If she were to get her key back, she thought, no one but her would ever touch it. She would wind herself well in advance so that she would never need to rely on another to keep herself alive.

Your people are losing your jobs to your machines. You put mechanizing everything and making it efficient above your people’s happiness, and you wonder why they aren’t happy?

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone – crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions – one has to live with them, and we try.

The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions – one has to live with them, and we try.

The spirits, he said, the souls. They are not angry at the living, they just want to help. Helping others is the only way we can prove we still matter.

You know how they say the grass is always greener on the other side? It is greener, because you’re not there. And if you go you’ll trample it and leave dirty footprints and probably spill something poisonous.

Helen devises plans to become a monster herself.

That was the trouble with the supernatural, Vimbai thought--you didn't know what laws ruled it, and what was a coincidence and what was a sign and what was weird and what wasn't. It was like a whodunit, only the clues refused to be arranged into any sort of hierarchy or a straight narrative, and most of the time it wasn't even clear if they indeed were clues; a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces were blank.

But why?" Vimbai whispered, overwhelmed with the weight of accumulated disbelief. "What is happening to us?""Who knows?" Maya shrugged. "Who cares? Enjoy it while you can, why don't you? There will be tons of boring shit in your life, okay? I promise.

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.