It is very quiet. I set my chin into my palm and count my friends and wonder what else is hiding in plain sight. - Robin Sloan

It was a fungal party hellscape.

Compaq Lois spoke. Her voice was not kind or coddling, but stern. “Do you like your job?” My hesitation answered for me. “I know I have strong opinions about everything — I can’t help it, I do — but this one’s the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.” The seriousness of her statement quieted the room.

There had to be a scale somewhere — the scale of stars, the scale of far-off cosmic super-beings — upon which we ourselves, we humans with our cities and bridges and subterranean markets, would look like the lactobacilli and the yeast.