My Cardboard Balcony

SQL Error by Belinda Roddie My fingers are fragmenting into long, helpless strings of code, leading to no man's land. The data is thin and finite, the computer language meaning as little as ancient runes washed away by metallic soil. Untranslatable and unsalvagable. When my core erupts, I will expect the fire to spread to every fiber that ties my alloy together. I never had flesh to begin with. My mortal spirit has withered into air that smells and tastes like hot copper. The bride will walk down the aisle, and I will be standing on the other end of it. When she asks why I am here, I will take her hand, and she will disintegrate into cyberdust against my artificial lips. Our love is tangible in that it can be rewritten and reprogrammed, our x's and o's the new binary in a very strange land of scraps and desperate human shrapnel.

A young woman decided to go fishing at the local river one day and never came back. I, as the newest detective on the small town's police force, was expected to investigate. I never knew her. I had always missed her around town, which was apparently a surprising feat considering the measly population and square mileage of the place. But I had never met her. And now I was in charge of finding her and making her family happy. Fancy that. I felt like I could use a whiskey already, and it was only nine thirty in the morning.