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.
Stories tagged “dystopia”
36 stories found
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Last Assay
On Sabaea memory is currency, and Mother Enneth Ordoval owes nine years. The Reckoner sent to collect them learns what the debt was really for.
A Sound of Turning Pages
The last library in the world stood at the end of Cormorant Street, and Silas Vane opened it every morning at nine, though no one had crossed its threshold in eleven years. He unlocked the great doors anyway.
The Weight Between Stars
You are the only human alive who can see dark matter — the vast unseen weight that holds the stars in place. And the men who run the world want your map.
The Mending
They gave us the menders for free, and that should have been the first warning. Nobody hands the poor anything for free unless they have already found a way to take back something larger.