05.16.07
Posted in Free Fiction at 5:55 pm by DMZ
This is a draft of Cubs of Democracy, which runs about 4,700 words. It’s gotten a kind rejection note or two, and it’ll go out for submission again soon. As such, it’s not released under any license, and I reserve all the copyrights, hopefully until it sells, which would be nice.
In school, I took a part time job in a Portland greenhouse tower as a junior worker bee, wandering the thirty stacked floors, earbuds in, humming along as I went about my rounds. I loved it. They paid next to nothing but offered flexible hours in a calm, quiet environment, and all the work was pleasant and easy: tending the plants, patching PVC runs, watching for the pests that made it through the screens, talking to customers about their backyard gardens, ensuring tastiness of the product through extensive sampling. Despite their place in this near-paradise, the other employees feuded. Who knew more about native plants, who got to repot the tulips, which junior worker bee screwed up patching the PVC run, who got the weekend off, who had screwed who when and with what at which convention. No dispute was too petty for them to not to fight over.
I thought about this while weightless, clinging to a handloop in the near total darkness of the hub, as the other thirty four crew members on station debated whether, having used the last of our uranium to send out the SOS beacons and with little air and heat left, we should play cribbage or go through our next shift, one of six we might, at the outside, have before we all died. Read the rest of this entry »
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05.05.07
Posted in Free Fiction at 8:32 pm by DMZ
I wrote this in workshop, as part of an exercise to write a hook. I’d spent a week trying to figure out how to write a story, botched it a few times, and then sat in class and did this. I just came across it and typed it in, so– check it out.
ObContent warning: includes slurs
A burned-out hacker and a heavily-armed white supremacist walk into a shipping container. No, wait, I fucked up. They don’t walk in. They’re already there. And in the container are sex droids - wait, and the hacker, he has a bomb. I’ll start over.
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02.23.07
Posted in Free Fiction, Writing at 9:44 am by DMZ
I wrote this as a character sketch for something larger, but I think it’s kind of amusing on its own, so I’m sharing.
I locked my amazingly expensive brand-new car with all the trimmings and the alarm went off instantly, the first tone in the eight-tone series advertised as a scientifically selected, clinically tested arrangement of noises designed to jar, annoy, attract attention, implore for help, and repel intruders, not in that order. I hit the disarm button and left it to walk across the park to find the teenage girl sitting on a picnic table, pounding out text messages or blog entries or something while watching me amble.
Meeting Andrea, I wanted to say “I expected someone taller, or shorter, or thinner, or fatter”, but that’s the whole point of Andrea, proof that eventually if enough domesticated primates swap enough chromosomes you eventually get someone who looks like nothing, and you could name her, say, Andrea. If you averaged all the faces of all the teenage girls in the world with web pages – all the party pictures taken leaning into their friend, flashing the peace sign in front of a statue, holding up a kitten, you would look at the result and say “that’s the girl that stole my wallet”. And having made that positive identification from a computer construct, the cops could put the update on the network and begin the task of hassling every fourteen-to-sixteen year old girl they came across, and the wheels of justice would come grinding to a halt, which happened in Montreal twice and now fourteen-to-sixteen year old girls get away with murder, which is not really that much of a difference.
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02.09.07
Posted in Free Fiction at 11:43 pm by admin
Archipelago is my latest science fiction story. I love it, I’m working on re-writing it to make it better, but I won’t spoil the story by discussing what I’m re-writing for until we’re done.
Across the table, over Assistant Chief Burton kept on about some ridiculous staffing issue that somehow tied the police union together with some obscure new OSHA workplace guidelines. Seattle Police Department Chief Scott couldn’t bring himself to pay attention. He’d been on the clock bomb chasing for over two days. Every day, all through the city, these things would turn up. Budweiser cans painted red, with a battery-powered alarm clock. Bowling balls with a fuse. Replicas of Big Boy, Little Boy, with tiny action figures riding. Tile reproductions of video game icons.
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01.24.07
Posted in Free Fiction at 5:21 pm by DMZ
Hi! It’s Derek, on June 24th. If you’ve searched for this, there’s a very good chance you are at Clarion with me. Come on, seriously now, does that look like a story I’ve been sitting on? I guess I should be happy if you thought that.
Anyway, heya.
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12.05.06
Posted in Free Fiction at 1:57 pm by DMZ
barely over 500 words
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Tom wake up more dumb than other day bang head on dresser.
“Ow,” Tom say. “I know not to do that.”
Then Tom not know where to go to work. Or how to get there.
“I get less smart last night,” Tom say. “Much way less smart.” Tom try to scratch head. Tom put hand in eye.
“Owwwww,” Tom say. “This day start bad.” Tom think. “I think too hard. My head hurt. Time for walk.”
Sun shine. Sky blue. Each day sun shine sky blue. Tom smile. Nice town. Young girl point at Tom, laugh at Tom.
“Why you laugh at me?”
“No pants!” girl say.
“Stop!” Tom say. Tom go back to house. Tom take dish rag, tuck dish rag in front of shorts. Tom go back out.
“Ha!” Tom say. Girl not laugh.
Tom walk to school. “Work!” Tom cry. Tom keep not think find lab down then down. Room hot. Many box whirr on many rack. Much wire. Man with giant head.
“I know you,” giant brain man say.
“I know you,” Tom say.
“I look for you.”
“What you do!” Tom yell.
“Box work last night.”
“Box that think?”
Brain smile. “Real large comp crunch crunch crunch.”
Tom frown. “Box that talk to void?”
Brain smile. “Yes!”
“No! That not work!”
“Work,” brain said. “You wrong.”
“Box work, yes, but box work is bad! All things break! I think, I break, I break. Chaos up, up up. No free idea!” Tom jump up and down. Dish rag fall off.
“Oooooooooooh,” brain say. “What?”
“Smart box make us dumb.”
“All work out. Black holes. Stuff like that. I write, you read?”
“I read! I say you write wrong.”
Brain shrug.
“It not work like that,” Tom say. “Can be near then go out! Here more than there!”
“That you,” brain say. “You wrong.” Brain stick out tongue. “Nyah!”
“Look!” Tom shout. Tom wave arms. “More here now! More more!” Tom look. Tom point. “Walk in rack hurt nose.” Tom point. “What three plus four?”
“Errr,” young guy say.
“See?” Tom ask.
“So?”
“Here! I fly plane vwoosh vwoosh vwoosh me go see mom now crash plane!”
“Oh.”
“No no here!” Tom yell. “What in this glass thing? Me take home, ask wife to smell! Cough cough die. Die die die.”
“Oooooh. Bad,” brain say.
Tom look for big grey box.
“Box write down, or box…” Tom grind teeth. “Box keep in head?”
Brain grin. “In head. Think much faster.”
Tom open big grey box pull switch. Room go dark, quiet. In the faint red glow of the emergency exit lights, Tom read the labels on the breakers and swapped the lights back on.
“Well, that should be better,” Professor Van Landingham said. looked around to see the assembled crowd staring back at him. “Let me be the first to propose that as dangerous this phenomenon was, there’s going to be some outstanding papers in it and there’s no reason we can’t all have our names attached to them if we cooperate.” No one responded. He looked down. “Oh. Before we continue, can anyone loan me a spare pair of pants?”
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11.13.06
Posted in Free Fiction at 11:31 am by DMZ
Yay! Unless you don’t want free short stories.
“Conversations with and about my electric toothbrush” An electronic toothbrush longs for more. Hijinks ensue.
“The Failure and Success of Collaborative Dating” - our hero takes his newly-single support group along on an important date, with horrible and wonderful consequences. It’s a little bit inspired by Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom“.
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