And there we were, in the darkness. Surrounded. Alone. The five of us together. No hopes, no dreams, nothing but the uncertain truth of our situation. There was a pool of light we could not see. A howling scream we could not hear. Children, children everywhere, grabbing and laughing and crying. Thousands dead, thousands more alive. A singular moment stretched on into infinity. We were now, and then, and to become.

May 29, 2034 Per capita use of Nanocule Browsing outpaces the use of every other method of board browsing combined. Economists and Market Analysts claim this is the tipping point for Nanocules as the status quo of board browsers. July 4, 2034 The UVote program is released to the Boards. This experiment in democracy displays all the bills and laws currently in committee, or up for a vote in representative countries across the world.

Now, I will not say that this is where the conversation ended. I will say that this is where the important and interesting aspects of the conversation ceased. Hours passed as each of us tried in turn, begging, pleading, promising, and threatening. The two Majesties did not mind our efforts, nor succumb to our pleas. If you are interested in the fascinating, if at times repetitive and at all times impractical, conversation, you may find them in my poem The Detailed Discourse of the Two Majesties.

Oh, the Apex, the beautiful and winding words that descended from the base of the cervical vertebrae to the occipital. Heresy. Damnable heresy for one such as I, a Sensate in good standing of the Grandiose Guild, to say I still find myself at a loss for words. What could be said to convey the glory and horror of the hallways, stairways, and byways of the Apex. For the beauty was not in its sweeping archways, its Ivory palisades, its golden buttresses, nor its marbled cloisters.

Even with the careful and steady guidance of Nock, it took us many days to make our way out of the wooded jungle that was the Inner Wings. We traveled through the Asparitetis and out the other end, around the Oyn and about the Upper Scapula we walked, seeking egress from the foul environs, until at last we arrived at the Pollier. Covered with barnacles and dangling vines, the Pollier was perhaps the quietest portion of our journey.

7:18 am, October 3, 2055 Jack stared down at her limp form. Part of his brain was working furiously trying to think of what had happened, what was going on. The rest of his brain was calm and detached. He had met Connie on the train five years ago. She had been reading an old paperback book. He knew the author, and loved the old paperbacks himself, so he worked up the courage to introduce himself.

I fear the rest of our journey through the tunnels will bore you, and so I shall carefully edit out that which remains incidental. Suffice it to say that there were a great many adventures had with me and my pilgrim as we wandered; a few poems of note, though none deserving of praise. We spoke little, though it became quite clear that we both understood that the other was searching for the Encinidine.

Down I slid, for how long I do not know. It was a descent most familiar for me, a descent most familiar to all, I am sure. We have all fallen. Whether through fortune or failure, a steady descent surrounded by guiding sides of metal or wood, that gently nudge us to the left or to the right, in hopes the landing is much softer. We never look up when we fall.

“I cannot fathom,” muttered Sir Juhrooz, as he turned the paper this way and that, “what the purpose of this procedure actually is.” “Oftentimes,” Mr. Porist carefully positioned his sheers around his earlobe, “the purpose is the procedure.” My Doppewassl friend stared at the paper for a moment more, before slowly nodding. “For seven days and six nights, I and my fellow trainees caught a drop of water as it slid down a pane of glass.

November 29, 2028 In reaction to rampant globalization and free trade policies, the Universal Workers Rights Act, or UWRA, is released by the new International Union Movement. The Movement’s aim is to utilize social media to unionize the global workforce. “If companies can move across the world,” the preamble of the UWRA states, “then it is only just that the workers of the world are given the same opportunities. We are human the whole world over, and deserve the same basic human rights, no matter which country we were born in.