How High We Go in the Dark

The vessel is almost fifteen feet long and nine feet high.

Wild horses graze; a sea otter in the bay cracks a crab on a rock; eagle eggs perched on a narrow shelf of a cliff face begin to hatch.

They were all places that might not exist within a lifetime

the Maldives, Key West, New Orleans, Venice.

the seas might rise as much as three feet by 2100 with glacial melt even if we do everything right,

SUICIDE GROUPS FILL IN THE GAPS WHERE SOCIAL SERVICES FAIL.

People have forgotten how to care for each other, for themselves. We can’t expect them to care about the world if they don’t care about what’s in front of them,”

His fisherman father died more than ten
years ago. He was among the first adults to die from the plague in Japan after the virus reached the coastal Siberian towns—organ failure after organ failure at Akita City Hospital, until the virus transformed his heart cells into lung tissue and the doctors could only stand by and watch.

Akira, who at thirty-five joins the growing class of underemployed who couldn’t

In the evenings, Akira walks down the busy streets of Tokyo’s virtual reality district to the neon-lit Ameyoko Market and browses knockoff VR visors and discounted bento boxes with his hands in his pockets. Projectors camouflage old buildings, immersing visitors in a different environment each night—nineteenth-century Paris, the halls of the Louvre, an anime wonderland filled with creatures from Japanese folklore.