The day we discovered our machine learning models were wrong was the day the earth began to catch fire and didn’t stop.

For years, we’d been fighting brush fires every September and October. One year, they spread into the villages in the foothills. The next, the towns were under threat…

I logged on and checked meeting notes for the last day. There were a few action items that I might need to deal with later if they were assigned to me, but mostly these were policy decisions that I needed to know about. …

I kissed her for the last time there, in the bay of a beaten-up starship that smelled like shit, just before the doors slid shut and we lifted off towards an unknown world. …

“You have four meetings today. The first one begins in seven minutes.” I heard the voice in my ear, clear as day. Since the upgrade a few days ago she’d become more realistic; her intonation almost imperceptibly uneven, the audio fidelity just a little bit finger. Still a woman, I…

“Are you sure you want to look?”

I nodded. There were risks associated with looking in the mirror, I knew. Most people were never the same. Some came away with a new spring in their step, ready to make changes to their lives that they knew would lead to happiness…

All I had was my boat. Everything else had long since washed away.

It wasn’t perfect — I’d escaped at the last minute, after all, and there’s only so much you can do when time is bearing down on you — but I was proud of what I’d managed to…

“Everyone says this guy is the best,” Bram said, his hands covered in thick juice from the slabs of meat he was busy tenderizing. “Janet and Phil just got finished with him. He turned their lives around.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Janet and Phil give names to crystals…

I’m writing from around 33,000 feet above Wyoming on a flight from San Francisco to Boston.

I feel guilty flying: it’s not something I’m particularly pleased to do, and not only because I don’t enjoy the experience. We’re destroying our planet, and by taking the easy way out and boarding…