Plugs

Ken Brady’s latest story, “Walkers of the Deep Blue Sea and Sky” appears in the Exquisite Corpuscle anthology, edited by Jay Lake and Frank Wu.

Edd Vick’s latest story, “The Corsair and the Lady” may be found in Talebones #37.

Alex Dally MacFarlane’s story “The Devonshire Arms” is available online at Clarkesworld.

Susannah Mandel’s short story “The Monkey and the Butterfly” is in Shimmer #11. She also has poems in the current issues of Sybil’s Garage, Goblin Fruit, and Peter Parasol.

Archive for the ‘Jonathan Wood’ Category

Connected / Chapter 1: Transitions

Friday, June 4th, 2010

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the first chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.” Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters. Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every 2 weeks.

Every man has his tribe. Home. Work. Streams of consciousness flooding in. No man is an island. Even in the dark of the night, dreams stream in. Everyone, everything… connected.

Except for these moments. These transitions. Tribe to tribe. Home to work. Family, friends, all-access celebrities, blinked away. Alone. Isolated. David Morello–just a sack of meat waiting.

But only for a moment. The system dials, reconnects. His feed swallowed, disseminated, reconstructed. Detective David Morello. NYPD tribe.

Macros pilot his meatsack to its desk but he’s already got a homicide request. There is a moment of disorientation as the on-scene detective’s visual feed obliterates his own.

A man on a bed. As if asleep. Except his eyes. Black ruins that ran down his cheeks. Crisped flesh at the edges.

“Morello patched in,” he says.

“Chambers,” comes back a hard nasal voice. “My ‘sack’s on-scene. John Doe. Dead on my arrival. Fried.” Chambers pulls up images from the crime lab mainframe. Twisted cranial wiring. Morello asks the AIs in research to cross-reference them.

“Too much heat,” Chambers says. One more image. Graphic.

“We know what the Doe was connected to?” Morello asks. Known harmful feeds, or downloaded malware will cut the case time.

“That’s just it,” said Chambers. Diagnostics begin scrolling down the shared feed. “He wasn’t connected at all.”

No. Morello denies it. The thought of it. It is as if he is suddenly alone. Suddenly in the dark. In that yawning moment of disconnection stretching out, out, out. No feeds. A man alone. Quaking, Knowing this is the last transition. Life to death. Just a sack of meat.

#

He cuts the police feed. Dials his home tribe. His kids, his wife. Sensations wash over him, through him: puzzling over a math problem, over a recipe for stew, watching an ass track down the street.

#

Back. The murder scene. NYPD tribe.

“Thought I lost your feed,” Chambers says.

Again, the fear. But weaker now. John Doe’s problem, not his,

He gets Chambers to flip the corpse over and sees the burn mark. Suicide. Overcharged himself. Morello isn’t surprised. Disconnected… alone… No man is an island. He is either buoyed up by others, or he drowns.

Morello posts his report. He watches the feeds of those who read it. All of them sharing the knowledge. All of them, through him, connected.

The problem, you see, is the endings

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

INT. DAY. TEMPLE OF THE MUSE


A large, opulent, but dusty chamber.  Vaguely classical.  Tapestries hang and heavy persian rugs spread out.  They are a little tatty.  A woman reclines on a chaise-lounge.  She is wearing a toga and slightly resembles my wife.  I enter.


ME

Hello!


MUSE

Oh.  Hello.


ME

Yes, hi.  Just a quick visit, I’m afraid.  Lots to do.  To write, actually.  That’s the reason I’m here, you see.  I’ve got this piece due for Daily Cabal so I was-


MUSE

How’s the novel coming on?


ME

What?  The…  Oh, the novel?  Well… yeah.  I mean.  It was going pretty well.  Was going… yeah.  You know?


MUSE

Was going?


ME

Yeah…  Yeah, I was going pretty good on it.  Got 12k down.  Good start, I thought.  But then… I don’t know.  I was playing with the voice.  Trying to get some things…  I don’t know.  It just, you know…  Just sort of ground to a halt.


MUSE

Ground to a halt?


ME

Yeah.  But, well… you know.  I mean…  Anyway.  So, there’s this Daily Cabal piece.  And it’s due tomorrow, so I was really hoping you-


MUSE

Your inspiration for the novel—it wasn’t enough?


ME

What?  No!  No that’s not what I’m saying at all.  No, no, no.  Not the inspiration.  Of course not.  Me.  Just me.  I didn’t…  I couldn’t…


[Silence.  Of the frosty variety]


ME

So this Daily Cabal piece…


MUSE

How is it going to end?


ME

What?  The ending?  Well, you know,  Kind of dependent on the beginning.  And that’s where, you know, I was really kind of hoping you could, maybe…


MUSE

Not worried it’s just going to grind to a halt?


ME

What?  No.  I mean…. No.  Of course not.  If you could just…


[More silence]


ME

Just a little…  Look, it won’t grind to a halt.  I just…  The novel…  It…


[More silence]


ME

Look…


[Silence]


ME

Please?


[Silence]


ME

Just a little…


[Silence]


ME

If you could just…


[Silence]


ME

I mean…


[Silence]


ME

Please?


[Silence]


ME

Nothing?


[Silence]


ME

Oh wait…  I see… I…  Oh…  You’re…  Oh…


[Silence]


ME

Crap.

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