"The air is filled with people," said Heaven Rains.

"I'm sorry?" answered Mangala Norbu.

"People," she continued. "Bits of them. It's what makes your skin sizzle, your hair stand on end. Whizzing through space, filling your lungs, you're surrounded."

Mangala gazed out the microglass windows of the Svarga Pos monastary. It was snowing again. She pulled her soft cerulean robes tightly around herself, even though climate control was functioning perfectly, producing a flickering series of fire illusions. "Yes," she answered. "Everything is all part of the same. Water and earth. Wind. Humanity."

It had been a good show despite everything that could have gone wrong. Farmer Bob and the rest of the Golden Sun Farm cast had taught a valuable lesson about sharing and Penelope the Dun Cow had managed to learn Peep’s song in time without dropping too many notes. He doubted that their young demographic noticed the nervous cow puppet fall out of tune. But there was no way they hadn’t missed Peep. The precocious chicken had been his partner on Golden Sun Farm ever since the beginning. Her absence was missed by every member of the cast, from the foam and felt puppets of the farm animals, to the wooden, hinged-jaw Mailman Pete. The stick-puppet mice and chicks in the barn missed her most of all, sometimes breaking down in tears during rehearsals.

Skye turned the metal lock on the glass door even though there were five minutes left to closing time. Outside, the last red and orange streaked clouds faded to purplish-blue. He watched the coming storm through One Hour Photo’s big front window. Funny how something so beautiful could be so terrible, Skye thought. The weather said the storm would be the worst in years.

One Hour Photo occupied a concrete island in the parking lot of the Cherry Wood Shopping Center, a small strip mall in the outskirts of Albany, New York. Its window looked out on the road and the wooded undeveloped lots beyond. A Cineplex was to be built in the vacant lot, but until then One Hour Photo was an excellent place to watch the sun go down.

The last time I counted, Bramblehorn, Texas had a population of 10. Though most in Texas pride themselves as the biggest and the best, there is something to be said about being the smallest city.

If you look in a book, it'll probably tell you that the smallest city is Los Ybanez, but that's just a myth brought on by the Big Liquor industry. That and I'm the only one here who knows anything about reading and writing and mathematics, and I was out hunting when the census man came around. I think Jem or Lem might have given him a bad count, that or they shot him.

A disembodied voice of an unidentifiable gender demands the visitor’s identity.

‘At this moment,’ he lied, ‘I am Q’ab-El.’

Traversing the threshold of the first portal, visitor and disciples enter a hallucinatory extravaganza: simultaneously, a synthesised acceleration in the speed of light renders them invisible to its inhabitants.

"You are flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone," the voice droned softly into her ear as she looked down at the endless line of laid out, bloodless flesh drying under the harsh lights of the supermarket store. A love song wilted in the air, stifled by the scent of day-old clams. The meat looked bitter and unpersuasive. She picked up a roast of beef; it was too stiff, too coarse, not marbled. She remembered the days of her childhood, and the rich scent of gravy, and the cows out in the pasture. Flesh had been something different then. Something mysterious and familiar. She put down the beef roast and impulsively grabbed a bag of halal chicken, as though the connection with a faintly mysterious, ancient-world religion would bring life back to pre-bagged meat.

Morgan Gayfriend pushed through the swinging double doors into the lounge. It was small and cramped, filled nearly to capacity. There was a soda machine, a snack machine, a payphone, and a magazine rack. There was no television or windows. There were three couches and four chairs set about the room. Most of the seats were taken. Morgan stood by the soda machine then spotted a single empty seat, on one of the couches between an overweight woman with glasses and a tall gangly man in a suit and tie.

A crash landing was necessary, the New Manchester to Io City transport shuttle pilots had informed us over the intercom system. Why the crash landing was necessary is another matter entirely. The explanation they provided was so vague, that I half-suspected that they didn't have a clue as to why we were losing orbit.

As if this information didn't panic us enough, the shuttle attendants had then taken it upon themselves to plaster utterly unconvincing smiles across their faces and circulated the shuttle, attempting to assure everyone that there was nothing to worry about. I presume their intentions were to calm us down, but invariably they had the complete opposite effect.

“It’s all in the genes,” the minotaur said, relaxing on the heap of human bones, a ruminative expression on its face. “But you probably don’t understand that, do you? The concept of ‘genes’? DNA? Chromosomes? Any of it?”

“I understand you’re a monster. I don’t need to understand anything else.”

“That’s the point I’m trying to make – my genes make me a monster. And you humans made my genes – well, my grandparents’ genes, anyway. Listen, do you know any history, or are you just some yokel with more guts than brains?”