The Equations of the Dead
Novelette 9,904 words Recommended by 2 award/anthology sources
"The boyo working the transmitter doesn’t look like much, except his face is radiant. Radiant, like one of those pooka upworld adverts for neural templates. Dopamine-druggy, but lucid. Like he’s in love. Boyo also looks like he hasn’t spoken to a human in days, and like aside from the food allotments he doesn’t have a lick of capital."
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on Lightspeed, where the author gets the click.