Everyone from Themis Sends Letters Home
Author: Genevieve Valentine
A settler on a newly discovered planet sends letters home–but who is she really writing to, and where is her real home?
The air here smells just like home. I don’t know why—the water’s different, so the soil should be different, but it smells exactly like the dirt from my grandmother’s garden. It helps stop me from getting lonely, that the soil here might be the same as what we left behind.
Second Variety
Author: Phillip K. Dick
Soldiers search for an enemy that could look like anyone.
He took a deep breath and then stepped out onto the gray, rubbled ground. After a minute he lit a cigarette and stood gazing around him. The landscape was dead. Nothing stirred. He could see for miles, endless ash and slag, ruins of buildings. A few trees without leaves or branches, only the trunks. Above him the eternal rolling clouds of gray, drifting between Terra and the sun.
Game
Author: Don Barthelme
The fate of the world may depend on two agents who are slowly losing their minds.
Meanwhile Shotwell and I watch each other. We each wear a .45 and if Shotwell behaves strangely I am supposed to shoot him. If I behave strangely Shotwell is supposed to shoot me. We watch the console and think about shooting each other and think about the bird. Shotwell’s behavior with the jacks is strange.