Crouch
The advantage of an organic robot was that you could eat it if it stopped being a useful addition to your household. There was a cord in the back of the machine which, when pulled, would cause a chemical reaction that started…
Category: Prose
Monk E
The monk moved through the shattered temple, sparks rattling around his head like fireflies. He was mumbling something under his breath that context may have forced people to believe was a mantra or somesuch — it wasn’t … he was angry. War…
Bad Diet
A diet of small children hadn’t really done him any favours in terms of public relations. To say that he had an impulse control issue was a vast understatement. To be sat there picking your teeth with a child’s pinky finger that…
Face It
If they had just been playing with the Face Changer then it might have been OK. A handheld DNA resequencer turned Robert into a plant. Susan was a vinyl record. It prompted an investigation. Why the hell had someone brought these pieces…
Breakdown
Gran was broken down. The AI had been shunted off into a Retirement Zone. The body sat there like a rubbery life-sized replica. They were waiting for the program for the guzzlers to break down what was left into its constituent parts,…
Decision Break Point
Decision Break Point. They were normally naturally occurring and the only role of a Reality Engineer would be to ensure that the narrative lines around a person were shored up well enough that they could happen. Sometimes you have to shoehorn something…
Out Of Your Own Way
He sits there and he does something. He looks at it and he wonders why it is not what he wants it to be. He wishes that he could cut it out of his mind and put it on the page, but…
Black, Red and White
It was a film noir city, so he collected the rainwater in buckets, on the roof beside his pigeon roosts. He trained the water to imprint with the sound of those walking around. A thousand narratives winding through the crying city. White…
Read And Blew
He looked at the red tie. He looked at the blue tie. Oxygenated or unoxygenated blood. There were police lights flashing: red blue red blue. A limited kaleidoscope. Hot and cold. The first politician’s dull brown shoe made contact with his crotch and…
Digging A Whole
The spade cuts into the earth, a clean sharp cut that reveals the dirt under the grass. It’s soft, which is going to make this easier. It’s never that easy. How do they always forget that they are having holographic maps of…