Rachel Green > Status Update

Grinder was too short a story for my liking but still had a glimpse of post-apocalyptic horror that I enjoyed and the augs I enjoyed the concept of from First to Fight.

I loved the artificial intelligence bent to Mr. Companion. Even though I didn't quite get the why of the abuse Marc subjected Gabriel to, I loved the comeuppance at the end and how the story played with the question of how much abuse is AI cognizant of and willing to endure before it retaliates.

The Children's Crusade had a Fahrenheit 451 feel to it that gave it and the chip technology implanted in the brains of the citizenry of the world potential but so much was going on so quickly that the story fell short for me.

Control Vipectus was a curious little story about a man in the midst of mourning a friend in a virtual setting while going through the failure of his marriage in reality. I would've liked to see more of a glimpse into his reality but the switches were just enough to give you a sense of how raw his grief was.

A Silent Auction was a doozy of a story over the worth of a word in controlling the use of a slur. Basically, people bid on words to either own them or erase them from the group consciousness- a few words get erased prior to the story's opening- but this story focuses on how jarring choosing to let a word stay in use is. Not quite sure I understood this one.

I loved how The Deepest Fake started out as this Altered Carbon-esque world of bending technology to create yourself in the image you want and turned into this dark, seedy tale of obsession and revenge. Donna had that right mix of motive and jealousy to push her over the edge so that having all the videos at the beginning just seemed a little off and just kept snowballing into literal and figurative backstabbing.

Cold Calculation dances that fine line between thriller and horror, all while cleverly wrapped in the guise of a space opera. I would expect to see this story on a show on SyFy or Netflix's Love, Death, & Robots and I LOVED it. For a short story, that cliffhanger ending was intense and the line "There are things worse than death" was the best possible note to end this story on.