She’d awakened to hunger pains and a dry throat, and wanted to pluck a fruit from a tree before an encomendero could catch and whip her.

Akari moved to the Island two years ago and built her one-bedroom house on the edge of a lake. She lives with Ren, a robot.

The aliens came when Rita was nine. Came, passed by, kept going. Kept decelerating.

We wear the masks long after penguins have been extinguished. By now we are hauntresses, hordes of extinction shuffling along the city streets under the excruciating weathers of this brutal world we’ve inherited. Individually, we are called pinguinos. It’s something to do; the world is depressed and none of us have jobs.

That woman—the version of me that had invented time travel, and traveled back to save my sister—haunts me, nips at my heels, makes me work faster and faster every day.

So I was poaching scallops in butter when the first eye emerged in the crease of my left elbow.

The day the last qawwal was killed, my childhood city, already known for its lethal silence, for its censorship of words, for its refusal to listen, went into a deep deep quiet.

The Drone remained behind him, heavy as a funeral. The Boy stood still as dirt.

She chooses at random. No one is special, or unspecial. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they look like. They’re just data.

Another apocalyptic was out by Gert's truck, stuffing pamphlets under the wiper blades. "End's coming," he said as she approached, his voice a frail whinny.