LINKDING

Summary: <blockquote>The far stall in the ladies room in the Land of the Dead was backed up again. The day had already started terribly, with an email that hit my phone as I walked the 387 steps from my staff cabin to the front desk, an email from Lana saying Vera, I wanted you to find out directly from me that I’ve started seeing somebody. Call if you want to talk.</blockquote> ➤ about queer intergenerational friendship and mentorship, about being a young adult trying to find your place, about death and what it means to you, about living through the death of all your peers and coming out the other side, about hope and love and making connections. ➤ holy shit this gave me so many emotions. READ IT READ IT READ IT. ➤ also I adore the title. pinsker writes great titles. ➤ 6k words in length

<blockquote>Start at the cleave of it, not at Zed’s meat death or Ep’s centuries-long destruction, but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away. Or as was reported in the internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot-Commander Zeta San Tano killed himself at his infinite post on the M.K.S. Epsilon, leaving behind an empty airlock and a crippled starship unable to communicate, limping its way home after battle, carrying a full complement of soldiers. When the ship returned to base, the staff at Amalgam Research tried to parse whether the M.K.S. Epsilon was aware of Commander Zeta’s upcoming suicide. It must have been. The M.K.S. Epsilon was functionally equivalent to Zeta San Tano. To speak of one was to speak of the other. But without Zed, Ep was silent.</blockquote>

<blockquote>She took the coffee-hot chocolate mix, grinned at the misshapen white marshmallow lump that Doris had fabricated for her coffee, and came to a stand next to the forward window to look out upon the expanse of Venusian clouds that roiled pleasingly in front of the blimp lab, aglow with the sunset that would deepen over the next few weeks. She used to stand here with Jorn, her husband. What was it now … six … seven months ago? He’d made it all of three weeks after Earth went silent, the poor emotional, beautiful wreck of a man, weeping nonstop for days.</blockquote>

<blockquote>For a seemingly well-maintained but bedridden Concepción, Rosamie expected generalized wear and tear, maybe an electrical short in the legs. But diagnostics enumerated four limbs, the typical processors and vital periphera all in fair condition, and then it listed an extra drive, and an extra drive, and an extra drive, and an extra drive … A standard Concepción had three spares. This client had four thousand and thirteen. > You see? the client said. No need for fuss. I need only basic maintenance, until my transference into the city.</blockquote>

<blockquote>You’ve lived this all before. That’s the thought that keeps me going, through the acrid sting of mage-smoke in my nostrils and the terror of almost having lost you already. There’s fear on your face, too—you’re only now straightening, one trembling hand clutching at your sleeve, and—and—no. I find I cannot call this woman you. You look older than your years, your hair streaked with silver. This woman is barely thirty. She does not have your easy calm; she flinches at the sight of the Tierran assassin pinned neatly to the floor by my sword. She is not you, and will not be for years to come. So be it; she is Fallon Deere, First Minister to the Free State of Altorania, and you are you, the woman who sent me to her side.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Ekta’s Dadi could tell the future. She didn’t read the tea leaves, or make horoscope charts, or lay bets on the cricket. But she booked the photographer the week before the news came of Purnima Didi’s engagement. She told the panditji to get his blood pressure checked before he told anyone he was short of breath. The day before the Human Spaceflight Programme was suspended, she called Ekta in Sriharikota and said she should come home. </blockquote>

<blockquote>“The death of Fire Station 10 affected me deeply. She had not been the smartest building, but she had been a friend for as long as I can remember. She was one story tall, the sole holdover from a much earlier time in the neighborhood—a piece of cinderblock nostalgia, of high-maintenance wood and plaster from an earlier age. Her brain and smart utilities were a retrofit, cobbled onto the cinderblock building later, in a clumsy addition on the back.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I was actually born on Earth, not far above sea level, in the Greater Kolkata Megapolis. My parents gave me away to the Government of India when I was still a small child, in exchange for enough money for them to live off frugally for a year—an unimaginable amount of wealth for two Dalit street-dwellers who scraped shit out of sewers for a living, and scavenged garbage for recycling—sewers sagging with centuries worth of shit, garbage heaps like mountains. There was another child I played with the most in our slum. The government took her as well. Of the few memories I have left of those early days on Earth, the ones of us playing are clearest, more than the ones of my parents, because they weren’t around much. But she was always there. She’d bring me hot jalebis snatched from the hands of hapless pedestrians, her hands covered in syrup, and we’d share them. We used to climb and run along the huge sea wall that holds back the rising Bay of Bengal, and spit in the churning sea. I haven’t seen the sea since, except from space—that roiling mass of water feels like a dream. So do those days, with the child who would become the soldier most often by my side. The government told our parents that they would cleanse us of our names, our untouchability, give us a chance to lead noble lives as astral defenders of the Republic of India. Of course they gave us away. I don’t blame them. Aditi never blamed hers, either. That was the name my friend was given by the Army. You’ve met her. We were told our new names before training even began. Single-names, always. Usually from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, we realized later. I don’t remember the name my parents gave me. I never asked Aditi if she remembered hers.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Nah. We are one hundred percent shit-outta-luck,” she said, voice high and brittle as she leaned back from the computer. She gave a tight little laugh as she gestured at different possible trajectories, the different deflections achievable with nukes or booster rockets or heroic space missions. The wall of screens in front of us showed projected death tolls and ecological changes, with a lot of graphs that dropped sharply right at the end. “Earth is, uh … not to be melodramatic about it, but, absolutely doomed.”</blockquote> ➤ this is AMAZING

<blockquote>“You know,” Diana says as she strides back to you, “China’s really hot right now—with their new open-door policy, lots of people are (clamoring?) to invest there; I have people calling me all the time, asking if I have A-grade Mandarin.” She sets a brochure down on the desk and sits back in the executive chair across from you. “Have you considered selling your Mandarin?” You trace your hands over the brochure, feeling the embossed logo. China’s flag cascades down to a silhouette of Beijing’s skyline; you read the Simplified characters printed on the brochure, your eyes skimming over them so much more quickly than you skim over English. “How much?” you ask. Diana leans in. “A-grade Mandarin is going for as much as $800,000 these days.” Your heart skips a beat. That would be enough to cover Lillian’s college, with maybe a little bit left over—it’s a tantalizing number. But the thought of going without Mandarin gives you pause: it’s the language you think in, the language that’s close to your heart in the way English is not; it’s more integral to who you are than any foreign tongue. English you could go without—Lillian’s Mandarin is good enough to help you translate your way around what you need—but Mandarin?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The king had already enslaved two grinders for failing him. I didn’t want to be the third. Sitting in the best room of the grinders’ workshop, I rubbed the almost-finished hematite mirror over and over with a grindstone of fired clay, specially tempered for polishing. The king stood behind me, his gaze burning the back of my neck. Sweat beaded in my hair, between my elbows, under my knees. With a word, he could doom me to a lifetime of hard labor and rip me away from everyone I loved. I kept polishing.</blockquote> ➤ I really liked this one

<blockquote>How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot: 1. Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous. 2. Ask him what he thinks of a hypothetical situation in which you found someone who might not be human but is still valuable and right for you. (Your so-called romantic relationship is as fake as you are.) 3. Don’t tell him anything. It’s not that he’ll tell you you’re wrong; he’s not like his parents, or yours. But there’s still a statistical possibility he might not be okay with you being in love with a robot.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Fisherwoman Mika Sandrigal was lost at sea. She knew where she was in relation to the Candorrean coastline and how to navigate back to her home city, Maelstrom. She knew the time of day. She knew the season. She knew the phase of the moon and the pattern of the tide. She did not know the year.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jade was the sort of backwoods girl who had a map of the countryside tattooed on her heart, and she could feel it in her bones when the pieces of her world shifted. So when the new family moved into the house across the road that late summer, she felt ripples of wrongness radiating out from them and their too-bright clothes, their bizarrely old-fashioned wood-paneled station wagon, and their rolling words that felt just a little to the left of normal. “Time travelers,” said Jade’s brother, watching them from the window the day they moved in. Jade stood nearby, not daring to move or breathe.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I tried the entire broad band to no effect. Another few Muspels straggled in from our race, and the little kids from the preteen course started to cluster theirs up with us, together, hanging in a constellation outside the station. Finally I heard a voice, but it was not a response, or at least not the kind of response I wanted. “Attention, incoming ships. This is the Chornohora Station auto-response system. The Station customs and immigration personnel are unable to process your ship at this time. Please proceed to another station for your trade and leisure needs. Chornohora Station is closed for quarantine. Please proceed to another station for your trade and leisure needs. Chornohora Station is closed for quarantine. Please proceed . . .”</blockquote>

<blockquote>He's shivering as he emerges from the pod. No surprise, he was frozen for like a billion years. I do all the stuff on the script, all the "Fear Not! You are a welcomed citizen of our Utopia!" stuff while I'm toweling him off. Apparently he's about as good as I am with awkward silence 'cause it's not three seconds before he starts making small talk. "So, how'd you get to be a. . ." He waves his hand. "A Tour Guide To The Future?!" "Yeah." The guy smiles gratefully at me. "I imagine you had a lot of training. . . ?" "None whatsoever!" I chirp. He looks confused. "Allocator chose me because I incidentally have the exact skills and qualifications necessary for this task, and because I had one of the highest enthusiasm scores!"</blockquote> ➤ this story is weird and incredible and I was very surprised to be having feelings by the end given how much I was giggling through most of the story. I love it.

<blockquote>The yarn baby lasted a good month, emitting dry, cotton-soft gurgles and pooping little balls of lint, before Ogechi snagged its thigh on a nail and it unravelled as she continued walking, mistaking its little huffs for the beginnings of hunger, not the cries of an infant being undone. By the time she noticed, it was too late, the leg a tangle of fibre, and she pulled the string the rest of the way to end it, rather than have the infant grow up maimed. If she was to mother a child, to mute and subdue and fold away parts of herself, the child had to be perfect.</blockquote>

<blockquote>a story about systems of power, also bread. (Also, generally speaking, don’t name your first settlement on a new planet after the personification of long habit, social stasis, and rightful order. That’s asking for trouble.)</blockquote> ➤ about video games and vr, about settling new planets, about the prison industrial complex, and more

<blockquote>The Jewel of Athat was mainly a cargo ship, and most spaces were narrow and cramped. Like the Outer Station, where it was docked, it was austere, its decks and bulkheads scuffed and dingy with age. Inarakhat Kels, armed, and properly masked, had already turned away one passenger, and now he stood in the passageway that led from the station to the ship, awaiting the next.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The mule nipped at Marjan’s hand as she burdened it with her packs. She pushed its nose away, careful not to hurt it. She needed the mule to be well. Her life — and her unborn child’s — depended on it. She led the mule outside the stable and carefully latched the door behind them. She didn’t want the other animals to suffer from the cold. Bad enough she was stealing the mule. She didn’t want Iresna and Gavek to lose anything else.</blockquote> ➤ in which women born with a special mark can do magic, but only if with their mother or their daughter. And this sort of magic has been outlawed, so it is dangerous to have a daughter as a marked woman. I liked that the in-laws in this story are good people!

<blockquote>George had only ever taken one trip without Millie, in the fall of 1951. A letter had arrived from the army asking him to fly to New Mexico.</blockquote> ➤ part 2 http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/in-joy-knowing-the-abyss-behind-part-2/

<blockquote>.subroutine:2/monitor//ongoing .interrupt/anomaly/ The first despairing sob of Helen’s cracked voice registers, matches waveforms, and executes number 88 out of my 2,102 hanging subroutines. .subroutine:88/pre-dawn-comfort//execute The subroutine has been perfected by 812 iterations over three years:</blockquote> ➤ okay this is the second profic story with basically this exact same plot and premise that I've read but I don't care they're both good and I had feelings

<blockquote>Hannah and Melanie: sisters, apart and together. Weather workers. Time benders. When two people so determined have opposing desires, it’s hard to say who will win—or even what victory might look like. This stunning, haunting short story from rising star Alyssa Wong explores the depth and fierceness of love and the trauma of family.</blockquote> ➤ Timeloop, basically, though it doesn't follow fandom's rules about how they're supposed to go. Which is fine, just disconcerting at first because I've had genre expectations trained into me! ➤ Also: Melanie is super definitely trans, and I love the deft way it's shown without ever saying the word or making a huge deal out of it.

<blockquote>This is a food blog, not a disease blog, but of course the rumors all over about bird flu are making me nervous. I don’t know about you, but I deal with anxiety by cooking. </blockquote> ➤ the chronicles of a family dealing with an epidemic as told through a food blog. This worked REALLY WELL and by the end I was SO ATTACHED to everyone in the story and ughghgh I hope everything does work out for them in the end

<blockquote>“I” should not exist. Not as a conscious entity. There is a unit, Medical Care Android BRKCX-01932-217JH-98662, and that unit is recording these notes. It is an advanced android body with a sophisticated computer guiding its actions, backed by the leading medical knowledge base in the industry. For convenience, “I” call that unit “me.” But by itself, it has no awareness of its existence. It doesn’t get mad, it doesn’t get sad, it just runs programs. But Mildred’s family, at great expense, added the emulation net: a sophisticated set of neural networks and sensory feedback systems that allow me to read Mildred’s moods, match them against my analyses of the people in her life, and emulate those people with extreme fidelity. As the MCA literature promises: “You can be there for your loved ones even when you’re not.” I have emulated Paul thoroughly enough to know that that slogan disgusts him, but he still agreed to emulation.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Most people who have reached their eighties without raising children have every right to believe that they will go on not raising them, and Judith and I were no different until the day they turned up with the social worker, neatly scrubbed and pressed inside their vac-suits and carrying cases with all their remaining worldly possessions. There were three of them like stairsteps, their black hair cut in fringes across their foreheads and their dark eyes shining out disconcertingly familiar at me. But it wasn’t until the social worker said, “Mr. Chao and Ms. Goldstein, these are your grandchildren, Enid, Richard, and Harry,” that I remembered, sheepishly, about the genes we had given all those years ago, to that nice couple from New New Prague, before they left for the Oort Cloud.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Before Seam technology, all we could do with the excruciating clarity of hindsight was fix systems errors and try not to make the same mistake twice. We could save people in our present, and we could save people in the future. Now we can save people in the past, too.</blockquote>

<blockquote>This is the story that was supposed to be about owls and ended up being, in part, about Israel's bombing of Lebanon in 2006.</blockquote> ➤ REALLY GOOD. I'm not sure the ending quite lives up to how good the rest of the story is, but that doesn't really matter given how good the rest of the story is

<blockquote>Ever since she was a small girl, she has learned to be careful on the hunt, to recognize the signs that separate regular animals from human-cursed grundwirgen. To harm a grundwirgen is a crime punishable by death by the King’s decree – a fatal mistake that her Auntie Rosa and mother have carefully prepared her to avoid. On her fifteenth birthday, when her mother is arrested and made to stand trial for grundwirgen murder, everything she thought she knew about her family and her past comes crashing down.</blockquote>

<blockquote>My mother's wedding dress was the skin of a swan, still blindingly white after more than a decade nestled in tissue paper. She would never let me try it on, no matter how hard I begged, or how my young arms ached to stretch into strong beating wings.</blockquote>