Clarkesworld #233, February 2026
“Remember Me in the Meat” by Sarah Pauling
“Think of Me Before I Disappear” by Raahem Alvi
“The Iron Piper” by Fiona Moore
“Three Fortunes on Alcestis as Told by the Fraud Baeliss Shudal” by Louis Inglis Hall
“Chip” by D. A. Xiaolin Spires
“A Sleeper Ship Is Like a Game of Go” by Claire Jia-Wen
“Painstaking” by Rich Larson
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
“Remember Me in the Meat” by Sarah Pauling takes place at a future time when people store most of their memories in the so-called cloud, calling upon them when needed. The narrator has been recruited by a cult after suffering abuse at the hands of more than one person. The cult uses technology to remove her from the cloud of memories, so that she cannot be tracked by sensors and is immediately forgotten by everyone she encounters. Her mission is to kill a wealthy tech entrepreneur who intends to launch a substance into the atmosphere to cure global warning in a way that the cult considers dangerous.
I have supplied a lengthy synopsis because this is a short story that packs a lot of information into its text. This is not only speculative technology, but a great deal of the narrator’s past as well. The mood is that of grimdark cyberpunk, with only one minor character who is relatively decent. The narrator has suffered abuse from lovers and from the cult and exacts violent revenge against those who have hurt her. The entrepreneur is also abusive. Readers need to be tolerant of stories without sympathetic characters to enjoy this gloomy tale.
The main characters in “Think of Me Before I Disappear” by Raahem Alvi are a human woman and her android lover. The machine has achieved consciousness and the company that manufactured it is willing to pay the woman a huge amount of money to get it back.
Most of the text of this novelette consists of the woman wondering if the android’s love is real or simulated. Although this is a reasonable theme to address in an age when many people have relationships with artificial intelligences, the reader may grow tired of the woman’s endless fretting over a question that could be more easily resolved.
“The Iron Piper” by Fiona Moore is one of a series of stories set at a time when modern technology collapses and is replaced by low-tech farming and tinkering with scavenged, leftover machines. In this tale, the protagonist and her guardian robot encounter two people trying to recruit workers for an institute aiming to bring back advanced technology.
The story achieves realism through the fact that robots and other scavenged machines are not sentient, but simply complex devices that do not resemble humans at all. The theme appears to be the appropriate use of technology rather than either rejection or abuse of it. The story is mostly quiet but has a melodramatic climax. Familiarity with other works in the series would help readers appreciate this entry.
The title character in “Three Fortunes on Alcestis as Told by the Fraud Baeliss Shudal” by Louis Inglis Hall is the last of generations of soothsayers. She knows that she has no real powers of prediction but merely tells clients what they expect to hear. The dying ruler of a galactic empire arrives on her planet demanding that she predict how he will be remembered by having her witness the destruction of an inhabited world.
After this melodramatic opening scene, the story becomes more sedate, with the soothsayer encountering a wounded soldier after the war that follows the ruler’s death. The story has the flavor of space opera with an anachronistic touch, particularly in its use of a classic galactic empire. One has to assume that the ruler is a completely insane tyrant, dooming a populated world and knowing that this will lead to interplanetary war. The other characters are more realistic.
The narrator of “Chip” by D. A. Xiaolin Spires hires a taxi controlled by an artificial intelligence. The AI is required to display holographic, sensory advertisements unless an extra fee is paid. It also has to take the passenger to a fast food restaurant before it reaches the desired destination and spend several minutes there, in the hope that a purchase will be made. The narrator develops a rapport with the AI, which has its own ambitions.
This gentle satire of the way that consumers are inundated with advertisements in this electronic age features a pair of appealing characters. Its portrait of an ordinary day in a high-tech future is entirely convincing. Readers who are fed up with hard-sell techniques are sure to appreciate its dry wit and optimistic conclusion.
The novelette “A Sleeper Ship Is Like a Game of Go” by Claire Jia-Wen features the son of a tech billionaire and one of his workers as its main characters. The billionaire is about to launch a luxury starship to an inhabitable planet, where advanced servant robots will care for the colonists and create an imitation of San Francisco for their enjoyment. The worker forms a friendship with the boy, who has never been outside the headquarters of his father’s company. She accepts an assignment as the boy’s full-time companion, learns how his father intends to use him aboard the starship, and does what she can improve his situation.
I have been deliberately vague about how the boy is involved with the starship, which is not revealed until late in the text. Suffice to say that it makes the billionaire seem like an utterly cold-hearted character with no concern at all for his son.
I have also not discussed the story’s structure. It alternates among three sections of text. One part, narrated in third-person past tense, deals with the worker meeting the boy and becoming involved with his life. Another, narrated in second-person present tense, relates an encounter between the controller of the starship and a passenger. The third, told in second-person future tense, takes place on the planet after the starship arrives. Only deep into the story do we learn who the characters are in the sections set aboard the starship and why the sections set on the planet are narrated in future tense.
This complex structure makes close reading of the story necessary for full understanding. The premise requires extremely advanced technology, which strains credibility in a story which seems to take place in the near future. The extreme heartlessness of the billionaire is also difficult to accept as realistic, although it may be intended as a dark satire on certain extremely wealthy individuals in our own time.
The protagonist of “Painstaking” by Rich Larson is a man born without the ability to feel pain who has been enhanced with a symbiont that causes his body to recover from injury with extreme efficiency, making him virtually immortal. The other main character is his clone, created after a suicide attempt literally tore his body in half. They are both on the run from those who want the man to go back to his enforced role as an unstoppable warrior.
He has to keep the existence of his clone a secret to avoid drawing the attention of those after him.
Although the premise requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief, it leads to a dramatic and suspenseful tale. There is plenty of action, the African setting adds interest, and the relationship of the man and his clone is interesting.
Victoria Silverwolf is surprised that this issue does not have a translated story.