sf

The Bug Who Saved Everyone

Hermitails from all corners of the world gathered in a great damp auditorium, dragging their synthetic and natural shells with them. They clicked and clattered into concentric rings around the great calciferous podium where their thought leaders would come to speak. No one would leave satisfied until one of them had convinced the populace of their truth, reaching past the murmuring auditorium, through video and audio broadcasts and beyond.

Trigger Warning: end of the world, climate change and extinction, heavy themes of death, loss of mental integrity

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Alix and the Bitter Cambrian

Opabinia is not an unpopular program, but it’s not a star. It rates high in a few of the recursive learning categories. Its history as a third-party program, disconnected from any of the major tech companies and their optimized powerhouse software, makes it a difficult choice for some of the sorting algorithms to pick up, but those who do find that it works powerfully for their interests.

Every day, as the hours swim by, you spend time talking to Opabinia about things related to work – and outside of it – in your dim apartment.

Trigger Warning: suicide, parent death, NSFW mention, depictions of extreme poverty and societal collapse

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Darkling Days

Between moments when the sky wore red, when it took on that classic blue color, she felt like the world was lying to her. Sure, everything couldn’t be on fire all at the same time, and fires were less common on the east coast anyway, but the blue did not describe what the world had become. Of course the world would stop the charade eventually, and the red sky would herald the coming of more ash, which she almost looked forward to at this point, because it meant the new beetles would take shelter. An absurd instinct - didn’t they know this was their world? - but one that allowed her a moment to forage.

Trigger Warning: animal death, child death, climate destruction, insects/disease, end of the world

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