The vampire secret space program was too rushed to fully erase Transylvania-born rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth from the history books, but they were able to disguise their Moon-bound launches in the chaos of WWII Eastern Europe. So strong were Von Braun’s oaths of silence (or so deep his fear of what had been left behind) that it took the Apollo program a handful of missions, and the sanity of more than one astronaut, before they accepted the message: the Moon was not for the living.

“That couch,” observed the salesperson, “is twice as smart at being a couch than you are at being a person.”

Visiting my patients at the Navy Asylum was my favorite part of the week. Cyber-psychiatrists don’t get many success stories, even if mine couldn’t leave the asylum without risking a psychotic break.

The General asked if I had ever listened to the program as it was begging for its life.

At least I’m not going to fuck the mail drone on live video. The joke falls flat, and not just because your mom isn’t there to hear it. She wouldn’t have laughed anyway. She has never understood that biogging isn’t porn, that you’re just streaming your body metrics 24/7, and if that includes sleeping with your boyfriend that’s just part of it. It’s not porn.

A man and a woman sat in a hotel room in a city haunted by death. The only noise coming through the window was the sarcastic — or so it sounded — instructions of the quarantine drones. They were in that city, on that night, on purpose. Ten thousand casualties had been predicted by the WHO for the year’s headline virus, the smallest catastrophe where points could be scored.

Whatever the Ministry finds in his weekly blood samples they will never share, but we’ve shared a room for the few years my little brother has been alive, and if his uneasy breathing worsened or improved I would notice at once. The health drone’s visits are neither for him nor for us. His blood is for the epidemiological surveillance network - a stream in the red delta of hundreds of other kids with weak immune systems.

“It’s an autopsy report on our country,” I told my husband when he asked, but I didn’t show him my files.

On the first (and last) Moon colony.

Anybody could’ve done it, given enough time.