New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

by Nisi Shawl

MANY OF THE children have left with trading parties to other villages, never to return, to keep the human flame lit, delicately dancing on the oily surface of our gene pool on the world. If the gene pool becomes too shallow, too stagnant and polluted, that flame will flicker, wane, and disappear.

Yeah, they were sleeping on the road and taking showers in the rain. It was work hard-sales or starve. The sly algorithm wanted her to feel sorry for the fallen middle class and spend big, like shopping would help save the world from itself. Sleazy data miners were working her last nerve.