13/02/2026 08:33

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Maureen McHugh, “The Naturalist,” Subterranean, Spring. * * *“You were clinically dead,” he told her, later. That’s what James Joyce had called it. But that didn’t matter because there was almost no one left waking to need feeding.

I reprogrammed the slab cutters to avoid it. ”Jennifer kept her eyes coolly fixed on that empty, safe spot. I had my helmet over my head in a heartbeat. His nervous system was diamond and optic fibre.