“Can I go somewhere with fairies?” I ask.

“Sorry,” the gnome says. “They don’t like your kind. The only alternate world available to you is a version of your own where no one invents the telephone, radio, movies, or computers.”

“What do they do?” I ask.

He laughs. “Everything else.”

Susmita Ramani is a writer and lawyer who has a novella coming out from Running Wild Press in 2026. She has two teenage daughters and performs improv with a group. She lives in Palo Alto, California.