Kaolin Fire
(USA)

For those won­der­ing where their bod­ies have gone…the sun, 

and life, any­thing but this dark, cold ruckus: what do
you remember?

Were you look­ing when the flash hit, a click, a smile on your 

face? Or were you sim­ply drained away one moment at a
time, shot from cover?

Blessed are they, the fractured—a hun­dred selves all 

sep­a­rate, equal in self despite a cer­tain primacy
intrin­sic in one’s fad­ed mem­o­ries of another.…

It’s get­ting crowd­ed; the man­age­ment is aware—the pres­sure of 

some bil­lion dis­em­bod­ied voic­es can be quite
dis­com­fit­ing. They apol­o­gize, but the re-sup­ply ships
are noto­ri­ous­ly late, and management’s best efforts at
prun­ing, well! They admit, with some self-deprecation,
they hadn’t imag­ined how fast you all would grow!

Your bod­ies? Oh! They’re out­side, as ever, emp­ty shells just 

dream­ing that they’re you, run­ning off some half-
imag­ined hint of what you were to them; don’t worry,
they’re fine. Just bring­ing more of you to har­vest in
the most—you say, humane?—manner pos­si­ble; as if not a
thing had changed.

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Kaolin Fire is a con­glom­er­a­tion of ideas, side projects, and exper­i­ments. Out­side of his pri­ma­ry occu­pa­tion, he also devel­ops com­put­er games, edits Great­est Uncom­mon Denom­i­na­tor Mag­a­zine, and very occa­sion­al­ly teach­es com­put­er sci­ence. He has had poet­ry pub­lished in Strange Hori­zons, Every Day Weird­ness, and Bull Spec, among others.

Filed under: Jabberwocky 17