Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
The New Zoli
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Two years ago, Jay Lake generously supplied us with a first line for us to write short shorts to. Through a bureaucratic glitch at the Daily Cabal offices, mine got sent 23.094688221709% of the way to Alpha Centauri, hit a mirror the Centaurians had set up, and has only just returned. I suspect alien hands have tampered with it. Check out the other Zoli stories. We’ve got a few clever reinterpretations.
Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks. That wasn’t exactly right. Zoli would have liked to like that… if it worked out. Also, his name wasn’t Zoli, but he’d heard that Zolis do exceedingly well at picking up chicks, so he had changed his name.
Zoli also liked golf magazines, kicking one’s feet up on the cool, beveled glass coffee tables. The pages crackled and snapped satisfactorily with each flip. The plush blue upholstery snuggled his back. The faint floral perfume of a female in… say, females were why he was here. He cast an eye about. Mothers occupied children with blocks pushed through wire circles. And back again. So many to choose from.
The secretary called him over with a crooked finger. “Can I help you?”
“I have an appointment.”
“Name?”
Sweat trickled down his forehead and wandered into the thicket of his brows. “Zoli.”
The secretary glanced at him, then at her keyboard. “First or last?”
Zoli stopped himself from saying neither. “First.”
“Last?”
“Zoli.”
The secretary shook her head. “Zoli Zoli?”
Zoli beamed. “Yes!”
“You’re not on the schedule.”
“Can you pencil me in?”
“Sure. Psychologists pencil in creeps–I mean, suicides all the time.”
“Great!”
The secretary called over her shoulder. “Another Zoli suicide!” Every male in the room turned as if he’d heard his name. The secretary held out her palm to Zoli. “Fifty-buck Zoli suicide fee.”
Zoli paid and was about to hit on a dowdy woman who looked particularly depressed when a stunning blonde asked him to step into her office–the kind of blonde you’d see on an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
#
Zoli wasn’t entirely sure what happened next. He seemed to remember the psychologist slipping an Alka-seltzer into a champagne glass. She wore a white coat, so he trusted her implicitly. The rest was a blank. His head was still fuzzy when she…
Choose your own adventure!
1. …slit his throat–and all of the Zolis yet to come. Women lived happily ever after.
2. …kissed Zoli. They were two of a kind. They lived happily ever after.
3. …administered shocks and truth serum to learn that few could date the low in self-esteem without owning that same quality. They lived happily ever after.
4. …keeled over. Everyone died. A random disease, lethal only to humans, wiped them out. Earth lived happily ever after without the constant mellow drama.
Connected / Chapter 2: Lost signal
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the second 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.
Two bodies now. Both disconnected from the grid. Both suicides. The first one fried his wires. The second went for an analogue exit – a bullet rupturing his meatsack.
Why do it?
Morello contemplates this while his ‘sack eats supper and he and his wife patch a corporate comedy stream. Somewhere deep he feels his son, Caul’s adrenaline–steering a steelsack through laser fire. He can taste the diluted flavors from some chef’s feed his mother is streaming.
Why do it? Why disconnect? The concept terrifies Morello. It pushed two men over the edge.
#
“They’re wackjobs.” The theory courtesy Chambers, proving himself an adept handler of the on-scene detectives motor cortex.
A third body. Still no sign of a crime. But a pattern is emerging.
Then a newsfeed obliterates everything.
“Urgent: Lost signal in SoHo.” The message pans across his vision. A pause before he grasps its enormity. Three blocks. Three blocks disconnected. SoHo. His son’s ‘sack is there. Physical training.
His son. Caul.
Lost signal.
He ditches the crime scene. Slams into his ‘sack. Selects macros to pilot it home. Then he’s off, the white noise scream of his son’s feed echoing in his ears. Smacks into a rental steelsack. Fights through disorientation. AIs are already setting up a cordon on the area. There are bodies on the ground. Staring eyes. They try to restrain him, but servo-driven limbs send him through.
One step. Two-
Lost signal.
He’s thrown out into his own flesh and meat. Like a physical blow. His meatsack reels on the subway. He has no time for this. Dials up another steelsack.
He waits this time. He can see the steelsack he piloted over the cordon. Lying there. Lifeless.
It’s five minutes before they restore signal. Five more minutes Caul lies there. Alone.
And then… “Signal restored.”
He runs, leaps, drains the steelsack’s power in a surge of movement.
Caul is curled fetally. But whole. Shaking like when they were having problems with the filters and the night terrors still got through. Morello scoops him up. Holds him.
“It’s me, Caul,” the steelsack’s speakers stutter. “It’s dad. I have you now. I have you now.”
Caul does not respond. Caul curls there in his arms and does not say a word. And still one question burns in Morello’s mind.
Why do it?
But he will have his answers.