I forgot the cues, the pulse of life the call of heat. of bass rising through air. bone. blood. how it held trembled pulled taut remind me how the build of a dark riff     …

The only light out here is the pulse of passing headlights, silver ghosts slipping through blackness, illuminating pieces of her world one frame at a time. Trees lean in, whispering ancient secrets, and the road ahead vanishes before she can claim it. The dashboard glows faintly; it’s cracked and scratched, scored like tally marks. Each one a sentinel of the time that’s passed.

I am caught again, wrapped in the folds of a night that feels too tight. Thin threads of thought tangle in memories I thought I’d buried. My limbs ache with exhaustion, not physical but soul-deep, a countdown ticking too loudly inside me; echoing moments already lived. And in those echoes, you come. You slip between the cracks in the windowpane, trailing cool fingers across my brow.

Since its modern beginnings back in the 19th century when Mary Shelley created her Frankenstein monster, Science Fiction has been a mirror that reflects society’s greatest hopes and deepest fears about humanity’s future and what it might hold. Packed with cautionary explorations outlining the dangers of unchecked power, corporate greed, the privatization of space and technology, and––most recently––the ethical challenges posed by the explosion of artificial intelligence, science fiction has long used stories to warn society about what a future might look like if handed over to a minority number of wealthy elites—and the consequences are, always, disastrous.