The Long Note
A signal from a starless corner of the sky arrives on an ordinary Tuesday: one low note that will not rise or fall. And a whole town begins, gently, to hum along.
The Contentment Ratio
Once a year the mirrors stand down and Anodyne sees its real sun. Yelen Arbos climbs to the counting house meaning to vote against the sky's owner.
Small Change
On a half-terraformed colony where memories are legal tender, a woman has saved eleven years to buy back the one afternoon she should never have sold.
The Improvement of Ossery
Fifty years ago Ossery grew itself a sky, and it worked. A reporter climbs the terrace for four hundred words and meets the man who kept the numbers.
The Sealed Sky
For forty years Maren has tended the gardens of a world she believes is whole. Then the water begins to lie — and something waits behind the sealed sky.
Hull Weather
Rain comes at eleven because a company sells it at eleven. Nine meters above the market, a courier finds the one window nobody was ever meant to open.
Every Mouth a Wound
Nine days into the clarity, no one on Earth can lie — not even to the dying. In a back room on Coyle Street, one woman still can, and she charges.
Full Disclosure
A plague has stripped humanity of the ability to lie. Summoned to a compliance interview, one woman tells the Ministry a truth it cannot afford.
The Abolition of Night
A city engineered sleep away to keep everyone content. Then an auditor of forbidden dreams begins, four seconds at a time, to remember what daylight erased.