Dizonia

Most guests at an art opening, particularly one located in a sizable outdoor sculpture garden, showed up with maximum intent to schmooze. Kenise, on the other hand, became schmoozed out especially swiftly, and thus preferred to sneak away and absorb herself in sketching…

The first time Millie was suddenly cornered by several black SUVs, hooded and herded into one of them by burly men wearing suits, sunglasses and earpieces, she'd reacted as you might imagine anyone would…

Ether lived in a liminal space. Though her childhood had been Earth-typical, in her teens she'd begun to "phase out," not mentally (like every other high school student), but physically. From her perspective, her surroundings & everyone in them would disappear, leaving behind a bare scaffolding of wherever she'd started, seeming both under construction & on its last legs simultaneously…

Lucia preferred the tranquility of the underwater world to the hectic, more populated surface. She'd worked with the Ocean Reef Group, helping to maintain Nemo's Garden, an agricultural experiment off the coast of the Italian Riviera that grew samples of land-based crops in underwater greenhouses called biospheres. But after storms & the pandemic cut off access to the project for months, the team was pared back to a skeleton crew, & she was cut loose. Not long into her hunt for a new job, she was contacted by a company called Reprion & recruited to work on their research submarine, the Thalassa. Eager to get back underwater, she didn't ask as many questions as she probably should have…

Tawai, arriving at a dinner party only to discover that not all of the guests appear to be strictly human…

For her 21st birthday, Rǣlia (known to her friends as "Really") decided to organize a celebratory nighttime gathering at Multiversal City theme park. The evening, attended by a dozen or so of the aforementioned friends, included an expansive dinner and mixed drinks, and then more mixing of drinks, and had been perfectly festive and joyous right up until she'd snatched a random bongo drum (from a couch shaped like a boat) and announced that she wanted to start a drum circle. Suddenly, all of her laughing friends were nowhere to be found…

Em, paradoxically feeling more than ever like a misfit toy…

Farrah, walking home alone from the only club that still stays open until sunrise, wearing the black ring…

Inka, aware of the Minders for several years now and long past cycling through self-doubt (am I dreaming? high? crazy?), had simply accepted their presence, and the fact that no one else seemed to be able to see them, as a novel fact of her life. For the most part, they just floated around, though it was clear from the get-go that they gravitated toward populated areas…

Parker, in the future, on her scooter, readying to no longer be parked…