I twirl around in my big desk chair, smiling to myself. The magazine is nearly ready to print. The only problem is the sp— my phone rings and I answer it immediately. A harsh, slightly distressed-sounding Martian-Australian accented voice says, “You are Marco’s boss?”
“Hello. Yes,” I say.
“I’m his girlfriend. Has he come into work?”
“No,” I say honestly. “And he hasn’t responded to my calls.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Oh. Shit, that’s … put out a green alert.”
“I did that.”
“Could he be in VR?” Marco used to spend a lot of time in VR.
“He doesn’t do that anymore.”
“Do you want me to check the place near the office anyway?”
“Yes please,” she says. “Call me if you find him.”
I’ll go to the VR place in just a second. First, I take a glance at the table of contents for the magazine.
Quality of Life Magazine, January 2068 edition
Opinion piece: It doesn’t matter if uploading kills the original
Philosophy: Should sentient ecosystems have voting rights?
DIY: Increase your hedonic set point with DIY micro brain surgery
Lifestyle: Why you shouldn’t access other worlds via quantum immortality
Parenting: How to get your autistic child to wear radiation damage reversers
Recipes:
- For 5 pointers: psilocybin-infused shallow-fried tofu with inverted avocado and grapefruit nitrous foam
- For 4 pointers and below: astronaut biscuit cake with rainbow icing
Relationships: When gaslighting involves illegal memory deletion and 6 other signs you are in a toxic relationship
Social issue: The word h*man is a slur—stop using it
History: People used to eat pigs and it was completely legal: a cautionary tale from the culinary dark ages
Global health: Removing someone’s VR headset now considered torture in every country
Science: How to be loved by absolutely everyone
Interview: I chose to live in a timeline where my family died—here’s why
I’m happy with it. Except—we need a new sponsor because our old sponsor, MemorySync (“Back up all your memories for just $200 a year! Disclaimer: 3-pointers may experience restricted access to MemorySync”) is being sued and seemingly going bankrupt from lawyer fees. Some idiot got the plugs mixed up and ended up with his wife’s memories in his head, including her memory of cheating on him with the nanny.
More urgent: Where is Marco? He’s our best interviewer. He asks the most interesting questions and really listens to what people are saying. Even that serial killer from last March. He’s also written several articles with advice for people with neurodivergent kids. I kind of wish the articles had existed 15 years ago. I could have read them. They might have helped. Then again, maybe not.
I will do my best to solve these problems, even though they are not my job to fix. And then I want to get lunch. Ever since the new bao bun shop Heady Days opened around the corner, I feel like bao buns for lunch every day.
As I head out of the building, I feel a burst of cold fresh air on my face, refreshing after the stuffy vanilla scented overheated mug of the office and elevator.
I run into my least favourite co-worker, Jenesis.
“Did you hear about Marco?” she says, looking sombre.
“I’m going to the VR place to find him.”
After a beat of intense eye contact, she says, “I think he’s gone. I think he saw his other options and left.”
“He can’t afford to switch.”
“He has savings. From inheritance.” How does she know this? I guess they’re close.
“Why would he leave? He’s got a good job, a nice girlfriend. He makes sculptures.” His sculptures are odd, they seem to all be of the same bird? But he must enjoy making them.
She looks at me, dumbfounded. “That’s not …” She trails off, then says, “I bet you $50 he’s left. Last week, he said he sometimes wonders what his life would be like if he never met Clare.”
I don’t know who Clare is, but this is none of my business. “See you later,” I say, annoyed that she would want to bet on something like that, and walk out the door and to the VR place. It’s literally called ‘VR Place William Street Perth’. None of them are allowed to have brands or interesting names anymore, it’s all run by government.
Marco is not there. I call his girlfriend and let her know. She hangs up immediately after I tell her.
I am anxious about Marco, but I’m also hungry. I will go to Heady Days a bit early today. Nothing wrong with having a bao bun at 10am.
The ~flavours~ available today include: ‘What Christmas felt like when you were a kid’, ‘none of your children hate you even a little bit’, ‘you know you’re the smartest person in your office’, ‘you are the main character of a Bourne Identity type film’, and a few other things. I realized one of them is just called ‘vegetable’. It’s a while since I had a bao bun that actually had a vegetable in it. Or maybe they just feel like eating a vegetable? Who knows.
“My favourite customer, Bronwyn!” the young man behind the counter says to me, alarmingly. When did I tell him my name, and how did he recognise me? He has no eyes and no ears but I guess he can sense me. I don’t really know how those implants work. Maybe I’m too old to understand new technology. I still haven’t fully got my head around cloning.
“The usual?” he asks.
“Uh, yes, please” I say, and he uses tongs to put a ‘none of your children hate you’ bun into a little cardboard box and then hands it to me. The shop is quiet. There is a real pigeon on a table and some orange leaves dancing around the pink floor tiles in the light cold breeze. I sit down at the pigeon’s table and relax.
I bite into the bun and immediately regret not waiting for it to cool down. My tooth is on fire. I must get around to getting it fixed—it’s just so expensive. We have free laser eye surgery, telomere lengthening procedures, etc. in every public hospital (plus gene editing in King Eddy) but for some reason I still have to pay for a filling.
The bun is comforting and I eat it hurriedly. I think of Damie and what a lovely kid he was and how proud I am of him and everything he’s accomplished despite all his issues. When I visited him in the hospital, he had made me a bauble during art therapy. Hundreds of sequins pinned to a foam ball. I still have it somewhere. I wonder if he is still living in the hospital.
I wonder what he would do if I just turned up. The bun is all gone now, but I’m still thinking about him, which is probably a bad idea. He has never forgiven me for not editing good mental health into his genome when he was an embryo. The way he phrases it: “Why couldn’t you just make me normal?” The technology existed by then, and I decided not to use it, even though his dad wanted us to. I’ve got painful mixed feelings about whether or not that was a good decision. I have no idea how old he is now … He sped up his ageing a bunch of times throughout his life for various reasons like wanting to vote, wanting to be allowed out of the hospital without a chaperone, wanting a subsidised android helper. The last thing he said to me was, “I’ll die before you, and I hope it devastates you.”
There are a few more people in the shop now. A woman who sounds like she’s half crying is trying to order three family size containers of a bun flavour I haven’t noticed before.
“You’ve never been abandoned and that—you know that’s because you’re amazing,” she says, stumbling over the name. “Three,” she repeats. Her accent is kind of Martian and her voice sounds familiar.
I lean back in the uncomfortable chair. Never really occurred to me to bulk buy. Could I buy some more now and take them to work with me? Take them home? They could become my primary carbohydrate and then if I just drank Soylent Blue in the morning for protein … Or maybe bao buns have protein in them already. I line up at the counter to ask this.
“Maximum is two,” says the bao bun man to the crying woman.
She looks at him blankly.
“You are only allowed to buy two at a time.”
“I’ll have two then.”
I might try the never been abandoned flavour too. I could eat both flavours in every meal. That would be fine, wouldn’t it? What would actually be wrong with that? Nothing.
“Can I come back tomorrow and get two more?” the woman asks.
“Yes, you can,” sighs the man, as if he has been asked this a thousand times.
I’ll get two as well then. One of each.
Em Stokes
Em is a writer based in Perth. She writes speculative fiction that explores themes such as technology, how memories contribute to identity, and how social and ethical norms may change in the future.
Her short story Maximum is Two is her first published work, appearing in Banksia Journal. She also recently completed a choose-your-own-adventure story Remember and is developing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign about a one-eyed forest frog.
Outside of writing she is active in animal advocacy and community event planning, and enjoys cooking and sitcoms.
Your story was truly incredible, and I don’t think words alone can fully explain how much I enjoyed it. The emotional depth and vivid imagery made it feel larger than life. I honestly believe animation could amplify your work tremendously, making it even more impactful and memorable for growing audiences. I’m both a dedicated reader and commissioned artist, and I’d absolutely love to discuss creative possibilities with you. Inst@gr@am: elsaa.uwu | Di$c0rd: elsaa_uwu.