Plugs

Read Rudi’s story “Detail from a Painting by Hieronymus Bosch” at Behind the Wainscot.

Kat Beyer’s Cabal story “A Change In Government” has been nominated for a BSFA award for best short fiction.

David Kopaska-Merkel’s book of humorous noir fiction based on nursery rhymes, Nursery Rhyme Noir 978-09821068-3-9, is sold at the Genre Mall. Other new books include The zSimian Transcript (Cyberwizard Productions) and Brushfires (Sams Dot Publishing).

Jason Erik Lundberg‘s fiction is forthcoming from Subterranean Magazine and Polyphony 7.

Instruction Manual

by Kat Beyer

Operating instructions
1. There are none.
2. Please remember not to try to steer it. Thank you.
Basic care
1. Leave it alone as much as possible.
2. Enjoy it.
3. Try not to use too much of it at once.
4. We strongly recommend that you do not produce radioactive or toxic waste, as this voids the warranty on protein codes.
5. Do not touch the wings of the butterflies, as it damages their scales. Thank you.
Emergency care
1. Study it very carefully.
2. Figure out which parts you did not leave alone.
3. You can panic, but please remember that that is a function of your glands. We advise an initial stage of panic followed by considered, careful action.
Tech support
You can call us at 1-800-277-1324. But it won’t do any good. If you’ve messed things up, we certainly won’t be able to figure them out.
Ted asks that you call us if you like the flamingos.
Parts list
Too numerous, particularly the moving parts, which are also changing all the time, therefore we feel it is not worth producing and revising a set list. But before you start using it, check to be sure these principal parts are intact:
1. Warm core.
2. Hard crust.
3. Watery surface.
4. Shell of air.
5. Local star (ensure correct distance, between 147m-153m km).
We hope you have found this manual useful. If not, we recommend that you re-examine your product more carefully, because it’s damn complicated, and we still haven’t figured out what it’s for, even though we like it a lot.

One Response to “Instruction Manual”

  1. Karen Says:

    September 21st, 2007 at 1:30 am

    I like it a lot too.