Sea of Tranquility

by Emily St. John Mandel

They were rats because in all the books the driver had read that involved helpful talking animals, the animals were just too big. Horses and dragons and whatnot. But how do you discreetly move through the world with a dragon or a horse? It’s untenable. Try taking a horse into a bar sometime. No, what you want, she said, is a pocket-sized animal sidekick, a rat for example.

I was working in AI training. So, you know, correcting awkward renderings from the translator bots. I remember sitting there by the hour

“ ‘The chickens are coming home to roost.’ Because it’s never good chickens. It’s never ‘You’ve been a good person and now your chickens are coming home to roost.’ It’s never good chickens. It’s always bad chickens.”

bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection.

I had already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further.