After the disaster—after the litigation, the endless testimony, the needling comments of the defendant’s counsel—there is at last a settlement, with no party admitting error, and the state recognizing no victim, least of all yourself. Although the money cannot mend any of the overturned things left behind, it can pay for college, so that’s where you go next.
As children grow into adulthood, it is often hard to know who is the elder until you are told. With Akpan and Udo, anyone could tell at first sight, on first hearing, who was Akpan, the first son in every way, and who was Udo, the one who came after.
Programs such as Deep Blue (b. 1995) and NeuraMind (b. 2015) had been capable of defeating the most skilled humans in strategy games since the early twenty-first century. However, the goal of second-generation programs such as Albion was not to defeat human players, but to imitate them.
A whale soars over Brooklyn. Clouds spread in streaks over the pale blue sky like cold butter. And the whale cleaves right through. Dar spots it from his perch on the rooftop, smoking a contraband cigarette. At first, it looks like the whale is just playing. Bobbing in and out of the clouds the way calves do during their migratory season. But the whale is too large to be a calf; it casts a shadow over the entire block as it glides directly overhead.
The corpsemongers down on Echo are selling human teeth again, little pearls of calcium passed hand to palm like benediction, and that means the pilot has to go down and check for eyeteeth.
