Closed System

‘Think of it as seed money; use it to set up your software development business.’
‘Right, so let me get this straight, you’re one of the big companies as far as security software goes and you’re paying me to create rogue programs that may outsmart your programs?’
‘Yep. It keeps big business ticking over if there is [...]

Out Through 1: Click

Click click click, you’re just a click through. She stared him down, her eyes blank as radio whitenoise.
‘What are you doing, Spira?’
‘Spinning you.’
‘What?’
‘Tuning you to another frequency – as far as I can tell your aura is indicating that you aren’t resonating at the right spatio-temporal frequency for optimum experiential throughput.’
‘In English, please.’
‘I am giving [...]

Drags 1: Black Hole Son

This alternative they don’t call them drugs – they call them drags. Not in the same way you refer to having a drag on a cigarette either. Chemicals here are seen as anchors – they create existential drag that holds you back from full acceleration. They talk of some great singularity planted at the end [...]

Dogleg Hinterland One

Madrigal had travelled the inner spirals of Cerebellum for longer than she could remember, dodging the bird shadows with their crow-skull heads and the hungry wolf spirits so that she could hawk her dream-spice to the Quiet Sleepers. She had seen more Inn Spires than most and she never tired of the mirror-spun magic and [...]

Grit: Grass 1

The worst thing you could ever be was a grass. Grit had known more than one person who had been turned by the promise of immunity or money – it never paid enough and they were never safe enough. The police hated grasses as much as the criminals did.
Grit kept his operation streamlined but no [...]

Grit 9

For the next few days Grit asked one question and one question only: if I let you go and tell the rest of your associates to leave me alone will we be done? Thus far the answer had been in the negative. At least the ones he asked didn’t waste his time by lying. He [...]

Grit 8

Like a lot of men that have surrounded themselves with a network of people to do their thinking for them, to do their grunt work for them – they lose touch; become somewhat lazy. Granted, Grimoire was not as lazy as some that he had seen but it was all a matter of degrees. If [...]

Squid Pro Quo 2

Bailey hadn’t been able to do much for him over the phone. He’d told him to go lie down and if it got worse to ring him back. No one knew what the hell kind of bacteria something like that would have on it so the fact that he had a dodgy stomach wasn’t exactly [...]

Squid Pro Quo 1

It was purely an evolutionary quirk that had made the thing, which appeared to be pulling itself through a tear in the very fabric of reality, resemble a giant squid. Apparently reality was akin to a crystalline structure suspended in some liquid hyperreality that the varying membranes separating different multiverses hung in like ice in [...]

Else City – Part 1: Scar Tissue

It wasn’t exactly sleep, more like throwing a switch and laying in a darkened room. Un-life – weirder than the fucking Bardo by anybody’s standards. His scars were itchy as fuck – damn, shouldn’t they stop itching once you had expired? He was not looking forward to work; part of him couldn’t believe he had [...]