Three years after Gavin Mox’s prototype first defied gravity, he was still chasing those original six seconds.  Five stories above campus, sealed inside the university’s old planetarium. Gavin sat beneath a night sky that was only half artificial. The upper panels of the geodesic dome had been retracted into the steel ribs of the roof, leaving a wide black opening where the night sky poured in and filled his lungs with dry desert air.  He

Gavin’s eyes closed involuntarily as the voice struck his eardrums like a barrage of closed fists. Only one person in his life could drag private humiliation into public execution before she even crossed the room. The shout had already done the damage. The squeak of Chuck Taylors only announced that the rest of her was coming to finish it. He exhaled, opened his eyes, and turned almost in unison with Eyra. Yves Saint Laurent Libre

The code kept rearranging itself across the monitor. The building trembled around Gavin and Ronni, then stopped so suddenly the silence felt artificial. For one breath, neither of them moved. “What kind of AI glasses are those?” a strange voice yelled from the portico. The XDE-1 drowned the room in a metallic whine, loud enough to swallow footsteps. Gavin looked back. The janitor stood in the portico, squinting at him.  “Alright, alright. Yea, those are