THE FI EXPERIMENT

As a favor to her aunt, Alice drives into Arizona's stark and bleak Sonoran Desert to check up on her cousin who has left his job as a chemical engineer and moved onto the family's long abandoned jojoba farm . No one has heard from him in six months. Alice hasn't seen her cousin in years. She recalls the egotistical, socially dysfunctional boy that tormented her througthout her childhood. When they meet again she finds that not much has changed about his unpleasant personality, but when he begs her to return to videotape a message he desperately needs to share with the world, Alice must make a fateful choice that will affect the rest of her life.




 

THE MT FUTURE

The MT machine was the size of a large closet, its surface streamlined with a matt silver finish. There were no buttons or switches on its perfectly smooth exterior, only a scan screen next to the door. When the door opened, it revealed an empty, featureless compartment. A small light from an invisible source barely illuminated its interior. An attendant scanned the husband’s phone, and the whole family squeezed into the box. The door closed on its own. In a moment, it opened again and was empty. 

            “Well. Here we go,” Susan said. One by one, their phones were scanned, and they entered the box. The door closed behind them, and they stood quietly in the semidarkness. Linda took a deep breath. She heard a soft hum and then oblivion. She hadn’t the chance to compose a single thought before dying.

            The soulless creature that emerged from the MT machine nearly halfway across the world shopped in some of Brussel’s finest boutiques. It paused for lunch, shopped some more, and ate a lavish dinner before returning home carrying shopping bags filled with its newly bought treasures.

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