The Box arrived on a Tuesday. This already upset most of the planet, because everyone knew that if something important ever came from space, it should at least have had the courtesy to show up on a Friday evening, when people had nothing better to do. It didn’t land in Washington, Moscow, or Beijing. It didn’t hover above the pyramids or land itself on the White House lawn. It simply appeared, without warning, in a small car park behind a shopping mall in Milton Keynes. At fi

Even a hangover couldn’t spoil the beauty of the photos from last night. Katie lay on the couch, legs dangling over the end, scrolling through them. She and Alex had gone to a rooftop bar that not only boasted glittering, magnificent drinks with names like “Hibiscus Heaven” and “Lavender Lemonade,” but bloomed with walls upon walls of vertical gardens that were bursting with flowers of every shape, size, and color. The hanging gardens , she thought when she first saw them. O

“Is that a cat?” The question was a pretty stupid one because there was no mistaking the fact that it was, in fact, a cat, a fat old...