New Moon

Nothing tells you that you are not on Earth anymore than exhaling at one price and inhaling at another.

We always thought the robot apocalypse would be fleets of killer drones and war mecha the size of apartment blocks and terminators with red eyes. Not a row of mechanised checkouts in the local Extra and the alco station; online banking; self-driving taxis; an automated triage system in the hospital. One by one, the bots came and replaced us.

The sense of power, of human ability, was so strong. Many of the men cried. Men are so easily moved.

Bullets are incompatible with pressurised environments and complex machinery.

The present is an illusion.

Humans are not made for endless light. Humans need their darknesses.

The might and magic of money is not what it allows you to own; it is what it allows you to be. Money is freedom.

You’re so terrestrial,

It’s so much better to have sex with someone who’s always available, knows what you want and who loves you more deeply than anyone else ever can. Yourself.

The men had to use condoms. You didn’t want to get hit by that stuff, flying. I said be kind and I did something worse than flying cum. I threw up all over him. I couldn’t stop throwing up. That’s not sexy.

The prices are vertiginous. Carlinhos and Wagner take a booth and they talk and dip their wafers of exquisite beef into the sauces but most of the time they keep companionable silence together, as close men do, and find they have communicated everything. Run

Handsome boys fighting in not many clothes. Even better than handsome boys marrying.

The freefall sex? Grossly oversold. Everything moves in all the wrong ways. Things get away from you. You have to strap everything down to get purchase. It’s more like mutual bondage.

Forgiveness is for Christians, and I am no Christian.

Her nikah contracts touch every one of the Five Dragons, the moon’s great dynasties.

The coffee doesn’t taste the way it smells. For that Adriana is thankful. If it did, humans would never do anything other than drink it. Smell is the sense of memory. Each coffee would recall countless memories, boundless memories. Coffee as the drug of remembering.

Agency is a comforting fairy story. Life is a series of doors that only open one way. We can never return. This is the world and we must live in it the best we can.

the inner glow that pregnant women have

but most of the time they keep companionable silence together, as close men do, and find they have communicated everything.

Babies are tedious. Kids only start to become human on their fifth birthday.

Everything is different when the Earth is round.

The dildo is long and elegant, a classic old school moon-rocket, complete with four stabilising fins at the bottom. Each fin controls a different haptic field. A silver pussy-rocket printed to the dimensions of her vagina and vulva. Not a penis. Never a penis. Ariel Corta has never allowed a penis inside her.

—Mira que eres terrestre —dice Ariel, y agita el váper—. En el sexo con otras personas siempre hay que transigir. Un tira y afloja continuo, siempre intentando conseguir que todo encaje, quién va primero y a quién le gusta qué y no me gusta lo que te gusta a ti y no te gusta lo que me gusta a mí. Siempre se ocultan cosas, ese secreto sobre algo que nos encanta o que queremos probar o que nos vuelve locos de atar, pero no se puede decir por miedo a que el otro diga: «Que quieres probar, ¿qué?». y no vea a su amante, sino un monstruo. No hay lugar más sucio que el interior de la cabeza propia. A solas, al hacerse una paja, al tocar el arpa, al reventarse el coño, al jugar al balonmano femenino, al hacerse una siririca, no hay nadie más por quien preocuparse, nada que contener. Nadie que juzgue, nadie que compare, nadie que esté pensando en otra persona y no lo diga. El único sexo sincero es el yosexual. —¿Yosexual? —repite Marina. —«Mismosexualidad» es horrible; «autosexualidad» suena a follar con bots, y cualquier término emparentado con «erotismo» es antierótico por definición.

He is a gross man-mountain balanced on strangely tiny feet. Not fat, vast.

I’m not even the one per cent; I’m the one per cent of the one per cent;