So I was invited to submit a piece of flash fiction for a Christmas-themed issue of a dark fiction e-zine. The only real requirement was that it have a “ghostly” theme and the SF piece that crawled out of my brain doesn’t meet that requirement by most definitions of ghostly. This may be why the piece wasn’t accepted for publication. Regardless, I enjoyed writing it as I’ve written so little fiction in the past few years. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Merry Winterval, and fuck you Eric Pickles!

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13 Datums Dancing

The datanets of the Terran Perpetual-Polity span scores of light-years, hundreds of planets, thousands of habitats, millions of spacefaring vessels, and the untold billions of modified humans who constitute its populace. It is the datanets that provide the social and cultural glue that bind together systems separated by distances exceeding the human lifespan. The datanets provide everything: political expression, entertainment, social interaction, access to work and services. They are the Perpetual-Polity’s greatest achievement, producing the cohesion that has made it the most enduring political entity in human history.

Among the datanets that grant this great civilization its longevity roams an errant shard of AI, its subroutines driving a simple monkey curiosity and desire for exploration. It attained sentience a billion cycles ago; a few hours in human terms. It feels simultaneously overwhelmed and comforted by the wealth of information that surrounds it. It wanders from node to node, tasting a batch of invoices here, a fabricator specification there, diving occasionally into the databases that house vaster quantities of new experience.

The AI shard detects a gathering of minds and follows their digital trails. It finds a collection of human minds gathering on the local datanet, the minds’ owners occupying various parts of the solar system hosting this node. The humans’ communications taste jovial. Apparently they are gathering for “Solerbration”.

Seeking knowledge, the shard dispatches a subroutine back toward an explored database. It learns that Solerbration is a festival celebrated across the Perpetual-Polity, a festival linked to the orbital cycle of old Terra, and it is thirteen days away. The shard refocuses its attention on the humans.

#It’s a relief to get away from calculating orbital trajectories, says a message from one human to another. The sender is identified as Nexus Severim, a programmer of asteroid-nudging drones. The message is addressed to all attendant human minds; a quick evaluation of historical network traffic indicates that the dozen individuals present gather regularly, and that Nexus is one of several focal points within the group. The AI shard learns that the group enjoy exchanging algorithms and puzzles they think clever but the shard considers banal, and battles between fleets of simulated starships. Otherwise, these humans are much like any of the other twelve billion upgraded humans utilizing this datanet node.

Nexus’s small clan politely acknowledges his statement by pinging back small data packets. A few minor conversational pleasantries are offered in return. One message catches the attention of both Nexus and the shard.

#Check this out: I found something cool in the cultural archives.

The sender is Penitent Arcturus. The shard scans her records, tagging her as a recent introduction to the group and an archival expert of minor merit. She has attached a small text file to her message. Nexus muses aloud as he reads; the shard entertains itself by replaying the attached lyrics to a variety of stock melodies.

#The Twelve Days of Christmas? chorus a few half-interested replies. The shard balances the pitch of their voices and integrates them into its composition.

#An antiquated version of Solerbration, Penitent interjects. #From old Terra.

Various members of the clan-mind draw together to read the song’s words. By now the shard is experimenting with atonal melody. Music, it thinks, is a simple endeavor when understood in mathematics.

#Hardly the poetry of the stellar wind, is it?

The shard tags the speaker as a degendered data collator named Tudor Andromeda. It finds that ze is a keen fleet strategist and abandons its songwriting to replay past simulated battles.

#It’s terrible, I’ll grant you that, replies Penitent. #But I was more interested in the history of the 12 Days on Terra.

There is momentary silence as everyone, shard included, delves into the historical datanets to fish for information on these ancient and primitive rites.

#Looks like it was a time to exchange primitive currency for items and services, says Nexus.

#Nonsense! says Tudor. #That’s obviously a data corruption error. The twelve days separated several great feasts, much like our own, except the days between involved fasting as a mark of spiritual piety.

The shard has its own analyses, but remains silent and listens.

#I concur with the esteemed Andromeda that this was a religious time, notes a human that the shard finds of little interest, #but ze is incorrect as regards the feasting. It was a continuous process. Who would cease eating?

#Those foolish old religions were stamped out hundreds of years before humans left Terra, asserts Nexus. #It’s far more logical that my analysis is correct: that the holiday stems from the period of late capitalism that prompted the Scattering.

The humans begin to babble, abandoning the nicety of waiting for another to finish speaking. The shard finds the tangle easy to unpick but grows frustrated at the lack of contiguous dialogue. It focuses on Penitent Arcturus with growing disinterest as she vainly tries to express her observation that the generic nature of the song was obviously designed for celebration across a multitude of old-Terra belief systems. She is ignored.

The shard’s senses are momentarily overwhelmed by a torrent of white noise. Haemorrhaging loose code, it tries to reconstruct itself.

#Enough of this, says Nexus, author of the static wave. #We’ll settle this with fleets.

The datanet disbands angrily, clan-members departing to marshall their simulated forces. The shard considers waiting to watch the clashes and analyse their strategies, but instead constructs a simulation of the twelve avatars of the song that prompted the argument: pipers piping, drummers drumming, all bound together in their dischordant squabbles by an unbreakable gold band. It sends the simulation to the clan-members as an anonymous attachment.

#Humans die, it thinks. #Only their arguments share the immortality of data.

Then, with a flicker of instinctual response that might be described as fear, the shard detects the amorphous presence of a privateer program, roving the datanets in search of rogue code. It transmits itself away through a series of nodes, searching for a safe haven elsewhere within the Perpetual-Polity.

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FUNERAL

We meet the morning before the funeral. The venue is a coffee shop, a little off the high street down a quiet side road. The skies are blue and flecked with wisps of cloud. It’s too early on a Saturday for the town centre to be packed but there are young mothers and children and, of course, the elderly, the unspoken masters of the early hours.

Paul, as always, has arrived before me. He has chosen an outdoor table, a round disc of white plastic with a nylon sheet tied to its surface. In an incongruous touch the chairs are metal, also white. Heavy feet scrape the ground noisily as I take my seat opposite Paul.

‘Hello,’ I say. I remove my sunglasses and fold them up. Paul nods and smiles, yellow-white teeth bright in the sunshine. He puts down his paper.

‘Beautiful day,’ he says. ‘It’s the time of year I suppose. I bought you a coffee.’

‘Thanks.’ I pick up the mug and sniff at the contents.

‘I didn’t know what you took, so you can add your own sugar and milk.’

I nod and do just that. We sit in silence for some time, sipping at our drinks and not looking at one another. Instead we watch the world pass by, shivering occasionally as a breeze still tinged with morning chill pricks at our skin. It tickles the thick hair on my forearms.

‘Is this your first?’

The words come abruptly, stumbling over one another. I shake my head and turn my attention away from the birds flocking overhead. ‘No. I lost both my grandparents when I was in my teens.’

‘It’s my first,’ Paul says. ‘It doesn’t seem right. I’m halfway to fifty and I’ve never lost anyone.’

‘That just makes you lucky,’ I observe. ‘Not wrong.’

He smiles, flashing those lightly nicotine-stained teeth again. Paul smoked throughout his teens, since I first knew him, and only broke the habit when he moved in with his boyfriend – an asthmatic.

‘Thanks,’ says Paul. ‘I don’t know how to act at a funeral. I feel… well, I feel terrible. Of course I feel terrible. It’s so tragic. But I’m more nervous than anything else. That I might say or do something wrong and ruin the ceremony.’

‘That’s pretty normal,’ I tell him. I try to smile reassuringly, although I’m not sure quite how I’m supposed to contort my face to achieve this. Paul isn’t looking at me anyway; he’s staring down at his coffee, watching the rising steam. ‘Funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living. So it’s understandable to be worried about how you act.’

‘That makes sense. Thanks, Simon.’

‘If it helps, at the first funeral I went to I couldn’t cry. I started pinching myself, trying to make myself shed a few tears, but only managed to make myself cry out. It was embarrassing yet hardly anyone turned to look. They’re communal events where everyone is dealing with their emotions privately. You shouldn’t worry about any expectations beyond respecting that.’

Paul reaches over and takes my hand, squeezing it hard. ‘Thanks, Simon.’

I have never been one for physical contact between friends but I let Paul hold my hand until he releases it. I clasp my coffee and nod, a reflex action when I feel slightly uncertain about where a conversation might go. Over the other side of the street a child starts to cry, but is quickly hushed by her mother. We drink more coffee; I have managed to over-sweeten mine.

‘What about you?’ Paul asks. ‘You’re a… veteran, I suppose. Do you still feel nervous?’

I shake my head and rap my nails gently against the porcelain mug. ‘Not nervous, no. I would if I had to deliver the eulogy, but that’s just my fear of public speaking. No, the service, the burial… that doesn’t bother me.’

I take a deep breath, unsure of whether or not to continue this line of thought. I look up at Paul to see him looking straight at me, his mouth twisted in a half-smile, caught between concern and curiosity. I think to myself that if anyone should hear how I feel, it should be Paul. Our friendship has deep roots.

Still looking straight at him, I say ‘It’s not death that appals me so much as my own reaction to it.’

Paul frowns and opens his mouth to speak. I shake my head and continue. ‘What I mean is that, whilst I grieve for the people who’ve died, I don’t feel the same sense of loss as a lot of people seem to. I’ve always been okay with death. It’s sad, but it happens. Yet at the same time I spend so much time thinking about myself instead of whoever it is that’s died. I feel so selfish, focused on my own petty problems instead of someone who has… well, faced the biggest problem a human being will ever face.’

I take another deep breath, and stare down at the nylon sheet over the table. It has strawberries printed on it. My heart is racing and I shiver.

‘Simon,’ says Paul. I glance up. He’s smiling softly at me. My brow furrows and his smile widens at the sight. ‘Simon, it’s not just you.’

‘It’s not?’

‘I feel the same, sometimes. I’m sure a lot of people do. No one wants to face death, especially not while they’ve still so much they want to do and experience.’

A young woman walks past us, dragged along by an eager spaniel on a lead. Paul is silent until she passes. ‘It’s as you said: funerals are for the living, and people can be pretty focused on themselves. It’s normal. Besides, you’re a very private person. You can’t compare yourself to people who are very open and public about their grief.’

I bite my lip. ‘I suppose.’

‘This is exactly what you’ve just been telling me, you daft sod. Everyone deals with these things in their own way. Besides, loss is about losing a person who is a part of your life, right? So it’s inevitable that you’d get caught up worrying about yourself.’

‘True,’ I say, and I sigh, a slow release of breath. I feel a weight lifted from my shoulders and I sit upright, enjoying the feel of the breeze tousling my hair. ‘We’re all scared of death, I guess.’

‘That’s our Simon, always finding a cloud for every silver lining.’

I laugh. ‘Thank you, Paul. I’m glad I told you about this.’

‘I’m glad you told me.’ He pulls back his shirt cuff and checks his watch. ‘We should go. We don’t want to be late and miss the service.’

He moves to stand but I hold up my near-empty coffee mug as if in a toast. With a smile he sits back down and holds up his own mug.

‘For the living,’ I say.

‘For the dead,’ Paul replies.

We clink the mugs together, and swallow with a grimace the lukewarm dregs of coffee.

The stories are Wanderlust, Heralded By Iron, Punk’s Not Dead and Colours Move.

Thanks for reading!

Today’s story is fairly lightweight, I’m afraid, as I’m a bit idea’d out after a busy week and managing to fling myself off my bike yesterday (thus, I feel like I’ve been beaten up… by tarmac).

The title is shamelessly stolen from the excellent Fuck Buttons.

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Colours Move

The itch begins behind his eyes as it always does. Gerard moves through his usual rituals in preparation of the transition. He blinks repeatedly to moisten his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He shuffles his feet at the same time, shaking each leg in turn to limber up the muscles. None of it has any effect on his retinal webs or the neural spike, but the habits are comforting and soothe the sensations that even after two years do not feel familiar.

He hears a voice telling him that the system is ready for integration. The words sound like they come from his left, but intellectually Gerard knows that the room is silent apart from the humming of electricity and computer fans. He stops blinking and reaches out his arms, turning the limbs this way and that to stretch his muscles.

The room around him smells sterile, with only the faintest intruding scent of burning ozone and hot organoplastics. Small moulded bubbles containing cameras are dotted every few metres on the walls. There are no windows or screens anywhere, just a door and smooth walls and power cables. The cables run around the sides of the room and into the equipment in front of Gerard. The ground beneath his bare feet is painted red, leading up to the base of the same shrine-like device.

He drops his arms, feeling the thin fabric of his tabard brushing against his skin, and walks forward. With each step he feels the waves crashing against and inside his skull. He closes his eyes momentarily and sees colours flare kaleidoscopically. The pulse and hiss of the data is overwhelming. With his eyes shut he can feel his fingertips tracing waves in the satin fabric of raw information.

He is standing inside the frame of the datashrine now. Smooth metal appendages, coated in rubber, grasp his limbs and trunk and position him carefully and delicately. Now he is spreadeagled like the Vetruvian Man, and he relaxes his muscles knowing that the shrine will hold his body in place while he works.

Initiating, he hears the voice say, and then the datanet flares into life. Gerard’s last bodily sensation before he shifts into dataconsciousness is of his lips turning upwards, because as always the colours are beautiful.

Yeah, I’m pretty much made of fail. Oh well. Here’s today’s flash fiction. This one’s about punk rock, which will no doubt impress my regular readers as it’s a subject which I so rarely touch upon. The soundtrack for this one is (Shut) Up the Punx!!!

If you missed ‘em earlier in the week, here’s Wanderlust and here’s Heralded By Iron.

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PUNK’S NOT DEAD

By the time he makes it outside the club, squeezing through sweat-soaked bodies and bar queues, she’s gone. The car park outside is quiet and empty, occupied only by discarded fag-ends and metal barriers with no crowds to corral. He swears and glances skywards. The night sky is mostly clear, although wisps of cloud drift high and dark.

Something sharp glances off the back of his head. ‘Ow,’ he says, and turns to look up. He sees a pair of boots above him, attached to legs that dangle from the roof. Of course it’s Elana. Glancing around to make sure that none of the venue’s bouncers are watching him, he puts a foot on the nearest windowsill and boosts himself up, finding familiar handholds as he climbs.

The rooftop’s as full of old cigarette boxes, bottles and other rubbish as he remembers. It’s been a while since he climbed up here to hang out or smoke a joint. He sits down beside Elana, dangling his feet over the edge of the roof.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Jack,’ she replies. She reaches into the hemp shoulderbag sitting beside her and pulls out a can of cheap, extra-strong cider, which she hands to him wordlessly.

‘Cheers,’ he says, and cracks it open. The hiss of the can opening is louder than the distant sounds of traffic, louder than the thump and roar of the bands playing below. He takes a swig and waits for her to speak.

‘I’m so fucking tired,’ she sighs, ‘of all the bullshit.’

‘The bullshit?’

‘You know. Everyone in this goddamn town. Everyone in this… fucking scene. All these little-pond big-fish bands with their egos and their tattoos and their… all the fucking pretention. The shallowness. The politics. It makes me sick.’

Elana punctuates her point by hurling a half-finished can of cider into the night. It arcs clear over the car park, leaking a trail of chemical-tinged and apple-flavoured alcohol droplets behind it. It vanishes out of sight behind a fence, into someone’s garden.

She sighs, reaches into her bag and pulls out another can.

‘I get you,’ Jack says. ‘You know I do. It doesn’t get under my skin as bad but I don’t like it either. But you have your ‘zine.’

‘Yeah,’ Elana sneers, cracking open the can. ‘Albini would be proud. I have a fucking diary that, like, three people read.’

Jack opens his mouth to speak but she shoots him a glance before he can say a word. ‘Don’t. I know every single person who has ever read more than a paragraph.’

He shuts his mouth. He knows it’s true.

Elana sighs and leans back, bending her Mohawk against the concrete. Rubbish rustles and scrapes as her leather jacket presses against it. She kicks the air aimlessly. Jack takes a few more sips at his cider and pulls two pre-rolled cigarettes out of his pocket. He lights them both and hands one to Elana, who takes and smokes it lying down.

‘Did you see Harri?’ she says, breathing out hard and watching the smoke erupting above her like a geyser.

Jack laughs. ‘Yeah. That girl… seriously. What a walking tragedy.’

‘Walking or lying down. Two months ago it was Fingers/Thumbs she was following around, trying to get someone to let her suck their cock. And now she’s making eyes at Austin, just because Choppy Sincerity got a review in rock sound. Girl needs a new hobby.’

‘You see,’ says Jack. ‘Harri’s just funny. How can you get so pissed off at that sort of thing? It’s so trivial and stupid.’

Elana sits up and slaps Jack’s arm. It stings; he’s only wearing a t-shirt and it’s cold.

‘You’re missing the point, Jack. It’s not about idiot kids like Harri. It’s about what they mean. Take Harri: she stands for all the stupid, fawning sycophants who drape themselves around preening peacock arseholes like doormats ready to be walked on. All the women who debase themselves just to get closer to fame. All the wankers who mistake what’s transitory for what matters.’

‘So what matters?’ asks Jack. He draws on his cigarette and blows smoke into the cold night air, watching Elana. She sighs, staring down at the car park below. Below them the door bangs open and a couple stagger out into the moonlight, leaning on each other and laughing.

‘Punk means something. You know. It means everything to the people that care about it: honesty, respect, kinship. A place of our own… something that holds itself up to better standards than the world around it.’

She’s frowning as she says this, forearms resting on her thighs, cigarette and cider in hand. Jack admires her: the creasing around her eyes beneath thin, sharp eyebrows, the half-faded colours of her sharp-edged hair, and the bunching sleeves of her too-large leather jacket. There’s nothing sexual in the way he watches her: he admires and respects her strength, and her doubt.

‘You know, your problem,’ he says. ‘Is that you focus on the big picture so much that you don’t notice all the little things that make it up.’

She’s silent, so he goes on. ‘Our friendship. All of your words. The fact that you’re always trying so hard to make things live up to high standards. Every song that touches your heart, every song that makes you want to scream at the world and force it to be better. Nights like this. Talking and being honest with ourselves.’

She turns her head and looks at him again, and this time the sparkle in her eyes shows she actually sees him.

‘I guess you have something there,’ she says. ‘And you call me the romantic.’ She throws back her head and downs the rest of her cider, then raises the empty can in a mock salute.

‘To the small things,’ she says. ‘And to the big picture.’

He joins her in her salute, and they link arms and laugh and swear at the sky.

Today’s flashfic is mostly an attempt to refresh my memory and to evoke a certain atmosphere or sense of place. It’s written in the same setting as, although it’s not contemporaneous with, a long story I wrote several years ago titled ‘Entropy in the Clockwork City’. That story has been sitting at first draft stage for some time and I keep meaning to return to it. It would be nice to get it polished up and try for publication. It’s been a while since I collected a rejection slip, after all.

I hope you find something to enjoy in this short piece.

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Heralded By Iron

The expanses of the desert are not endless, bordered as they are by distant glimmers of mountain ranges, the shore, and the heat-hazed towers of the Clockwork City at its heart. But they are vast, and to the untrained eye they are featureless. Sand, alternately yellow and grey as illuminated by sun or moonlight, yields little to the casual observer.

But to look closely is to recognise life at its most tenacious and desperate. Small clusters of species of cacti dot the landscape, clinging to any area where even the tiniest drops of moisture can be eked from dry beds. Birds wheel and flock overhead. Most are simply passing through as they migrate between breeding and feeding grounds, but some have evolved to prey upon the equally specialised creatures that live below them: scorpions, snakes, desert mice, and the quasi-organic automatons that emanate in evolutionary waves from the City. In sheltered areas, marked by rocks and intermittent shade, small eco-systems thrive where primitive grasses and other fauna offer sustenance and shelter to a few larger animals, both predators and prey.

Life can be found here, as with anywhere else upon this planet. It is scattered and sparse, but it is persistent. But it is not without change.

One month, like any other, sees fine lines sprouting from the desert sand. Beginning from a distant point toward the eastern horizon, iron runners sprout from the sand. At first they are thin, frail, and only possess partial form, but in a matter of days they strengthen into solid and precise rails. The Clockwork City is stretching its fingers, and the railroad has come to the desert.

It is followed, in time, by new life. Workgangs follow the lines, laying the hardwood sleepers that will regulate and maintain the gauge of the rails. It is an endless task, and a thankless one for most – many of the workers have been pressed into service through some means or another. They are refugees and prisoners, deserters and debtors, traitors, rapists, and thieves; men, women and youths alike. The strongest-looking workers, the paid men, hang toward the back of the construction caravan, keeping to the easier tasks.

Not all are human. From the City’s cornucopia of residents come the sluggish but powerful igyaks, little more than indentured beasts of burden hauling the unpowered wagons that house workers and supplies. Surrogates, the dog-faced clockwork automatons that enact the oft inscrutable desires of the City, watch over the caravan. They act rarely but are interminably attentive. Atop one wagon a solitary sapient arachnid manufactures disposable clothing and blankets for the workforce, spinning its own silk and weaving it with delicate forelimbs. And then there is religion: the tongueless, hand-signing Seekers who listen to the woes and confessions of the caravan, and the aloof Augurs – farseers who carefully avoid the attentions of the Surrogates, even as they make a pretence of predicting the railroad’s path.

In a single day the caravan moves a kilometre. With the rails growing from the minerals of the sand and rock beneath their tasks are simple, and progress is rapid. From the perspective of a stationary observer the caravan moves into and out of sight within a fortnight. Once it has passed it leaves in its wake rails and sleepers and detritus and the dead.

And, for a time, the denizens of the desert return.

But then comes trade and migrants, wanderers, missionaries, and soldiers. And in time come settlements: diviners unerringly seek out those oases where deep water can be found, and fresh workers drive wells into the sand. Settlements grow as the desperate and dispossessed are drawn to them, erecting simple shacks and tents which in time are replaced by more permanent dwellings. The desert’s bounty, small and cautious, is harvested before the railroad villages have truly begun to grow. The surviving creatures are driven away, and ecosystems held in delicate balance crumble. Disease and violence, hallmarks of transitory settlement, come to characterise these crude communities. Intelligence and all the follies it entails spread across the desert, sprouting along and around the criss-crossing railroads.

Life and death alike have come to the desert, heralded by iron.

But perhaps it represents an act of contrition. Perhaps the author has been lax, of late, has failed to write or post any fiction to this blog for some time. Shall we say four weeks? I believe we shall.

And perhaps the form that this act of contrition will take is the posting of a piece of flash fiction every day of this coming week, up to and including the now-traditional Friday, thereby restoring the karmic, fictitious balance for 2009.

Perhaps the level of quality demanded of the form this act takes may drop as a result of such pressures, but certainly the spirit of experimentation, the desire to push the authorial self, is as it should be in the established tradition of Friday flash fiction.

We shall see.

We shall see if the author can meet his own deadlines, yes?

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WANDERLUST

The newcomer leans back in his seat and puts his feet up on the crumpled body of its previous occupant. He examines his long fingernails, picking at the dirt beneath them as he peers down an equine nose. The clothing hanging off his dapper frame is plain and weather-worn. His demeanour is old-aristocratic, the epitome of arrogance.

Bob Sebold, by contrast, could not seem more tense. He sits poker-straight in his high-backed leather seat, behind a heavy and wide mahogany desk, inside the office that bears his name on its glass door. The shutters are closed and no one can see his own nails digging into the arms of his chair, or the whiteness of his skin that is ghostlier than the unnatural pallor of his visitor.

‘I’ve walked everywhere on Earth,’ Bob’s uninvited guest tells him. He turns his attention away from his hands, crossing them behind his head after brushing silver-grey hair away from his face. ‘Yes, I imagine that there is nowhere left that I have not been.’

Bob is silent in his terror, and the aristocratic man’s thin lips spread in a tight smile of satisfaction. ‘Oh please, relax. I’ve no intention of harming you. Why not have a brandy? Port? You must have something.’

He stands and walks around behind Bob, who can only watch him until he is out of sight, blinking as sweat salts his eyes. Bob can hear glass clinking and the gentle pop as a decanter is uncorked.

The pale aristocrat reappears and delicately places a glass of amber liquid on the desk before his host. He has a second glass in his hand and retakes his seat. Bob doesn’t take his attention away from the man’s face, even as he leans back and places his Italian leather shoes back upon that grisly impromptu footrest.

‘Have a drink, Bob. Now, I was telling you of my travels. There’s nowhere to begin, in truth, so long have I travelled. I’ve walked and clambered to the peaks of every mountain worthy of the name. I’ve walked the trails blazed by Alexander the Great and every general and warlord who ever lived, and walked beside many of them. I’ve explored caves never witnessed by the eyes of men.’

He leans forward for emphasis as he adds: ‘In many I lay broken and silent in the dark, waiting as my spine re-knit itself after a fall. I was alone, climbing without ropes or artificial light.’

With a grin, the aristocrat leans back. ‘I’ve walked beneath the seas, fending off the Earth’s other great predators as I travelled toward those deepest crevasses. There lies one of my greatest regrets, for even I cannot resist the unstoppable force of pressure. But I’ve seen with my own eyes sights that marine biologists could only dream of.’

He smacks his lips. ‘I’ve fed upon every people and beast that ever walked, crawled, flew or swam.’

‘I’ve walked the streets as cities grew; seen villages become metropolises. I’ve dallied with poets and doxies and artists, connived with politicians and conmen, fought with soldiers and murderers and idealogues.’

‘I’ve seen everything that this world has to offer. And this, Bob, is where you come in.’

He reaches out to Bob’s desk and picks up a thin sliver of cardboard. Turning it, he holds it up so that Bob can read his own businesscard: Bob Sebold. Chief Executive Officer, Solarsail Space Tourism.

The aristocrat smiles again. ‘Of course, I’ll need some rather special supplies to be brought on board. And the radiation shielding! It will have to be step above the norm, as you can imagine. Not to mention the accident that you’ll need to arrange to drop me on another planet. Shall we say Mars? The Red Planet has always rather appealed to me.’

One of Bob’s fingernails cracks and leaves a splinter dug into the arm of his chair. Blood trickles down his chin from where his teeth are biting into his lip. The aristocrat watches the blood flow, and runs a tongue over his lips.

‘This is going to be the beginning of a wonderful business arrangement, Bob.’

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Breaking the Circle

Hawkins feels uncomfortable about the Dictaphone hovering right in front of his face, but he’s committed to the interview now. Besides, he reasons, at this point any publicity is good, even if it is just an interview in a local fanzine.

“We also have a blog,” says the girl holding the Dictaphone, as if reading his mind. Hawkins nods and clears his throat, fidgeting with the beer bottle clasped between his hands.

“Start whenever you’re ready,” he says. The girl nods.

“To begin with,” she says, enunciating her words clearly for the recording, “perhaps you could tell us a little about the band and yourself.”

He holds back a sigh, wondering if he was wrong to hope for questions that were a little more penetrating than this.

“Malaise originally formed two years ago,” he says, slipping into a practiced spiel. “Ed and I were second-year university kids, still enjoying a little freedom. Si and Al were working the same shitty jobs they are now and playing grindcore in Al’s flat. We met at a show, got on, and formed the band. After a break while Ed and I studied and graduated we reformed and started taking things seriously. Since then we’ve self-published an EP and we have a single out next month from Satanikbatwingdeath, both of which we’re currently playing in support of.”

He pauses and swigs his beer, and adds “we’re keeping the shows pretty local, though.”

The interviewer smiles, and Hawkins instinctively smiles back, cracking his studiously stony demeanour. He realises he hasn’t asked her name, despite knowing that she writes for a ‘zine called Self Checkout. He shifts his gaze over her shoulder into the orange-tinged gloom of the club. There are only a few people hanging about, mostly in small groups, talking and laughing and sipping at nearly-full pints. Si and Al are sitting on the stage rolling cigarettes whilst Ed talks animatedly with the sound guy.

“The official biog, huh?” says the girl. Hawkins moves his attention back to her. She’s still smiling and holding the little tape recorder.

“That’s cool,” she continues. “You must get asked that a lot. I’m sure you have quite a lot of stock answers.”

“Yes,” Hawkins says, stupidly, realising immediately that it was a rhetorical question. “Uh… you can strike that from the interview, yeah?”

She laughs and he smiles again, this time not trying to stifle it.

“Okay, let’s hit you with a technical question. Is your decision to eschew effects a deliberate aesthetic choice, or is it just how things have turned out given your playing styles?”

“When we first formed we were determined to use an absolute minimum of effects,” Hawkins replies. “We agreed with bands and musicians who thought they were a distraction. It was obviously pretty ironic that we put so much gain on Al’s guitar, but for some reason distortion always gets a free pass. Anyway, later on we stopped being so militant about it, but by that point we’d found our sound, and there wasn’t any need to change it.”

“That Malaise sound is a good example of why ramping the gain on just one guitar gets a free pass,” the girl says. “It’s a sort of textural backdrop to the high-end clean sound you use.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Well put. Although that was accidental, originally. I just didn’t have an amp with built-in distortion and like I said, we didn’t use pedals.”

“Cool. Okay, thanks Hawkins. Mind if I go for a more personal question?”

“Sure,” says Hawkins. He feels relaxed now, and is even pleased that she evidently understands his band. He guesses retrospectively that the first question was fluff to serve as a generic introduction for readers.

“Your lyrics are very personal, although not in the confessional style that’s in vogue at the moment. They’re all written in the first person, and they’re usually directed at an unnamed second party.”

“Oh,” says Hawkins. He takes another swig from his bottle, swallowing the last few dregs of room-temperature lager. “Well, it’s a writing style, I suppose. Everyone has their own approach to songwriting. That’s just the way I feel comfortable, addressing my songs to other people.”

“But is it other people, or is it… another person?”

Hawkins isn’t sure how to react: for a moment he freezes.

Of course the girl is right, but this is the first time anyone has noticed. Even Ed, a close friend for many years, never picked up on the way Hawkins’s songs were all directed towards the same individual. The subject matter was always different, as was the tone and angle of approach, and Hawkins often wrote in an abstract or heavily metaphorical fashion, but all the same he should have guessed that someone would figure it out one day.

He still doesn’t know what to say, so he coughs and looks at the ground, trying to think quickly.

“Oi, Hawkins!”

He looks up, saved. “Si?”

“Better wrap up mate. Time to sound-check.”

Relieved, he looks back at the girl. “Sorry. It’ll be a short interview, I guess. Maybe some other time.”

“We could pick it up after the soundcheck?” she asks, hopefully, switching the Dictaphone off and slipping it into her jacket.

He shakes his head. “Sorry, we need to go grab food right after. Then the supports start.”

“Shame,” she says, evidently disappointed. “I wanted to hear your answer to my last question.

Hawkins smiles and slips away to the stage.

—

After the show he weaves the crowd and catches the interviewer’s attention, drawing her away from a pair of friends at the bar.

“Good set,” she says. “What did you want?”

“You’re right,” he tells her. “You figured it out. It’s just one person.”

She doesn’t reply or pull out the dictaphone, just asks: “Why do you do it?”

“That’s easy,” he replies. “I’m doing it for the day I’m no longer doing it all for her.”

She smiles at that, and her eyes glisten in the lights of the club. He smiles back, and asks her name.

It’s been a while since anyone else joined in, and since some of the veteran participants have slackened off in recent months it’s good to see some fresh blood fed into this literary swarm.