Casey by Jay Johnson, Submission 2 by Jay Johnson

"Where the fuck is Casey?"

"I don't know. She was here a second ago. I had a beer with her."

"You got Casey to drink a beer? Dude, where the fuck is Casey?"

Dark, straight, short, soft hair. Casey was just here a second ago. Soft, kind, brown eyes. Or, maybe she wasn't? Casey was muscular, for a girl. Time is measured in drinks. How many beers ago was Casey actually here? My friend walks back inside, calling again and again for Casey. Percocet mixes with alcohol to produce a heightened buzz. Should've tried this long before. The night air is warm tonight. Humid. This party smells redundant. I doubt I'll fall in love tonight.

"The line to the bathroom is too long, man! I gotta take a piss!" This fucking guy has two polo shirts on for some reason. He's somebody else's friend.

"Just go around back, man. That's what I did. I opened the gate from the other side – it should still be open. Piss over in the side yard."

Two-polo comes back.

"Check it out man."

Two-polo produces a plastic bag.

"Ever had 'shrooms?"

Two-polo likes to share. So many shots. So many beers. Kissing some girl I've known for awhile. Now we're on the side yard by the gate. Entangled tongues. My fingers sticky between her legs. Her hands around my cock. Heavy breathing. Bare chests, the grass is chilly. Skin to skin contact feels important. I feel important.

"What the FUCK?"

What-the-fuck guy cuts through my buzz. He can't possibly be pissed about this – this is fine. She wanted to. He knows that we like each other – we've hooked up before. What is his problem? She said yes, and yes still means yes, yes?

"Did you open the fucking gate?"

I roll my head back and look, upside down, at the gaping hole that a gate normally fills. She's still on top of me. She's on top. She's a totally willing party. He can't be pissed about this. I'm still inside and her cunt gives a little squeeze. I laugh at her audacity.

"You think this is fucking funny?"

I prop myself up on both hands.

"The line to the bathroom was too long. Just needed to take a piss, so I used the side yard."

"FUCKING Christ. You motherfucking asshole. Casey was out here."

"Oh shit."

I move to get up.

"No, you've done enough, thanks. You're too trashed anyway. I'll fucking find her. Her leash is still in your car, right?"

Almost a Martyr, Submission 2 by Lee Martin

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"Hola chica!" "Hey, baby!" "Wooo WOOO!" Sara stood facing the brick wall in the dim and surreal orange streetlight. So far everything had gone to plan. She closed her heavily black-rimmed eyes and took a deep breath. Her hand closed tight on the black handle sticking out of a long cardboard box. Striped socks, spiky black hair, buttons. She was the bait, and about 50 men had come to take a bite. She was ready; they all were.

----

They had planned it for months. Their plans evolved, their numbers grew. Kids had come from the cracks in the walls it seemed. Mexico City in 2044 had become a SuperCity, just like all the sprawl areas in North America. No place was untouched by the fingers of progress...they worked their way across continents and across oceans to completely cover the world with Progress. So there they were...TNY kids in "Conservative" Mexico City. Sara had known Tim and Matt since the Breakdown. They frequently made trips to ForbiddenCity, Buenos Aires, Genesis...anywhere to escape then crushing foot of the prevailing sentiment of Mexico City. Two of Sara's friends from before the Breakdown had been kicked to death in front of a Bar by a cheering mob...and she got to watch from the safety of a dark alley. Too fragile to act, she just hid. But she didn't know that hundreds of others like her were doing the same, and they didn't know that they weren't really hiding...they were waiting. For Her.

They all new her name, but out of respect they referred to her as "Her" or "She." They came to secret meetings with colored hair and strange bracelets. She was surprised how quickly things evolved...changed...grew. The New Youth grew from the ashes of the burned dreams that Progress had torched to pave the way for Tomorrow.

-----

His dark and heavy hand squeezed her shoulder. His grip tightened. Sara's hand clenched on the black handle. "Aren't you in the wrong part of town, chica?" He asked with ethanol breath.

"Yes. And so are you."

-----

"Just try to stay sober tonight," begged Sara. Tim stood glaring at Matt. Sara looked at the concrete floor of the TNY meeting room, a dank hole forgotten during the Conversion under a luxury hotel. "Try."

Matt had a penchant for drugs. E2E, Meth, pot, whatever. He was probably the only real addict in TNY. Sara recalled Tim telling her that the only reason he didn't throw Matt out was that he was with them from the beginning. "It just takes the edge off!" he'd say while hitting some E2E before a practice session, or before doing a line off his sword before a recon.

"We're depending on you," said Sara. "We all are. I am."

"I can. I will," said Matt. Sara looked back at Tim, who was draped in the shadow of the corner. She couldn't see his face but she knew what he looked like right now. She always could tell.

------

The steel of Sara's sword flashed like a strobe. That was the signal. The man's hand fell to the ground. He raise the stump to his face; Sara turned to see his body silhouetted in the orange streetlights, 50 men behind him. She was ready. The pink highlights of her black hair glowed. She plunged the sword right into his stomach. She exhaled, and through the hilt of her sword she felt him do the same. It was just like she imagined it.

He fell to the ground. At 5"5" she craned her neck up at the men slowly advancing toward her. Any second now. She could feel their breath on her from 10 feet away. They growled. They hated her kind...strange hair, strange music...strange ideas. Any second now. Her eyes flicked left, then right, rimmed in black. "Matt..." she breathed.

The men advanced.

They practically piled on her, which is probably what saved her life. She felt her leg break...a knife across her back...her shoulder. She could hear the flapping of the sneakers of her friends finally arriving. 30 kids, 30 swords...only 30 of the kids had progressed to the level where they felt comfortable taking on this large of a group. Blood dripped onto her face in the dark, surrounded by the men. Was it her's? She could tell she was suffocating...after what felt like days she felt the weight fall away and the darkness came back to life with the golden streetlight. Triumph. Tim picked her up.

"Matt..." she whispered. "No, it's Tim. Matt didn't show. I am glad I had decided not to trust him. I sent lookouts watch you tonight. But we came out ahead. We got all but two...we want the story told to the rest of them, so we let them go. This is the beginning, Sara. This will be a blow they won't soon forget, let alone recover from.” She passed out in his arms as he walked past Genesis Club toward the meeting room under the hotel.

------

Manmade Jesus, Submission 1 by Tricia Pooladi

Submission 1 inspiration: Genesis

Between the layers of clouds and ions, high in the atmosphere, is the incubation level, where the first seeds of life were planted. The seeds were a concoction of enzymes, particulate heavy metals, elemental gases, and amino acids. They were sent in thousands of carefully engineered capsules, carrying the human hypothesis about what created the beginning of life. It was sent to test a hypothesis, but also sent as an attempt to play god. It was sent to create a saviour for life as we know it.

Manmade genesis imploded 200,000 light years away from the Milky Way's Earth, at 4 p.m. WST (World Standard Time), on January 24^th, in the Gregorian 2310. The Earth's atmosphere was livable, but inextricably different from the climate that mammals had come to dominate over the past few thousand years. The dust of human manipulation swirled visibly in every layer of strata, and no technology had been developed, no viable ideas had been formulated that allowed the light of the sun to pierce through to ground zero—the crust of land that had once been the seat of Earth's life and the location of Earth's original population.

Capsules were designed to implode in clusters using atomic implosion to simulate the heat of Creation. No one knew what kind of life they would create, if life was created. But the outcome of the experiment didn't matter. It was just another thing to try, in a laundry list of things that had already been tried.

On earth, life continued to thrive, but the process of "natural" selection was now an endeavor almost solely manipulated by the entire human race. If we could capture it or cultivate it, it would live. If it was elusive, it would die.