What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

pumpernickelandcoal:
“ avatar-dacia:
“ crispy-ghee:
“ juliedillon:
“ This is an illustration I did for the August 2014 issue of Popular Science Magazine. The assignment was to show a scifi take on human aging in the future. I wanted to do something...

pumpernickelandcoal:

avatar-dacia:

crispy-ghee:

juliedillon:

This is an illustration I did for the August 2014 issue of Popular Science Magazine. The assignment was to show a scifi take on human aging in the future. I wanted to do something relatively positive, so I drew a lady whose life has been been prolonged through cybernetic enhancements and augmentation, so she gets to spend time with her great-great-great-great grandchildren. 

Thanks to AD Michelle Mruk!

this is beautiful

So I keep wanting to reblog Cyborg Matriarch here, but I keep losing track of her.

She’s not getting away this time.

I really want a sci-fi story to go with this.

‘Kata-sa! The ships, the trade ships are coming!’

'I know, youngheart,’ Kata says, smiling at Lev’s enthusiasm, 'but we needn’t rush. The downdrift takes time.’ She resettles Qiba on her hip, chuckling as his fat hands tug at her beads, and lays a protective palm on Yuni’s shoulder.

'What does it say on the nexus?’ she asks.

'I can read it -’ Lev says, trying to snatch the lotus from his kinsib’s hands, but Yuni lifts it out of reach, blinking as she sifts the data.

'Forty minutes before planetfall,’ she says, and taps the lotus with a tip of her finger. The datapetals iris shut, and Yuni pockets the lambent sphere. 'We have plenty of time for gelato,’ she adds, glancing shyly up at their Ancestor. 

Gelato. Kata remembers the flavours of it - sweet, bright, cold - from the years before her first tongue failed, when she could still taste. Modern synflesh can replicate sense reception, she’s told, but the upgrade costs chits that could better be spent on Yuni’s first augs, or Qiba’s creche-debt, or something Lev can endlessly break and reassemble. But Kata is nothing if not patient. Tech improves, prices fall, and children grow. She can wait.

'Gelato it is,’ she says. The children squeal with delight, and Kata breathes deep in vat-grown lungs, her bronze arms gleaming warmly as she shepherds her youngest descendants through the festival crowd.

One day soon, as she once did for Yuni’s mother, and her father, and his mother, and her mother before that, she’ll sit the girl down and tell her the story of how they came to Isis; of those first rickety, treacherous ships, with their riveted hulls and thirsty fires, that ought to have cracked like eggs in the black of space, and yet somehow endured. One day, she’ll tell her what it was like to leave one planet for another, how the heart that was still decades from its first replacement beat in her throat as they slipped past the curve of the world. One day, she’ll tell her everything.

But for now, they have forty free minutes, and a gelato vendor to find.

(via knitmeapony)

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