The fireplace stuck out from the lunar surface like a middle finger directed at my future. From a distance, it looked just like the fireplace at my house in Pasadena, all limestone and granite, sparkling in the sun. The stone was covered in black ash, as if it had burned, like things could burn here on the fucking Moon....

The ranger was beautiful. Try as I might, I couldn’t reach even to the knee of his exoskeleton. The armor on his chest shone with the blue tinge of tempered steel, although the material wasn’t actually metal but something far stronger....

Songs and wartime seem to go hand-in-glove. There are songs urging our troops to vanquish the enemy, songs urging our forces to decimate anyone who stands in their way, songs urging them to act in unison for a common cause. And there are some gentler songs, too....

Humanity had been hoping for some transformative, revolutionary technology, but what the aliens left us was a salad dressing recipe. It used some weird feedstocks, but what came out of the fab looked, smelled, and tasted a lot like Kraft Zesty Italian....

Everyone else in the lunar base could continue to fluster and fuss over the lack of aeroships from Earth, but I needed to find Mister White Whiskers forthwith. “Where have you gotten yourself to, you silly thing?” My brittle, high voice echoed within the narrow duct....

The job of the Adam is to stand astride the kill gate, waiting for the animal to be driven past. As the cow passes underneath the Adam’s legs, the Adam hits it between the eyes with its right arm, which is a sledgehammer....