600 & 42

Writing prompt: A short story set in Detroit, 1956, in which a car mat plays a crucial role. "What if we put together a murder mystery? Like maybe some guy, he's fucked over the union and they have him whacked, but some blood gets caught in his car mat right, and the killer doesn't notice, and that's how he gets caught." "That's pretty fucking flimsy. I mean, that is really stretching the point. Nah, here's what I say - the car mat is like, it's special, okay? But only to this one guy. He gets absolutely obsessed with it, until it drives him mad. That's got legs, right?" "Oh yeah, that's good. That's a solid idea. That's such a good idea Borges wrote it seven years ago, only it was coin not a mat." "Really? Fuck. Okay, okay, I got another. We make the car mat be like, alive. Like a person, and it's a musician, and it plays some Latin American instrument or something, which we call a Rolé. And the big fundraiser gig that saves the car factory or whatever, their Rolé player breaks his fingers, so the car mat has to step up." "John." "Yeah Dave?" "That is about the dumbest fucking thing I ever heard." "What do you reckon then?" "Let's go postmodern, get a bit meta here. That won't be a tired idea for years yet. Let's tell a story about writers trying to tell a story about a car mat. It'll be a deconstruction of the form, and a total insight into man's struggle with the creative process, as a metaphor for his own mortality." "Dave." "Yeah John?" "You should leave. I'm never speaking to you again after how bad that idea was." "Oh."

Drawing prompt: A penguin

Writing prompt: The best that could happen

Greenham shook her head as the cloud of displaced quantoids dissipated to reveal a wooded clearing outside the jump device. A veteran of countless hundreds of reality jumps, she still got an overwhelming wave of dizziness every time. “What are the readings like, Boyley?” she asked, addressing her technician. “Good commander, very good. In fact,” Boyley hesitated, “in fact I think this might be it.” “You’re sure?” “We’ll need to get out and do some site readings, but look, the needle is already off the chart. I think we might finally have found the best of all possible worlds.” For the last decade, ever since confirming the existence of an infinite multiverse and developing the ability to travel it, humanity had been engaged in a search for the best of all possible worlds. It had frequently seemed a doomed quest, a hunt for the perfect catalogue in the library of Babel. If they had finally found it, if this were really it, then Greenham and Boyley would go down in history. “Alright, atmosphere seems breathable,” Greenham said, “let’s go for a walk.” It took them ten minutes to secure the jump device and make preparations for an initial foray. If this really was the best possible world the machine was sure to be safe, but Greenham insisted they follow protocol anyway. The machine was their only way home, if the scanners were miscalibrated or mistaken and danger did lurk in this world then she didn’t want to be stranded. She had to clear some of the broad flowering plants that covered the clearing in order to drive the device’s secure anchor into the ground, and she took a moment to marvel at their scent before pulling them away. They’d been to many worlds, seen many strange environments and unusual lifeforms, but few had been as delightful as these flowers. Their colours were almost intoxicating, but not quite enough to actually become distracting. “Any life nearby?” she asked the tech. “Scanners are showing a mix of low-order herbivores, nothing advanced.” “Interesting, I would have expected city-building culture at least.” “Look on the bright side commander, it means less competition if this place really is what we’re looking for.” They had been wandering through the woodlands surrounding their landing site for a while, enjoying the pleasant surroundings. Even the cracking of twigs underfoot and the dancing sparks as flying insects burned up on contact with their defence screens seemed more enjoyable than on other worlds they’d visited. On several occasions they stopped to take samples, scraping moss into test tubes or taking cuttings from various plants. These would be vital for the researchers back on Earth Prime to discern the best strategy for colonisation if it came to that. He hadn’t mentioned it to the commander, not wanting to spoil her mood, but Boyley was concerned by the readings coming from his scanner. They were small fluctuations, not statistically significant as yet, but the needles were dropping slightly below the indicator for the best of all possible worlds. Could he have been mistaken in his earlier assessment? Could the machine be malfunctioning? He would have to keep a close eye on it. Of course, even if the world turned out to be merely very good rather than perfect it would still be a fantastic find. The vast majority of worlds surveyed were utterly unsuitable for human habitation. A merely excellent world wouldn’t get their names into the history books but it would certainly get them a hefty finder’s fee. A sudden rustle in the undergrowth to their left brought Boyley’s attention back to the forest around him. A large creature came stumbling out towards them, a heavy four-legged creature almost as tall across the shoulders as a person. Its hide was a rich green, lightly furred, and a ring of eyes seemed to loop entirely around its head. Before the beast could get any closer to them Greenham had brought up her sidearm and put a round through it, the circle of eyes torn apart by the high velocity shell. “Crap,” the commander muttered as Boyley fought down a surge of adrenaline, “I’d almost spaced out didn’t hear that thing creep up on us. That’s a pretty big predator.” Boyley crouched down, pulled back the dead creature’s upper lip. Two rows of large blunt teeth lined the mouth. “I don’t think this was a predator, commander. These teeth suggest a herbivore, and I can see no signs of talons, venom, or other predatory hallmarks.” “Are you sure? Damn, I must be getting jumpy. Well, take some samples, we can find out if the meat is safe to eat I suppose.” Boyley set about gathering samples, and as he worked he noticed a definite dip in the perfection readings for this reality. No mere fluctuation, it was now a definite drop away from the best of all possible worlds. He’d have to tell Greenham. “Commander,” he said, “I think you need to take a look at this.” He showed her the sensor read outs and watched her face fall. “It gets worse commander. I’ve tracked the data back and, well, I think it’s us. The more we interact with this world the worst its readings get.” “I knew it,” she said, with a shake of her head, “I just knew it. We arrive at a perfect world, devoid of human life, we crush plants and shoot animals, and with every step we take the world gets worse. Eventually we’re forced to include that the best of all possible worlds is the world in which humanity isn’t present. Reality itself bends to deliver us this heavy handed message about our own inherent flaws. “You can’t mean…” “Yes Boyley, I fear we’ve become trapped in an episode the Twilight Zone.” “My god…”

Writing prompt: The worst that could happen

“Life can be pretty strange out here,” he tells me as we step out of the airlock. A body floats past, perhaps a hundred feet up from us, its holed suit leaking atmosphere. “Can be pretty short, too,” he says. I’m here at the top of Big Dr Tower with Michael (like all workers on the BDT construction team he is under a series of very restrictive non-disclosure and confidentiality clauses, so will not be using his real name) to learn a little about life – and death – on the world’s first starscraper. Is he worried about the danger? At seventeen deaths per hundred workers every month the construction is one of the most high-risk workplaces possible. “Not really. I don’t let myself think about the statistics, you know? When you’re thinking about that you’re not thinking about the job at hand, and that’s when you’re most likely to make a mistake, get dead.” Construction on the tower, which now stands over sixty miles tall, has been going nonstop since the end of the Quiet War. Plagued by allegations of human rights abuses, intolerable working conditions, and a constantly expanding budget the project nonetheless continues to attract men and women like Michael, those who are willing to risk life and limb for the big payoff. “What do you do with the money?” I ask Michael. There isn’t, after all, that much to spend it on out here. “I’m was saving up for a homesteader’s license. My wife and I, we were going to set up outside Nova Praetoria.” Why the past tense? “About six months back, micro-meteorite tears through a crew compartment during offshift. Jessie and six others got vac’d in their sleep.” Perhaps it’s just an effect of the cheap narrow-band comm units in our helmets but Michael’s voice seems flattened, affectless. I ask him if there aren’t meant to be safety precautions in place to prevent things like that. The laugh he gives is somewhere between bitter and resigned. “Self-sealing hulls, polarised out shell to deal with small impacts, drop down vac masks for crew in the event of a breach. That’s the theory. But corners get cut. And sometimes management wants a person gone, then it doesn’t matter how many safety precautions are in place.” Is he suggesting that the corporation intentionally kills some of its workers? “You hear things, you know. Someone tries to unionise, or insists on doing things the right way instead of the cheap way. Then oops, a tether snaps and they take the long drift, or maybe it’s an accident with an autowelder. Never anything provable.”

This isn’t the first time such rumours have reached the press, but Michael resists my attempts to get more information. He’s become a lot more comfortable with death since his wife died, he tells me, but he isn’t quite ready to push management that far. We continue up to the apex of the BDT, which now stands just two hundred feet short of the intended peak height. Other workers move around us, individually and in teams, carrying the supplies and tools needed to crown this testament to ingenuity and determination. Or to unrestrained pride and poor taste, depending on your point of view. From up here the view is breath-taking. The Earth curves away below us, the sun behind it. Lights cover the surface sixty miles below, the greatest concentration of them at the foot of the tower, in what was once Texas. They spread out, tendrils and threads following the urban sprawl along the highways, jagged lines of them where new towns have clustered on the sheltered side of the Rockies and the Appalachians. It looks as if some cosmic giant has plunged a spear into the Earth, light leaking out of the spreading wound. I experience a moment of envy for the top tier executives who’ll someday have their offices up here. “This makes it worth it,” Michael says, “this is why I keep working. This is the first, but it won’t be the last. I tell myself that someday we’ll all get to live up here, a little closer to the stars.” The view has clearly stirred something in him, and I make one last push for the inside scoop on those not-so-accidental deaths. Back before they seized control in the Quiet War the corporation was famous for one particular advertising slogan, and I drop it into my question. “Tell me about those deaths Michael. What’s the worst that could happen?” He’s quiet for a very long time, and afterwards I wish maybe he’d stayed that way. “The worst that could happen?” he asks. And then he tells me about they call ‘the long drift’, when a worker’s tether comes loose and he slips away from the building before anyone can grab him. The lucky ones, he tells me, they spin down towards the surface, burn up in atmosphere. The unlucky ones drift up and out, into that embracing blackness. There’s up to three hours of air in these suits. A person can drift a long way on three hours of air. After the first time it happened, he says, management started fitting all comm units with remote overrides, so that no one else would have to hear the screaming.

I try not to think about that, on the long ride back down to the surface.

Drawing prompt: A mime

Writing prompt: When you knew you were no longer a child.

Ashford picked her way slowly down the damp steps, one hand on the rough stone wall, the other on the shaft of her spear. A heady mix of adrenaline and peyote filled her body and she moved with the exaggerated care of one who knows their facilities are impaired. Her mouth was parched, her hands unsteady from dehydration. She’d stopped sweating despite the pounding heat of the Chicago summer. She’d emptied her stomach on the L track over Franklin Street when the peyote nausea hit. The older hunters had warned her, but the sudden spasming, the feeling like an iron band was crushing her guts, it still caught her by surprise. The bitter tea had tasted just as bad on the way up as when she’d first choked it down. Things had gotten confusing after that, she’d lost her water bottle while fleeing from a patch of malevolent colour in the Loop. Somewhere along the way she’d picked up a sprained ankle and a bag of the softest feathers she’d ever seen, though she had no idea how she had ended up with either. The feathers would be a fine prize though, as long as she survived the next ten minutes. Even before she nudged the door open she could hear the breathing of the beast within. Great ragged breaths, rasping inhalations that seemed to drag the whole world in, waves of almost physical rot every time the creature exhaled. She pushed the door with the butt of her spear, let it ease open into the darkness beyond. She’d made the spear herself as part of her preparations – an old stop sign pole, cut down and hammered to a fine point, the tip painstakingly sharpened and the haft wrapped in strips of soft leather torn from old car seats. The sign itself, its sharp edges ground down, had been made into a crude chestplate, which she wore now to keep the perils of Chicago at bay.

The basement beyond the door was dankly humid, a sickly heat in the air. Light filtered in through a damaged ceiling, wan beams that gave glimpses of the beast as it moved among the rubble and discarded furniture. She couldn’t see enough of it at any one time to make out its full shape, couldn’t seem to fit the parts she saw together in a way that made any sense. It had a predator’s grace, she was sure of that, and it seemed large, though somehow it had managed to fit down here. She tried to steady her hands, to slow her hummingbird heart. The second wave of peyote, which she had consumed when she reached the sacred tenement, was cresting. Linearity and coherence began to flow away as she brought her spear up and leapt at the beast. The woman who came back to the tribe was not the child who had departed that morning. The lesson she had learned, which she could not find the words to share even had she wanted to, had not been how to kill but how to assimilate. To survive in the rubble of Chicago was to become one with the city, to take it into her and thrive. It was a lesson that all would have to learn eventually, by choice or by the sword.

Drawing prompt: A panda

Writing Prompt: The thoughts of your favourite pet

It's pretty Zen being a rock.

Drawing prompt: A layer cake

Writing prompt: Would you rather be a rock star or win a Nobel prize?

The orange dance of firelight, bottles being passed around, the sound of crickets somewhere in the middle distance. The lingering smell of barbecue smoke filled the night air still as the last few revellers sat merrily in the plastic garden chairs. “Alright,” someone asked, “would you rather get in a bath full of cockroaches or have sex with the weird one off of the morning news?” She took a swig from one of the bourbon bottles making the rounds, waited for the others to stop laughing and answer. “Um, will people know I had sex with them? And who’s on top?” “Yeah, it’ll be on the news the next day. And they’re on top.” “Oh, ew, then I guess probably the cockroaches.” “No way,” chimed in another, “I’d never feel clean again if even one bug touched me?” “Wait, are they the little roaches, or those big crunchy fuckers?” “How does that even matter?” The group broke down briefly into half a dozen overlapping conversations, debates over how long the sex had to last or how many roaches it took to fill a bath. “Okay, okay, my turn,” once all amusement had been wrung from the last question, “would you rather be a rock star or win a Nobel prize?” “That question sucks.” “Yeah man, they’re meant to be bad things.” “Like, gross at minimum.” Someone flung a crumpled up ball of paper towels, which went flying off into the long grass at the far end of the garden. “Fine, fine, alright. How about this then, would you rather have sex with a goat on live TV, or float alone and immortal through the endless voids of space, knowing that the most interesting thing you had to look forward to was the view of that nebula changing very slightly in about ten thousand years’ time?” There was quiet for a while, only the crickets and the quiet sound of summer radio ballads drifting out from the kitchen window. People stared into the fire, picked at the labels on their bottles. “Well, I feel bad now. Thanks.”

Drawing prompt: Fiji

Writing prompt: Finding a bag of cash

“Cacciatore’s, Johnny, very nice. I see a life of fine dining is treating you well.” “Well, I ate here so much I figured it would be cheaper to buy the place. Can I offer you a drink? My head sommelier is a genius, I swear.” “Just the one, I have a long drive ahead of me. You remember that summer, Johnny?” “Of course, it pretty much defined us.”

The four of us, out playing in the woods behind Tyrel’s house. You had those ridiculous sneakers on Johnny, those bright lurid green… what were they, the Nikes? Man, you were so proud of those things, made us steer clear of every spot of mud because of those shoes. And Bruce, he swore he’d seen a whole mess of tadpoles in the creek the day before, and nothing would do for him but that we go down there and catch some, look for frogs. And there you are refusing to go anywhere near the creek, because of all the mud. I swear, I thought the two of you were going to start throwing punches. I think you probably would have if Tyrel hadn’t been such a joker, jumping right into the creek. His mom must’ve tanned his hide for ruining his clothes like that, but at least it got you two to stop bickering. So it’s funny I guess, the rest of us ran down to follow him, and you stayed up top with your fancy shoes. We never would have found that bag down in the creek with, how much was it? Five million? We never would have found that if Bruce hadn’t wanted to go tadpole hunting, if Tyler hadn’t dived in. I reckon it would have just sat there all summer, ‘til the water got in and ruined the notes. Oh man, we about shit bricks, huh? We go looking for tadpoles and we find five million bucks instead? And we’re all hollering for you to come down and see, but trying to be quiet too in case anyone else was around and made us give it up. You remember what you said Johnny, when you finally came down and saw what we’d found? You said ‘oh shit, what if it’s like mob money?’ like maybe the mafia were hiding cash outside our little Minnesota suburb. Said we just should leave it there in case someone found out and put a hit on us. That must’ve been the summer we all snuck into the ‘Plex to see the Godfather, right? That’s why a phrase like “put a hit on us” didn’t seem so absurd. Like Don Corleone is coming after a bunch of fourteen year olds from Nowheresville. Looking back, maybe it would’ve been kind to Tyler if we had just left that money there. You heard about Tyler, right? I know it’s been a while but I figured someone would have told you. Turned up in the morgue in Chicago a couple of months back, veins full of cheap crack. Honestly surprised he lasted that long, a man with a self-destructive streak as wide as his can get a lot of drugs for a million dollars. And Bruce? He wrapped his car around a tree right after the third divorce went through. That man had a knack for pissing off vindictive women with good lawyers Might never have been any mobsters coming after us, but I swear that money was cursed. Five million dollars and all it brought was misery. Well, except to you, which isn’t that the funniest damn bit? Makes me laugh so hard I wanna cry. Look, I’m laughing right now.

“What’s so funny about all that?” “Don’t you see Johnny? If we’d listened to you we never would have found the money, never would have taken it. Probably Bruce and Tyler would be alive right now without all the trouble that cash brought them.” “Tyler had his own troubles, he would have been just as damaged without the money.” “Yeah, but the money facilitated. The money paved the way for his destruction. For all of us. But you, you never wanted it, never deserved it, and you’re the only one who actually got a happy ending from it. Chain of restaurants, nice house, lovely wife and kids. I visited them earlier, by the way.” “I… wait, you what? What did you-“ “You didn’t deserve this Johnny, with your fancy fucking sneakers. You got to be happy when I didn’t know how to be. And that’s not okay.” “Christ, look, my investments have been, I mean, I can give you money, I can, please just don’t-“ “It’s not money, Johnny. I had money. One and a quarter mil, same as the rest of us. And I’ve got just enough of that left to disappear when I’m done. You never understood what it was like for the rest of us. Go home. Look at what’s left of your family. Maybe then you’ll understand what it’s like to wake up every morning with a hole in your world that you just can’t fill. Goodbye, Johnny.”

Drawing prompt: New Jersey

Writing Prompt: A bad situation that turned out for the best

“…and we’ll have more on that story as it develops. Now, over to Tarji Hanson in Peru for more on the flight JH37 disaster.” “Thank you Richard. As you can see I’m here at the site where doomed airliner JH37 went down, and the emergency services are still sorting through the debris. It’s a grim scene.” “For anyone just tuning in, why don’t you give us a little background on the disaster?” “Of course. Flight JH37, a commercial flight out of Lima carrying 168 passengers, lost touch with air traffic control at 0623 local time yesterday, shortly after take-off. Experts think the plane suffered some form of mechanical failure of all engines, and shortly afterward came down here, about forty miles outside Lima. It’s not believed that any of the passengers or crew survived the impact.” “Tragic.” “Yes Richard, but possibly not as tragic as it may seem. You see, authorities have checked the passenger manifest and have now confirmed that the passengers were all members of 4R, a banned international organisation dedicated to bringing Hitler back to life through fringe scientific methods. It is believed these individuals were travelling with a rare sample of Hitler’s DNA, intending to begin their project when they reached Nicaragua.” “So you’re suggesting that this seemingly-tragic loss of life may well have prevented the rebirth of one of history’s greatest monsters?” “Indeed. And furthermore contacts at Interpol have confirmed for us that the pilot, whose remains were identified late last night, was none other than notorious child-killer and con-artist Mark Sholson, operating under an assumed identity. It’s not known how Mr. Sholson came to be piloting the plane, but some are speculating that his lack of experience as a commercial pilot was a key factor in this crash.” “Those are shocking revelations indeed. Thank you Tarji, and we’ll be coming back to this story as more information emerges. Now over to Amy for the weather.”

Drawing prompt: A surf board

Writing prompt: Write a story with yourself as the villain

Commander Pearson prowled around the perimeter for the third time that morning, too full of nervous energy to stay sat in the command post. Just a few days before Christmas, her breath frosted on the air and snow crunched underfoot. At least the snow had stopped falling for a while – low visibility was not ideal for guarding a sensitive target. She rounded a corner of the outer fence, saw a pair of troopers huddled around thermos mugs, weapons slung over their shoulders. “What in the blue hell do you think you are doing, soldier?” she yelled. In three quick strides she’d covered the distance between them, seized one of the offending mugs. “Who gave you permission to take your hands off your weapon, private? Because I sure as hell do not remember giving you permission.” “Sorry ma’am, it was cold and…” The two privates were practically trying to  hide behind each other in their attempt to avoid her ire. “Oh it was cold? Do you think the Librarian is afraid of the cold? Do you think this weather will keep him indoors with a hot chocolate, private? Oh no, he’ll say, no evil for me today, the weather is too godsfucking inclement.” “I-“ “I did not ask you to talk, soldier. If we didn’t need every hand on deck you would be scrubbing half-tracks with a toothbrush right now. If I see either of you with your hands off your rifles again I will feed you the damn rifle, am I clear?” “Yes ma’am.” “Am I fucking clear, privates?” “Yes ma’am!” She stomped off into the snow, still clutching one of the mugs.

Inside the bookstore a frantic bustle of activity overrode the normally calm atmosphere. Clerks and assistants, called in to do double and triple overtime shifts, carried armfuls of rare first editions from the mezzanine down to a basement room. They locked these in boxes, chained the boxes together, carefully placed the piles of boxes inside heavy old safes. Soldiers stood at every door, and at strategic points around the building. Heavy machine gun nests had been set up facing the main doors and the grand old stained glass windows at the rear of the building. One soldier, stationed by a counter, was quietly smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. “Ah, ah, no, not by the antiquities!” Director Hoften called out. He snatched the cigarette away, stubbed it out on his heavy apron. “You’re here to protect the books, not to set them on fire. Please, go stand somewhere else.” The soldier shrugged, wandered over to a position at the top of the basement stairs.

“What’s the situation, General?” “We’ve identified five high risk targets, mister President. Sources suggest the Librarian will hit one of them in the next twenty four hours.” “And we have measures in place to stop him?” “Not exactly, sir.” “I’m sorry, what?” “We have a token presence at all sites to reassure the civilians, but soldiers are under orders not to engage the Librarian. We’ve learnt enough to know we can’t stop him head on.” “Then what the hell are we doing, General?” “Analysts have studied the books he tends to take, found a pattern, identified likely books at the high risk sites. And we’ve fitted those books with remote triggerable contra-terrene devices. As soon as the bastard gets clear of civilian targets, boom, no more Librarian.” “Alright, keep me informed. And tell me we have a cover story, I don’t want to have to tell the UN we set off a CTD.” “Of course, mister President.”

“Absolutely unexpected,” is how store assistant Janice Bradley would later describe it, when interviewed by news crews about that afternoon’s event. She’d been minding the counter at the small used bookstore in the untrendy part of Akron when the Bookwagon came crashing through the storefront in a roar of jet engines and tearing stonework. Out came the Librarian and three of his men, dropping the handful of customers with tranquilizer darts. Janice had hidden behind the counter, watched as the Librarian stalked through the wreckage of the store and scooped up a single mass-market paperback from the staff recommendations shelf. Then, she said, he was gone, leaving his men to sort out the chaos as he jetted away in that distinctive Bookwagon.

“What happened, General?” “He wrong-footed us again. The analysts were sure we knew where he’d hit, what he’d take. Then he turns up in Akron of all places, and steals a single novel.” “Damn that Librarian. Put your best men on this, unlimited budget. I want that fiend caught.”

Drawing prompt: A water tower

Writing prompt: Describe your city 100 years from now

“Council in exile accepts apologies from Dominus Carlsonn, whose primary is on pressing business in the Free African Republics. All other members present. We are quorate.” The simulated conference hall fell silent as conversations stopped, or at least moved to private side channels. “First item of business, progress towards the reclamation of London. Specialist Darzhen has the floor.” Darzhen, like most technicians, took a minimalist approach to their simspace avatar. Practically featureless, pallid skinned, gender-neutral, the only customisation evident was a row of blow pinprick lights along one side of the jaw. It looked out of place against the virtual opulence of the conference hall. “Thank you. Council members, my team has spent six hundred and eighty seven days looking for ways to reclaim our city from the malevolent Hokkaido-strain Generative Intelligence that currently infects all systems.” A dark murmur went round the room, as was typical at any mention of the machine that had forced them into exile. “What we have,” Darzhen continued, “is a ‘basilisk in a box’ problem. The Hokkaido GI is capable of killing or subverting us with bio-digital viruses. Right now the London network is on lockdown to prevent this, keeping it ‘in a box’. We want to know what it's doing, but if we see the wrong bit of data, we die. If it knows we're looking, it will almost certainly try to make us see the wrong bit of data. Our advantage is that it doesn't know when, where, or if we're looking." "So what has your team been doing for almost two years?" It's poor form to interrupt, but the council are all stressed after this long exile, and the presiding officer lets it slide. "There is a lower limit to the amount of information needed for the Hokkaido strain to create an attack. If we extract data about it in smaller chunks than that, we know they can't contain a virus. But they are of limited use, like trying to understand the shape of America, studying five inches of dirt at a time. So we have to assemble them, and then again there is the risk of an attack. "We are running the data through limited simul-spaces, distorting it. As long as it doesn't launch a semantic attack we believe we are safe. We are ready to take questions from the floor now." A babble of noise as everyone leaps to ask questions. The presiding officer mutes the space, randomly selects council members to ask their questions. "You mentioned a semantic attack, what precautions do you have in place against something like that?" "Well, we take sharpness filling soda cans."

"Dharzen, we've got a Klein-web spiking in sim seven." "Alright, quarantine it off, purge it if it steps up to six." "Of cour- oh, shit." Dharzen knew immediately what that meant. Data cascades ran rampant around him and he had just enough time to wonder why they didn't use more sim layers for protection before the Hokkaido GI overwrote his memory cores. Reality blanked. "Dharzen, level two is gone. Hokkaido intrusion after seventy three hours." "What variant were they running, asynchronous or transliminal?" "New twist on the asycnch." "Alright, dump to secure archive, reseed with an extra layer. Let's see if we can get them to run transliminal." They booted up a new instantiation of the sim, factored in the data from the last run. Maybe this time they'd get the data they needed to reclaim London. Dharzen wondered for a moment whether his own research centre might not be another sim layer, and that was all it took for the Hokkaido GI to get a hold of his frontal cortex. Reality blanked.

 Drawing prompt: Paper airplane

Writing prompt: I had no idea what was happening at the time

Seven thousand goose faced-dogs stumbled blindly through the corridors of my dome. When did a half eaten lie get so poignant? Half eaten, half digested, quarter consumed. It sat cold in all our stomachs and I knew I couldn't give the speech. This was a horrible mistake, as the baby in my hand had assured me it would be. Not in as in held, inside my hand, between the bones and the tendons. The dinner hall had very shiny cutlery, did shiny mean sharp? Rusty meant blunt, so shiny must mean sharp. Maybe sharp enough to dig that damn baby out of my hand.

Why are they all looking? Why am I holding these index cards? So many index cards. Are there infinitely many? Every card has infinitely many little squiggly things on them. Infinite infinites. Lovely. Lovely like letters. We should have more letters. Then we could say more. We could say everything. We could say the infinite things.

Ugh, I knew shouldn't have taken that ayahuasca before giving my inaugural speech.

Drawing prompt: A synthesizer

Writing prompt: Write a review of a novel or memoir you've never written

It is said that one should not speak poorly of the deceased. Were this paper to follow that advice we should be unable to review The Author’s posthumous debut novel, Eight New Leaves. This would be a grave disservice to our readers, who may then unwittingly purchase the book. Hinging entirely on an underdeveloped and unoriginal conceit, there are many words that spring to mind when one considers Eight New Leaves. Tedium, twaddle, tripe.

The gimmick at the heart of this novel, seemingly lifted directly from Stanislaw Lem’s far superior A Perfect Vaccum, sees the aging narrator trudge through their memoirs in the form of eight reviews for books they meant to write but never got round to (the eight leaves of the title). Presumably these books reflect on works The Author himself never finished – we might wish he had completed one of those instead, so that we would not be subjected to this self-indulgent meandering. Like many writers The Author acts upon the false belief that others want to read writers writing about writers writing about writing. Whilst a small number of books have, in the past, found success with this formula The Author lacks the wit or talent to pull it off in Leaves. What we are instead left with is a flaccid tome, devoid of dramatic heft or anything approaching satisfying pacing. A work like this can overcome a lack of substantial plot by offering the reader a compelling cast of characters with which to engage. Sadly The Author fails to deliver. The narrator (and a more obvious stand in for the author we have rarely seen) is a friendless and unlikeable curmudgeon, an embittered wreck of a human being. We would root for his downfall, except the crushing tedium of the book leaves us unable to care even enough for that. The supporting cast is paper-thin and underdeveloped, a rotating selection of flimsy characters and farcical parodies of human beings. In a better book we might assume the author was making a deliberate point about his narrator’s inability to understand other people. In Eight New Leaves we can only accept that that flaw is The Author’s own.

To describe this offering as a bad novel would be a grave insult to the many bad novelists who toil away at their craft, churning out underwhelming paperbacks for undiscriminating mass market consumption. It is more accurate, and only a touch hyperbolic, to compare the writing of this book with the sort of act that might normally see a person on trial for crimes against humanity. The Author, we must assume, had some powerful black mail material on his publishers. Nothing else explains how this shambolic mess ever saw the light of day. All deaths are tragic, and our thoughts would be with The Author’s friends and family, had he had any. But we consider it a mercy that there will never be a sequel to Eight New Leaves.

Drawing prompt: A Crystal Ball

Writing prompt: The difference between the first death you remember and the most recent one

The city is always changing, and I stay awake to watch it change. The first death I saw up close was a messy one, my second day on the job. An overburdened forty something in the suburbs who opted for a twelve-gauge debt consolidation programme, right in front of his wife and kids. I’m not ashamed to admit I vomited. The old hands laughed, told me I’d get used to the smells, to the sight of brain matter congealing on old upholstery. Later that night, as I picked a skull fragment out of my hair, I hoped they were wrong. No one should get used to that.

When I first got here you could stand outside Jenny Toler’s Diner at the corner of 42nd and 3rd, and if it was a clear day you’d get a view right down to the sea. I liked to watch the big container ships coming in to unload, their squat frames low in the water. There hasn’t been a container ship here in a decade, and it’s been about as long since you could see the sea from Jenny Toler’s. The waters dried, the smogs came in, and the buildings just kept getting taller. Anything we can’t fab ourselves comes in by air these days. If I weren’t awake anyway I’d be kept awake by the endless buzz of VTOLs ferrying cargo up above the skyrises. Automated dragon flies, the economy can’t afford for them to ever stop.

It scared me that first death, kept intruding into my thoughts at odd hours. It wasn’t the gore or the body, it wasn’t any fear of being haunted. I didn’t believe in ghosts, still don’t, and we all have skeletons just waiting inside us anyway. It wasn’t even the reminder of my own mortality that bothered me – I wouldn’t have started working on a bodies clean-up crew if I couldn’t deal with that. No, the thing that scared me, on a really bone-deep level, was the thought of how bad that poor man must have felt to make swallowing a shotgun barrel seem like the best choice. I spent a lot of time that summer sitting drunk on my balcony, watching the city grow and hoping to never understand what it was like to feel that way.

I was there, a few summers ago, when the last tree in the city went. The media pundits had been speculating for months on when it would finally happen, and some of the more tasteless betting shops had been offering odds on the date. The streets turned into something halfway between a memorial ceremony and a riot on the day it finally happened. I don’t know if we really understood then what it was we’d lost.

I never vomited again, after that first time.

The change seemed to accelerate after that last tree gave up and turned to stone. The whole character of the city warped, people turned more feral. The ever present smog got into the buildings, into the glass and stone, the fabric of everything. The architecture itself blackened as the chemicals in the air worked their magic, petrifying our gleaming spires. There were days when I would leave my apartment in the morning and be unable to see the stairwell at the end of the corridor, too thick was the smog in the air.

It was around then that I stopped going to work. I couldn’t focus for long enough to scrub away the stains of some stranger’s abrupt exit from the world. When I had started with the clean-up crew most of what we dealt with were accidents, the occasional suicide, a murder once every month or two. By the time I left it was an almost even split between those who’d been killed and those who’d taken their own way out. No one had accidents any more. I took to drinking instead, to walking the hazy streets. I had a lot of conversations, some of them with strangers but more with people who had never existed. I think I’d gone long enough without sleep that my dreams had grown jealous, started pushing into the waking world to clamour for my attention.

Last night I heard noises, a thudding and screaming that came muted through the fog. Like listening to an action movie with cotton wool in my ears. When I left to visit the store this morning I saw my old crew milling around the apartment next door. How have you been, they asked me, are you keeping well? I told them I was fine, asked what the job was. Double homicide, very messy. Creative use of a belt sander. Did I want to come back to work? I thanked them, told them no, but if they could stop by my apartment later it would be much appreciated.

At the store I bought a very large quantity of painkillers, as well as my usual vodka and cheap frozen pizzas. I guess the difference between the first death I remember and this one is that this one doesn’t scare me. I have never had to understand how awful that poor man in Brooklyn must have felt. All I’ve done is make a choice, a simple practical decision. My dreams have been demanding my attention and my waking world has been fading into fog. Better then to sleep. The city is always changing, and I stayed awake to watch it change. It took me a long time to realise I was changing too.

Drawing prompt: A sundial

Writing Prompt: The time you were most terrified - you could barely stand to be in your own skin.

“Jhavesh, I know what you’re doing, what you’ve been building.” “Of course, I wanted you to know. Come with me.” “You can’t do this; the consequences, the risks, you might-“ “We’re surrounded by cities Carole, and they’re safe and they’re comfortable, and they mean we never need to take chances. And if we don’t reach out to take the stars then cities are all we’ll ever live in. Please, come with me.” “I can’t let you do this. I’m pulling the plug, this project is over.” “I was worried you might say that. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” She opens her eyes and it’s like white noise under warm grey skies. She cannot lift a finger, though there is no heaviness here, nor is she cold. She is glad that on this scale there are no mirrors, for she doubts very much that she would any longer resemble the woman who once bought Carole so many flowers. Movement now is more a matter of mind than muscle, a refocusing of attention. Gods but it’s weird, all she has to do is think and she can take in the sweep of everything, the whole planet at once. She strides, a titan, and time and space open themselves up for her. The stars surround her, so close now and so alive. Almost ready. She won’t return though, once she steps out of this world. She won’t want to. It’s almost enough to make her hesitate – will this be anything more than dissolution, death? Will she be annulled, evened out across the cosmos until there’s not enough left anywhere? The fear is thrilling. But first she has to do just a little more.

An unmarked stretch of beach somewhere out on the Pacific Northwest coast. A place they’d always longed to see. They made their way there hand in hand, lay out on the brilliant white sand. The sky was black ink and gleaming stars, as clear as could be. “Which are there more of do you think,” Carole asked, “grains of sand beneath us or stars above?” “You count the sand, I’ll check the stars,” Jhavesh replied. She scooped up a fistful of the white grains, poured them out over Carole’s lap, set them both to laughing. They’d been putting this journey off for so long, caught up in the hard work of getting Carole’s firm going, all the difficulties of bootstrapping a little tech start-up into a global powerhouse. So long spent living in cities where they all could see above them was their own light reflected back off the smog, no stars. Like living inside a light bulb and trying to spot a candle outside. They had needed this escape. Eventually they had retreated to their tent, pitched a little way up the beach and safe from the tide. And when they woke the next morning they had both shared the same dream – a figure, awesome in every sense of the word, uttering a line from a Walter de la Mare poem, ‘Yours will be a journey only of two paces, into view of stars again.’ Unlike Carole though, Jhavesh also dreamt the plans for a wonderful project, a grand use for their research and development department.

She is terrified. She has been terrified every moment of every day since that night on the beach. But now she is here and the stars are in her hands. She just needs to take that second step. It is time to take the stars, to leave the world and its cities behind. No more dead matter, no more limits, no more entropy or decay. But she is realising there’s one piece of matter she can’t leave behind. One piece she can’t have back. She has made, she realises, a terrible mistake.

A rainy Seattle afternoon, four dozen black clad mourners on a hill overlooking the city. It was a tragedy, they all agreed, two fine young minds cut down too soon in such an unfortunate lab accident. Only fortunate that no one else had been in the building at the time, said some, that the blast hadn’t killed anyone else. Yes, said others, nodding their heads, though how would the company continue on now without Carole at the helm? Someone holds a plain black umbrella over the priest’s head as he conducts the reading. A poem, requested by Carole in the will she’d changed just days before the accident. “Yours is a journey only of two paces, into view of stars again,” he intones, “but you will not make it. There will be no recognition; No one, who should see you, will say throughout the uncountable hours, why the last time we met, I brought you some flowers.”

She is without end now, beyond entropy’s touch. And she is utterly alone.

Drawing prompt: Jelly Beans

Writing prompt: Describe exultation

Everyone gathered round in the little living room as Grandfather adjusted the aerial on top of the box. Snow and static flickered on the screen in response to his manipulations and we all cooed in excitement every time it came close to resolving into a picture. Televisions weren’t new, and this particular one was battered second hand model. But it was new to us, the first time we’d ever been able to afford even a second hand unit. Father and Grandfather had brought it home earlier today, purchased from a friend in their local pub and driven home in the back of Father’s Morris. He said he’d never taken corners so carefully before, even with Grandfather back there to hold the television steady. Finally we’d be able to watch the programs our peers talked about. Television time was to be very limited, we children had been told, so as not to disrupt our homework or take away from family time at dinner. But it would still be something, we’d be able to join in on the playground when friends spoke of The Flintstones, the Avengers, or Dixon of Dock Green.

Finally Grandfather got the aerial into just the right position and the shifting static resolved into a black and white image of a black gentleman in a suit, on a stage. He was playing a saxophone, his whole body moving with the instrument. Crowded around the little screen we caught the last strains of a strong blues sax tune, all crackle and warmth. It was an electrifying experience – we had all seen television before, at friend’s houses or down the local, but it was something else entirely to watch one that was ours. The future had finally arrived in our quiet home. The man on the screen set his sax aside, bowed to an audience we couldn’t see. The crisp tones of an announcer’s voice came through, “And that was Booker Ervin with Mooche Mooche, from his new LP Exultation, available now from Prestige records.”

Drawing prompt: A bag of hammers

Writing prompt: Your most transcendental ice cream experience.

It's quiet as we walk through this city of dead skylines. The sky is on fire but the sound can't reach us, not here. She takes my hand and tries to warn me. Our skin is like electric. We walk like each other's ghosts.

What happened here was cruel, but it was nothing on what those who came after would endure. Our fever had yet to break. We sank the ship of state and drifted down into the water's welcome. In rain, we will be found again.

She tells me how she went to the hospitals and the clinics then, searching for her boy. How small and still he was when she found him. "Wake up," she told him, "I brought you a toy."

Drawing prompt: A jar of pennies

Writing prompt: The thoughts of the first ever man to eat an oyster.

"Well he was scared, son, and he was tired. A deep weariness, the kind you can only get through hard work a long way from home. He hadn't intended to come this far, he'd only wanted to explore the old Channuk Creek, so he hadn't been carrying the supplies for a long expedition. But then he'd seen the creature, and son, he knew he had to eat it. One look at it there on the plains and he knew. If it were good it might even be a new source of food for the tribe, something to tide them through those harsh winters. With its great shaggy coat it certainly looked like it would thrive in cold temperatures. So he had stalked it, day after day across the veldt, waiting for it to stop, to tire. Handfuls of berries, leaves, the occasional meal grub, these had been his sustenance as he hunted. The great beast proved to be a wily and tireless prey, leading him on for days. At dusk on the third day he had no choice but to sleep, and feared that he had lost the beast. But the elders had trained him well, he was a master tracker, and soon he found its trail and resumed the hunt. As the sun rose on the fifth day he finally cornered the beast in a dry wadi. Up close it was far more muscular than he had realised, its teeth sharper and claws longer. They made eye contact and he knew that the  creature bore for him the same intent which he carried for it. By day's end one of them would feast upon the flesh of the other, as surely as the sun would set. And son, he had not set out to hunt, he had not brought his bow that ever shot straight, or his spear that had pierced a thousand hides. He had only a small knife with him, barely more than a sharpened piece of flint wrapped partially in goat hide. And it seemed such a small thing in the face of a creature like that. But he was courageous, and perhaps a little foolhardy, so he did not waver. They clashed on the dry sand of the wadi's bed, a great struggle, and the sand did not stay dry for long. Blood and sweat watered the ground, the man learned new lessons in pain as the beast's claws ripped his flesh. But he was determined, and he was clever, and when all seemed lost he drove his flint knife into the thing's eye, took its life. He said his prayers then, thanked the gods for granting him victory. He honoured the beast, showing gratitude for the food it would provide him, as was proper. And finally, too ravenous after those long days of pursuit to wait for a fire to kindle, he feasted. And it was good. He was tired and alone, a long way from home, but it was worth it. So that's how it was." "Really dad?"

"..."

"Dad?"

"I, ah, might be confused about what oysters are."

Drawing prompt: A juice box