Touch

by Courtney Maum

All these openings for closeness—all these humans with their disappointments and their desperate hearts, but it’s so much easier, so convenient, to blame emotional distance on a lack of time.

In the space of his nonreply, Sloane considered her tendency toward sarcasm. It was unnerving, really, when people didn’t banter back at you. You actually had to pay attention to the things you said.

Brainwork had gone into this, brains inside of human beings who had allowed themselves to buy into the idea that convenience was the same thing as contentment. Those brains were still out there, working on the wrong things. Sloane couldn’t even imagine what could be accomplished if people reappropriated their brainpower.