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W #5 EVIE
This is a preview copy of a story that will be appearing in our book This is How You Die, out in July 2013 from Grand Central Publishing. Its the sequel to our bestselling short story collection Machine of Death, which introduced the idea of a machine that can predict how youll die. All of the the stories in both books are explorations into this common theme. This story, TETRAPOD, is by Rebecca Black. In the book, itll be paired with an illustration by Carly Monardo. Were releasing this story in advance thanks to the kind supporters of our Machine of Death card game Kickstarter, which is open for pledges through March 19, 2013! This file is released under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercialShareAlike license. This permits this story to be freely downloaded, shared, and retransmitted in a noncommercial manner, so long as attribution is given. For more information about MoD, visit machineofdeath.net.
TETRAPOD
My name is Miyako Kamemura. I play kendo. I will die by fall down stairs. Nice to meet you. I sighed. Falling, I said, flouting everything Id learned about the right kinds of corrective feedback in my studies of second-language learning and forcing a smile to mitigate the blatant recast. Falling down stairs. Its nice to meet you too. I shook her hand, letting the I play kendo gonone of us had ever quite figured out for sure what the correct verb to use with kendo was, anyway. I do kendo? I practice kendo? Let their high school English teachers worry about it. My name is Takeshi Kamai, the next kid was saying confidently. I play running. I will die by lung disease. Miyako had sat back down, blushing a bit. By this time, the first year of middle school, theyve mostly memorized their basic jikoshoukaiselfintroduction. Name, favorite sport, death, sometimes favorite food or which neighborhood theyre from. I love getting to know the new first years, but right then I was not in the mood for endless jikoshoukai day, repeating my own fifteen-minute introduction to each of the four new first-year classes in turn, listening to each student, an endless flood of ninety names I wont remember a single one of. It drains a lot of energy that I didnt have to spare that day. And each class asks the same questions: How old are you? (Twenty-three.) Do you have a boyfriend? (Not technically.) Whats your blood type? (A-negative.) How will you die (or more commonly, What is you will die by)? (Breast cancer, which always draws a few giggles from the boys.) Whats your favorite bug? (Dragonfly, I finally decided after the fifth time I was asked.) Is your hair really naturally blond? (For the hundredth time, yes.) Today one kid threw me off by asking what my favorite word in Japanese is, and I didnt have an
YOU DIE
Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death Inescapable Machine of Death
EDITED BY RYAN NORTH, RYAN BENNARDO, MATTHEW NORTH, MATTHEW BENNARDO, AND DAVID MALKI ! AND DAVID MALKI ! EDITED BY