Virtual Journal:

-- Band name: Unique Cliche

The summer I was seventeen was when I started fooling around with my parents’ housekeeper.

She lived with us and slept in the coat closet.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not some trust fund kid whose parents keep a staff of servants and have a summer home in the Hamptons. We’re middle class suburbanites. Both my parents work.

She was only two years old.

Kissing her was like testing a nine volt battery with your tongue.

-- “What are you doing in this neck of the woods?” “I wanted to see them all.” “See all what?” “The necks. These woods have many necks.”

-- The unfettered freedom of a journey with no destination.

-- For a Playmate of the Year, she was not an attractive woman. When her centerfold issue hit the stands her image had been so Photoshopped, airbrushed, cropped, and filtered that it gave new meaning to the phrase, “Looks good on paper.”

-- I Suck at Titles: “Not Gone, But Forgotten”

-- Different types of sexual encounter: #1: The Passionate Earth-Mover. This is what every romance novel would have you believe happens every time two star-crossed soulmates experiences when they make love. The Earth moves, the angels weep, etc. etc. #2: The Frantic Scramble. This is the short, but satisfying bonk session between teenagers trying to keep their parents from hearing. Or, the married couple trying to keep their kids from hearing. #3: The Clumsy Scuffle. This is the awkward, under 2-minute disaster with preoccupied minds and premature ejaculate. Regrettable and hopefully forgotten.

-- What if there was a Harlequin Romance that consisted of nothing but clumsy scuffles instead of steamy passion? (Wouldn’t that just make it a RomCom?)

-- If something is unsavory, wouldn’t that make it sweet? #Showerthoughts

-- This town was so far out in the sticks, they had a Cabela’s bridal registry.

-- Revoltin’ Colton

-- Kevin Dickenscheidt

-- Nursing homes are like self-storage units for our elders. “Out of sight, out of mind.” Hide them away and forget about them—but don’t totally get rid of them. Forget them so much that someone else eventually comes along, bids on whatever’s inside the storage unit, cuts the lock, and sorts through all the detritus and junk from a forgotten life.

-- I would like to see the you before me. That is to say, the me of today would like to view the you that is you before the me that is me could influence you (thee?). You see, I am not I without something from you—a shot from the heavens (sky?) that I knew to be true (?). What were you before when ... The me of the now is better somehow with the you and your soul becoming part of the whole. The je ne sais quoi

-- Medieval Hacker story: maybe coinciding with the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440, a ne’er do well who calls himself Discord uses carrier pigeons and the illiteracy of some of the workers in print shops to spread disinformation. Is there a plague that coincides with the year above? Is Discord a troll who sows distrust of plague doctors and quarantine orders?

-- There’s a madness to my method.

-- I beg to differ; I beg, borrow, and steal to differ.

-- When my life was ruled by mixtapes, the songs never seemed to fit. The end of each side would inevitably cut off the end of the last tune I tried to squeeze on there. During each listen, I would find myself anticipating the cutoff and wondering what those last chords or lyrics sounded like. Years later when I recreated my old mixtapes on my iPod, I would find myself anticipating a cutoff at the same points in those last tunes. But the songs would go on, into uncharted aural territory. It’s like moving into 20 Preserve Ct.: the anticipation of a cutoff. Waiting to have to uproot and move. Each anniversary of our closing date on the house would come and go and we’d be like, “This is the longest we’ve ever lived in one place.” After about two years, the kids would ask when we’d be moving again. The time beyond that closing date anniversary is like uncharted territory.

-- Alfred the Great of England was afflicted with extremely painful hemorrhoids. Maybe that’s why he was know to history as The Fissure King.

-- The Last Three Tracks: rewritten as a horror podcast. (The tracks themselves could actually be heard!) Maybe the protagonist and a buddy discover the tracks together? The rantings about Apple being the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes are banter between the protagonist and his buddy. How does the wife become a more three dimensional character? (Maybe the ‘love’ that the protagonist loses isn’t his wife, but his buddy?)

-- Hacker Story (4.0): A hacker programs an AI that seeks out all online videos that are tagged ‘porn’ and swaps the audio with videos that are tagged ‘DIY’. So, when someone is watching something on RedTube, the accompanying audio is a guy walking you through how to install your vinyl flooring. “So, take your tongue and slide it into the groove here and then just bang it on home. Easy as that.” When someone is trying to watch a DIY video on installing vinyl flooring, the accompanying audio is porn. “Yeah, slide it in, baby. Slide it in! Mmm! Bang me! Bang me!”

-- “MMO Plan”: Sci-Fi short story where, during open enrollment, people people can choose between PPO, HMO, or MMO healthcare plans. Under the MMO plan, people must go into a Massive Multiplayer Online game and complete quests, find loot, and complete micro transactions that help them meet their deductibles and find in-network providers.

-- "Wipe Your Sins Away" Bizarro Fiction short story about a person who wipes his ass and sees the face of Jesus in the shit left on the paper. He makes his bathroom a shrine and places the soiled paper behind bulletproof glass as he spreads the word about the miraculous paper's supernatural powers. Droves of pilgrims descend on his Vernon, CA 1-bedroom apartment to be cured of their colon cancer, hemorrhoids, and anal itch. He starts making a fortune letting people use his bathroom (word even gets out to the local homeless population that you don't have to buy anything to use the toilet) and selling repacked rolls of Charmin, wrapped in custom paper featuring the image of Christ in shit for $20 apiece (no, of course he's not going to sell the soiled toilet paper on eBay!). The local Catholic Archdiocese sends a priest and a deacon to his apartment to see what all the fuss is about. The priest, of course, denounces the shrine as an abomination--like Saddam Hussein's Q'ran written in blood. The guy and the pilgrims counter that doesn't Jesus love every part of his children's bodies--even their asses? Doesn't he want to cure what ails them, even if it's in a part where the sun doesn't shine? Does a miracle need to be a beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin, already ensconced in a cathedral, weeping extra virgin olive oil to be worthy of worship? The priest can't deny that he witnessed a man with ulcerative hemorrhoids takes a seat on the commode beneath the enshrined toilet paper and stands back up with a bottom as soft as a newborn baby's. However, he says he cannot endorse the shrine on behalf of the Church, nor verify the miracles to Rome for acknowledgement. The guy counters that his shrine doesn't need to be recognized or endorsed or acknowledged as true to be effective at helping those who believe. People will continue to come regardless of what he tells the Bishop. The priest and deacon leave the apartment and stop by a taco truck nearby to plan their next move. The priest soon realizes the carne asada with extra chihuahua cheese was probably a bad decision. The nearest bathroom is back in the guy's apartment, which he and the deacon hurry to. The guy only lets the priest in if he makes a generous donation to the shrine. The priest hurriedly agrees and kneels before the shrine--the porcelain god.

-- Hacker Story (1.0): Told through a series of text messages, emails, subreddits, and vm transcripts. Follows a hacker who poses as a salesperson or Third Party Tech Support who sells a BlueTooth patch for Omnipods to a rep at the medical device company that distributes them to T1D patients. The patch is actually a Trojan Horse that uses the Omnipods’ BlueTooth to spy on the diabetics’ cell phones. It culls vital data on the patients. What the hacker wants is, not to then steal credit card info from the T1D patients (who are mostly kids), but to hold the HIPAA info as ransom. The hacker then poses as a federal agent who informs the pharmaceutical company that distributes the Omnipods of a HIPAA breach and collects a hefty fine.

-- Hacker Story (2.0): Told through an international exchange where grade school student Skype with diplomats from other countries to learn about foreign cultures and promote peace. A hacker uses Deepfake realtime video to pose as a grade school student and gains access to several diplomats’ secure servers. It turns out, little Julie Rosner from Hooper Elementary in Des Moines is actually a Nation State hacker from China.

-- Hacker Story (3.0): A guy finds a service on the Darknet that makes Deepfake porn videos of favorite celebrities. His request, though, is to have a video made of an unwitting young woman at his community college (or workplace, or church). The Deepfake needs a lot of pictures and videos of the woman so the resulting video looks real—the more reference material, the better. So the guy takes surreptitious pics and videos of her during his classes, he uses campus security cameras to get footage of her, and stalks her on social media for more footage. The story is told from her point of view as she discovers the Deepfake of herself in a video that she never consented to make or even knew about.

-- An Irish Little Person who is also a gamer has the gamertag: SmallPotatoes.

-- “If you do that, you’ll really piss off your mom. It’ll be, like, a Mama-geddon!”

-- Like finding a haystack in a needle.

-- What if the conservative/liberal conflict were told from the point of view of a Neanderthal dad whose daughter has pair bonded with one of foreign homo sapiens interlopers. He listens to a mad oracle named Ibex Bones who predicts the new race of people infiltrating their tribe, mating with their women, encroaching on their hunting grounds will eventually erase them.

-- Afterlife Transfer Protocol (atp:// or altp://): Someone discovers that ghosts are actually like computer programs or applications left running or that won’t close down. The living consciousnesses of humans are pure data. When someone dies, the hardware (body) shuts down and the software (consciousness) stops. Sometimes, however, the program doesn’t quit like an old PC that gets stuck in a shutdown procedure loop. The protagonist in this story figures out a way to force quit ghosts and let them finally be at peace.

-- The story is told from the third person and presents the protagonist making a house call to a haunted apartment. The family has been living with a restless spirit of a former tenant in their basement. The protagonist can transfer the ghost from their residence. The family’s old abuela, who lives with them, asks the protagonist where his vestments and bible are, if he is an exorcist sent by the church.

-- As the protagonist captures the ghost program over his wifi, he downloads the entire consciousness of the deceased person. From it, he creates previously unwritten memoirs for the families of the deceased. He can solve cold cases and reveal cause of death for law enforcement.

-- Maybe the story is told from the POV of a trainee who’s job shadowing on the house call above.

-- Keep MS < 2k words and submit to Terraform.

r/Showerthoughts: The human lower digestive tract looks very much like a map of Ohio.

-- “She had the face that filled a thousand Kleenex.” “ She had really bad allergies?” “Yeah, sure.”

-- First line of a story titled, “The Klutz”: Gravity and I have always had a strained relationship. One of these days, we’re gonna have a throw down.

-- For “Father Nature”: since rising temperatures decrease snowfall, travel advisories are issued for tumbleweeds. “Tumblegeddon”

-- “Tales from Clock Castle”: in keeping with the idea of Medieval illustrations, maybe use alliteration instead of rhyme to give a nod to “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. Illustrations should lean more toward the Limbourg Bros. and less toward the Bayeux Tapestry for inspiration. Maybe draw a couple of scenes and let the pictures lead the story.

-- Magical Realism short story called “Custom of the Sea”. A restaurant opens on Nantucket called Custom of the Sea. A rich douchebag has just bought his first luxury sailing yacht and fancies himself quite the sailor (even though he hires a skipper and crew to sail it for him). The douchebag winds up eating at Custom of the Sea where the menu starts with grog, hardtack, and salt pork, then features raw sea turtle and cormorant, and finishes with urine and cabin boy. Maybe the douchebag has been hitting on and harassing a local waitress whose father is a retired sea captain. The Captain takes the douchebag to Custom if the Sea after he catches the douchebag getting handsy with his daughter. Instead of fighting, the Captain invites the douchebag to dinner where they can discuss the matter like gentlemen (or maybe the waitress feigns interest and invites the douchebag to dinner?). Maybe, instead of cabin boy for the piece de resistance, the chef’s choice is offered. The chef presents the douchebag and the Captain with straws. The douchebag (obviously) draws the shortest straw and the Captain (or waitress) draws the next shortest straw.

-- The thick, pungent aroma of the oily garlic sauce was like a pizza chef’s ball sack or a Pizza Hut floor drain.

-- For “R.E.M.brandts”: Maybe one of the test subjects having their dreams recorded is terminally ill. He volunteers to have them record his experience as he dies. Maybe during this his entire consciousness is uploaded to the university’s server.

-- New band name: Pol Potluck

-- What if we found and traveled to a habitable exoplanet, but the atmosphere contained trace amounts of carcinogenic chemicals that living there would cause long-term health effects? Everything else is fine: the gravity is just like Earth’s, there’s a magnetic field, the average atmospheric temperature is comparable to Earth’s, the oxygen/nitrogen content is just like Earth’s, but there’s trace amounts of lead, sulphur dioxide, etc. comparable to present day Mumbai.

All Apologies:

-- A man gets an apology from his significant other via a YouTube video. His lover had been unfaithful and this was the best way to apologize since the Narrator wouldn’t answer his calls. This way, the whole world could see his remorse and debasement.

Soon, the Narrator sees a whole stream of apology videos. Pleas for reconciliation and forgiveness. Promises to never stray again. Oaths. Bargains. Pledges. The Narrator is fascinated by this public show of humiliation--how everything is laid bare for all to see. Eventually, the Narrator becomes an Apology Vlogger--even though he has nothing to apologize for.

-- Maybe the Narrator’s boyfriend is apologizing because he became addicted to internet porn. But now, the Narrator has become addicted to internet apologies. He becomes a true connoisseur of apology videos and can identify ones that are truly heartfelt from the ones that are forced or just for comic relief.

-- Maybe there’s a scene of the Narrator curling up in front of his laptop with a bowl of popcorn and clicking on a video titled, “An open apology to the Genius Bar employee who saw my porn.” “Oh, this one will be good,” he said through a mouthful of kernels.

-- YouTube apology video channels that the Narrator subscribes to: All Apologies, ApoloJesus (for Christians who’ve sinned), Truly Sorry Vids, and Apollogeez (specifically for gay men).

-- Maybe bring in the self-licking ice cream cone of the conversation that goes: “It’ll be fine, just stop apologizing.” “Ok. I’m sorry.” “Ugh! Stop it!”

-- Last line: He switched on his webcam and let the tears flow.

-- A 50-year-old former insurance salesman must learn a new career because AI has taken over his old job. He gets a job building virtual and augmented reality worlds for gaming, social media, file sharing, etc. The world he builds bears a striking resemblance to his old job. The company discovers a source of potential customers who use his VR world to relive doing their old clerical jobs.

-- Could AI serve as a shrink? Referencing the observed behaviors of its patients and cataloging what constitutes an anxiety attack or a depressive crisis or a violent outburst—and the behaviors to positively counteract those crises, it creates the illusion of empathy. Can sound waves be used to treat conditions like electroshock therapy? Could this be delivered by an app in a smartphone?

-- In a Post Climate Crisis world, farmers till the soil in Antarctica where the temperatures mirror present day Southern California and extended hours of sunlight make the South Pole the new breadbasket of the world. The formerly temperate zones of the Earth are now deserts. There are aquaculture farms at the North Pole, which now has similar temperatures to the South Pole and no ice. The farms specialize in seaweed crops and have their bases of operations in Svalbard and Greenland. Permafrost is now referred to as Permamoist.

-- A child is born and undergoes routine genetic profiling to check for potential defects or diseases. During the screening, the AI comes across an exact match. The research foundation that does the profiling has been building archives of the DNA of significant historical persons using tissue samples from exhumed corpses. The AI realizes the child is an exact clone of Arizona Senator John McCain. The child isn’t a reincarnation of the Senator; he won’t have any of his memories. He is merely an exact genetic copy. What pressures and expectations might be put on this child?

-- Horror/Magical Realism/Sci-Fi story about a gathering of ‘real’ Halloween monsters. All of them have been transported to a future or contemporary setting from their respective locations and eras. A mummy from Egypt’s Old Kingdom, a Zombi from Haiti (maybe the real-life case mentioned in ‘Lore’), a Vampire from Romania, a Werewolf from Germany (the 16th century one from ‘Lore’ who eagerly confessed to his crimes), a Witch from Salem. They’ve been gathered together as part of a museum exhibit. Maybe rework premise of “Big Game” where the trophy hunter travels through time to collect the monster specimens. Maybe the protagonist is competing with another trophy hunter to collect the very first example in each category of monster.

-- A biohacker injects his girlfriend with a gene edited from a cuttlefish. It allows him to tell when she’s actually irritated with him. She’s very good at masking her emotions—she even avoids using the classic ‘Fine’ giveaway. So, he surreptitiously injects her with cuttlefish gene so her skin turns purple when she’s angry.

- - What’s the twist? Do her pupils turn W-shaped? Does she develop green-blue blood? Three hearts? Does she ink?

-- When I start my own custom kitchen cabinetry and bathroom business, I will call it “Counter Intuitive.”

-- New unit of measurement: “Me, but without my head-sized.”

-- Take that with a pillar of salt. Or: Take that with a lick of salt.

-- Horror for the Blind: Series of audio dramas with no dialogue that use only sound effects to tell a story. For instance: “Funeral” starts with the wooden sounds of a coffin lid closing followed by the muffled sounds of someone saying what might be the Last Rites. Then the sounds of some kind of winch grinding beyond the walls of whatever container just closed. Then the sounds of thumping as clumps of something soft strike the closed lid, getting fainter and fainter until the segment ends with a protracted silence (maybe it ends with a gasp and a pounding of fists on the lid). Or, “Cave In,” which starts with a drip. Then, after several seconds, the chitter of bats that gets closer to the listener’s ears. Then, building from a distance, a rumbling that builds and builds until it overwhelms the listener and ends as if they’ve been buried alive, trailing off with the sifting sound of pebbles falling. “Dental Surgery” (‘nuff said). “Solitary,” begins with the loud clanking of a steel door closing, locks turning, and footsteps retreating away. Then, nothing. From far away, the squeaks of rats can be heard, which get closer and closer, until they fill the listener’s ears. “Missing Hiker,” starts nicely enough with the sounds wind in the trees and crickets, but gets more sinister with the sounds of owls, coyotes, and wolves. The sounds of the wolves get closer and closer until there is the loud snap of jaws right by the listener’s ear. “Cliff Face”(?) which includes the sounds of scrabbling and pebbles falling and ends with a gasp and then nothing but the whistling wind. “Drowning,” that starts with a splash and a floundering. The sounds change from distinctly above-water and muffled and below-water. Three times. Bubbles that trail off into silence. “Nelophobia,” which starts with shattering glass and continues with the crunching sounds of footsteps on broken glass that gets closer the listener’s ears as if they’re kneeling and lying down in the broken glass. It ends with a slicing sound. Or some sort of scenario where it sounds like a bug is trapped in the listener’s ear. “Water Torture,” which starts with the sounds of clamps being secured the the listener’s right and left, the close to the head (in stereo) as if a restraint is being secured around the listener’s head. Then the dripping starts (in stereo, at the forehead). The dripping slowly intensifies, gets quicker and louder until it sounds like a jackhammer.

-- Band names: Cavernous Cadaver Anus; A Reptile Dysfunction; Abundance of Shrugging Shoulders (ASS)

“Does it always hurt so bad?”

“Yup. It’s like a hangover or withdrawal. It’s an extremely powerful drug.”

“A drug?”

“Yup. Even though it can leave you devastated after the thrill is gone, you’ll still seek it out again and again. And its effects are so short-lived. You can’t possibly sustain that level of intensity for the long term.”

“But how are you and Janice able to keep it up after all these years?”

“Oh, the initial effects wore off years ago.”

“What?”

“I’ll still get a taste of that intense high every now and then when I find myself looking at her or smell her perfume or hear an old song on the radio, but it comes and goes and the long term effects of a different medicine take over.”

“What medicine is that?”

“The kind that’s good for you. It’s like taking vitamins—they’re only good if you take them day after day, letting them build up the nutrients and minerals you need for the long haul. It’s the difference between the quick, intense rush of cocaine or heroin and the fortifying effects of calcium and zinc.”

“But, even though it hurts, I still want that feeling.”

“Yeah, that’s normal, especially at your age. You’re just now realizing the greater world of those intense feelings. You’re probably feeling like you’re the only boy on earth who feels this intensely for this particular girl and the rest of the world is emotionally dead and can’t possibly understand what you feel for her, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s how it is for everybody. You’re nothing special.”

“I’m not?”

“Nope. Think about the boy your age who realizes he feels that rush when he sees another boy in his English class. Is he, maybe, going to feel like he’s the only person in the world who feels that way?”

“Yeah.”

“And might his withdrawal when he realizes that special boy doesn’t feel the same way be excruciating?”

“Probably.”

“And, just like you and billions of others, he’ll go right back to the crack pipe for that same high.”

-- Time travel short story where the protagonist’s older self travels back 20 years to steal the girlfriend of his younger self. He figures, things went south shortly after their awkward tussle on the beach that night, why not swoop in and treat her like a real man would and enjoy that twenty-year-old for one more fantastic night?

-- Rework “The Poet” one-act play into a short story about a female Goth singer who makes beautiful music, but is horribly depressed and attempts suicide. Afterwards, she is put on antidepressants but her music is now uninspired and cringeworthy. (Picture Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval on Prozac.) Perhaps something about listening to sad music invites the hurt and melancholy in like a joy vampire, letting it drain you and fill you with something colder, more familiar. Living one’s true self through the music. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” “I’m not. I’m just feeling...sorry.” That feeling of finally living authentically when the melancholy fills you—like you’re clean from the drugs—an addict recovering from the haze of antidepressants and artificial joy. Maybe the story is told through a series of news stories and TMZ articles that detail the Goth singer’s rise to fame, depression diagnosis and treatment, descent into obscurity, and death.

-- Band names: Questionable Lemonade; Charlotte the Harlot; Infamous Daves (none of the members is named Dave)

-- Character name: Harry Tung

-- “Of Mice and Mars”: One of the research missions to Mars in an attempt to understand how future colonists could survive long term on the red planet is a mission that sends 30 mice to the planet. They are sealed in a terrarium that supplies them with food, water, oxygen, heat, and protection from radiation. The terrarium is designed to last indefinitely. The scientists hope to study how the mice deal with lower gravity, intrinsic radiation, reduced sunlight, etc. so that they can better prepare humans for the journey.

-- The story is told from the POVs of the biologists and zoologists who are monitoring individual mice. The mice are named, Mickey, Jerry, Stuart, Algernon, Despereaux, Mrs. Frisby, etc. The scientists, of course, grow very fond of their assigned mice and the subsequent generations of mice born on Mars.

-- Character name: Prof. Buster Dunsmore

-- Particular crowds seek out lenticular clouds.

-- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse finally arrive. Their names are: Alexa, Siri, Google, and Cortana.

-- Milk-MAN! The spokesman for America’s Dairy Farmers is a superhero called Milkman. He has a flowing, white cape and enormous breasts. Fighting against his arch nemesis, Lactose Intolerance. Standing up for Truth, Justice, and Strong Bones.

-- I Suck at Titles: Concatenate

“... many noses will he yet make sneeze!” -- Thus Spoke Zarathustra

-- Play-To or Play-Tao: “The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.” — Glaucon, “The Republic” A young kid is playing with an app or Alexa/Cortana/Jibo-like device which interacts with its user and teaches him or her how to use the myriad features. It not only teaches the kid how to use the app, but also life lessons. It uses Socratic questioning. It tells the kid to input things like mom’s email address and phone number (but not credit card number), which is creepy. But then it will correct the kid’s spelling mistakes and answer his or her questions about the troubling things being broadcast on the news (which is heartening). Maybe the device is made out of Kinetic Sand and can change its form like a personal Minecraft. However, I’d like the kid’s mom to scold him or her about too much screen time right when the device was about to answer a particularly poignant question. Was the device about to reveal the impending arrival of The Great Filter on humanity?

Seen written in the men’s restroom of the Philosophy Department at Princeton University:

“Glaucon, you ignorant slut.” —Socrates

-- Religion is humanity’s Great Filter. Is there any other human enterprise more adept at helping us kill one another? Is there any other human enterprise so good at perpetuating ignorance? Enforcing tribalism? Oppressing the marginalized? Protecting corruption? Chicanery and charlatanism?

-- Consistently denying people their civil rights, access to healthcare, education, and entitlements on the basis of a Bronze Age text is suicide.

-- The Measles epidemic is a result of this ignorance and could be seen as one of the first events leading to our extinction.

-- I suck at titles: “A Dagger of the Mind”

“Sons of Janus”: new title for “Quitting While You’re A Head” (although that joke should be made in the book). Include subchapters or chapter intros that define each category of conjoined twins, i.e.: Thoracopagus (joined at the chest), and Craniopagus (joined at the head). Maybe the same crass individual who makes the titular joke says something about twins conjoined at the nose (Snuffalupagus). When the twin who was only a head is connected to a robotic body and gets married, he has stem cells extracted from the nerves at the base of his skull and clones himself. His wife carries his clone. They get to see what he would’ve been like fully formed from birth.

-- She lay on the ground at the tree trunk of his legs and let herself be charmed by his snake. Then she reached up to the dimpled fruit the snake let hang down for her and she grasped it.

-- Disney World has its own funeral parlor. It’s the happiest mortuary on earth.

-- The drugs help, but they’re like a bandage. The wound beneath is still there. It won’t get infected, or bigger, or bleed on the carpet, but it’s still there. Aching. That’s what it’s like at these times. When somehow I bump the bandage and the pain flares up beneath the covering. A sad song comes on and I think of my son away at college and I miss him. I listen to the song again and I think of my daughter home from school in our big empty house while I commute and work and spend all this time away from her and my wife and my dog and we have so little time and why do we have to be apart? And I can feel the pain percolating beneath the thin covering of the drugs—always there, never truly gone—welling up as if to bleed through.

-- What if computer and bio hackers figured out a way to engineer synthetic creatures through freeware programs like Blender and Minecraft? They design a creature in Blender then use a version of Minecraft (Periodicraft) that can render the creature’s Blender characteristics in base elements and compounds. This then allows the hacker to determine the DNA structure of the creature. They then obtain mail-order DNA and sequence the genome of their Blender creature and incubate it in embryonic cells until it’s viable.

-- New Nickie Story: Told from two different points of view, one person is a former EMT or nurse trying to perform CPR on someone they came upon on a darkened train platform late at night. The other is a person being assaulted by a stranger on a darkened train platform late at night. The scenes are described in a way that the reader a) doesn’t know the two scenes are related and b) could consider the two characters to be the same person. What is revealed at the end is that the former EMT suffers from schizophrenia and thinks s/he is helping a stranger in distress. The other person is being assaulted by the former EMT.

“...wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we...”

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

-- “Marriage is an institution and I definitely feel like I’ve been institutionalized.”

-- Character Name:

--- Chris Scalf

-- Universal Corollary: When you’re at the store, the sound system will play the shittiest song just as you’re leaving, ensuring it’ll be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

-- Panspermia: What if the asteroids (Chicxulub, Popigai, etc.) that were responsible for mass extinction events carried with them the microorganisms responsible for the next dominant species to arise?

-- What if different generations of Science Fiction fans adhere closely to the vision of the future that their era’s sci-fi books, movies, etc. painted for them? For instance, readers of Jules Verne would envision a future with hot air ballon mass-transit and steam-powered machine guns. People who grew up watching Star Trek and reading Ray Bradbury saw themselves traveling in sleek silver rockets to meet green-skinned women on distant planets. Fans (like me) who cut their sci-fi teeth on the likes of Neuromancer and Bladerunner would feel at home in a used future urban landscape full of computers and neon. Maybe this is the reason for the rise in Steampunk: Jules Verne fans writing sci-fi in their preferred vision of the future (even if it’s an alternate history). What will be the tropes of sci-fi created a generation from now? Will I dislike its aesthetic and cling to the William Gibson vision that I’m familiar with?

-- Character Name:

--- Dr. Sajjad Murtaza

-- It’s a fucking shit-astrophe!

-- What if aliens invaded Earth, but they weren’t extraterrestrials, but humans from the far distant future. The invading humans left Earth so long ago in their past and are so far removed from the humans on the Earth they invade that they don’t even recognize the original home world.

-- T-shirt seen at the airport: “Not Today Satan.” Mine would say, “Not Today Santa” or, “Not Today Satan; How About Tuesday?” How about, “Get Behind Me Santa”

-- Seen spray painted on a Missouri highway overpass (in BOTH directions): TRUST CHIRST

-- Most of the time my brain feels like someone left a TV turned on in the room with me. Lying awake at night my brain channel surfs through all of the things left undone or left unsaid or my fantastical futures and possible pasts. Even after sex my mind can break out of that “biological hyperspace” that overtakes time and space and thought in the height of passion. Despite lying in Nicole’s arms having achieved my ultimate biological imperative, my brain will be reciting movie quotes and wondering about my next writing project.

-- Well, you’re on the right path: the Socio-Path.

-- His glasses were square and large and magnified his hazel eyes so much that he looked as if he had two small televisions on his face broadcasting his eyes.

-- The Gargantuan Mantuan, Giulio Romano, vs. the Menace from Venice, Tiziano ‘Titian’ Vecellio. The Pope can’t decide who to commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so his cardinals organize a Thunderdome-esque, WWE-type battle to determine the winner. Michelangelo takes on Donatello, Ghiberti takes on Leonardo.

-- The Lost Legacy of Leather Feather