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Brenda Peynado's "The Touches" is a Tor.com Original short story set in a post-apocalyptic world
Salipa and Telo have perfect lives in the virtual reality world that humanity has retreated to after bacteria and viruses resistant to all medications take over the outside world.
But when the robots that take care of the necessities in the dirty outside world start glitching, Salipa must figure out what it means to truly live if they can never return to the world they once knew.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Brenda Peynado
Brenda Peynado's genre-bending short story collection, The Rock Eaters—featuring alien arrivals, angels falling from rooftops, virtual reality, and sorrows manifesting as tumorous stones—was named one of NPR, the New York Public Library, and Electric Literature's best books of the year. Her stories have won an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award, and inclusion in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.
More by Brenda Peynado
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