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You Are Here

You need to take the Blue Line to Memorial Park – move up around the
axis to the second exit. (You can use your home vehicle.) You walk along
the fence and turn right to find the entrance ahead. The fountain is
inside, centered in the hall; to locate it, you need to walk past the core
steles along the main avenue.

At the time of liberation and crisis, this was the largest cavern inside
the planetoid, dug for the purpose of mining ore; but the mine became
repurposed as a war memorial when independence was declared. The lights
overhead fade out in response to your awareness and darken to a constant
gray, reminding the visitor of generations past in the face of what is yet
to be. With each moment, the baseline of your memories shifts, creating an
unsettling dream atmosphere. The quiet, oblique space opens wide and
resounds with your own breathing. You can touch the fragments and pebbles
embedded in the stone mantle, but beware of your instinctive missteps –
the ground is uneven. You can assert yourself and call from the inside,
expecting deliverance, but any wrongs are products of your own mind and
your preconceptions. You are the mirror.

[ PROCEED ]

Was: Blue Line to Memorial Park

The cavern inside you resounds with the purpose of generations past;
you walk ahead, expecting the lights overhead to darken any second
and the dream to fade out to the constant gray of baseline awareness.
Turn to move, mine your memories for ore and liberation. You are here
and with each moment you assert your independence, centered inside
the planetoid you can call your own. You need to find the fence around
the fountain, to walk along the main avenue and touch the steles; exit
as the entrance opens wide – this is your need to locate your home when
you are but a visitor, creating a memorial from repurposed fragments,
the unsettling space inside became embedded in your core,
reminding you of past missteps. Take up the mantle but beware the war,
the instinctive response to right declared wrongs at the time of crisis –
the quiet in the hall is the vehicle of your own uneven breathing
and the ground shifts along an oblique axis. It is the deliverance
of the mind – preconceptions dug in stone and atmosphere;
the largest products mining can use are but pebbles in the face of
what was – and can yet be. Mirror yourself.



Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person and a resident alien in the US. E writes both fiction and poetry, and eir work has been published in a variety of venues like Strange Horizons, Clarkesworldand Apex, among others. E reviews diverse fiction, poetry, and nonfiction at Bogi Reads the World. You can follow em on Twitter at @bogiperson. Bogi also has a webserial, Iwunen Interstellar Investigations.
Current Issue
29 May 2023

We are touched and encouraged to see an overwhelming response from writers from the Sino diaspora as well as BIPOC creators in various parts of the world. And such diverse and daring takes of wuxia and xianxia, from contemporary to the far reaches of space!
By: L Chan
The air was redolent with machine oil; rich and unctuous, and synthesised alcohol, sharper than a knife on the tongue.
“Leaping Crane don’t want me to tell you this,” Poppy continued, “but I’m the most dangerous thing in the West. We’ll get you to your brother safe before you know it.”
Many eons ago, when the first dawn broke over the newborn mortal world, the children of the Heavenly Realm assembled at the Golden Sky Palace.
Winter storm: lightning flashes old ghosts on my blade.
transplanted from your temple and missing the persimmons in bloom
immigrant daughters dodge sharp barbs thrown in ambush 十面埋伏 from all directions
Many trans and marginalised people in our world can do the exact same things that everyone else has done to overcome challenges and find happiness, only for others to come in and do what they want as Ren Woxing did, and probably, when asked why, they would simply say Xiang Wentian: to ask the heavens. And perhaps we the readers, who are told this story from Linghu Chong’s point of view, should do more to question the actions of people before blindly following along to cause harm.
Before the Occupation, righteousness might have meant taking overt stands against the distant invaders of their ancestral homelands through donating money, labour, or expertise to Chinese wartime efforts. Yet during the Occupation, such behaviour would get one killed or suspected of treason; one might find it better to remain discreet and fade into the background, or leave for safer shores. Could one uphold justice and righteousness quietly, subtly, and effectively within such a world of harshness and deprivation?
Issue 22 May 2023
Issue 15 May 2023
Issue 8 May 2023
Issue 1 May 2023
Issue 24 Apr 2023
Issue 17 Apr 2023
Issue 10 Apr 2023
Issue 3 Apr 2023
Issue 27 Mar 2023
Issue 20 Mar 2023
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