There was a metal rod inside of Colin. The rod went from his stomach to the middle of his head. It was made of steel and sugar, and had been dissolving inside of Colin for...

As a child, she’d always had what she imagined were fascinating thoughts, but didn’t ever say them. Once, as a little girl, at recess, she thought that if she ran very fast at a pole...

Though she’d begun to get a bit fat that winter, it was in February, around when her father found a toy poodle (sitting there, in the side yard, watchful and waiting as a person), and...

does a society exist where it’s become acceptable to wear ‘helmets’ enclosing one’s entire head when in public to preempt social interaction

In the parking lot, she drove and parked in a dark area with no other cars around. She reclined her seat, and listened to music. Outside there were trees, a ditch, a bridge; another parking...

that was bad; i shouldn’t have done thatto prevent you from entering a catatonic statei am going to maintain a calm facial expressionwith crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanori believe in a human being...

Oh,” Chelsea said.And he stepped back a little and tried again, but Chelsea, distracted now by something—maybe the plant in the far corner, standing and waiting like a person in a dream; or maybe the...

Death is the end of the fear of death. […] To avoid it we must not stop fearing it and so life is fear. Death is time because time allows us to move toward death...

He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large...

Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or...

Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It’s depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.

It was spring, not winter or autumn, Paul thought with some lingering confusion. He listened to the layered murmur of wind against leaves, familiarly and gently disorienting as a terrestrial sound track, reminding people of...

Garret went across the street to the library. There was a hole in the sidewalk the size of a bathtub. Construction was being done, was always being done. It was the journey that mattered, Garret...

loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shapeof a helicopter the same size as the helicopterand that’s it’s only skilland it isn’t good enoughbut it’s still amazing.

On average, since the urge to kill myself isn’t so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him,...

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of...

,No te parece a veces que vivir en el mundo es como una mierda?- ,A qué te refieres? – dijo Paul lentamente.- A ver… que lo que el mundo puede darnos no basta para satisfacernos.-...

Nice” said Paul staring transfixed at Fran’s delicate and extreme gaze, like that of a skeleton with eyeballs, or a person with their face peeled off.

…one had to expect very little—almost nothing—from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by...

A partir de un determinado momento, advirtió Paul vagamente, la tecnología había pasado a señalarle únicamente el carácter ineludible y próximo de la nada. En vez de liberar nanobots en el torrente sanguíneo para reparar...

Y ahora qué hacemos – dijo Paul cuando unos veinte minutos más tarde se marchaban del parque.Después de dar unos pasos en la calle, Daniel miró distraídamente en las dos direcciones y, con la vista...

a kind of emptiness existed in the center of my bagel; really it was just the hole that’s in the middle of all bagels; ‘i need to go read my blog to find out what...

It would take her thousands of steps to get anywhere, but she would get there easily, and when she arrived, in the present, it would seem like it had been a single movement that brought...

Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same.

sad things are beautiful only from a distancetherefore you just want to get away from themfrom a distance of one hundred and thirty years ….i’m going to distance myself until the world is beautiful

Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening...

But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of...

The late-afternoon sky, in Paul’s peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes—of nature’s vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of...