LINKDING

<blockquote>Raymond was the new care worker at Sunshine. The place was mostly staffed with holographic workers, who ambled around picking up things people had dropped, whether or not they wanted them picked up, and otherwise lurked in corners and shimmered. But Raymond was pale, spotty, and human, with a permanent sneer on his thin face. He turned the dial on the radio and Edie stopped listening. Instead, she thought about the song she’d heard, the few lines of the melody repeating themselves over and over in her head. Da-da-da-DA. It made her feet twitch. She got up, ignoring Annabel’s glare—Annabel thought Radio 4 should be a compulsory Sunshine experience—and went up to her room. In her diary, she scrawled today’s date, followed by: heard music. Name, Lee. Min?</blockquote>

<blockquote>Priya wondered why they were all so afraid to speak of death, herself included. “I’ll be fine,” she said. The daylight spilling across the kitchen floor was filtering through the layer of snow on the window, erasing all shadows. It all felt pleasingly melodramatic. “If I get lonely, I’ll go to Amarnath Noy.” “Oh,” Adam said, obviously trying to hide his surprise. “I guess you could. I, uh, I thought you didn’t go there alone, usually.” More tactful stepping around the subject. “I don’t,” Priya said briskly, “but I guess I’ll have to start.” She wasn’t sure where the idea had come from; she’d been to Amarnath Noy less and less as she grew up, and hardly at all in the years since college. But it felt necessary all of a sudden. It must be these difficult times, Priya thought. She put on her snow boots and set out.</blockquote> ➤ I love this approach to the portal fantasy, how her experience of the other world is both an allegory for the diaspora experience and a real thing in itself.