Word of Mouth

Andrea Phillips arrives on this week’s transport with a game and at least one secret.

June’s adventures on the Sunday Morning Transport include stories by Alex London, J.R. Dawson, Andrea Philips, and Karen Joy Fowler.

We are grateful for your support in helping us get here, and in continuing to bring more extraordinary writers and their work to the page. Enormous congratulations go to Thomas Ha for the inclusion of his Sunday Morning Transport story “The Patron,” in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2026.

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~ Julian and Fran, June 21, 2026

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Word of Mouth

by Andrea Phillips

I have something very important to tell my friends. I’ll have to wait for the right moment to bring it up, but I can be patient.

Our party meets in a dappled glade at the foot of the mountain. It’s early in the evening, though the moon hasn’t risen yet, and the skybox above is an exquisite fantasy in peach and lilac. The trees are identical to the leaf, straight-limbed and unclimbable, stretching away in staggered rows until they fade from view. There is birdsong in the ambient sound, but not a single bird to be seen.

I’ve arrived first. My character is a wood sprite with a shock of grass for hair and a crystal-topped staff in one branch-like hand. A trio of butterflies circles my head in something akin to a halo. I adjust my settings, and the butterflies shift from pink to yellow.

My friends pop into existence one by one, or more accurately two by two: each is both an avatar in the game and a hazy video feed alongside it. The video used to be clearer, but my bandwidth isn’t as reliable as it used to be. Nobody’s is. I’ve considered going audio only, but that would be a last resort, only if the game became otherwise unplayable.

I’m here to spend time with these, my closest friends. Observing their body language and microexpressions—and showing them mine in return—is an important part of fostering solid relationships; a necessity, not a luxury.

Today there are only four of us. We wait for a while to see if the fifth turns up: Chunkie. To our collective surprise, even after ten minutes, after fifteen, she doesn’t.

“Should we just start without her?” Gentian asks at last. Formally GentianBleh543135. In his video feed, he has cheekbones like the Grand Canyon and a jaw formed by glaciers. His game avatar is a squat bipedal fox with a gleaming hammer thrice its size.

It’s a legendary hammer: the Gnarlthorpe. It’s not easy to bring up the memory, but I was there when he got that hammer, quite a few new content drops ago, before we settled into this routine of grinding and waiting for the next update. There hasn’t been an announcement, but the developers will probably be giving us a surprise drop any day now.

“It seems rude to start before Chunkie is here,” I say.

Camemburt shrugs. “She won’t mind catching up,” he says. Camemburt888410 is the youngest of us, only thirteen when we began playing. His almost pubescent cheeks are splotchy with hormonal acne; his neck is thin.

His avatar is a slim figure cloaked in a shadowy aura. It’s a trait you get after reaching level 70 as a Night Thief; he can teleport short distances for sneak attacks.

“Did anyone get a message from her?” Loofah, formally Loofah696911, is a bunny girl with masses of hair. The lights in her room have shaded her skin a dusky rose. Her breasts are very large and very round, and through some miracle of gimbal or filter, constantly remain the primary focus of her video feed.

Her avatar is a button-eyed doll in a pinafore with a sweet smile painted on her fabric face. She throws poison and healing powders in puffs of bright color.

“No message,” I say.