Liberation Day
Love Letter
“Love Letter” is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson. Amid a dystopian political future that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and one another. “Ghoul” takes place in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado. The story follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complicated Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted.
Liberation Day
The title story "Liberation Day" is about an enslaved group of storytellers. Mr. Untermyer runs a carnivalesque group of three storytellers. The storytellers are ordinary until they are pinioned on a special wall and jacked into a special neural socket. The pinioning assists the performance by 'boosting their prolixity'. Mrs. U comes to Jeremy at night and programs him to compliment her and entwine her in romantic tales. The other speakers pretend to sleep as she swoons over the stories. But sometimes Jeremy –the narrator– knows they only pretend to sleep.
One day Mr. Untermyer puts on a performance with the speakers all pinioned to the wall in ascending heights. They speak of generic cities and the narrator's sad city is the finest one. However, the performance is a bomb and Mr. U seeks to boost it by getting knowledge mods for the speakers.
They end up with details about Custer's Last Stand and the many native American tribal nations involved. However, the present situation of the pinioned speakers becomes entwined with the battle narration as the plot develops. The Untermyer's adult son attempts to release the speakers from imprisonment by recruiting outsiders who are offended by the set-up. Confusion of narratives leads to Jeremy killing the outsiders with the gun they bring in.
Mother’s Day, Elliott Spencer, and My House
In “Mother’s Day,” two women who loved the same man come to a reckoning in the midst of a hailstorm. In “Elliott Spencer,” our eighty-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed. His memory “scraped”—a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. And “My House”comes to terms with the haunting nature of unfulfilled dreams and the inevitability of decay.