Tomas nervously made his way to his seat at the very back of the lecture hall. He’d originally staked out this spot to avoid being called on during class discussion, but if it afforded him the opportunity to surreptitiously glance at his neighbors’ test answers, that was just a happy accident.

Tomas stood and walked out of the classroom. The world needs car mechanics too.

Thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence, electric relaxation has become a standard wellness intervention around the world. Cheaper than traditional forms of medication, this novel technique almost instantaneously improved the emotional fitness of every human lucky enough to experience it.

With the application of just the right intensity and frequency, the patient becomes pleasantly stimulated to the point that all fears, anxieties, and unwelcome urges are permanently purged. Individuals with aberrant behavioral issues find themselves much better able to cope with communal life, happily taking their place in the new social order that’s been ushered in by the singularity.

My family sings and we eat ice cream cake, the crunchy bits dancing across my tongue. We shovel sugary forkfuls into our mouths, laughing and sharing kindred stories. We are warm. We are comfortable. We are sheltered.

Whistles for justice pierce the air before biting clouds of pepper spray surround the faces of protestors fighting for their neighbors. There is a shove, and all the world sees a cell phone raised in a clenched fist; a lifeless body sprawled in the street.

From Guest Contributor Brigitta Scheib

Brad felt like his entire life had lead to this moment. The weeks of relentless training. The years of cutthroat business success that made the expedition possible. The lifetime of dedication and sacrifice that helped sharpen his discipline to the point where absolutely nothing could ever stand in the way of accomplishing his goals. Not his family, not his peers, not any of the many unimportant distractions fate might place on his path.

“It’s all downhill from here, sir.”

There’s a responsibility implicit in every act. By choosing to engage in life, we accept that our choices will have consequences, even when we consciously deny them. We are of the world and we are defined by the actions we take as surely as by those we don’t.

So yes, Mother, I broke the dish, but is it really my fault?

Every time Marvin rode the subway, he thought of Sarah. It got to the point he wondered if she was haunting him. For more than a decade they’d ridden the train together every morning, her to the high school where she taught, him to the warehouse that he managed. When he closed his eyes, he felt Sarah sitting next to him. Sometimes she’d even lay her head on his shoulder like she used to. He didn’t want to look for fear of what he would see.

The dead ARE ghosts, but not in the world around us. They live inside.

The scale of the world is different here. Distances become impossible, the sky so expansive the Earth no longer fills it, the fence posts that line the highway fly by until they blur into a constant.

But no matter how long I keep driving, I never touch the horizon.

The prophet mutter his pronouncements to a jaded congregation that paid no attention. They didn’t need to hear the truth from the mouth of a crazed zealot to understand this time was different. The world really was coming to an end. At least all the parts that mattered.

“After destruction comes rebirth.”

All I ever wanted was a small measure of happiness to call my own.

If my happiness comes at the expense of all the good-for-nothings in the world, they have only themselves to blame.

It is a little known fact that Herbert Hoover was never really interested in becoming president. He actually started his career working as a mining engineer, traveling the world developing mines for various precious metals. At this time, politics was the furthest thing from his mind. His simple ambition, if you can call it simple, was to have a dam named after him, preferably the most famous dam in the Western Hemisphere. Becoming the President of the United States was just, in engineering language, the straightest line between two points.

Too bad Hoover’s mostly remembered for causing the Great Depression.