My Cardboard Balcony

2.5 Petabytes by Belinda Roddie Pull the plug right out of my skull, and watch me bleed out code. The old man sits with the head of his son in his lap. The jaw is solid steel. His daughter knits her father a scarf. Outside, the wind screeches like a data transfer. I want to be disconnected from the world that has been built from wires and computer chips and motherboards, all of them deprived of actual mothers. They will never feel the heat of milk simmering in their cooled, metallic bellies. And helium is a poor substitute for Mama's nourishment. If I send a letter to a friend, how long before they write back in the cold tundra of a fascist regime? Perhaps it will return to me with entire sentences blocked out in black. My heart is censored so it only beats so many times per minute - any faster, they tell me, and I risk death. My brain can only hold so much memory; they tell me that soon, everything else will catch up. But I am ready to die before my body...

Two women played golf in the blazing summer heat, while their husbands kicked back with drinks and reminisced over the good old days of wrestling in the school gymnasium and hunting for squirrels in the backyard and finding new ways to sneak beer out of grocery stores without getting caught. And while the ladies scored holes in one, the gentlemen scored each other on belches and laughed as their stomachs gurgled beneath the weight of their coats.