Page 23 of Overgrowth

Stem

I think everyone expected to see a man emerge—possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks—like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me—and then another.

—H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

I won’t say I’m sorry for something I never got to decide to do.

—Stasia Miller

Nobody tells us how much time we get. I wish somebody could. I wish that as soon as we fell in love, a little man with a pocket watch would appear like something out of… out of a Lemony Snicket novel and say, “The young lovers did not yet know, although they were soon to learn, that they would only have three years, six months, and two days together before their love would end in tragedy.”

It would still have been worth it. We would both have stayed. But I might feel a little less like I was dying.

Robert was the kind of man people say can’t possibly exist. He was kind and funny and loud and aggressive when he needed to be and gentle whenever he could be. He loved me. I loved him. If I ever needed proof that the world was good, I got it when he chose me. If I ever needed proof that the world was cruel, I got it three years, six months, and two days later.

—eulogy by Amanda Reyes for Robert Gilmore, delivered 2028.

Go back to your home planet, you freak.

—inscription in the yearbook of Anastasia Miller, June, 2015.