Anatoly had delivered the mermaid the previous night, but Celtigar only discovered its existence after he got out of bed and went into the living room, where it had been dropped off. Anatoly must have used the one-time passcode he’d given him—the alarm hadn’t gone off....

I. Origins Fashion moves in a spiral, as demonstrated by the resurgence of the Restoratronist School of art. The school’s principles are a response to the Barbaric Era: art is about destroying it, mourning it, recreating it, interpreting it. And thus the art of the Restoratrons mostly concerns humans....

Sometimes I think that all God did to create our universe was to burp it out, then let it inflate like a balloon. In that first fraction of a second, the compressed matter of His Burp sprayed out its offspring in waves....

The Third Incubation of Peacocks, afternoon. I write this from a lily pad floating on the North Pole. I came here to ponder mushrooms; I find it helpful to think about dark things in bright places. Kaida has scolded me for wading in the algae pools, and I understand how important they are to our oxygen cycle....