Something Magic This Way Comes by Sarah A. Hoyt

will exit the highway in five more miles.”
    As I started up the engine and fastened my seatbelt this evening, my GPS system said to me, “Hello, Sherri.”
    I froze.
    Then it said, “Not working late tonight, I gather?”

TEARS OF GOLD

Paul Crilley
    F OR months after it happened, the question on everyone’s lips was, “What were you doing during the Changeover?”
    I used to tell the truth. “I was grieving the death of my husband,” I would say. I don’t anymore. I decided I was being unnecessarily cruel. Now I just lie and say I don’t remember, which in a way is worse because everyone remembers. The events of that day have been imprinted on our minds. Every thought, every feeling, every nuance of emotion, there to be looked back upon like snapshots from our youth.
    I sit at an outside table sipping espresso and trying to position my laptop so the sun doesn’t shine on the screen. I glance up at the impossibly blue afternoon sky. Small one-man helicopters buzz past in all directions, miraculously managing to avoid crashing into each other. When I close my eyes, their buzzing sounds like lawnmowers, cutting the grass of my childhood on a Saturday afternoon. The copters were part of the latest fashion. Retrofuturistic; people wearing silver jumpsuits driving cars made from chrome and plastic. Soaring steel buildings stretched up to the blue sky, thin roads encircling them like something out of Metropolis. I didn’t like it. They made the city look like a colossal pincushion.
    I pull my damp blouse away from my back. I close my eyes as a breeze wafts my way, sighing with relief at its cool caress. It has been summer ever since it happened. A year-long summer. I wonder what season will come next. Maybe none. Maybe everyone wants to keep it the way it is. God, I hope not.
    When I open my eyes again, Erin is hovering in the air before me.
    “Hi,” she says.
    “Hi. How long have you been there?”
    “Not long,” she says, pulling out a chair and sitting in it. She’s doing that for me, I think. She would much rather float in the air than sit on hard plastic. I can see it in her eyes, by her look of tolerant pity. It doesn’t anger me anymore, not like it used to. There’s no point in letting it. I see that look about fifty times a day now.
    “You want anything?” I ask, signaling for a waiter.
    “Thanks. I’ve already got,” says Erin, sipping from a multicoloured cocktail that suddenly appears before her.
    “You’re showing off,” I say, half-joking.
    “Dana!” She reaches forward and grasps my hand.
    “Dana, you know I would never do that.”
    I squeeze her hand, a silent apology. Of course not.
    Nobody ever does anything to rub our noses in it.
    I take a sip of my espresso, grimacing at its bitterness.
    I squint up at the sun. “Don’t you get tired of this weather?” I ask, more to stop the silence growing awkward than anything else.
    “Sure,” says Erin quickly, obviously as eager as I am to fill the void. As I watch, thunderclouds the color of angry bruises appear from nowhere and pile up in front of the sun. An angry rumble echoes close by.
    “But I just do that and no more sun. And if no one else wants it, for them it’s still sunny.”
    I want it. I want the rain again. “What about me?”
    I ask, trying hard not to sound like a petulant child.
    “What about the others like me?”
    Erin shrugs awkwardly. I can see her trying to stop herself getting annoyed. We’ve been through this before, too many times. “I sympathize with you guys, I really do, but it’s your choice. You don’t have to stay like you are. There’s no reason for it.”
    “There are plenty reasons.” One. One reason.
    She won’t let herself be drawn into the argument again. “Look, Dana,” she says. “The reason I called you here . . .” She pauses. I can see she’s nervous about something. “It’s to tell you I’m going away for a while.”
    Ah. I ignore the churning in my body, the feeling of