“They fly very swiftly, and prey upon the wing, being of great use to mankind, in clearing the air of innumerable little flies.” —Chambers Cyclopedia.

The government was busy drinking. The lights were always blinking and going out in various parts of town. “Neighborhood’s winking up at God,” my grandmother used to say on nights like that. “But you can’t make him pay attention.”

On one hand I'm sort of tired of answering his questions because it's all really obvious stuff but also it's really fun! It's always super neat to watch their eyes light up as I tell them about the world and that's probably why I got picked for the position in the first place. "Let's have ice cream!" I demand.

But he’d never been just an arm’s length away from a spaceship before, the way he was now. And that’s why he felt like crying.

She put a slice of bread on the long fork and began to toast it over the gas flame. The gas, at least, was fairly dependable, and the water.

Pero nunca habia tenido, como ahora, una nave espacial al alcance de la mano. Por eso sintió ganas de llorar.

"Let me guess," Sara said, "you went chasing after a missing cat, got five metres off the ground and then forgot you had a body. Right?"

Yann kept the dynamite in his coat closet. I smelled it as soon as he let me in.

His skin wasn’t brown, or even a man’s skin any more, but instead glistening, polished alabaster. They’d even cast his inner ear in the stuff, and his fingernails; Akeem was willing to bet that Cain’s gums were white stone as well. The only parts that weren’t calcified were his eyes, replaced with clear diamonds of a dazzling cut that made them dance with light.

Suddenly people remembered older stories, the kind where people die, and are reborn, and birth is difficult. The end of the world just made it worse.