Leila’s front wheel wobbles when she cycles over a crack in the tarmac. A car behind blares its horn as she struggles to steady the books in her basket and keep her summer dress from flaring up.

‘You daft old cow,’ the driver yells as he overtakes. He waves a flabby arm at her, blurry tattoos stretched all out of shape. She gives him the finger back.

Jeremy and I broke up months ago, but I’m still best friends with his dad. Not that this was the plan, of course. It all started with Jeremy himself, the golden boy who came highly recommended by a mutual friend. You two will be perfect together, they insisted. And for a while, we were. He checked all the boxes that mattered to a 22-year-old girl: shaggy blonde hair, eyes the color of a tropical lagoon, and abs sculpted with the precision of a Renaissance statue. Can you blame me for falling? Beyond the aesthetics, we also shared a handful of meaningful interests: we were both 22, both enjoyed watching movies, and both liked late-night food runs. Okay, maybe our compatibility was surface level at best, but we were young and he filled the lonesome void I was sinking into. So, minor details like emotional depth and long-term potential seemed entirely negotiable.

I’m a volcano’s volcano. Vesuvius. Pompeii. Krakatoa. It’s about the artistry. That’s why my first eruption had to be perfect. I planned it for over 10,000 years—curating landscapes, correcting vibes, ignoring the constant, unbearable pressure building below my crust. There was always something wrong.

We knew we had a serious problem on our hands when the entire student body of Emerson Middle School began to show up in mismatched socks. It was weird, but it wasn’t middle-school weird. You see: the socks were all wrong, but all wrong in the right way. You look down and you see one kid’s got stripes on his left foot and polka dots on his right foot standing next to another kid who’s got checkered prints on her left foot and leopard prints on her right foot, and it all looks good together, as if the students had conspired to have the same color palette. And then you look at other socks and it’s the same thing. Technically, they’re all different, but technically they all go together.

I. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, non-binary, carbon-based and non-carbon-based lifeforms, robots, androids, mandroids, womandroids, womxndroids, and robosapiens. This is a regular meeting of the Space Station 5B-300218-ZΩ7 group of Astral Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Crewman-bot 5000-6C and I’m an alcoholic.