A science fiction lose-the-farm narrative in a recognizable near future. Excerpt below. For full text email coreywaite [at] gmail [dot] com.

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The brochures competed for our attention on the kitchen table, each one demonstrating the best traits of a given model by running short videos narrated in Japanese. The Tengu whirled across a golden field of wheat, threshed and flailed with the manic energy of a wild dog. The squat, bathtub-shaped Oni waddled to a cliff side, hunkered down, and blasted long arcs of chemical fertilizer across a vivid green tobacco crop. I picked up the literature for the Dorotabo. The long limbs and flat, heavy top reminded me of a deep-sea snow crab. They used to scare me as a kid, when I'd see them at the supermarket in town, dead and frozen behind plate glass.

We buried mom four months later, in June, during a summer so dry the pollen floated down from the trees and covered everything in sight.

“You've got a good eye,” the salesman Ethan said, and carefully extracted the flashing brochure from my hands. “Wouldn't want to disparage these other fine pieces, but this one here? She's special. The most popular girl at the dance.”

I looked over at Mom, hoping we might share a conspiratorial grin, but she was staring at her grandson, Rainer. He had escaped my brother Nathan's grip and was crawling on all fours across the table, trying to catch the moving pictures on the cards in his meaty little hands.

“Come on now,” Mom said, without looking up. “What's she do already?”

“What don't she,” Ethan replied, and then winked. “We like to think of our products at Komainu as focused instruments: machines perfectly calibrated to take on a particular agricultural task, and with gusto too. This little Tengu, for example, is all about cutting. Promise she would triple the yield you get discing with that Deere out back. She might even take you to dinner after,” Ethan joked, and then shot a little glance at Nathan's wife Chelsea.