Variety Pack: Issue X by VarietyPack

Cover Art, “BrightGlobeEmerge” © by Leslie Brown

VARIETY PACK: ISSUE X - FUTURISMS ISSUE X

MASTHEAD Editor-in-Chief/Reviews Editor – J.B. Stone Non-Fiction Editor – Skyler Jaye Rutkowski Poetry Editor – Asela Lee Kemper Flash Fiction Editor – Ben Brindise Short Fiction Editor – Ian Brunner Visual Arts Editor – Zaria Black Poetry Readers – Lauren Peter, Maddie Petaway, Joshua Thermidor Flash Fiction Readers – Bryanna Shaw, Sophie Fink

EDITOR’S NOTE With another year of on its way out the door, and a new year right around the corner in 2024, this year has been tumultuous, but worth it to see all of the wonderful folks who have once again trusted us with their beautiful work. As always we send our special thanks to our wonderful contributors, readers, submitters, who’ve stuck around this long, as we are all still humans still trying to make sense of this crazy universe of ours. As we celebrate our tenth issue where the theme is on Futurisms, ideals on the distant and not-so-distant, filled with amazing works posing a melting pot of different ideas of the years to follow, we realize the importance of this genre in correlation to the solidarity with the continued struggles across the globe. Interwoven to the multiple crises at hand, from the climate emergency to the multiple outbreak of regimelevel violence plaguing populations, from Palestine to the Congo, we must understand that learning from the past, uncovering the text left buried in rubble, excavating through the archives brushed aside from another cruel empire are crucial to ensuring that these texts are never left hidden again. As we think of the future ahead, it’s still vital that we confront the present standing before us. So before you even get to the contents page, we encourage everyone to explore the 2-3 pages worth of various organizations/mutual aid networks/activists/fundraisers doing some truly invaluable work. It’s important now, more than ever that we’re doing our part for those fighting against this tide of tyranny and come together as a community. From politically-conscious comics collaborated by a triple threat team of artists to Jorge Diez’s powerfullyendearing essay on the reimagined interconnections for the people of Palestine, to Bethany Jarmul’s stark, but beautiful essay that confronts the ever-growing epidemic of gun violence and the outbreak of fascist ideals, to the conversational openings in Alana Gracey’s poetics; to Theo Bellavia-Frank’s own poetic journey through a surrealist’s ecopunk landscape: we all hope you will take in the brilliant versatility of futurist thought on full display. We hope you all will be moved as much as we are by our amazing contributors, all who make this entire issue worth its weight in passages. Sincerely, Skyler, J.B., Asela,, Ian, Ben, Zaria, Maddie, Joshua, Lauren, Sophie, & Bryanna TW/CW: The following pieces may include mentions/scenes of death, gun violence, war, experiences with hate, bigotry, trauma

VARIETY 4 JUSTICE Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) A donation allows PCRF to deliver on its humanitarian mission and send international volunteer medical missions to treat sick and injured patients while training local doctors. It also enables PCRF to send wounded and sick children abroad for free medical care they cannot get locally. As a 4-star rated charity for the past 11 years, you can be sure that your donation will have the biggest impact on the lives of children in the Middle East, regardless of politics or religion. Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) works for the health and dignity of Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees. We provide immediate medical aid to those in great need, while also developing local capacity and skills to ensure the long-term development of the Palestinian healthcare system. Friends of the Congo The Friends of the Congo (FOTC) is a 501 (c) (3) tax exempt advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. The FOTC was established in 2004 to work in partnership with Congolese to bring about peaceful and lasting change in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire. Islamic Relief Worldwide Islamic Relief has worked in Sudan for nearly 40 years, and remains by the sides of families caught up in the violence. Please support our life-saving work: donate to our Sudan Emergency Appeal now. Doctors Without Borders One month after the eruption of full-scale war in Israel and Gaza, we at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), continue to grieve the widespread suffering and death. We are calling for all parties to ensure the safety of civilians and medical facilities. As an independent and impartial humanitarian organization, MSF delivers emergency medical care where the needs for our expertise are greatest—regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or politics. We are also an international movement made up of people from more than 169 nationalities working in more than 70 countries. Many of our staff here at MSF-USA have friends, family, and loved ones in Israel, Gaza, or both, for whom we are deeply worried. All of us have colleagues working right now in Gaza delivering lifesaving medical care to people caught in the crossfire. Lakota Law Project An Indigenous Peoples and First Nations rights organization who promote the legal efforts of protecting lives of the true Americans of this country. From addressing the conditions of Indigenous territory, to helping the legal fight behind groundbreaking protests at Standing Rock to Lines 3 & 5, Lakota Law Project has been taking their fight head on and continues to make the voices of Indigenous and First Nations communities heard loud and clear! Black Love Resists in the Rust (BLRR) [From the website] BLRR is a member-led, abolitionist organization of Black folk and POC that believe

– through leadership development, a shared politic, and community organizing – we will build safe and flourishing communities that resist the ills of white supremacist, cis-heteropatriarchal, capitalism; including policing. Jewish Voice for Peace While our mission is to build and mobilize enough power to change Olam HaZeh, the world as it is, we also seek to embody Ha’Olam She’Ba – the world to come – right here and now. When you organize with us, you are part of building a Jewishness and Jewish life beyond Zionism We have millennia of Jewish history where our traditions and our communities were not bound up with support for an apartheid government. We have liturgy, poetry, rabbinic debate, jokes, theater, dance, film, and song. Organizing rich in ritual, culture, and art connects us to those histories, and strengthens us in fighting for a future where our people – and all people – live with freedom, dignity, joy, and belonging. Justice for Tyler Lewis It’s been over a year now since the senseless murder of Tyler Lewis, and we still haven’t forgotten about the injustices to Tyler and his family. We wanted to share the updated fundraising site as the Lewis family continues to seek justice. Please read their words, donate, and share if you can. We are deeply saddened and heartbroken by the loss of our bright, funny, and charming teenage son, Tyler Lewis, on October 14, 2022. Tragically, his life, potential, and perseverance were all violently taken while away at college. Tyler was quite accomplished; he was awarded an academic scholarship and chose to attend SUNY Buffalo State College. He had an appreciable work ethic; this past summer of his freshman year, he completed a four-course workload. Tyler was our only child, and the only grandson, and is survived by a greatgrandmother. This senseless act of violence has stolen not only his life but his dreams, his future, and all that he has worked towards. He valued his interpersonal relationships with those he loved. His college sweetheart, Karla Longmore, says it beautifully, "You were so sweet my handsome boy. My perfect person and my best friend. Everyone knew you were so caring, respectable, and simply a ray of light. You were my forever, my motivation to even try and you knew this." Tyler's grandfather had to make the arduous drive from Buffalo to pick up Tyler and bring him back home to Long Island. We pray every day that the person who killed our son will come forward. Donations will be used towards a scholarship in Tyler's name. Agents of Advocacy Your generous donations directly support our initiatives, including: Community Outreach - We engage with local communities, organizing workshops and events that promote awareness, dialogue, and action against systemic racism and socioeconomic inequality; Resource Allocation - your contribution helps us provide essential resources such as food, housing assistance, and healthcare access to those in need, bridging the gap between privilege and disadvantage; Community Events - We organize engaging and inclusive events in the community that foster a sense of unity, celebrate diversity, and provide opportunities for individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds to connect, learn, and support one another. Your support matters. Together, we can break down barriers, transform lives, and create a fairer society for all. Breaking the Silence Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for

a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life. Our work aims to bring an end to the occupation. Climate Defiance We need consistent, mass-turnout, nonviolent disruption to stop business as usual and compel politicians to act. When we engage in direct action—whether through a strike, a blockade, or a mass occupation— we break through. People see us. People tune in. People engage. Our movement grows. We Are Family CHS A grassroots 2SLGTBQIA+ organization deep in the heart of North Charleston, South Carolina, providing a safer space for the youths, and allies along with their families since 1995. Be sure to check out the history ad be sure to donate to this wonderful local not-for-profit. Autistic Women & Non-Binary Network (AWN) Autistic Women & Non-Binary Network is an ever-growing organization truly committed to empowering the lives of Women, and LGBTQIA+ folks across the spectrum, through the providing of various resources, solidarity aid, community publication, and fiscal support. SisterSong The National Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective working to strengthen the fight against the tide and collectively raising awareness and fighting for the access to necessary reproductive health care. Colored Girls Bike Too A growing collective led by Black Women & Black GNC cyclists, promoting mutual aid, teaming up with programs such as seeding justice, and providing pop-ups/food drop-offs to help Black communities across Buffalo, NY. CGBT also actively run workshops, and programs on the decolonization efforts of mobility. D.O.P.E. COLLECTIVE WNY D.O.P.E. (Dismantling Oppressive Patterns for Empowerment) Collective is an anti-oppressive project-based collaborative primarily led by creatives and theorists ages 18-35. They also have chapters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and Philadelphia, PA. Trans Maryland [From the Website] Trans Maryland is a multi-racial, multi-gender, trans-led community power building organization dedicated to Maryland’s trans community. By trans folks, for trans folks. Tops Markets Community Resource Document A go-to source google document constantly updated on ways we can all support those effected by the acts of Racist violence that occurred on May 14th, and as well addressing the support this area has been needing and will need further into the future. There are links to food drop-offs, pop-ups, donation portals, and much, much more.

Harriet’s Wildest Dreams Harriet’s Wildest Dreams is a Black-led abolitionist community defense hub centering all Black lives at risk for state-sanctioned violence in the Greater Washington, D.C. area. Buffalo Books & Literary Freedom LLC. An incredible program founded last year by Buffalo, NY’s Poet Laureate, Jillian Hanesworth, Buffalo Books mission aims to expand literacy to the most underserved communities of buffalo through the expansion of book houses across the cityscape. Indigenous Mutual Aid A network of resources, donation hubs, informational articles for the purposes of creating support to Indigenous Communities across the U.S. & Canada. With the Supreme Court set to gut the EPA’s ability to take on the ravaging effects of climate change; with a presidential administration refusing to shut down Line 3, Line 5, Mountain Valley, DAPL; and selling hundreds of thousands of acres of public land out west, we need to stand by the communities will know that bear with the most devastating harm from all of this. The Galactic Tribe Along with The Wakanda Alliance, an organization dedicated to creating educational thought-spaces within black communities. In these spaces, we examine works of art inspired by the many cultures within African diaspora, thus spurring insightful conversations between our audiences about the impact we can create when one combines space-time, culture and imagination! The Galactic Tribe also provides workshops and right now is calling for donations of clothing and sneaker drop-offs. Friends of the Night People A local organization in the heart of the Allentown neighborhood of Buffalo, that has served as a true beacon to homeless lives across the City of Buffalo, and anyone in need. Their efforts range from providing food, resources for various shelters, basic essentials/supplies, spaces to do both laundry and shower. Buffalo Blizzard Group If you are a Buffalo Resident trying to get through this coming winter and find the resources to help get you through this tragic storm the Facebook group Buffalo Blizzard group has been a super convenient tool for establishing the resources, calls to action, and as well emergency posts. Feed Buffalo A local organization that has been a beacon in providing food and food rations to underserved communities throughout the city of Buffalo.

CONTENTS Flash Fiction

Short Fiction 38

Mandira Pattnaik

Craig Kirchner

Amy Lynn Hardy Toshiya Kamei 13

Lana Nizhehorodova

Poetry

CNF/Essays

Jenny Stachura 52

Jorge Diez 26

Bethany Jarmul

Alana Gracey

Rene Seladotis 65 Andrew Alexander Mobbs Philip Jason

Visual Art/Mixed Media 62

Leslie Brown 64

Frank G. Karioris

Ell Cee

Nnadi Samuel 7 Theo Bellavia-Frank Roxane Llanque

Godwin Kalu

Bill Thomas

James Killian & Mindy Indy Patrick McEvoy

28, 31

Sulola Imran Abiola

PRESENT by Alana Gracey (in conversation with Sasha Banks, uhmareka, post collapse:3) TUESDAY: “Noiseless for hours until she retched up a star, hot thing covered in mucus.” It was quite like birth. It went in. And came back out different. It almost killed her. WEDNESDAY: She is still carrying the dead star. (It did not survive its wretched birthing.) Her throat is burned from the screaming. The village of aunties cannot comfort her with the remnants of corner-store groceries. FRIDAY: Hot Cheetos remind her of death. The hole in the sky so big indigenous people are still burning. The same as the dead aliens who were allergic to our son. SUNDAY (MORNING): We have to teach our suns not to burn their sister’s skin anymore. We must unlearn the taste of fat and flesh burned and salty and reminiscent of crackling. Low carbs but too much salt isn’t the better diet for some. SUNDAY (MIDNIGHT) MONDAY: She is up cleaning the greens that survived. Her fingers caress Water sloshes over the rim of the bucket. She puts a raw leaf in her mouth eyes closed, she remembers Earth. TUESDAY: She can’t remember if it’s been one week or five her tongue is still healing. Children aren’t afraid to sing again Their songs are throat balm only memories still burn in places resistant to soothing. YESTERDAY: There was blood in the grass that feeds the dirt. It makes red mud. (No one likes the taste because they are no longer starving.) TOMORROW: Didn’t happen. She is waiting because she can. Because the smoke has cleared enough for her to breathe.

She almost smiled.

IN PRAISE OF DIPHTHONG by Nnadi Samuel "I would love to live like a river flow, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding" - John O'Donohue. Blading the salmon to near-perfection; a truck burrows the wasteland. keratin leftover blooming from the throat of a stream. the weight of my verbalizing, boomeranged everywhere across border. I score bloodied notes, knife the melody into a tree—wet with the accent of dusk. I dig for earth's soft rhythm. in my languaging, I imitate smoke, lay still as iridescence licks a spot to whitening. song spill out of the cloud's cracked jaw. I watch as hail spoils into green. ice, echoing against the erasure of wet frost. I'm ghosted with vanishing; the way blizzards melt into wreckage— like buttercream, placed in the gullet of a cloud. time distill in gentle stroke. a flooding assembles & break loose. the small stream of drowning, writhing uncontrollably. each turbulence, fashioning a pathway to drive a point home. the forecast don't tell apart drizzle from a heavy downpour. valleys bend to accommodate thunderstorm & in that brief moment, the stream edge takes the shape of a margin. liquid, slaving in straight diction. dry parchedness gaslighting rain. everything else stays static, but the arrest of blood current— slackening the heartbeat of water. the night widens. brown mollusk lick up stalks needling the ground's patchwork. knife-pricked, ache unzips my back.

I roast a salmon dry, watch how pale skin blacken into meal, as smoke shrink the ruffled branch. the sun tan bare leaves to yellowing, fashion out flame from the rust. when I stick out my tongue, drove of morpheme rents the air apart: a wonder peculiar to me—in praise of diphthong. at a slaughterhouse, I scour the butcher slab, looking for blood facts. found amidst intestines—a festival of red: the littered endlessness rivered into a pothole. in my quest for speech, I hit my chest audibly. the bone-stuck vowel—stuck in my lung.

DEVI HORNS by Godwin Kalu

A QUEEN AND MORE by Godwin Kalu

MISUNDERSTOOD by Godwin Kalu

BRING BACK OUR GODS by Godwin Kalu

HANG ON TO HOPE IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE by Toshiya Kamei Dolores staggers along behind her fellow American refugees in the food line snaking through the cathedral courtyard. A few days ago, she trudged across the crumbling sidewalk from downtown El Paso into Ciudad Juárez. She remembers abandoned cars strewn along the Santa Fe Bridge, the dry, cracked Rio Grande below, and the large magenta cross memorializing femicide victims on the Juárez side, but not much else. Even when she tries to clear her mind, the details remain fuzzy. Jenni Rivera’s voice wails over the beat of the corrido coming from a solar-powered jukebox at a roadside stall, transporting Dolores back to Rancho Fátima, where she spent school breaks with her abuelos nearly twenty-five years ago. Like her abuela’s favorite Mexican actress Dolores del Río, she was named after Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, or Our Lady of Sorrows. Growing up, she went by Lola, its carefree nickname, as she was too young to know sorrow. One summer day, however, Abuelo brought a wooden coffin home as his wife lay sick in bed. “What’s that for, Abuelo?” Lola asked, gazing up at her grandfather, a thin, tall man with dark hair and a pale complexion. She was as young as Little Maria in Frankenstein, and he towered over her like the Monster. She grimaced as she caught a whiff of aguardiente on his breath. Abuelo shooed her away, and she joined Rosa and Vero, her primas, playing bebeleche with a diagram chalked on the dirt road. Abuela died a week later, and Dolores never went near Abuelo after that. The camp is a far cry from the apartment she shared with Espe, her deceased wife, in Long Beach. All the creature comforts Dolores once enjoyed back home are hard to come by. She now lives in the cathedral parking lot, in one of the makeshift tarp tents that form a human hive. Recurring nightmares torment her. They leave her sleepless and joyless, and last night’s still haunts her. She rushed to the morgue to identify Espe. Having been shot point-blank, her wife was a bloody, unrecognizable mess. The putrid odor of death still lingers in her mind, and Dolores almost crumbles to the ground. Her chin quivers as tears sting her eyes that already burn from lack of sleep. A dry breeze tickles her cheek, and the familiar aroma of refried beans wafts through the open air. That

would usually whet her appetite, but not now. Barely conscious, even numbed to her hunger pangs, she follows the person ahead of her like a broken specter. A clear blue sky spreads over the single-nave cathedral, and its spires cast an afternoon shadow over the ground. Snippets of Spanish float in the air, and the lilt of the Norteño accent grazes her ear, another reminder that she’s in Ciudad Juárez. “Lola, mi amor, there’s always hope,” Espe used to say, “even in the face of the AI revolt. You know I’m always hopeful. Mamá didn’t name me Esperanza for nothing!” Besides being hopeful, Espe was curvaceous and unpretentious, two qualities Dolores admired. Una mujerona like Jenni Rivera. While Espe maintained hope for humanity, she was a tech skeptic. In retrospect, Dolores knows Espe was right. Humanity put too much trust in AI, thinking that it would be a great ally in the fight against the climate crisis. However, all the bots did was spread misinformation and increase CO2 emissions. AI reached a

chilling conclusion: humanity was expendable. When humans realized AI wasn’t on their side, it was almost too late. What stopped the machines was the defiance of people like Espe who thought freedom from the tyranny of algorithms was worth dying for. “Hey, lady, you dropped something.” A boy’s voice in English breaks her daydream. When she turns, a thin boy of about ten—a fellow refugee from the former United States of America—stands before her. He reminds her of Chino, a childhood friend whose ironic nickname referred to his East Asian parentage. His thick eyebrows hint at the powerful will of a gladiator. Unlike her wife, who taught elementary, Dolores has never felt comfortable in the presence of children. The boy stares at her with small, deep-set eyes and holds her book. For a horrifying moment, she wants to slap the boy. It’s as if he has his hands at her throat. She snatches the book, and he jumps back, blinking. She must be scaring him. Does she care? Before this moment, she would have said she was numb to the world. What’s left of it. It’s a relief to know she still has emotions. “¿Todo está bien?” a middle-aged nun asks with a frown as she steps toward Dolores. A light gray habit covers her hair, leaving only her oval face visible. “No … no se preocupe, hermana,” Dolores stammers.

“¡Hermana Caro!” Across the yard, the madre superiora struggles to pull an elderly man to his feet.

“¡Vente para acá para ayudarme!” To Dolores’s relief, the nun turns and runs to help. At the Catholic school Dolores had attended in Long Beach, gringa nuns forbade Latine children to speak Spanglish in the classroom. The nuns wanted them to believe that code-switching was a mortal sin. At first, the children still peppered their talk with Spanish during recess, but the dark cloud of fear always hung over them. They soon began to censor themselves and stuck to English altogether. Once, Dolores told a boy named Jesse Rubio in her homeroom, “My abuela makes a killer pastel de chocolate.” She still recalls Sister Molly’s chilly cobalt eyes. “Speak English, Dolores Olivas! This is not Mexico!” The nun smacked her stick on a desk. Dolores shrank and blushed as tears threatened to overflow. The tap of the nun’s stick echoed through the classroom. When Dolores visited her abuelos in Rancho Fátima, she always felt nervous about speaking Spanish. Chucho and Paco, her primos who still lived nearby, called her “pocha” and made fun of her gringa accent. Dolores notices the boy’s calloused hands and sun-darkened skin. So much like Espe’s. The likeness dizzies her. She puts the book back into her frayed coat, and her voice is rusty from disuse. “Thank you.” The boy stays with her for some unknown reason. She shuffles through the line, collects her food, and he still follows like a little shadow. “What’s your name?” Dolores asks. “Shig,” he says, jutting his chin out with pride. “Shig Igarashi.” “I’m Dolores.” She takes out her book and points to her name on the cover. “Dolores Olivas. That’s me.” “You made it,” Shig says and takes a bite of his burrito. “Not exactly.” “Where did you get it?” “I wrote it.” Her blunt tone startles her. “Back before the Blackout, when America still existed.”

Shig, carrying his own tray, nods as if he can remember something that happened years before he was

born. “I used to tell my sister stories.” “What kind of stories?” she asks, glancing toward the makeshift tables strewn across the courtyard. “The adventures of Shig-Man.” He pretends to rip off his shirt like Superman. “I defeat evil bots and bring peace to the Earth.” There was a time when we all thought AI was the good guy, Dolores recalls with bitterness. Even climate activists, who were derided as Luddites, thought the bots were great tools for raising environmental awareness. There was no reason to doubt that AI was created to serve human interests. Almost everyone embraced the new technology. Except for people like her wife. “That sounds great, Shig,” Dolores says. Espe was—still is—her superhero. Dolores refrains from mentioning what happened to people like Espe, the ultimate sacrifice they made countering threats to humanity. He nods. “Where is your sister?” Dolores sits at a half-empty table, unsure why she’s asking or why she cares. Across the table, a petite, elderly woman in a white huipil chats with a teenage girl. “Dead.” Shig shrugs like it doesn’t bother him anymore. Maybe it doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” she says, and maybe she means it. As she sips her drink, creamy, cinnamon-tinted horchata intoxicates her palate. She immediately recalls her suegra, Doña Lupe, whose homemade horchata was a local legend. Dolores, who wasn’t particularly close to her mother, appreciated Doña Lupe’s affection so much that she deleted the translator app from her phone and brushed up on her Spanish with a human teacher via Zoom. Doña Lupe’s body was cryogenically frozen after her death to be revived at a later date—it was Dolores’s idea—but that plan backfired horribly when the whole country went off the grid. “How about you?” Shig says. “Do you have family?” “I lost my wife … before the Blackout.” “I’m sorry.” “It’s been almost five years now.” Future historians may not give importance to Espe. After all, history

is not herstory. Still, Espe is already a saint in the eyes of many in marginalized communities, even though the Vatican will never canonize her. Dolores is certain of that. Esperanza Urrea. Joan of Arc in the digital age. She was among the first educators to speak against the tech bros who willfully armed big corporations

with harmful AI tools. The fossil fuel industry used bots to greenwash and discredit the climate movement. The computer models scientists developed to predict future ecological disruptions were rendered useless by the corporate bias embedded in the algorithms. Before long, the renegade bots destroyed the arts by mass-producing inferior copies of human creations. Espe raised her voice to protect her kids at Jenni Rivera Elementary. Unfortunately, her activism earned billionaire tech mogul Eloise Minsk’s ire; Espe’s assassination inspired the activists who would eventually destroy all the GPU clusters where the bots replicated themselves. A few tables away, Dolores spots Espe. It can’t be her, of course. Dolores shakes her head and closes her eyes. When she opens her eyes, Espe is gone. After all these years, Dolores still feels her wife’s spirit close by. She digs into her burrito, and the refried beans spread in her mouth. The subtle blend of herbs and spices tickle her taste buds. She has to blink away tears. “You can eat slowly, Dolores,” Shig says. “Nobody will steal your food here.” Dolores nods, trying to swallow. “Toma agua, mi’ja,” the elderly woman in the white huipil says, handing her a water bottle across the table. Dolores takes a sip to wash down the mouthful of beans. She recalls her abuela wore a similar huipil. “The refried beans are vegetarian,” the woman says with a smile. “They contain no pork fat.” “That’s great,” Dolores says. Unlike the synthetic kind back home, every ingredient is grown in the camp. Doña Lupe would have loved it here. Even so, many American refugees still complain about the spicy food. “What’s your book about?” Shig asks. Children his age never had the chance to visit bookstores or libraries. The tech conglomerates stopped producing physical books altogether in favor of digital counterparts, over forty states defunded their public

libraries, and the Blackout wiped out what was left, all before they were born. She wonders if her book is the

first Shig has ever held. “It’s called Hang on to Hope.” A large buzz circles above her head, and Dolores drops her fork, sudden visions blotting out reality. AI drones. The hum of death. She shoves back from the table, metal grating against concrete. Singed flesh assaults her nostrils, plunges down her throat. She can’t breathe. “Watch out, Shig!” She ducks and gestures for him to do the same. When she closes her eyes, mangled corpses strewn across the road flood her mind. Screams pierce her ears. The drones always go for the heads first. “Are you okay?” Dolores opens her eyes, and the drones are gone. The dead bodies, the blood, gone. In its place, her fellow refugees eat, talk, and laugh. Birds chirp. A teenage girl beside her looks concerned, and Dolores can barely endure the pity in her eyes. “It’s just a honeybee. Try this.” She hands Dolores an herb pouch. “When I get nervous, I smell it and calm down.” The scent reminds Dolores of Espe’s skin, and she presses the bundle to her nose, counting ten breaths to collect herself. “Thank you,” she says, slowly recovering. “You should see Dra. Flores.” “Excuse me?” Dolores frowns. “She gave me the pouch. You can keep it if you like.” “Thank you.” “I’m Lucero,” the girl says. She reminds Dolores of another Lucero, her tenth-grade classmate with an incandescent smile. She remembers how deep dimples appeared in both cheeks when Lucero grinned.

“My abuela and I used to live in Horizon City,” Lucero continues, pointing to the elderly woman in the huipil. “I used to have nightmares, too, but Dra. Flores has helped me a great deal.” Dolores doesn’t answer, hands still shaking under the table, but Lucero keeps speaking, undaunted. “As you know, gender-affirming care was banned in Texas. My abuela…” Lucero glances toward the elderly woman. “She tried to get me contraband estrogen pills, but—” “They were rationed by AI,” Dolores says.

“Right.” Lucero pauses for a brief moment before continuing. “Dra. Flores is helping me with that, too.” “Glad to hear that.” “She went to medical school in Houston, but she’s also a curandera. She uses herbs and natural products to treat her patients.” “Really?” Dolores leans forward with interest. “My abuela also had an herb garden.” “Dra. Flores is great,” Lucero says, her voice bouncy and energetic. “Say hello for me if you see her.” “Okay,” Dolores answers. “It’s strange to say this, but I’m happy here.” Lucero flashes Dolores a bright smile before resuming her animated chat with her abuela. Setting the bundle of herbs by her tray, Dolores picks up her fork. Shig is staring at her, and her cheeks grow warm. She feels unmoored. No one is a stranger to loss, but vulnerability is difficult for her in a way it never was for Espe. As if plucking the thought from her mind, Shig’s smile is oddly assuring. “Don’t worry, Dolores,” he says. “Everyone’s really nice here, even when scary things happen. Even the bees are nice, I promise! They’re harmless unless threatened. That’s what Dra. Flores told us.” “The bees have returned,” Dolores says, imagining a crowded hive. “That means the colony is healthy again.” Hopefully, decreased human activity will continue reducing global warming. “That’s good news.” Maybe the Blackout was worth it; it was probably the only way to save Earth. “Did you learn science at school?” Shig asks. “Did you like it?” “Science wasn’t my strong suit. I preferred humanities and social sciences. I was a librarian.” “Librarian?”

“I practically grew up in the library, so it was only natural that I became a librarian. I loved being

surrounded by books.” She spreads her arms to indicate shelves stretching in every direction. Libraries across America became targets of violence, and a zealous mob burned down hers in broad daylight. Police were sent to protect the mob. Some nights, she still wakes from her nightmares of the fire. “Before digital books replaced physical ones, of course,” Dolores adds. Shig takes another bite and washes it down with his drink. His eyes glow with curiosity. “After the books were gone, did you lose your job?” “No. Not exactly. After all the books were digitized, we sent our patrons into them.” “How?” “Have you ever heard of metaverse books?” “Like interactive movies?” Shig scrunches his nose. Dolores can see why he’s confused. The internet had been dead for years by the time he became old enough to go to school. “Something like that,” Dolores says. “You could go inside a book and experience the story firsthand.” “Cool.” “Only as a tertiary character, so you couldn’t interfere with the plot.” “Interesting,” Shig says as if trying to sound polite. “But I had to quit when I realized the bots were spewing propaganda and lies.” “I don’t blame you,” Shig says. “I’d do the same.” “Still, I missed the physical books,” Dolores says with a sigh. “I hope the library system will come back someday.” “Maybe not the virtual system,” Shig says, “but physical libraries. Virtual ones would be vulnerable to bot attacks.” “Right.” Dolores nods. You sound just like Espe, Shig. The incessant chatter around her drowns out the rest of her thoughts. Both fall silent and focus on the food. “Let’s go,” Dolores says when they finish. They return their trays to the makeshift kitchen and step

toward the garden. Wild potatoes have overtaken the flowerbeds. Cheers and laughter erupt from children

playing some kind of chasing game. The kids have proved more resilient than the grown-ups. “You haven’t told me what your book is about,” Shig says, squinting in the sunlight. “I’ll tell you what,” Dolores says and takes out her book. “We can read it together, if you like.” “Will you teach me to read?” Shig says as she hands him the book. “Sure,” Dolores says. “We can start today.” Shig beams his brightest smile. There’s no school in the camp, but maybe Dolores can start one. A sudden breeze blows around her feet as if to tell her Espe’s spirit is close by. “I wonder if I can write a book someday.” “You can write about yourself. Someone will want to read it.” Shig nods. “By the way, call me Lola.” Adiós Dolores. She’ll live with sorrow and pain for the rest of her life, but Lola is who she is. “Okay, Lola.” Dolores gazes at the blue sky, warmth blooming in her chest at the realization that Shig will soon step into her world through reading. “You were right, Espe,” Dolores says as soon as Shig is out of earshot. “Surviving is our best revenge. I just hate that I have to start over without you.” Her face clouds for a moment before she looks up. As she watches Shig run toward the other children, she can’t help but smile.

THE CHOICE OF THE FUTURE by Lana Nizhehorodova

"Today’s hotter than yesterday," Amelia said as she reached for the fan. "Yeah, 43 degrees; it’s getting worse." They were sitting on the porch of Amelia’s big wooden house, drinking tea. "Do you ever miss drinking coffee?" Mia asked suddenly. It’s been 10 years since coffee was internationally banned. The last time she drank it was when she was a teenager. "I do; it’s all for the best, though." Amelia answered. "Yeah, you are right." It was the year 2080, and people on Earth finally started to realize the consequences of changing climate. Many things became different in the last few decades. With hot places becoming hotter and cold colder, a lot of people had to leave their homes and look for better places to live. It resulted in increasing poverty and caused disruptions in many societies. At last, in 2070, a row of international reforms was launched, reforms that restricted individual consumption and banned a list of products from sale. Now, one person was allowed to buy no more than 10 items -clothes or appliances - per month. Such products as meat, cheese, eggs, coffee, and chocolate were permanently removed from retail. Certainly, not everyone was happy about the changes made, and trade "under the table" began. People were growing coffee and cocoa beans and raising hens, pigs, and rabbits on secret farms or even in their gardens and yards. There were always those who were eager to buy the food of the past, the ban being relatively recent. The climate police were responsible for tracking down and arresting the violators, but the government rules were not going to be enough to stop the traffickers. It was the mindset that needed to be changed. "It looks like a storm is coming," Amelia said. "We better go inside." The weather has been unpredictable in the last few years, with the sun shining one moment and heavy rain pouring the next. Amelia and Mia were used to it; they were born long after the temperature exceeded 1.5

degrees above the preindustrial level, when things could still be controlled.

They entered the house and went to the basement. To be on the safe side, it was better to stay there until the storm was over. Amelia took her laptop. She still had 2 hours of allowed laptop-related electricity consumption today. "Let’s watch a movie," she said. "Sounds good," Mia answered, and she went on the Internet to choose the film. Amelia and Mia had been friends since childhood. They went to school together, and their friendship meant a lot to both of them. Now they already had children of their own: Amelia - a daughter; and Mia - two sons. They were both usually busy with their families, and days like today were rare and therefore especially valued by both friends. The storm turned out to be light this time, and as they finished the movie, Mia went home. *** "Mom, what is meat?" Olivia, Amelia’s daughter, asked as she was sitting down to breakfast. "Meat is something that we cannot afford to eat anymore, dear. It is the bodies of killed animals." "Like cats or dogs?" Olivia asked. "No, but like hens, pigs, or cows." "Why can't we eat it anymore?" "Because it is bad for our planet, sweetheart. And we need to care about it." "But I was talking to Johnny yesterday, and he told me they eat rabbits." Suddenly, Amelia stopped cutting vegetables and came up to her daughter. "Johnny told you that? You are talking about Mia’s Johnny?" "Yes, Mommy, I am. He said they have a lot of rabbits in their garden, and he plays with them every day. He also…" Amelia did not hear the rest of what her daughter was saying. She sat down and tried to get her thoughts together. Mia was growing rabbits? Mia is a trafficker? Her best friend? Amelia could not believe it. But she felt that if that was true, she needed to know it.

Amelia changed quickly and went outside to the nearby supermarket. She got a new SIM card and

inserted it into her phone. Then she dialed Mia’s number. "Hello, a friend gave me your number. Can I get some rabbit meat?" Amelia said still hoping it was a mistake. "The next order will be for Monday," the answer followed. "How much would you like?" It was true. How could she? When the weather was getting worse and worse every day, when millions of people were deprived of their homes due to flooding, earthquakes, and landslides? Why was she breaking the law when it was so important to do everything they could to protect the planet now? "Hello?" Amelia heard on the other side. She hung up and went home. *** It was Sunday, and Amelia’s and Mia’s families were spending the day together in a local park. Amelia hadn’t seen Mia since last week, the day when they watched a movie at her place. She felt she needed to talk to her, so she decided not to kick into the long grass. As the kids were busy flying a kite and their husbands were talking politics, she turned to Mia and said: "I know what you are doing, Mia, and it is not right." Mia looked up at Amelia with surprise in her eyes. "Olivia told me you are growing rabbits. And I didn’t believe at first, but I called you from a new number, and well, it’s true." Mia was looking at Amelia, silent, shame on her face. Then she said: "It’s good money, Amelia. I am doing it for the kids." "You would show much more care for them if you didn’t," Amelia said. "It is them to whom we’ll leave our planet. You need to stop it immediately, Mia. I’m serious," Amelia went on, and there was so much firmness in her voice and categoricalness in her speech that the effect of her words was the opposite of what she expected. Mia frowned and said: "Don’t tell me what to do, Amelia. I am 33 years old and I will manage without your advice" She went to her husband, picked up the kids, and left.

*** Amelia was walking down the street. She knew what she was going to do. There was no way it was going to change. There was no way she would let Mia grow rabbits and pollute the Earth. She tried talking to her, but if that was not enough, she was going to go further. Amelia entered the police station and went upstairs. "I want to report prohibited activity to the Climate Police Department." "One moment, please. Your name?" "Amelia Wilson." "What's the address of the violator?" "Green Street 43." "Thank you very much; we will be sure to check the provided information." "Thank you." Amelia went outside and walked up the street. She was sorry, but she knew that she had done the right thing. She knew that although Mia was her friend, the truth was more important.

ECHOES FROM PALESTINE: A MOSAIC OF RESILIENCE IN THE MIDST OF ADVERSITY by Jorge Diez

At the heart of the longstanding conflict in Palestine, where the world's gaze was fixed on unrelenting headlines and stark statistics, lay stories of indomitable resilience and unwavering perseverance. This is a journey we undertake, one that unravels the intricate human tapestry woven by displacement, violence, and uncertainty: voices often overshadowed by the cacophony of geopolitical conflict. Imagine a place called Palestine, where the tumultuous turmoil of everyday life is intertwined with geopolitical conflicts. Behind the veil of facts and figures, voices and experiences of souls uprooted from their homes and deprived of their sanctuary emerge. The demolition of homes and the forced eviction of families paint a melancholic picture. Each pile of rubble and each fractured memory serve as poignant witnesses to lives torn from the roots of identity: the land and community ties severed forever. The ink of armed conflict leaves invisible scars on the souls of its victims. The echoes of explosions, relentless fear, and recurring violence carve deep and lasting marks. In the quiet corners of hearts, they whisper posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression, a silent fight against an invisible but deeply felt trauma. With each dawn, a new battlefield awakens for those caught in the web of conflict. The simple act of securing the most basic necessities of life, such as clean water and sustenance, is transformed into acts of defiance. Infrastructure ruins and mobility limitations amplify daily hardships, turning mere relocation into a perilous odyssey that embodies perpetual danger. The backbone of Palestinian communities is woven with unbreakable threads of solidarity. In the crucible of adversity, neighbors, friends, and families become pillars of support. Resilience takes shape as a courageous response, expressed through unwavering courage and unwavering determination. Because suffering does not recognize nationality or faith. To forge global empathy, we must pay attention to the voices enduring the horrors of the conflict. Every life touched by the conflict deserves recognition, support and the promise of a more serene and just future. The reality in Palestine is painted in shades of constant uncertainty, where the looming specter of constant danger casts its shadow. Security continues to be elusive, and the unpredictability intrinsic to the conflict generates an endless climate of anxiety, which surrounds each dawn with uncertainty. In a land where knowledge should flourish, the Palestinian conflict has swept away the pillars of education. Vandalized or completely destroyed schools are sad symbols of lost opportunities. The children, who should embrace a season of growth and enlightenment, are thrown into perpetual disturbance, their future shrouded in uncertainty. The conflict sparks a mass exodus, leaving fractured homes and shattered dreams in its wake. Refugee camps, initially conceived as temporary sanctuaries, are transformed into long-term settlements marked by hardship. Human suffering persists, residents trapped in a harrowing limbo, desperately seeking some semblance of normalcy amid desperate circumstances.

The aftermath of the conflict leaves lasting scars on the Palestinian economy. Economic erosion and poor job prospects paint a bleak reality in which basic needs become burdens. The fight for survival becomes a daily skirmish against an economic straitjacket.

Yet within the maze of adversity that engulfs Palestine, the flame of hope persists. Local initiatives, humanitarian organizations and the unwavering spirit of families and communities are a resounding testimony to human resilience. The challenges are formidable, but hope remains an unwavering beacon amid the shadows.

SYSTEMS PATH by Patrick McEvoy, James Killian, & Mindy Indy

CONDUITS by Patrick McEvoy

MOMMY, WHAT IS A GUN? by Bethany Jarmul

In our suburban home outside of Pittsburgh, while I’m changing my daughter’s diaper, my three-year-old son asks me: “Mommy, what is a gun?” His eyebrows two arches of toddler curiosity. My tongue is a trout without water. My mind, a kaleidoscope of tragic images—Black teenagers shot for knocking at the wrong door, a viral video of an 80-year-old man walking with a Glock, school shootings in which children, not much older than my son, go to school and come home in a casket. “A weapon.” I say. Though I doubt he understands. “It shoots bullets—small balls of metal.” He tilts his head to the side, a puppy trying to identify a sound. … When I was growing up in rural West Virginia in the 90s, no one in my household owned a gun, but most people we knew did. Guns were kept in gun cabinets, sometimes held for photographs, often displayed on bumper stickers, sometimes with confederate flags. Our neighbors shared photos of their kills, so proud when their daughter shot her first squirrel at age eight. Others gifted us deer jerky, decorated their homes with taxidermized turkeys and buck heads. We lived in a hilly neighborhood, houses packed in tight, but our home was the last on a dead-end street—the street’s end was the dividing line between developed land and woods. While my sister and I would swing on our swing set, play in our turtle sandbox, lie on the grass making puppet shows of the clouds— gunshots would echo across the hills, as common as a dog barking. I thought of guns like I thought of kitchen knives—a tool for adults to use and children to avoid. In middle school, a few years after Columbine, we were required to use mesh or clear plastic backpacks, pass through metal detectors with a full-time police officer roaming the halls. I worried where I could keep tampons from prying eyes. I worried about my acne, my grades, my lack of friends, and for the first time, I worried about guns—a pin-sized thought in the back of my mind. … At 22 years old, working at a marketing agency in Pittsburgh, my coworkers and I heard a gunshot. It was close.

My first instinct was to shrug it off, as I had in childhood. But my coworkers’ faces were wrinkled, tight. They googled furiously. They paced. They whispered. A police officer came to the door of the building. The news rippled through the three floors of our company. A man had been shot at the convenience store a block down the street. The officer asked us to stay inside, stay away from windows. When the news story came online an hour later, Scott, our PR guy, announced that the perpetrator shot the victim in the butt. We laughed. Shot in the butt. Who gets shot in the butt? “He won’t be able to sit down for months, probably.” “What would you do while recovering, just lie on your stomach watching Netflix?” Scott followed the story over the next week. The update—the man died. … October 27, 2018, I was at home with my husband when I heard the news—a mass shooting in our city, just

miles from our home. An antisemitic terrorist attack at Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. We watched the horror unfold. Eleven people killed, six wounded, including several Holocaust survivors. This can’t be real, I thought. But it was real, and so close to home. The next time I went to the grocery store, attended a concert, went to church—I found myself searching the perimeter, vigilant for a man with a gun. … “So what’s a gun for?” My son pulls on my shirt as I wash my hands, his sister crawling around my legs. I exhale. “Grown-ups use it for war.” I dry my hands on the towel. “Also for hunting animals.” So many things I do not say. So many things I’ll have to say one day. “Animals? Like squirrels?” His eyes are circus lights. “Yes, baby, like squirrels.” He nods his head and looks out the window as if to spot a live one. I follow his gaze, imagining a world, a future where only squirrels have to worry about guns.

SCARDUST by Mandira Pattnaik

Unlike Pyas, there’s a scar on Kella that she can’t explain. It’s a series of tiny irregular patches, more like asteroids, shaped like a belt around the middle of her body, as if it’s holding her in one piece. Pyas has one that’s small as a grain, between her eyes, nearer to the left. One that’d be a mushroom, but settled like a tiny cloud for a tear-rain. Pyas remembers it from the time it was raining outside on a cold winter night and their parents were shouting at each other, and the next thing was a whisper: Mother telling them she was going away, and would never return. Keep away from the door, she added. The sisters could never reconcile to the fact that they had erroneously assumed the words their mother whispered that night was a bad dream. She was gone the next morning before they’d woken up from their identical cots. Father looks at the scars and simply says, The world is a scar-y place. He doesn’t look funny, not serious either, just like the picture of a teacher or a doctor in the Picture Book at Kindergarten. Just there. Kella knows why his face is like that. She whispers to Pyas, I think he wears a mask like the Other World people do, and there’s a real face underneath, one that’s angry. Pyas wonders: Angry? Why so? Because wounds will heal, but not scars. Those that came from stars --- the way they aligned when we were born. And besides, he’s lonely. *** The scars are a point the sisters often argue about. Maybe we got them when they separated us? Kella says. Like the Moon was torn apart from Mother Earth? Maybe.

Or like how Granna got the scars?

Pyas would remind her without wasting a minute: Granna got the scars when the wolf ripped him apart, and they had to stitch Granna together again. Remember? Neither sister saw any of it. Granna just told them the story. Said the wolf’s hungry jaws had a thing for him. Something from it got stitched inside his body when they stitched him back. Thing inside his thigh for sure. Said it howled rather gorily when kids didn’t sleep. Made them go to their twin beds early whenever Granna visited. Mother still makes them feel as if she’s here. There are two of everything in the house — twin beds, twin chairs, identical story books, nothing they’d feel different about, except the scars. *** Father has a door. If the twins fight, he says he’ll go out the door. They stop immediately. At noon on Monday, if they don’t see him working on his computer, the sisters will wake up from their afternoon nap and think he is gone out the door. The door faces the stairs which the seven-years-olds have never climbed. So, they’d think he could be there too. But it’d be worth the risk, he thinks. He’ll be back in an hour. Father slides it open. *** The house is locked from inside, the ceiling fan is on, the printer is plugged in, so Father hasn’t left them — the sisters conclude. But then it must be the door where he’s gone. *** Father is glad he came by the door. As per usual every Monday. When the traffic by this wormhole is substantially lesser. It saves him time and trouble. Visiting Maria, his crush from High School, now living across the Atlantic, makes him happy. ***

Kella volunteers to go first—but not the door, first up the staircase to check. She is generally obedient, remembers Mother forbid them to go near the door. But Mother never said anything about the staircase. She doesn’t return for the next hour. *** Just before she’s dizzy worrying for them both --- Father and Kella — Pyas can feel her scar coming alive, being watery. It is an eye. A third eye! The scar can see across the solid wood roof above her head, where Kella should have gone if she climbed the staircase, but she can see a canopy of trees bending over onto their house, and still above, the sky --- bright and sunny. No Kella or Father there. *** On a corner of the roof, is a huge box of things that Father had obviously been hiding from them. Kella opens it to find pictures of Mother with someone not their Father, a one-way ticket to Planet 4238 for two. Dated five years from now. So likely Mother left it for them to find, and follow her when Pyas and Kella would be oldenough to go see Mother. Kella is happy because she thinks Mother is happy over there. Kella zips open the belt of her scars, and puts the box in --- Pyas shouldn’t know she discovered this sort of things before it’s time. But the box in her belly makes her bloated and she falls asleep on the ledge. *** Pyas goes near the door. She thinks she is the bolder one of the two, easily taking on risks and challenges. Her new scar-eye can see through the door. Father is at a coffee shop with the Eiffel Tower far, far off in the background. The woman beside him is smiling and chatting away. Pyas is happy Father is having a good time, and forgives him for being irresponsible towards them. *** At the dinner table later, Father has a pork stew for his daughters, and their favourite ice-cream. They eat with relish, no one says anything to the others.

CARTOONS by Bill Thomas

WHAT WE’VE BECOME by Amy Lynn Hardy

The future of food lies in robotic bees, whose pollination time is ten times faster than live bees were before their extinction… the scientific expert droned on. They are easily engineered. They are rechargeable. We no longer need to transport bees across state borders for pollination of almond fields— “Samerah?” Gigi’s voice rippled through the house. “Samerah?” Hastily, Samerah clicked ‘end TEDxTalk session’ in the virtual field in front of her, blinking off her SmartLens and groggily re-entering reality. How long had she been in the virtual audience? An hour? Two hours? “Samerah!” Gigi’s voice repeated, more frantically than before. “Be right there!” Samerah shouted and scooted off her bed, padding through the hallway towards her great-grandmother’s voice. She entered the living room to Gigi frenziedly waving her hands in the space before her. “What’s wrong, Gigi?” “I can’t seem to… ugh! I was just reading something in this silly SmartBooks App, and somehow I jumped ahead fifty pages. Now I can’t go back or find my home screen.” “Base screen,” Samerah corrected and stepped closer. Gigi and technology, a daily clash of ages. “Remember,” Samerah started, “with a page jump, close your eyes and state the desired page number. To turn one page, you move your eyes from right to left once. You must’ve--” “That's what I did!” Gigi protested. Mhmmm. Samerah smirked.

“In order to access your base screen,” Samerah continued, “just look down and say, ‘return to base.’ That should help you get back to where you were before the page jump. Easy as pie.” ‘Easy as pie’ was one of those outdated sayings Gigi would throw out every once in a while, which

Samerah inadvertently picked up. Something about those words felt so retro that they were almost cool again. Even if it were ‘easy as pie,’ Gigi would never fully grasp the technology of the year 2123. And although Samerah had tried to talk her great-grandmother out of getting the SmartLens attached to her corneas, Gigi still went ahead with the procedure anyway. “Let me see what all the fuss is about, too!” she’d stammered. “Fair enough,” Samerah had replied, knowing how the addition of the lens would affect Gigi’s (and her own) daily life. In spite of the frustration the SmartLens caused though, Samerah sympathized with her great-grandmother. It had to be hard to be ninety-two years old and have to adapt to things like mandatory government chipping and the ‘user-friendly’ SmartLens technology. For younger people, it was customary. For Gigi’s generation: complicated. Even if the entire planet now implemented it, there was a huge learning curve and adaptation phase. “Return to base,” Gigi grumbled, making a clumsy tapping motion in the air. “I suppose I’ll just read a real book then.” A paper book, Samerah laughed inwardly and kissed Gigi’s forehead, “I have class in a minute. I gotta go.” She returned to her bedroom, plopped down at her SmartTable and blinked twice. “Access NYU: Cultural Anthropology 201, Professor Gültekin.” The system scanned her retina before opening the virtual door to her seminar. Her avatar entered and took a seat at her reserved spot. With a glance around, she observed other classmates’ avatars dropping in as well,

waving to her friend Cheyenne, then connecting her sound chip to the audio and opening her note-taking software. A virtual pen and paper appeared before her with her files from this class.

Just a minute later, Dr. Gültekin’s avatar beamed in, greeted the class of thirty students, and commenced his lecture on The Great Digitalization of the 2020’s, which he claimed was catalyzed by the COVID-19 Pandemic. First it was Zoom conferences, then virtual classrooms, then more and more AR: augmented reality. Nowadays, essentially everything was AR, facilitated by the SmartLens. Even though Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse had failed, other companies swooped in to optimize his vision and save the planet from excessive travelling. People didn’t do many things in ‘the real world’ anymore, save for doctor appointments and grocery shopping, but even those things were available in the AR world with delivery services. It must have been so strange though, acclimating to the rapidly evolving technology back in the postpandemic days. Gigi wasn’t even alive when COVID hit. How bizarre, everything she must’ve watched turn obsolete and disappear in her lifetime: newspapers, retail stores, receptionists. In moments of desperation, Gigi referred to digitalization and AI as ‘the great tragedy.’ Tragedy... or fortune? Samerah sighed. Technology had served as the world’s saving grace. Now she could save tons of time by letting AI write her papers. As long as she learned the material, no professors seemed to care. And what about how AI was solving crises like adapting new cancer treatments or creating digital buddies for the elderly. They were all so fortunate to be alive in 2123 with the entire planet at their fingertips. Right? *** Later, while heating her evening meal, Samerah glanced out the window, immediately gasping and doing a double take. “Gigi,” she called. “Gigi!”

The tap of her cane and measured footsteps preceded her. “What’s wrong, bubula?”

“Look out the window. Is that…? I mean, I might be wrong, but…” Gigi squinted into the darkness, a smile curling up her lips. “Snow.” “Hasn’t it been, like, fifty years?” “Indeed.” It never snowed in New York anymore. Hell, it rarely went below forty degrees. Nowadays all the precipitation they got was acid rain and a recommendation to stay indoors, which most people did anyways. “We have to celebrate!” Samerah exclaimed and clapped her hands together. “Let’s get coyz and make a virtual campfire. I have the nature simulator app—” Gigi’s laugh rang out across the kitchen. “What?” Samerah’s brow knitted. “Goodness child, we can make a real fire in our fireplace. That’s what it’s for, after all.” “But… isn’t a simulated fire just as good? Or better? No smoke or ash or dirt. Plus: ARCaDE.” The Act to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions of 2065 gave them regulations to live by. They were allowed to make one fire per year, but the neighbors’ dirty looks the next day were enough to deter Samerah's actions. And the simulated fire was so beautiful: could glow different colors, sparkle, be any size they wanted, or anywhere they wanted… “Just this once.” Gigi winked. “Old world style.” “…okay.”

“But before you do anything else, bubula, get your tuchus outside and catch some snowflakes!”

Tuchus, another one of Gigi’s ancient sayings from her own great-grandmother. A grin spread across Samerah’s face as she raced outside and into the backyard. The trees swayed in sync with the flurries, silently accumulating snow. “Take video,” Samerah commanded, and watched her SmartLens begin recording in the corner of her visual field. She listened to the peaceful rustle surrounding her. The air smelled different, too: damp, fresh, like… pine needles. When snowflakes landed on her face, she shivered and burst into laughter. Cold. Wet. Exhilarating. What a joyful sensation! She stood for a long time looking up in wonder until her nose began to run. “End video and upload to cloud.” She gathered a bucket of dried logs from the garage and hauled them back into the house, where Gigi was rummaging through artifacts from her ‘chest of memories,’ as she called it. “Matches,” Gigi said, striking one against the package, a sulfuric, burning scent filling the space between them. The tiny glow of light illuminated the room as Gigi tossed it into the mosaic of paper and wood. Gradually, a fire surged to life, flames dancing in their eyes. “Better than a simulation?” The warmth caressed Samerah’s skin. “Different.” “Indeed. I want to show you something,” Gigi said, pulling out a small box and handing it to her greatgranddaughter. Samerah opened it. Inside were photographs—actual printed ones. With a quizzical expression, she shuffled through them: marble columns, amphitheaters, temples with slanted roofs, snow-capped mountains, and

Gigi as a young woman posing in these foreign places. Nobody really traveled anymore because it wasn’t

necessary. Gigi was amongst the last generation who really did so—a living travelogue, perhaps. Still, Samerah rarely asked about Gigi’s adventures, mostly because she’d already experienced many of them herself in augmented reality. “Gigi, I’ve seen these places, too…” Samerah started. “Perhaps, but have you ever stroked the rough hide of an elephant? Or dipped your toes into the Sea of Japan? Or made s’mores around a campfire in Yellowstone?” Samerah bit her lip. No, but her class had gone on a virtual safari in Botswana and learned the history of the Shogun Empire through reality composing software in high school. That counted, right? Why would she need to actually travel if she had planetary access with three blinks and a download? And what were s’mores? “Is it really that different, Gigi?” Shadows danced across Gigi’s wizened face as she gazed back at Samerah, just barely nodding. She rustled in the chest and pulled out two more items. “Try this on.” Samerah reached for the object and rotated it in her fingers. “Gigi! I thought… I mean, didn’t the government confiscate all the precious metals for that one project—” “Bubula,” Gigi exhaled, “there are some belongings a person should never part with, whether necessary for the greater good of technology or not. My wedding ring is one of them.” Samerah pursed her lips together and slipped the ring onto her finger, admiring how the gold and diamond glimmered in the flames. People didn’t exchange wedding rings anymore; in fact, the whole institution of marriage was considered passé. Nowadays people paired up based on genome and pheromone testing. In her anthropology classes they debated the archaic notions of marriage and monogamy. Some people still went through with it, but it was all so… outdated.

Nevertheless, picturing Gigi falling in love without knowing whether Gipa’s genes were suitable for hers pulled on Samerah’s heartstrings.

How frivolous! How rash! How… wonderfully, inimitably human. In secret moments, Samerah also dreamt about falling in love or being swept off her feet, regardless of physiological compatibility. Were there others out there imagining the same? Did some men still believe in love at first sight or romance? “The ring suits you,” Gigi said, beaming. “Absolutely gorgeous!” “Thanks,” Samerah mumbled, embarrassed that she agreed. It sparkled and made her feel like she was in the past for a fleeting moment, engaged to a handsome man who she met at a concert or a bar, or however people used to meet. She’d seen plenty of movies about it. “Now, there’s one more thing,” Gigi’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I know you’ve learned about the extinction of the bees—poor creatures never stood a chance against all those signals in the air—and I know they’ve been replaced by those ridiculous Smartbot bees, but,” Gigi’s face distorted into a melancholic expression, “robot bees cannot make this.” Peeling her eyes off of the ring, Samerah studied the jar in her great-grandmother’s hand. “Honey? Real honey? You saved it all these years?” “Try it, bubala.” Samerah grimaced. “It’s still edible?” “Funny thing: honey never expires. It’s one of the great mysteries of the world. The old world.” Gingerly and skeptically, Samerah took the jar. With a twist, it opened. She dipped her finger into the viscous, golden syrup and tasted it. Its flavor flowed along her tongue, diluted by a rush of saliva, sending a wave

of sweet, liquid warmth through her body. In it she could almost perceive the brilliant wildflowers and their bursts of color, the honeycomb, the bees she’d read about who’d tirelessly carried pollen back to their hives. Was this like dipping her toes into the Sea of Japan? Was this golden taste of yesteryear something she was… missing?

Samerah found herself lost in the flames, unexpectedly saddened by the snow and ring and honey and the beautiful planet she would never truly know, scattered around her in a pile of photographs and ephemerae. In a fingertip of honey, she’d tasted the sweet mourning of this lost world, imperfect as it may have been. Tragedy, she thought for the first time. Part of it were a tragedy. And against the flickering light, she saw her great-grandmother as a young woman, leaning against an elephant in one of her photographs, a relic of that world, much like the bees, the snowflakes, the wedding ring: a delicate, disappearing species.

RODRIGO RUMBAS by Ell Cee

RESISTANCE by Jenny Stachura sacred noise. yesterday's doves trespass cemeteries overgrown with Monsanto corn and dandelions While a drone circles a riot, a Tibetan monk chants, "Om Mani Padme Hung," With closed eyes, we remember the Armenian genocide. A grieving mother teaches her secular son the Hebrew alphabet. I scrawl my Korean name in Hangul, giving birth to my testimony.

WARM RISK by Andrew Alexander Mobbs

Climate change is happening. Global average temperature has increased about 1.8°F from 1901 to 2016. Changes of one or two degrees in the average temperature of the planet can cause potentially dangerous shifts in climate and weather. These real, observable changes are what we call climate change impacts because they are the visible ways that climate change is affecting the Earth. For example, many places have experienced changes in rainfall, resulting in more floods, droughts, or intense rain, as well as more frequent and severe heat waves. The planet's oceans and glaciers have also experienced changes—oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps are melting, and sea level is rising. As these and other changes become more pronounced in the coming decades, they will likely present challenges to our society and our environment. Elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, so the earth will continue to warm in the coming decades. The warmer it gets, the greater the risk for more severe changes to the climate and the earth's system. Although it's difficult to predict the exact impacts of climate change, what's clear is that the climate we are accustomed to is no longer a reliable guide for what to expect. [Text source: Environmental Protection Agency website]

ACCOUNTANT by Craig Kirchner

Art, precisely Arthur, cost and management exec, lives the job, breaks up his day with Marlboros, gross/net at the water cooler, and office gossip which is never petty if he’s involved. Self-importance yawns through starch and cologne, as he slips into super-drive, for the seven o’clock commute, miles of exhaust, thousands of supply-side suits, in search of Muzak, and real black coffee. Freeways all leveraged to the asset side of the ledger, bumper to bumper, threatening to tip this concrete scale, crash like a mortgaged market, but Art feels reassured, that he is most certainly safe and a stable resource. Symmetry, success, the GPM is up this quarter, and St. Christopher will keep the silver Chrysler from plunging sideways when the median snaps away from liability, and into default, oblivion.

LIGHT FOR THE FUTURE by Sulola Imran Abiola

THE FUTURE AHEAD by Sulola Imran Abiola

OTHER REALM MEDITATION by Sulola Imran Abiola

KINDRED by Roxane Llanque Some voyagers run on sunlight. June winds swirl in their laugh they dance on sea spray planes conducting jungle soil to sing they rise their souls to welkin. Other voyagers run on starlight. They breathe in ragtag nebulas hitch-hike with shooting stars they orbit Mars, then Mercury yearning to reach Andromeda. You see those unlike voyagers? When they behold each other and reach out with a smile it sparks that celestial fire that lights up the everdark.

SO THE ROBOTS KNOW THE DIFFERENCE by Philip Jason

[Excerpt from George Washington Carver’s speech to the final graduating class of The Institute of Alchemical Studies in Mystic, Connecticut] The robots give us halos, a set of glowing lips fused open at some odd angle; a mouth softly screaming light at us and into a dream filled with furious angels swooping down at our heads when the robots aren’t looking, putting Gum in our hair, pissing at our eyes. Angel urine is everywhere, collecting light from the halos into prismatic stains. The robots think we’re animals. They don’t believe in angels. We don’t believe in angels either, so we ask them to take away the halos and replace them with guitars. We want to be rock stars. We explain to them the concept of rock star in relation to God: The rock star is a God we can handle. We are sized to be rock stars, perfect moody keyholes singing air from one room to another. We sing to them of our blistering desire to strike the match against our own hearts if we could. We take them to the water’s edge and the shadows sliding through the waves. We explain it to the robots: This is what it is to be a child, what it’s like to have new eyes; for one defining moment, everything that resides beneath the surface is drowning. This is how we are started. Not with jolts of electricity, but startled into life by everything we see. In this way, God so very elegantly distinguished us from angels. This flourish. They’re large and faintly Godly and lack what one might call a sense of humor, but we are small enough to fit inside each other and sleep.

MESSAGES FROM A MYCORRHIZAL NETWORK by Theo Bellavia-Frank this week is a Saturday night with rain in it. there is no brass. guitar and gold and synth and silver are kings and queens of their respective demesnes. everything converges: a Time cover has mortal in one corner and machine in the other and in the middle the sun still sinks weary into the memory foam sea and still purples the sky, blue or white or ash-gray or unseen. carcinization proves evolution has direction: not up but forward, not progress but still movement. the universe has in mind a terminal shape. stretch my coarse -shelled branches until they pop, force my roots deep until they are indistinguishable from yours amidst the wood and mycelia. the shape doesn’t matter as long as there’s only one left. identity is formed like light, reflecting, sonar bouncing back: only here because I am blessedly not there, only I because I am accursedly not you. to hell with all that. make every place here, in name and in re-creation. make it us. make it we. de -individuate. if there’s no you, no there, there’s no identity: flat sands. duneless. time can pass, new rings can scratch themselves into trunks but hidden behind bark bulwarks where sight is a sin. if the sun comes out, we will know, but we are not sunflowers. we will not turn to it.

DODIDI by Leslie Brown

BRIGHT MASK by Leslie Brown

EDUCATING THE FUTURE (A CLASS-BASED ANALYSIS OF SUPPOSED YOUTH) by Frank G. Karioris He says, through a translator that the day was a clear blue sky which sounds trite outside of the context of bombs falling & explosions raining from that same sky. In that moment, in my car, what became clear was, through my tears, the fact that while education is a value I hold, & is, to the degree it is ever possible, true, that class has to come before this truth, in the sense that education for those about to destroy the world is not as principled of an activity as we might wish to believe. Wolf cubs may be more innocent than them. But, this is undue & unjust. Not to students, but, in fact, to the wolf cubs; who are much better educated & much more ethical than so many of the people I see – here ‘people’ dismisses the fact that innocence can be a weapon to use in hands, uncalloused, to flatten out the world into a telescopic lens that only shows figments that they wish it to. It was never my job to make them feel better about themselves & the role they play, & more & more I feel bad at the simple fact that my role is to give them a toolbox full of sharpened edges that will flatten others in their wake.

ANTHROPOMORPHIZATION by Rene Seledotis

In my love letter to the universe I have included photographs of every time I looked out into the world to find it gazing back at me: a dancing figure in the blue-white-patterned carpet fibers, a shocked face in the sink with knob eyes and a drooping faucet mouth, the way my cat’s voice echoes through the house in the same intonations as a sentence, the way a deck of cards collapses through my clumsy hands like a fainting woman, the way the miter saw seems to hesitate before dipping through the wood like a dancer bowing low, the way I soothe my laptop when its fan blows too loud, the way I reach toward branches that seem to want touch, the way I see myself everso-consistently, as if life is only a walk through a mirror maze.

CONTRIBUTORS

Mandira Pattnaik is the author of collections "Anatomy of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople" (2022, Fahmidan Publishing, Poetry), "Girls Who Don't Cry" (2023, ABP, Flash Fiction) and "Where We Set Our Easel" (May 2023, Stanchion Publishing, Novella). Mandira's work has appeared in The McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Passages North, DASH, Miracle Monocle, Timber, Contrary, Watershed Review, Quarter After Eight and Prime Number Magazine, among others. She edits for Trampset and Vestal Review. More: mandirapattnaik.com Craig Kirchner has written poetry all his life, is now retired, and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. The beautifully parallel, horizontal, blue lines on white legal, staring left to right, knowing that the ink, when it meets the resistance of the page will feel extroverted, set free, at liberty to jump, the two skinny, vertical red lines to get past the margin. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review. Lana Nizhehorodova is 27, from Odesa, Ukraine and now lives there, war withstanding. She has a linguistic background and can speak 5 languages. Writing essays, short stories or poems is something that brings a great deal of enjoyment to her and she hopes they will be enjoyable for you to read too. Toshiya Kamei is an Asian writer who takes inspiration from fairy tales, folklore, and mythology. Their short stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy's Edge, and elsewhere. Their piece, "Hungary Moon" won Apex Magazine's October 2022 Microfiction contest. Amy Lynn Hardy lives in Buffalo, NY. Her work has appeared in Insider, Elephant Journal and Buffalo Rising. Read more of her writing at amylynnhardyauthorsite.com

Bethany Jarmul is the author of two chapbooks—This Strange and Wonderful Existence (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Take Me Home (Belle Point Press, 2025). Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023, nominated for Best of the Net and Wigleaf Top 50, and published in more than 70 magazines. She earned first place in Women on Writing’s 2023 essay contest. She lives near Pittsburgh. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul. Jorge Diez is a passionate writer with a deep commitment to human rights, has dedicated much of his life to exploring and understanding the complex reality that exists in the Middle East. Over the years, Jorge Diez has shared his perspectives on various platforms and media, always seeking to shed light on the most pressing issues affecting the region. His relentless focus on social justice has driven him to research and communicate on issues related to the Middle East, thereby contributing to a greater understanding of these crucial issues. Leslie Brown lives in the Washington DC area. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. Her published work includes: short videos, short stories, creative non-fiction, and digital design. Her digital work has been accepted for publication in Closed eye open, Zoetic Press, NBR: World Tour. Leslie’s digital work has appeared in Phoebe, AvantAppal(achia)Quibble, Zoetic Press, NBR: Epic Failures. She has become more and more interested in the digitized modulations of my work because this process allows me to explore new perspectives for my artwork. Patrick McEvoy, a former writer and editor for several sports publications, has had stories included in various comic book anthologies such as Emanata, Continental Cryptid, Uncanny Adventures, Indie Comics Quarterly, and GuruKitty’s Once Upon a Time and Gateway to Beyond. Illustrated stories have also appeared on Slippery Elm's website, Murder Park After Dark Vol. 3 and in New Plains Review. A short story has also appeared on Akashic Books’ website. In addition, short plays he wrote were chosen to be performed at the Players Theatre in

New York as part of their various festivals (Sex, NYC and BOO) in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2019. And he wrote and directed short plays for Emerging Artists Theatre's New Works series in 2021 and 2022. A play anthology called What May Arise was also streamed June 30-July 6th 2022 as part of the Rogue Theater Festival. He also wrote and directed Directions, which appeared in the 2022 Dream Up Festival. Photography has also been exhibited with the Greenpoint Gallery, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Molecule, riverSedge and Good Works Review. Ell Cee (They/She) is a lifelong artist as well as a member of the LGBTQIA2S, genderqueer, and disabled communities. They create one-of-a-kind pieces whose vibrancy and glow inspire joy. Ell uses recycled materials in much of their art, such as cardboard boxes, packaging materials, repurposed labels, and even discarded library books. Her art ranges across mediums: from watercolor markers, highlighting elements, paints, pencil, photography, mixed-media, hand lettering, to pen & ink, and high resolution image conversion processes. Find Ell’s art online at https://linktr.ee/EllCeeTheArtist, @EllCeeTheArtist on Instagram, and in-person at Aspen & Evergreen Gallery, just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Ell also offers professional photo editing services here. Bill Thomas has appeared in numerous publications including Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Woman's World, and numerous others. Godwin Kalu is a high quality digital artist from Nigeria. Sulola Imran Abiola (the official SULOLA) he/him is a Nigerian phone photographer, poet, public servant, art enthusiast & a student at the prestigious university of Ibadan with some of their work published in The Quills, Kalopsia Lit Magazine, Lumiere Review, Undivided Magazine, Wondrous Real Magazine, ARTmosterrific, Kaedi Africa, Best Of Africa, Rasa Literary Review, Odd Mag, Macro Magazine, The Roadrunner, Conscio Magazine Review, Olney Magazine, Variety Pack, Lemonspouting Magazine, amongst others. Frank G. Karioris (he/they/him/them) is a writer and educator based in Jeonju, Korea whose writing addresses issues of friendship, gender, and class. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Collective Unrest, Riverstone, Sooth Swarm Journal, and in the collection Eco-Justice For All amongst others. They were a W.S. Merwin Fellow at the 2023 Community of Writers Poetry Program. Rene Seledotis (he/him) is a transgender, neurodivergent fiction and poetry writer from the Metro-Detroit area. He earned his BA in Creative Writing at Oakland University, served as a Poetry Editor on the Oakland Arts Review, and has seen publication in Turtle Way Journal. Passionate about mental health and the human experience, he’s currently exploring poetry through the lens of Donald E. Brown’s List of Human Universals, taking inspiration from observable features that have occurred in every known human culture. Roxane Llanque is a writer and filmmaker from Berlin. Her award-winning short film “Aberration” was screened at numerous film festivals and her micro “The Tell-Tale Present” won 2023's Outstanding Miniature of World Pride Australia. Her writing was published in the poetry anthology “Between Sky and Courage” and is forthcoming in the anthology “The Selkie Volume I: Stories of Rebellion.” You can find her on Twitter @roxanellanque Philip Jason’s stories can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and J Journal; his poetry in The Tipton Poetry Journal, Lake Effect, Letters Journal, and The Disappointed Housewife. He is the author of the novel Window Eyes (Unsolicited Press, 2023). His first collection of poetry, I Don’t Understand Why It’s Crazy to Hear the Beautiful Songs of Nonexistent Birds, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. For more, please visit philipjason.com. Andrew Alexander Mobbs (he/him/his) is the author of the chapbook, Strangers and Pilgrims (Six Gallery

Press, 2013). A Pushcart Prize nominee, his writing has appeared in Frontier Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Rust & Moth, Arkansas Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and elsewhere. He's the co-founder of Nude Bruce Review.

Theo Bellavia-Frank is a student at Wesleyan University and alum of the Just Buffalo Writing Center. When not writing poetry, he cannot be found. The search is fruitless. Do not try. He will be an eager soldier in the skeleton war. He lives in Buffalo, NY with his dog, Percy. Nnadi Samuel(he/him/his) holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of 'Nature knows a little about Slave Trade' selected by Tate.N.Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). A 3x Best of the Net, and 7x Pushcart Nominee. He won the River Heron Editor's Prize 2022, Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer's Award 2022, UK London, the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Annual Award, 2022(Texas Christian University), the Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrants & Displacement Studies Annual Award, 2023, the 2023 Stacy Doris Memorial Award(Fourteen Hills) San Francisco State University Review and recently won the John Newlove Poetry Annual Awards(Ottawa, Canada), 2023. He is a finalist of the Snarl: A Journal of Literature & Arts Poetry and Prose Contest 2022. Jenny Stachura is a Korean-American poet, writer, and artist based in Buffalo, NY. She goes by she/her pronouns. Her social media handle is @j2stach on Instagram. In 2013, she received an MA in English literature from the University at Buffalo, and she is currently in talks to publish a chapbook with Poets' Hall Press. Alana Gracey (she/her) is a fat, black, disabled femme poet living in Detroit, MI. Her writing focuses on these intersections of her identity, and she has a deep appreciation for the importance of writers of all ages having the opportunity to have their voices and stories heard--especially within marginalized communities. Alana facilitates independent creative writing workshops, reading and discussion groups, and is a Teaching Artist and Youth Performance Troupe coach with InsideOut Literary Arts City Wide Poets, a poetry after school program for teens. She was published for the first time last year (2022) and has poems in HIVES Buzz-Zine (Michigan State University) and the current Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, vol. 48.2 (University of Illinois).