A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension

by Andrea M. Pawley

Olive touched the tiny carbon fiber legs. They folded under her fingertip. The drone was dead. Its accumulator nodes held enough copper to get Olive through the next three days. Papa had always provided Olive with the inorganics she needed, but Papa hadn’t been home much since Mama stopped going to work and the second grandma arrived five days ago.

With her hand curled around the drone, Olive wiggled backward through the sinewy filament holding each living quarters trailer like a barnacle to the side of the elevator. The filament slowed Olive. So did a shortage of metals in her system. None of today’s dead drones carried the gold she needed most.

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