Category: issue 7

“This is mostly your fault,” Baozi said as he bandaged the still-bleeding forehead of the stranger propped against the tree. “You jumped out at me from the trees without so much as a word of warning. Nearly scared me to death. Instead of stabbing you, I only punched you lightly.”

You’ll believe the dead are finally contacting you one week after you move from the countryside to São Paulo, two weeks after you turn 30. And much like both the moving and the birthday, the experience will be kind of bittersweet.

ve been covering the night shift lately. It just makes sense. Bernie has kids and Trevor has early morning classes over at the state college in Weatherly. At our last staff meeting, Andy (our manager) kinda-sorta indicated that I should step up and cover for the other two. He likes to see his employees striving towards something—family, career, whatever—and encourages us to support each other in those ventures. It’s not like grocery store clerking is anybody’s life ambition. Except maybe for me.

For the god Brahma the Creator, the act of Creation was never a one-and-done affair. He understood that when releasing an unpredictable element like humanity in a newly designed world, it would take some cycles to work out the kinks. That was why Brahma believed in an iterative process: four Yugas to chart the inception, progress, decline, and collapse of the world under humanity, an honest post-mortem, followed by a new version of Creation, with an updated design informed by hard data.