note in the pocket at the thrift store

Near the end of the expedition we had to eat the horses. I chopped up the hides and quilted them together to make shelters. When the weather grew warmer I used pieces as vellum to keep a journal, and I took them back with me to civilization. I then had them made into this jacket.

described in great detail

The revolution was bogged down in court for several years, almost a decade and a half. Most people had forgotten about it but as the final verdict approached it hit the news again. It was strange to think that the counterclaims might actually win. People were wondering what things would be like in a post-monotheism.

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pasture bound

Small monkeys bred to herd pasture animals. They bond to one particular ungulate (or, rarely, two), grooming, warning, and directing it as a partner. The pair of them is slaughtered together and the monkey pelts sold with the grazer’s meat.

delimited dissent

The new assistant program, called ‘Recover Boy’, was installed on top of an old jazz musician. Some subroutines weren’t completely over-written, some memory spaces, when occasionally referenced, initiated an inappropriate function call from the previous life. Nobody thought it would affect any of the core routines, and a post-installation check assured them that everything there was new code. But they didn’t try running all of the old routines, so they didn’t know how any of them could affect the new code.

wandering memory fair

All attempts to weaken the law were derailed. Weakening public memory solidified it. One man plans to take over an amusement park for a day to remind people what it was like before.

spatialization

The doctors were using a new technique to reconstruct his burned skin. They were growing new patches in a scaffold they had installed on his back. He asked if he could keep the scaffold after he was discharged. He liked it.

tapestry

Her abuse was embroidered into the upholstery of the furniture he sold.

haunted ring

A breakdown in the afterlife transport results in an excess of ghosts. Ghosts run out of living people to haunt and begin haunting other ghosts. One paranormal researcher realizes this and diagrams out as many hauntings as he can find out about as a directed graph. He suspects that it may not be entirely acyclic.

dockland

Everyone who came into contact with the strangely colored tide developed keloids that were treated with shots of cortisone, which quickly ran low. Someone found out when the next shipment was due and intercepted the ship before it reached the harbor.

pointed out

Every time the woman came into town a mountain cat walked beside her. The new law officer decided he had to enforce the leash law, after a complaint from a new mother.