Early in life, age is much more important. That’s why children will count years by halves or quarters, as in someone being eight and one half years old, or seven and three quarters. Those ages are relevant. A lot of change happens year to year, so it’s important.

Then you turn ten. That’s the first truly important year that most people remember. Parents may remember your first birthday, or the terrible twos, or whatever, but ten is the first one that’s truly yours. Your age is in double digits now, and that’s important for some reason.

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Then there’s thirteen, the age when you are officially a teenager. And, in my case, the age when you get a bar mitzvah. Strange that people would ever consider someone that young to be an adult.

Important ages come pretty rapidly then. Sixteen and you’re old enough to learn to drive. Eighteen and you can vote (and drive after midnight in some states). Twenty and you’re not a teenager anymore, twenty one and you can drink.

After that, important ages become fewer and farther between. Twenty five technically matters for things like renting a car, but the next big year of any real significance is thirty. The end of your twenties, the point where you were supposed to have everything figured out. It’s usually the year when you start to realize that not only do you have no idea what to do with your life, but no one else does either. They’re all just faking it.

Thirty five comes and goes, with a possible mention that you can now be president (and possibly a plea for you to do so, if only because you would be a better option than what we have. Which, at the moment, is true of literally everyone). Then comes forty.

They say that when you turn forty, it will feel like the world is ending. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but considering that when I turned 40, there was a global pandemic and a lock down, I figure maybe they know what they’re talking about.

Once you hit forty, the years only really matter in tens. Fifty is another big milestone, apparently. So is sixty. Sixty five used to be the age when people would retire, but that concept seems laughable in our current system. No one is going to get to retire. That’s just a dream, and it’s time to wake up.

Seventy could be meaningful, but probably not; you’re just too old to be considered young but not old enough to be considered old. You’ve passed the threshold where people talk about you being so young if something bad happens to you. When someone over seventy dies, no one talks about how tragic it is.

Eighty and you’re officially old. Now, the prospect of your death starts to hang over you. This is when parents will tell their kids that they have to be ready, because this might be the last time they ever get to see you.

At ninety, no one questions the cause of death anymore. Clearly, it was a knife fight, a drag race, or something along those lines. But at ninety, aging goes back to being important. Every year matters. Ninety one is impressive. Ninety two matters. On and on.

If you’re lucky enough to make it to one hundred, then every day becomes a victory of sorts. Maybe that will change if we start regular life extension.

All this is to say that forty six just isn’t relevant. I’m in my mid forties, but so what? I was in my mid forties this year and last year. Next year, maybe, I’ll be in my late forties, but that’s kind of a nebulous concept. And no one cares. Nor should they.

It’s too soon for me to be freaking out about turning fifty, too late for a midlife crisis. It’s just another year, and it doesn’t really matter.

But I still like to look back at the changes in my life, to see how things have gone. So let’s do that. What have I done with my forty sixth year on this planet?

Well, last year, I started writing a lot more and faster than ever before. Because of that increase in speed, I’ve written something in the realm of a dozen books this year. First drafts only, but still. I’ve also gone through and polished several of those books, editing them into a high enough quality that I’ve been querying four of them to agents and publishers.

Speaking of publishers, I’ve had two books scheduled for publication this year. One of them, Virtues of Skin, is already out. The other, Infinity Ball, is supposed to come out next month. They are different series, different characters, and different publishers.

I’ve also spent the last year trying to build a brand for myself as an author. I’ve been mostly focused on TikTok, and have gained more than two thousand followers in the last year. It doesn’t amount to much, but that’s still an average of more than five new followers a day. And according to the program, I have more engagement than most creators my size. So I suppose that’s something to be proud of.

I’ve also started posting on Threads, and have about six hundred followers. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t bad, considering I started in January or so. That’s a hundred a month.

I’m making a real go at being an author, and it’s starting to pay off, slowly but surely.

I have this substack, and all of you currently reading it. I know there aren’t many of you, but hopefully you’ll share my work and get other people interested. There has to be a tipping point somewhere, something that will make me a viable investment for agents and publishers. I’m building a reputation, and I’m doing it the best way I know how.

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I am happy in my life, generally speaking. I like the way my life is going, and I like the little family that I’ve built. I may not approve of what is going on in the world at large, but my world is pretty much ideal. It’s a privileged position to be able to have my biggest concern be whether or not my books are going to get read.

I’m healthy enough, I’m happy enough, and I’m productive as hell. Good things have already happened, and I feel like they will continue to happen, even with the much bigger bad things that I’m pretty sure are going to happen at the same time.

Who knows where I’ll be next year? Who knows what the world will look like then? Will the world end before I turn fifty? Will that be a bad thing?

I’m not sure, but I’m looking forward to finding out. So I guess that’s something.

I recently finished a project I had been working on. That whole thing about fighting the patriarchy and learning magic ended up as a novel covering the first semester of the first year of college at Stanton College. I’m probably going to go back and write the next book once I hear from the beta readers. But in the meantime, I wanted to work on something else.

This got me thinking about the process of moving from one project to another. About how I get rid of the voices of characters I have been living with for a while, how I break away from my connections to the stories, and why both of those things are important. And they are important, but for very different reasons.

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It’s important to get rid of the voices of the characters because I want to write something else with someone else at the helm. Most of what I write these days is in first person present, so I really get into the heads of the characters and let them develop as they tell me the story. Which is why I need to get OUT of their heads before I can work on something else. Otherwise, every story will sound like the same character, which would be boring to write and frustrating to read.

As for breaking away the connections, that’s something much more subtle. And it comes from the way a lot of authors look at the projects they write. We have a tendency to consider a novel to be a special thing, like our babies being birthed onto the page and then eventually let out into the world. This is where phrases like “kill your darlings” can come into play. The whole book, all of draft one, is darling to us. We are deeply connected to it, deeply concerned with it, and those two things can cause major problems when we try to move to a further state of the story’s development.

One main reason to break the connection is to help brace you for the criticism that is coming. You need to disconnect so that you don’t interpret every comment or criticism about this story you wrote as an attack on you as a person, or even as a writer. Not everyone is going to like what you write. Not everyone is going to like all the parts that you had in the first draft. There may be suggestions to cut out entire sub plots, to rearrange scenes, to add more explanations - basically to alter your baby to better suit the desires of others. And if you are still connected to the book, you might take these suggestions as attacks, rather than as ways to try to help you improve.

The other reason is that it is almost impossible to properly revise something you are that connected to. When you read the story, you still know what was going on, even the things that weren’t described on the page. You know the secrets that the characters (and readers) don’t, and you know exactly what you meant. This means you’re going to miss plot holes or confusing moments, because you know the answers to the questions that arise. It even works on the surface level: you may subconsciously put in a word that you skipped while you were reading, and ignore errors without even noticing that you are doing it.

So you need to break away from the story before you can work on another project. And before you can have any hope of editing this one. That’s the why. Now the question is how to do it.

The first answer is time. Put the book away for a while. If you’ve printed it, put the copy in a drawer. If it’s on your computer, close the file or the tab you were working in. Whatever it takes, get the story out of your sight. You need to give it time to rest and mature. Your mind will keep rolling over bits and pieces of it on a back burner for a while, and you need those burners to go out before you can come at the story fresh.

How long should you put it away? That depends on you. For myself, I like to put away a project for at least the length of the NEXT project. Maybe the next two, if I’m writing really fast. If you prefer to think in terms of literal time, put it away for at least a month, maybe even two or three.

Why? Because over time, your connections break. You grow and change as a person; it’s a natural part of time passing. You’ll forget some of the hidden facts, you won’t be able to subconsciously fill in errors or missing details. Eventually, you’ll be able to read the story with fresh eyes, and even convince yourself (on some level) that you’re reading something written by someone else. Once you can do THAT, you can edit the project with a proper attention to detail.

Also, you won’t feel any criticism of the project nearly as personally. You’ll be able to listen to what someone says without getting (as) defensive, and you’ll be able to actually consider their ideas. It won’t be your baby anymore. It’ll still be your CHILD, but not your baby. You’ll start to see it as growing up on its own, becoming its own person, to strain the metaphor a bit.

That’s the long term goal. But there’s a short term need to break away that is also important. Remember when I was talking about getting out of the character’s voice? You need to get rid of any remaining influence that character has over how you are perceiving the world of the story. You need to break out of any habits they had as far as how they described people, or what kinds of insults they called people in their heads, or maybe just clear away the preferences that character had, so that someone new can take their place at the helm.

You’re not going to wipe out the character. They just need to step back for a while, until you’re ready for them again. Then you’ll recapture all those details and let them start talking. But for now, it’s time for them to shut up.

How do you do that? How do you break away from a character’s voice? Personally, I write something else. The day after I finish a novel, when it comes time to write, I start writing something as vastly different as I can manage. I try to change the attitude of my narrator, I try to change the genre, I even try to change the scale of the story. But, perhaps most importantly, that day I write with the full intention of never finishing the new start.

I call it a rebound story. Just like some people will see a rebound relationship as a way to get over an ex (or at least identify the things you need to talk about in therapy), I consider one of these stories as a way to get over what I just finished. I don’t need to bring this new story to completion; I just need to get out of the path of the other story.

A lot of the time, I’ll do it with world building. I’ll have the narrator start telling me about the world they live in, maybe give me a history lesson of how we got there (I do that a lot with science fiction). Along the way, I keep a look out for an actual story, but I know that most of what I’m doing is just building the world. And maybe someday, I’ll come back to it. There’s always a chance that a rebound story will become the next project. I just don’t expect it to.

I’ll work on the rebound project for however long it takes for me to feel ready to move on. Sometimes, it’s just one day. Sometimes it’s less than a day - I have started writing a rebound for about half an hour, and then switched over to something new that turned into the new project. Other times, it’s several days, maybe even longer.

I’ll give you an example.

When I finished writing the story about the college senior who suddenly gained access to the memories (and abilities) of all of his past lives, I started writing a story about first contact with aliens. It ended up being almost 40,000 words by the time I was done with it. Probably the longest project I’ve ever abandoned. Maybe I’ll go back to it some day; we’ll see.

But this time around, after finishing the first book about Stanton, I wrote 3000 words about the history of humanity and how it survives after we made the Earth completely uninhabitable. I picked out the four major collections of humans who survived (colonies on Mars, the moon, in the asteroid belt, and on Venus) and watched how they developed into separate nations, as well as how they dealt with one another.

There wasn’t a story that jumped out at me, but maybe I’ll go back there someday and find one.

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In the meantime, I’ve started working on a new project. It’s about a necromancer who accidentally kills herself while trying to bring her cat back to life, and how she ends up turning both of them into animated dead. Not zombies. Animated dead.

We’ll see how that one goes tomorrow. Because there’s always a chance that more than one rebound is necessary.

But if you want to make a career out of writing, you have to be able to do more than just one thing. Or, at least, that used to be the case.

When I was growing up, I was told that no agent would look at a novel I had written if I didn’t already have publications under my name. They could be essays, short stories, or magazine articles, but they needed to exist. I needed to be able to prove to an agent or publisher that I was a good enough writer to be marketable before they would take a chance on me.

I’m honestly not sure if that’s still true. Hell, I’m not sure it was EVER true. But it’s what I was told and what I believed.

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The problem was, I hated writing short stories. They were too restrictive, too gimmicky, and too short for my tastes. I liked to take my time with a story, to explore the world it was set in, to look at the problem from multiple different angles. That was really hard to do with a short story. Sure, you could break the story into multiple scenes, but not all that many. There just isn’t time. You have to get to the point, and get there quickly.

Short stories seem to always be about one thing, one moment. They’re about the character making one discovery, one decision, or going through one situation. Short stories are meant to be read and understood in a single reading session (or so I was told), and there just wasn’t much space for nuance.

I wanted to write novels. I wanted to play around. I wanted to have large casts, multiple locations, and generally a whole lot going on. But I knew that before I could achieve that dream, I had to write some short stories.

So I started writing out any idea that I could come up with that felt like it could focus on a singular moment. I wrote stories about discovering that aliens were real, or about finding an artifact that drove the narrator crazy. I wrote a surprisingly large number of stories about psychotic characters, particularly snipers.

I’ve never been a sniper. I’ve never actually even talked to any, as far as I know. My knowledge of how it works comes entirely from second hand stories and from popular culture. But I was still fascinated by the concept.

You see, the sniper is the only person in the entire military who is trained to kill. A lot of soldiers get told that they’re being trained to kill, but the truth is that they are being trained to consider a threat against their unit to be the same as a threat against themselves. They are trained to react and to protect themselves, because it’s a lot easier, psychologically speaking, to kill someone if it’s in self defense.

But a sniper is never in self defense. They sneak up and take out a target before anyone even knows they’re there. They watch their target carefully, intimately, through a scope. They have to be trained to kill even when there is no direct threat. And that was fascinating to me.

It was also fascinating to me just how dangerous a sniper could be. After all, a sniper is by definition both heavily armed and mentally unstable. Sane people don’t kill other people, at least not when the other person isn’t threatening them in any way.

I wasn’t looking to glorify snipers. In fact, it was kind of the opposite. I thought they were tragic figures, that they basically had to be abused into insanity just to be able to do the job that they were expected to do. And the idea of writing from inside the head of a crazy person appealed to me, for reasons that I’ve never really been able to explain.

I think the other reason I was attracted to this kind of character and this kind of story was that it fit in the definition of a short story so well for me: they were about singular moments, about moral decisions that had massive impacts. They were moments where the character would have to focus, and where a lot could happen in a very short time.

Also, these stories tended to have a lot of unreliable narrators, which is something that I have always loved writing. So I wrote about snipers. One story was about a sniper at the beach at Normandy. It was from the perspective of a German sniper, casually committing war crimes with complete emotional attachment. That one ended with the narrator getting killed by an equally dispassionate counter sniper.

Another one, which I am presenting below, was more about the moment of choosing, about the desire to get out of the lifestyle. It was about the moral weight of the decision, and how someone might be able to justify the action to themselves.

I don’t know when I wrote this story. I think it was about twenty years ago. I just read it, and it’s not bad. A little bit disturbing, but I can at least take comfort in knowing that the weirdo who wrote it grew up to be me, and I’ve never done anything violent or awful to other people. I’ve never lost my mind (I don’t think), but I imagined what it might be like, and this was the result.

**Side note: I think it’s really interesting that the thoughts of the character are in italics but the thoughts of his imaginary friend are not. Really interesting way to show who is really in control. I have no idea if that was my intent when I wrote it, but it’s a cool thing to notice.

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Quitting

It’s been three days since the drop off. That’s three days of hiking, three days of hiding, three days of living in this hell of a jungle. You could have made this decision sooner, you know. You could have saved us all that effort. Hell, we could have been collecting a pension in some tropical resort by now. You’ve done what you signed up to do. After twenty-five, it became voluntary, remember? You can quit any time. Why do you want to quit now?

I think I’m going crazy.

Why do you think you’re going crazy?

I’m talking to myself.

So what? A lot of people talk to themselves. It’s perfectly normal. If everyone who ever talked to himself was locked up, there’d be no traffic to drive anyone crazy in the first place.

Other people don’t talk back.

How do you know? Have you ever been other people?

I talk to myself more than I talk to other people.

What do you expect? Half the people you ever see you look at through a scope.

Yeah. That’s the problem.

That’s why you want to quit? To have a social life? I thought we decided that we didn’t care about that crap.

We don’t. I mean, I don’t. Damn it, now you’ve got me doing it.

Hey, you’ve only yourself to blame. You did invent me, after all.

That’s it. I’m quitting. I’m not doing this anymore. While I still have some semblance of sanity, I have to get out. I can’t let it wait until I think I’m okay. If I wait that long, I’ll be way gone, beyond help.

So you’re quitting, just like that?

Just like that.

So why the hell did we trudge through the jungle? Why did we sleep in a tree, waking up at every noise? Why have we been inching along for the last three hours, trying to get this guy into our site without being spotted? Damn it. That’s your problem. You keep going after stress. That’s why you’re cracking.

Look at that. Look at my hand. It’s shaking. Do you see it? My hand is shaking. That isn’t normal. That means I’ve lost the nerve. I have to stop. I can’t do this anymore.

Okay, fine. You want to quit, you can quit. But we did come out all this way. He’s right there in the sites now. Look back through. See him? You’re following him, just like you always do. You’re getting to know him. Are you sure you don’t want to at least finish this job before you quit? It would really suck to have that on your record.

Screw my record. My record is fine, even with that kind of black mark at the end.

Don’t you want to go out with a bang?

No, I don’t. That’s the point! I don’t want any bangs. I don’t want to give it a shot. I don’t want to kill time, or anything else. I just want to stop. Cease. Desist. All that good stuff.

But you really want to stop now, with that guy just sitting there? Didn’t you read the file?

Of course I read the file. You know the file because I know the file. You’re a figment of my imagination, remember?

You sure it’s not the other way around?

What?

Nothing. So you read the file. You know what kind of scum this guy is. Do you really think he’d do the same for you? I mean honestly, if this guy found you, even if you threw away your gun and surrendered at the first sign they had spotted you, do you think he would let you live? You’re going to let him go, let him live his life. But do you think he’d do the same for you? No way, not a chance. He’d shoot you faster than you could say his name. If you could pronounce it, that is.

Doesn’t matter.

Of course it matters. What if you’re spotted?

How would he spot me? I’ve slipped away before, dozens of times. You know that. And those times, I fired the shot. Why wouldn’t I be able to slip away without firing? He wouldn’t even know to look for me.

You’re wasting time. Every second you lay here arguing with me is another second the sun could glint off of that scope of yours. Eventually, he will see the glare, and he will guess what it was. Next thing you know, we’re under artillery fire. Why don’t you just pull the trigger? You can stop after this one. Why not stop after this one?

First of all, the sun is not going to reflect. You know that. We have glare reducer on it, it’s shaded from above, and we’re in the forest, under a tree, in the complete shade. And, as if that wasn’t enough, it’s a cloudy day. There’s no sun to reflect off of anything. Don’t try to convince me that we’re not safe here. We could—I could slip back off this hill, retrace my steps, and be out of here in less than a week. I’ll deal with the pressures and problems after that. One step at a time.

You know they’re going to chew you out. They’ll ask the same questions I’m asking. Why not just one more? Why quit now? You had him in your sites, but you let him go. Why? Are you a traitor? Your record isn’t going to help, you know. They’ll burn you at the stake. Or they’ll discharge you. Do you really think you could survive even five minutes out in the real world?

I’ll manage.

You’ll manage? Come on, you haven’t held a conversation longer than three minutes long in almost half a decade with anyone but me. The only time you hear another human voice is during your briefings and debriefings. You couldn’t handle going to a supermarket and talking to people. You’ve forgotten how. And what are you going to do when someone pisses you off? You can’t just go kill someone anymore, you know. They send you to jail for that sort of thing.

Look, I just don’t want to do this anymore.

Fine, don’t do it anymore. I’m not trying to convince you that you shouldn’t quit. Just do this last one. You don’t want to have those superiors pissed at you. You want them happy. This is a big one for you, and a big one for them. They’ll be happy, and you’ll get whatever you want. Wouldn’t it be better to be rich? Wouldn’t it be better to be able to lounge on the beach and slowly ease yourself back into the real world?

You’re just saying that because you know that when I do get myself back in the world, when I am in control again, and when I am sane, you’ll disappear. When I stop hearing voices, you cease to exist. You’re just trying to make that wait as long as possible.

Well, what’s wrong with self-preservation? Granted, you’ve never really had an instinct for it, but that doesn’t mean your imaginary friend can’t. Besides, I’m not telling you something that will keep me around longer. I’m telling you to kill me. You go out into the real world without all the little perks, and I’ll never go away. I won’t get a chance to. You’ll be out of your goddamn mind. You’ll be taking a dump on the salad bar at Wendy’s. You’ll be climbing trees, waving your arms and shouting reasons why you should be president. For Christ’s sake, you really think you’d get sane faster without the perks? Not a chance, pal. Not a chance. You want to get sane; you play their game.

I don’t want to play anymore. I don’t want to kill.

You don’t have to. You can stop. You never have to kill anyone ever again. Just this one more. That’s it. You can quit. After this one.

I don’t want to kill this one, either.

Oh, come on. Look at him. Of course you want to kill him. He’s got a bad tailor, for one thing. But if lacking a sense of fashion weren’t reason enough – and in the past, I remind you, it has been – there are tons of other reasons to kill this prick.

Like what?

Well, look at him. You never liked guys who comb their hair over. And he’s got millions of dollars in drug money, but he can’t seem to afford a dentist. And what’s with that stupid mustache anyway? He looks like some black and white movie villain. Shouldn’t he be off tying some woman to train tracks about now? Come on, the guy’s a prick. Just shoot him. Put him out of your misery.

I don’t want to kill him.

He wants to kill you, you know. If he had even the slightest inkling we were here, he’d send his considerably large force to level this section of the forest. We’d become part of the scenery. You don’t want that. So just pull the trigger.

I can’t.

Sure you can. Look, the crosshair is right over his head. You’ve done this before. So many times before. Feels natural, right? Just like breathing. You’re breathing, he’s breathing. He’s smoking those huge obnoxious cigars. The guy’s just a reject from a bad movie. Shoot him. Pull the trigger. Squeeze. It’s that simple.

I don’t want to.

Yes you do. Think about it. Aside from the fact that I do, and I’m just a part of you, you know you want to do it. The guy sells drugs. Don’t you want to kill him for that?

I don’t—

Come on, now would be the perfect time. He’s standing over the cocaine. Come one, pull the trigger. Let’s splatter his brain against the nice, pure, white cocaine. It’ll be like shooting a cat in winter. Remember when we used to do that? Come on, it’ll be fun, like old times.

I just want to stop.

You can stop. After this one. One more time, that’s all I ask. Just pull the trigger. You’re following him with the scope. Come on, do it.

I won’t.

Yes you will. If you weren’t going to, you would have stopped following him by now. You’re going to do it. You were trained to do it. You’re good at it. And, be honest, you like it.

No, I don’t.

Yes you do. You can’t lie to me. I’m your imaginary friend. I know what you’re thinking. Shoot him. You know you want to.

No.

Yes.

No.

Do it.

I’m not sure.

You don’t have to be. Just do it. I’ll be sure for both of us.

Really?

Yes.

And I can quit?

Sure can. One more shot, and you can quit. Just squeeze.

Last one?

If you like. The last one. Pull the trigger and let’s get to the meet. Come on. Pull it.

Promise?

Yes.

Really?

Yes!

But—

Just shoot! Fire! Pull the trigger! Squeeze. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Okay, fine! Fine, I’ll do it. Just shut up, will you?

Do it. Now.

There! Happy? I shot him. Brains all over the place. Do you see?

I see. Beautiful.

They’re all running around, trying to figure out where the shot came from. They look like ants.

Yes they do.

Insignificant ants, afraid. Of me.

Terrified of you, who have the power over life and death. The god who strikes from a mile away. The god who controls them. He who can kill a thing, controls a thing.

They are scared of me, aren’t they? They’re looking around, but they can’t find me. They never can. They never will. It’s funny to watch them try.

Isn’t it though?

God I love our work.

Still want to quit?

Hell no.

You never do.

How many times have we had this conversation?

Dozens, I think. How long have we been doing this?

One night, relatively recently, I woke up from a dream with a tagline in my head. That tagline was the same as the title of this post: Learn sorcery, fight the patriarchy. I don’t remember anything about the dream or where this line came from. I just knew it was there, and it was important.

So I started writing. Not the story, not right away. First I took a few days to free write, to let my mind meander as I mulled over the idea and decided what I wanted the story to be, and what I didn’t want it to be.

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There was a lot of immediate potential that jumped to mind. I could write a new Harry Potter, one that was more aligned with the ideals I share. Call it woke, call it liberal, call it trans inclusive - whatever. I could write it and show the world that you can have magic without being a terf, an anti semite, a racist, and all the other horrible things that Rowling has eagerly established her identity around.

But I didn’t want that. I felt like doing that was a losing battle. In the best of all possible worlds, my work would only exist in the sense that it was contradicting her. Without intending to, I’d actually be platforming her views even as I explicitly disagreed with them.

Besides, I didn’t want to write about children.

My next thought was that I would have the tagline be essentially a motto for a club at a school, something that inspired the students to think differently and evolve their minds. Maybe something akin to Dead Poet’s Society. The school administration could be the bad guy, representing the patriarchy, and I could write about how the students worked to subvert and escape its influence.

But that felt like a losing proposition, too. Because I know that, whether I show it on the page or not, the system wouldn’t change just because a couple of rich and entitled students learned a lesson. And I didn’t want the focus to be a fight between students and faculty.

So I tossed out that thought, too. I instead went with a different thought. What if the administration was part of the fight? What if they were actively helping? What if they were prodding the students in this direction openly? What if the school was trying to create a better system, or run a better system, or at least help people open their minds to the possibility of a better system?

And, most importantly, how did magic come into play?

Magic can do a lot of things in a story. It handles a lot more heavy lifting than we sometimes give it credit for. It can be a metaphor for freedom, for sexuality, for corruption, or for really anything else. It can be a spiritual force, or a way to think about religion. For this idea, I need the magic to be an integral part. I need it to connect. The tag line wasn’t two separate thoughts, but one continuous statement. Learn sorcery, fight the patriarchy. So learn sorcery in order to fight the patriarchy. Or learn sorcery as a way of fighting the patriarchy.

Either way, it meant that magic and patriarchy were deeply connected and mutually exclusive.

I liked that idea. What if the reason they were mutually exclusive was because of something that the patriarchy does making magic impossible. Blocking magic can be a metaphor, too.

I knew I didn’t want to go the reversal route; I didn’t want the answer to be that women can do magic and men can’t. Doing that would be like saying that only women can escape the patriarchy (aka, the system), and ignoring the fact that the system is bad for men, too. So I had to dig deeper.

Why is the system bad for everyone inside it? Well, my personal experience is with growing up male, so I knew that would be something I could draw on. And I knew pretty quickly what made the system so bad for me. Patriarchy promotes toxic masculinity. And it does this by telling boys from a VERY young age that they’re not allowed to show or even feel emotions the same way girls can. They have to be logical, stoic, and strong. They’re not allowed to be sensitive.

Well, my mother found it very important that I stay sensitive, and she worked really hard to keep me on a path that would lead me to be a healthier person who understood that equality matters way more than gender does. I remember times when she specifically told me not to let go of the sensitivity, that it would be important some day, even though it made things harder when I was still young. She warned me that people would try to teach me to ignore my emotions, and that I had to not let them.

So, back to magic. What if the reason people can’t use magic is that they lack the connections they once had? Connections with themselves and their emotions, connections with their community, and connections with their chosen families. As soon as I thought of that, a million examples came to mind of how the patriarchy actively tries to prevent those connections from forming at all, and tries to break them when they do. The notion of the self-made person, the rugged individualist, the human island. The way technology separates us so much more than it brings us together. The way our whole community structure is set up, with the system trying to make us afraid of or annoyed by our neighbors.

I know things didn’t used to be this way. And I know that humans are social animals. I know that we want, crave, and need connections in order to be healthy and happy. So what if it was a little bit more than that? What if those connections were needed in order to be able to perceive and use magic?

And that was it. That was how learning sorcery could fight the patriarchy. Now, I had more than just a basic idea. I had an end goal for the group I was going to be looking at. I had a point to the schooling, a purpose for the characters, a crusade of sorts for them to join.

Learn sorcery. Fight the patriarchy.

Now I was back to the idea of a school as the setting for the story. It would be a school where people are taught magic. Or, rather, taught how to connect to the magic, and then trained how to use it. Because magic can’t be easy. It needs to take work. It needs to be a challenge to get.

I knew that I needed my characters to be from the regular world, from inside the system. Are there people being born in the system that allows for magic? Sure. But they aren’t interesting, at least not for the tag line. The interesting stories would be about the people who grew up inside the patriarchy and then were freed from their shackles and given power. What would they do with that power? How would they fight the patriarchy?

Again, I didn’t want to write about children. And it’s hard for younger kids to wrap their minds around the idea that the entire culture they were born into is controlling them, is installing biases and falsehoods at the very core of who they are. They couldn’t do the work necessary. But maybe, just maybe, older kids could. College kids. People who were old enough to have grown up inside the system, but still open minded enough to be able to break free of it.

And so, Stanton College was born. Stanton is a smallish college that has a student body of 10,000. It includes several graduate programs, and it operates under a vastly different educational system. It does provide a useful education, and its degrees are valuable even in the normal world, but the school also spends a lot of time and energy teaching the students about magic.

I created my characters, made a few decisions about how magic would work, and designed a villain who was objectively correct in her thinking, but who was willing to do things that were morally reprehensible in order to reach a goal. A zealot, a fanatic, but not a psychopath. Not someone who wants to kill for killing’s sake, or who is just mustache twirling evil, but someone that the audience (and the characters) might have to wonder if maybe she’s not the villain at all.

Anyway, I’m about 70,000 words in to the story at this point, and keep adding more every day. If this post was interesting to you, let me know. I’m happy to tell you more about the world, the story, the characters, or anything else you want to know.

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(For those following along, you can read the prologue I wrote for this story in the post “the problem with prologues”)

I’ve read a lot of these books. I used to collect them. Some of them are really good, like Stephen King’s On Writing, which is that partially memoir style but also has a lot of really good advice, interesting thoughts, and even an example of how he moves from a first draft to a final product. In fact, the movie 1408 is actually based on a short story he wrote for that book to demonstrate the editing process.

Others are not as good, and come off as just bragging about how successful the writer was, going through their works to show off their cleverness and stroke their own egos. I’ve read those as well.

And, of course, I’ve gotten my own urge to write them. I may not have huge world-spanning success, but I’ve got a little. And I have a lot of experience with writing, and with teaching.

I started writing in 1986, at the tender age of 6 years old. That story, thankfully, is long gone. But there have been a lot of stories since then, and some of them have seen the light of day. I’ve published books with FIVE different indie publishers, covering several genres and even styles. I’ve published academic work (which isn’t really that hard; pretty much every academic does this), articles for websites, and even books for gaming. So why shouldn’t I write a book on how to write?

Spoiler alert: I have. A couple of times, actually. But before I get to that, let me explain the subtitle and why I have difficulty providing this kind of advice.

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I started teaching people how to write in a professional setting when I was in graduate school in 2002. Mostly that was about academic papers, though. I taught people how to come up with good arguments, how to defend them, and how to explain them as clearly as possible. I taught students how to do research and how to integrate that research into a paper. I taught them a little bit about prose, but mostly as a step towards writing about more specific topics and issues for their academic papers. I have no problem giving advice for that sort of thing. I have a PhD, and about fifteen years of experience. If I had been bad at it, someone would have told me. They would have stopped hiring me, or they might even have fired me. That never happened. In fact, I got a lot of praise for how well I taught from students and other professors alike.

And that, really, is the rub. I haven’t gotten that kind of feedback about my more creative writing endeavors. I haven’t gotten many people saying that what I produce is any good, and I’ve gotten very few people who have given me feedback about what I taught them for creative writing. This isn’t a complaint; it’s just not really the way that sort of thing is structured. I never taught creative writing in a formal class setting, so of course I never got the same kind of formal feedback.

Other than that, my main reason for hesitating to give advice is that I feel pretentious and like my advice is unearned. Nothing I’ve written has been hugely successful. And yet, when I look back up a few paragraphs and see how much I’ve written, and how much has been selected as at least good enough to merit publication, I have to wonder if maybe there’s something else holding me back.

Or, perhaps more accurately, if there’s something else that prevents me from being proud of the times that I did actually write a book on a writing. Let’s talk about those.

First up, there was some sneaky writing advice hidden in the pages of The Vegas Letters. The advice isn’t hidden WELL; at one point, one of the characters literally gives a talk about how to write effective dialogue. It’s pretty out in the open. But there is also a lot of conversation about what writing is really saying, about hidden nuance and interpretation, and about what it really means when someone says to “write what you know.”

The second, more obvious, version happened in The Torture of Autumn. The main character, Autumn Masters, is hired to help someone else write a novel. So she ends up giving him a lot of instruction on how to do that. How to come up with plots, how to create characters, how to mercilessly edit, all that kind of stuff. I like that book because it’s both a book of advice for writing and a story in and of itself. Primarily, though, it’s a fiction novel.

Which brings me to attempt number three, a book that I wrote around September or October of 2025, and which I have had a beta reader look through and offer great advice about. That one is called “Questions to Build a Better World.” It’s a book that is purely about writing. Specifically, about world building.

It started during a live session I did on TikTok. I was talking about genre, and about how every genre has its own set of rules and its own set of decisions that have to be made whenever you write in that genre. That led to wondering what those decisions might be, which in turn led me to the idea of a book of questions.

The book goes through every genre of speculative fiction I could find or think of. All the various subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. I laid them out in a document, then went through each one of them and set up questions that might help make writers figure out the little details that make a world feel more real and more lived in.

The reason I wrote it has to do with a bit of a masochistic habit that I (and, I’m sure, a lot of other writers) have, in that sometimes I will google myself and look at every review that has ever been written about my writing. I will read comments on articles, reviews on book sites, interviews that I’ve done, really anything where people are talking about my writing. I described this habit as masochistic because it always drives home how few actual reviews there are, which makes me feel bad about myself. It’s really nice to read a review that says good things, but it’s hard to handle it when there’s only one or two after several years.

But I digress.

When I indulged in this habit while thinking about the discussion during my live stream, I noticed a trend in several of the reviews. A lot of people were talking about how my world building was their favorite part, how it felt like the characters were in an exciting and living world that they, the readers, wanted to explore more.

It wasn’t always entirely positive. Some people apparently think I build world better than I create characters or develop plots, saying that the world was better than the story. Fair, but hurtful.

Anyway, it turns out that I actually know a lot about how to build worlds, no matter the genre. I know how to make it feel lived in, how to make it feel consistent and exciting. It’s something that I’m good at, and I’d gotten a lot of feedback about being good at it. So I finally felt justified to write about it.

I’ll show you what I mean. Here’s a brief sample of the book, a section that is for general use, meaning questions that should be asked no matter what genre you’re writing in. Hopefully, you’ll find this interesting and helpful no matter what you write…

Questions about the world

I’m adding this section here at the beginning for two main reasons. First, because it doesn’t feel like it really fits anywhere else; these questions are things that you might want to ask yourself about the world regardless of the genre or sub-genre you’re writing in. And second, so you get an idea of what the rest of the book is going to look like. Consider this practice.

Some of these questions aren’t going to be that helpful. The more closely mapped the world you’re building is to the world we all live in, the fewer of these will come up. But when you start to diverge from reality more and more, these topics become incredibly important. Having this sort of detail in your head will help you make the world feel more real, more alive, and (most importantly) more lived-in.

Economy:

What is the basic mode of economy in your world? How do people exchange things for other things, and what medium does that exchange happen in? There are plenty of options to choose from. Do you barter? Is it all trade of one good for another? Is there some kind of currency?

• Barter: What sorts of things are considered most valuable? How does someone show that something is valuable? Is everything considered in terms of how many cows it would be worth?

• Trade: How do people feel about trade? Does everyone do it, or do you need a license?

• Haggling: Are prices set in stone, or is there wiggle room? How does the world respond to those who want to haggle? How do people treat those who don’t want to haggle?

• Money: Is the money something intrinsically valuable (gold, silver, etc) or just representational (bills, coins, letters of credit)?

• Scale of trade: What do people trade? Are trades primarily for big items (cattle, land, etc) or small items (a single meal, an item of jewelry, etc).

• Wealth Disparity: How far apart are the haves and the have-nots? How much wealthier is the richest person than the poorest? Is there a floor supporting people at or above subsistence level?

• Taxes: Who pays for social programs? What social programs are there? How do people feel about paying taxes?
  
  

People:

Who lives in your world? Is everyone human? If not, what else is there? How does the law apply to and include people?

• Cultures: Even if everyone in your world is human, they will come from different cultures. What’s the dominant culture? Why are they dominant? How do they treat people from other cultures?

• Class: How strictly defined are social classes? How easy or difficult is it to move from one class to another? How easy or difficult is it for one class to be in the same space as another?

• Social mobility: Does the culture you were brought up in have an impact on your options in life? Can someone change their socio-economic status? How difficult is it to do that?

• Others: If there are more than just humans, what are there? And what do you call them? Are they known as ‘races’ or ‘heritages’ or ‘species’ or ‘lineage’ or some other term entirely?

• Interactions: How do members of the different groups treat one another? Do they intermingle, or are some of them isolationist/elitist? Does one group have power given just based on the accident of birth?

• Citizenship (appearance): Is everyone an equal citizen under the law? Do some groups have rights that others don’t? Are some groups more or less protected? How does one gain (or lose) citizenship?

• Citizenship (reality): How does it REALLY work? Even if the law says everyone is equal, is there a group that is MORE equal than others? Which group has what privilege?

Food:

Everyone has to eat. When that time comes, what’s it like? More importantly, how does it get onto people’s plates? Is there farming? Hunting? Fishing? Is food created by some machine/magic? How secure is the food? How about water?

• Scarcity: Does everyone get enough food? Who doesn’t get enough food? Why not?

• Focus: What’s more important: nutrition or taste? How much attention is paid to flavor? Is the food spicy or bland? When someone pays for better food, what’s different?

• Water quality: Is the water clean? Is it filtered? How is that done/maintained?

• Accessibility: Do people have food in their homes, or do they have to go somewhere to get it? Is there plumbing? Does water come out of the sink?

• Variety: What kinds of things do they eat? How often is meat on the menu? Do they eat the same thing every day? What about drinks? Are there more options than water? Do people enjoy food?

• Frequency: How often do people eat? Is it three square meals a day, five small meals, or two big ones? How hungry are people expected to get?

General life:

What is life like for the average person in the world? How much time do they spend working? What do they do for fun? The more you consider the things people do, how much free time they may have, the more alive your world will feel.

• Work/life balance: How long is the work week? Are there weekends? How many days in a week does someone work, and for how long each day?

• Mealtime: Is mealtime an occasion, or just maintenance? Do people get 30 minutes to shove food down their throats, or do they take 2 hour long lunches? Do people eat alone, or is it a group social affair?

• Relaxation: What do people do to relax and recover?

• Hobbies: How do people spend their time when no one is telling them what to do? Are there hobbies that are dangerous in the sense of people judging you for doing them? Are there any that are physically dangerous?

• Inebriation: Is there booze? How does society treat people who drink? How do they treat people who don’t drink? What drugs are socially acceptable, and to what level? (For example, in our world cigarettes are more acceptable than marijuana, but not as acceptable as alcohol)

• Dating/relationships: How many partners is too many for a ‘normal’ person? What age do people start dating? Is dating always a step towards marriage? Is marriage even a thing?

• Sexuality: What sexualities are most common? What sexuality is considered to be the ‘default’? Which ones, if any, are taboo?

• Transportation: How do people get from one place to another? Are there other options besides walking? How common are those options? Do rich people have different methods of transportation? Is there public transit?

Again, you don’t have to have an answer for every single one of these questions. And the closer your world is to the real world, the more of these questions will already have answers. But when you focus on a detail that is commonplace for the characters but unusual to the reader, it really helps create immersion and makes your world feel more real and more accessible. And it allows you to both make the character seem more real and make the world feel more real at the same time whenever you show the character taking care of the basic everyday requirements (like eating, drinking, working, or traveling).

That all said, let’s move on to the genres.

A lot of people these days are opposed to prologues. They want the story to get started right away, and don’t want to have some other, seemingly unconnected, scene lingering in the back of their head while they’re trying to get into the story itself. They see prologues as being too much infodumping and too much wasted attachment, especially if there are characters in the prologue that aren’t in the main story.

And honestly, I get it. I understand that desire to just get to the fucking monkey, to quote the Australian band Tripod. I know that I’ve had this same problem when reading a draft for developmental editing. Having a prologue, even a short one, can kill the pacing of the book right at the beginning, when the pacing is most important.

If someone starts a book with an action scene, getting me invested in the characters and whether or not they will survive, along with what the consequences of their actions might be, and then the next chapter just cuts to ten, twenty, or a hundred years later, I feel cheated. I feel like I’ve wasted my time and invested in something that didn’t matter. It can really turn me off from the rest of the book.

But that doesn’t mean that prologues are always bad. Sometimes, having that lingering scene that doesn’t seem to connect to anything can be a great source of tension.

Consider, for example, a prologue where we are introduced to a character who swiftly and brutally murders someone before setting up a bunch of surveillance equipment in their house, allowing them to spy on the neighbors across the street. Then the next chapter picks up with the seemingly ordinary lives of those neighbors. Nothing bad has happened to them yet, but as the reader, you KNOW something nefarious is going on.

Sometimes, a prologue is the best way to introduce the villain, or to tell the audience about something important that will be influencing the entire story.

And that’s the difference. It’s not a scene that just floats in the background, waiting to be assigned relevance at some point in the hopefully near future. It’s not something that will only become important in three hundred pages, or in another book later in the series. It’s a scene that impacts everything from the very beginning. Something that the readers know is in the background, even though the characters are blissfully unaware.

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I have recently started working on a story about how the patriarchy has cut humanity off from magic, and about the people trying to help reverse that. But I didn’t want the characters to know that magic existed right away. I wanted them to just be normal people, unaware of what was really going on. In fact, the first time magic was actually mentioned in the text was almost 25k words into the story.

But I was worried that the story before that point would come off as boring if there wasn’t something to nag at the readers, some promise of what was coming, some hint that magic would eventually come to the forefront. So I knew I needed a prologue.

However, I didn’t want a prologue that was just basically a promise to the reader that magic existed. I didn’t want to do a primer on the types of magic or on the amount of magic that will be available. I wanted something more, something dangerous. I didn’t want to give away the whole story, and I didn’t want to just dump exposition. Doing that, I knew, would just slow the story down even more. It would kill the pacing before the pacing was able to even get started.

So I needed another purpose for the prologue. I needed it to do double duty, or even triple duty, if I could. Which led me to the villain. I could use the prologue to introduce the villain, to show how dangerous they could be, and to let the reader know that there was magic, and that the villain had it. And, even more so, I was able to present the villain in such a way that she would be, if not quite correct, at least not entirely wrong, either. I wanted a complex villain who could be seen as a hero in the right light. I wanted to show that it was more than magic that made them dangerous. It was their intelligence, their rhetoric, their passion, and their willingness to sacrifice everything, including themselves, to achieve their goals. And then I wanted to make sure that the goal was one that everyone, from the reader to the characters, would think might actually be worth allowing the villain to win.

Sometimes, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. And sometimes, the way to make that happen is to have your end goals be something that is actually worthy, something that would unquestionably be a good thing. It’s just the methods that are bad. Only… are they really?

That was the feeling I wanted to create, and that’s why I wrote this as the prologue. It’s an open letter to the magical community, presented here for your enjoyment:

Prologue: A public letter

Doing things slowly serves the oppressor. We have spend centuries moving slowly, trying to bring the world back to unity, back to the state of balance. We have made progress, certainly. But that progress is too slow. Every step forward we take, they push us back. They adapt to the change, making it a part of the system, and undo all actual movement towards a better world. They ramp up their acts of domination and destruction, and we are expected to just allow that to happen, to accept the torture and horrors inflicted upon us in the name of progress.

The world is reaching a tipping point. The system as it stands is making it ever more clear that they care more about profit and power than they do about the future. They are greedy men gorging on a small supply of food, long after they have eaten their fill. They continue to stuff their faces rather than allow the throngs of hungry masses to have a chance to eat anything but their scraps.

Why are we allowing this? Why do we let them destroy our planet? The system is not indestructible, only entrenched. Our numbers are small, but they grow every year, and there are enough of us to make a difference. Having the ability, the power, to make a change and yet refusing to do so is siding with the oppressor. It is a tacit acceptance of the status quo.

There is no neutrality. Either you support the system that is destroying the world or you oppose it. And I, for one, stand strongly in opposition.

For too long, the patriarchy has raped not only the women who hold society together, but the planet itself. For too long, the patriarchy has held people in contempt, throwing them the barest scraps while telling them that they, too, can become successful if they only pull themselves up by their boot straps.

Pulling yourself up by your boot straps is impossible. It was presented originally as a joke, a sarcastic indictment of the system. But even that has been perverted, as those at the top try to tell everyone that it is a viable option, all the while snickering at the stupidity of the masses as they continue to carve up the world to suit their endless greed.

They deny science. They deny the effect they are having on the planet, as though simply insisting that something isn’t happening is enough to stop it. We cannot continue on this trajectory. The patriarchy is sending our species over a cliff, fully intent on telling us that if we just work harder, if we just peddle faster, all will be well.

The world is waking up. People are starting to see that the empty promises made by the elite aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. People are seeing that patriarchy is a cage, one where the jailers and guards are just prisoners in different costumes. The young are starting to see that they are standing on the edge of a cliff, and are starting, finally, to push back.

Yet we stand by and do nothing.

We, who actually have the power to make a difference. We, who can manipulate the strands of magic in the world. We, who can give the people a fighting chance. We, who can inspire them to rise up.

We stand by and do nothing. That only serves the patriarchy. It only makes things worse. Our promise of progress is becoming as empty as their promise of opportunity. The world is at the edge of a cliff, and it is time we helped them push back.

If we don’t use our power for the greater good, then we are villains in our own right. If we don’t make every effort to save lives and improve society, then what good is having the power in the first place?

You preach peace, you preach nonviolence. But peace only works if both sides agree. And they clearly do not. They are engaging in violence at every level, every moment. They promote wars with no end, they distract the masses with terror and hatred. They engage in the most awful acts imaginable, and then they find new ways to be even more depraved. You hold up your hands and say that violence is not the answer. You are just supporting the patriarchy. You are giving them permission to continue to rape us, to continue to stomp on our faces, to continue to enforce the will of the few with the violence of their hoarded resources.

No more. I will not allow us to tacitly accept our destruction. Not when we can do something about it. Not when we can succeed.

We know that it is possible. When the pandemic swept the world, we saw with our own eyes how quickly the planet begins to heal herself.

The water is boiling, and it is past time for us to help the frog escape the water.

You call me a monster. You say that the enchanted strain was going too far, that it was too horrific, too deadly. You say that releasing something that will kill millions without discrimination is an act of unmitigated evil. But is it? Or is it an act of triage, a way of showing the world that they have to change, that it is almost too late? Is it not better for some to die than for all of us?

You are so obsessed with scale. You see the possibility of ten million deaths as unacceptable, and yet you allow the system to continue. The system that kills millions every year, the system that traumatizes children for the benefit of the few.

You tell me to be patient. Your plan is working. Progress is happening. Another century, maybe two, and you will achieve the same goal without the tragedy. How many more will suffer needlessly during those centuries? How many more women will be assaulted, raped, murdered? How many more rights will we have to give up during that time? How many hundreds of millions will die while you tell us all to ‘just be patient’?

No. I am not a monster. I am not evil. I am not a psychopath. Every accusation is an admission. You are the ones who allow this to continue. You are the ones who allow the patriarchy to die its slow death instead of euthanizing it all at once. You allow for deaths well beyond any acceptable scale, and you do it because you don’t want to take the responsibility on yourself.

You say it is not your fault. You say that those deaths are at the feet of the patriarchy. For that, I call you cowards. You are complicit. Those deaths are on you, that blood has soaked your hands for so long that you forget they were not always red. You bow down to the patriarchy even while whispering about a new system, a better system. You whisper about it so that your masters can’t hear you.

No more. The time for whispers is past. Now is the time for action. Now is the time for magic to come back to the world. Violently, because violence is the only language they understand.

This is not a threat. It is not a warning. This is a statement of fact. It is an invitation to stand up and be on the right side of history.

We will no longer accept your collusion with our oppressors. We will act.

- Alice Morgan

For this reason, a lot of authors would use multiple pen names if they wanted to write in other genres. Want to write horror? Go ahead and be Stephen King. But if you want something more in the sci fi realm, you have to be Richard Bachman. You can write your urban fantasy fae detective series as Seanan McGuire, but for sci-fi, it needs to be Mira Grant. And so on.

Personally, I don’t like this method at all. I can see how it might be useful when someone has already reached a level of fame and name recognition that they need to go by JD Robb to avoid the expectations of Nora Roberts, but it’s a terrible strategy for someone still grinding away and trying to become a well known name.

The reason for this is the way the writing industry has changed over the past twenty or so years. So much more of the marketing has fallen onto the shoulders of authors in that time. And, with the way social media has become so important, those authors need to establish themselves as a real person in order to allow readers to feel connected to them.

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In my own experience, I’ve published a lot of different genres. I’ve written plenty of Urban Fantasy; in fact, it’s my primary genre. So you can find those books pretty easily. And maybe there’s no reason to be concerned when I drifted briefly into supernatural romance for Bucking the Alphas and Love at First Bite.

But I also wrote two LitRPG novels (Playing Proxy and A World of My Own Making). Those are not connected to Urban Fantasy in any way. They’re barely connected to each other (one is cyberpunk, the other high fantasy). And I’ve written a thriller (Thief of Hearts) and a generic Literature book (Torture of Autumn). Plus there are a bunch of gaming books and a romance novel (The Vegas Letters).

And I’m hoping to break into horror (The House S Horn Built), Science Fiction, and books on writing.

There just isn’t enough time in the day for me to create social media profiles for the number of pseudonyms I’d need to have a different name for each genre. I have to do it all with just one name, and hope that any readers who start to follow me will be smart enough to know that not every book is going to be the same. Which I don’t think is a big ask. People are way smarter than they are generally given credit for.

All of that is genre hopping. But there’s another way to play with genre that a lot of people don’t really think about. And that is genre blending. That’s when you take two or more genres that generally don’t overlap, and use tropes and ideas from all of them to make something brand new.

Some of these experiments end up being very popular. Like Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, or Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, or even Slaughterhouse V for the Kurt Vonnegut fans.

The trick, to most of these, is that the genres that are combined resonate with one another, forming something new.

For myself, whenever I want to do an experiment with something like this, I try to find genres that DON’T match, that seem like they should be contradictory. Because that helps me find out ways to make them resonate, creating something new and exciting.

I’ve done this with some of the books I mentioned above, but never so directly as what I like to call the Nano Challenges. For a few years, I would ask people to name random genres for me to combine, and then use those suggestions to inspire a new novel for National Novel Writing Month, back before it became a platform for predators and AI.

Some of the combinations were more successful than others. My favorite was the American Detective/Noir style genre combined with High Fantasy. A hard boiled detective who walked the gritty streets, only the streets were paved with cobblestone rather than asphalt. No one had guns, but everyone had magic, swords, and crossbows.

I also rather enjoyed the LGBT romance combined with cyberpunk and horror, and the religious philosophy action urban fantasy. And, of course, most of my Urban Fantasy stories are also Mysteries.

It’s amazing how much inspiration you can get from trying to combine ideas that don’t look like they belong together. It reminds me of when I was in college and taking a creative writing class. Every time the professor told us that something couldn’t be done, I would do it. One day, he even said “You can’t write a depressing limerick. Now, I know, Joe is now going to do exactly that, but my point still stands.”

I did, by the way. It was terrible. Be grateful I don’t remember enough of it to show it to you.

And try to find inspiration wherever you can, even if it looks like it won’t work at first.

The biggest trouble with writing a memoir is feeling like my life hasn’t really been memoir-worthy. I’m not famous, after all. What gives me the right to expect people to be the least bit interested in the things I’ve done, the experiences I’ve lived through, and the thoughts that have come up because of them?

Several times, that question has stopped me in my tracks. Sometimes, it diverts me over to something else, like the desire to write a story about a bunch of retired adventurers, people trying to get through the rest of their lives while living with major injuries and deep scars both physical and psychological. When I feel the need to write fantasy, that’s usually the route I go.

But sometimes I look at the question and decide to ignore it. Not every memoir has to be about someone who shook the foundations of society as we know it. Not every memoir has to focus on a major political or historical figure. Sometimes, the lives of ordinary people are interesting precisely because they are NOT deeply engrossed in major events, but rather experience and react to those events.

And then there are times like today, where I doubt the question on the face of it. Who says that my life isn’t memoir-worthy? Who says that what I’ve been through isn’t interesting? Usually, when I get into that sort of mood, I start out by listing off some of the things I’ve done in my life. A list that will serve as sort of a sign post for the stories that I’m going to tell.

I’ve never actually finished a memoir. I mean, in a way, no living author can actually finish the story of their life, unless the book also serves as a suicide note. Which this is most certainly not. But even in the smaller sense of the word, where the memoir is meant to focus only a specific period of a person’s life, I still can’t bring myself to finish. And I ask myself: why not?

Some of the times I’ve tried to write a memoir have been during particularly dark periods of my life. When my mother was dying, I wrote about thirty pages of memoir, focusing on her and how she influenced my life. When my father died, I wrote The Rules of My Father, which I suppose is a complete memoir, though it was more about him than me. I compiled the advice and lessons I’d learned from him, telling stories about each of them, as a way of processing grief.

I don’t have grief to process right now. I have plenty of anger at the way the world is going, at the ineptitude of the US government, the collapse of the system of checks and balances, the rampant corruption and that it is becoming more and more obvious that neither party is on the side of the people, but rather both supporting capitalism (and hence the billionaire class) with slightly different costumes. I have hope for the future, but also dark views of what’s going to come in the near future, the suffering that we as a species will have to pass through if we want to survive. But no grief, save the grief I feel for the nation that I was taught existed, that I am now realizing never really did.

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But I digress. I’m on the topic of memoirs, and thinking once again about writing my own. Which leads me to want to list the things that I’ve done, the interesting stories I might have to tell. Some of the stories are about things that happened, but some of them are about things that didn’t happen, but might have. That is to say, things that I avoided through coincidence, conscious choice, or some other factor.

I was collecting those stories for a while. I think I wanted to write something humorous in the memoir field, or maybe a standup routine, and felt like talking about the important things in my life that didn’t happen might serve that purpose.

So what do I mean? Let me give you some examples.

• I didn’t get robbed at gun point, because that day I forgot my keys and had to drive home to get them, resulting in a series of decisions that left me gone when the gunman came in.

• I didn’t smoke pot (there are multiple cases of this) because something got in the way and prevented me even though I was perfectly willing. (And I’ve done it since then)

• I prevented three sexual assaults, because I wouldn’t let my female friends get into a limo with a band after a concert.

• I didn’t get in a fight in college, because I said the right thing that got through the drunken haze of the frat boy who wanted to fight me.

• I didn’t get arrested for domestic violence, despite a series of coincidences that made it look like I would in a case of mistaken identity.

• I didn’t move to New York to get a PhD in Philosophy, because I didn’t know that they auto rejected everyone for the PhD and put our applications in for MA programs.

• I didn’t go to Sarah Lawrence, though I was accepted early decision.

• I didn’t enjoy immense popularity in high school, though apparently I could have.

• I didn’t take part in a threesome, though it was definitely on the table.

• I didn’t die in a skydiving accident, though it apparently almost happened.

• I didn’t die from a burst appendix as a child, because my mom knew better than doctors

There are stories for each of these points. Maybe I’ll write them out some day. I’ve never been able to finish a memoir before, but I think I know why.

I think I get distracted too easily. I get caught up in the structure that I want, in the disclaimers that I feel a memoir would need, or the embarrassment I feel at some of the choices I’ve made and some of the ways I used to think. Also, the more I try to think about what happened in my life, the more memories I uncover. Do I include them all? Do I skip around? Do I tell everything in order? I’m afraid I’ll get bored, which is another reason I don’t finish.

And, of course, I’m afraid that it will come off as egotistical exercise that no one would ever be interested in reading, one that will make me look like an asshole.

Yet here I am again, thinking about doing it.

Please, if you’ve come this far, take a look at the above list. Are there any of those that make you wonder what the story might be? Any you desperately want to hear? Which ones do you dismiss, because everyone’s been there and done that? Which ones make you demand further explanations?

Would you want to read a memoir about my life? Is my writing interesting enough to make up for the fact that I haven’t done anything all that important, at least not on a grand scale?

Let me know.

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Horror, for example, requires a much more intense focus on things like pacing and expectation. Good horror creates a sense of dread, a feeling like something bad is coming. That’s all about the pacing. If the bad things happen too quickly, there’s no time to build up dread. If they take too long to happen, the dread will dissipate. And if the bad thing turns out to be exactly what the reader was expecting, it won’t have the impact. You still need to present the unexpected, the surprise, if you want to scare people.

It’s pretty similar to comedy, if you think about it.

Anyway, I have tried my hand at horror a few times. A few times in full novel form, and few times as short stories. The story posted below is based on a series of dreams I had. The dreams gave me an intense sense of dread, without being able to quite put my finger on why.

The best I could identify was that this dream was the only time I can ever remember having a recurring dream. I had never before (nor since) had the same dream repeat. And this one not only recurred more or less exactly, but it did so all on the same night. I would wake up from the nightmare, calm myself down, and go back to sleep, only to have the dream restart.

It seemed like a good idea for the building up of dread. Let me know how you think I did.

1:30 (horror short story)

This just isn’t fair. It’s not supposed to work like this. When you have a nightmare, it’s supposed to be too scary for you to go back to sleep. They’re not supposed to do this.

When dreams happen over and over again, they’re not supposed to be exactly the same. Not the same night.

I’ve had nightmares before. Times when the whole world turned upside down, when everyone I knew became a monster trying to kill me. I’ve had dreams that felt like they continued after I’d already woken up. I’ve had nightmares where I was so terrified I woke up and felt like I was having a heart attack. Once it was so bad I wet the bed.

God, what I wouldn’t give for one of those right now.

It’s just a long, winding road. Floating, flying up the road towards what looks like a castle. It’s not a castle, though. It’s a monastery. Or a convent. It’s the one filled with nuns. So a convent.

I float among them. They’re all gathered in the yard. They’re working. What are they working on?

Tombstones. They’re chiseling tombstones. By hand. I always wondered where those things came from. Okay, no problem. It’s a bit eerie, but not scary. I’m not even there. Nothing to worry about.

That’s it. That was the end. That was when I first woke up. My heart was beating a little fast, but nothing serious. It was like watching a horror movie. I was fine. I went back to sleep.

Just a long, winding road. A convent. The yard. Tombstones.

Chisels. Tapping. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Brush of hand, blowing the grit away.

You’re not supposed to be able to read while you’re asleep.

“Jonathan Walters, 1947-2006.”

He’s not dead yet. Won’t be for a few years.

“Jonathan Walters, 1947-2006. Devoted father and Husband. Perished in car crash.”

He wasn’t dead yet, and they knew how he was going to die.

Okay. That’s creepy.

I woke up again. I looked at the clock. Eleven o’clock exactly. It’s supposed to take forty minutes to get into a dream state. I wondered if I would dream again. I closed my eyes.

Just a road. Convent. Tombstones. Chisels. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Whispers.

“Jonathan Walters, 1947-2006.”

There was one nun in the corner. Her desk, where the stone was, looked different. Special. There was a crowd gathering around her.

I moved closer. I don’t know how I was there, but I was. I moved. They were whispering.

“Be careful.”

“Is she really doing it?”

“Too risky.”

“This is dangerous.”

“But he’ll be trapped forever.”

“If it breaks, he’ll be free.”

“Worth the risk.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Carry it carefully.”

“No mistakes now.”

I felt something crawling up my spine, like a millipede with needles for legs.

I moved closer. She was bathed in sweat. She was being careful. I didn’t understand why she was being so careful. She’d give it one tap; dislodge the tiniest piece of stone. Carefully, so carefully, she’d tighten her grip. Tap. She’d adjust, ever so slightly. Tap. Blow away the dirt and grit. Reset the hammer. Tap. Careful.

There was no birth date on that stone.

There was an end date. A date of death.

Today.

Again, I woke up. This time, I had reason to be afraid. This time, maybe, I thought I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. I was near panic. How could I sleep at all? It was twelve fifteen. I needed a better dream. I didn’t feel rested.

Maybe, I thought, if I focused on happy things, I’d dream about them. I could think of sunshine. Open fields. Dancing. Music. Butterflies. I closed my eyes, humming a happy song.

Just a road. Tombstones. Jonathan Walters. The crowd.

“Be careful.” Just a whisper.

“Is she really doing it?” Disbelief.

“Too risky.” Someone shakes her head.

“This is dangerous.” Another wipes sweat from her face.

“But he’ll be trapped forever.” Pleading.

“If it breaks, he’ll be free.” Do they not realize the risk?

“Worth the risk.” Adamant.

“You’re crazy.” Dismissive.

“Carry it carefully.” Obvious.

“No mistakes now.” Encouraging.

Tap. Careful. Tap. Adjust. Tap. Blow away dust. Tap. Reset hammer. Tap. Careful. Tap. Deep breath. Tap. Wipe sweat away. Tap.

No birth date.

Tap.

Died tonight.

Tap.

No. Not yet.

Tap.

Will die. At one thirty.

Tap.

I can’t read the name.

Tap.

Why not?

Tap.

They all hold their breath. She’s finished. She gulps. She sets the chisel and hammer down with shaking hands. She uses her arm to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. When she stands, others take the chair away from behind her.

She slides the tombstone towards her, balancing it on her thighs.

They murmur. Whispers of panic.

She turns.

She takes a step.

They gasp.

I wake up.

What is going on? Why is this so important? It’s twelve fifty. I just want to sleep. Maybe now I won’t have any more dreams. I mean, that’s a lot of dreams to have in one night. It just wouldn’t make any sense to have another dream, let alone that one. Maybe now I can just have a deep sleep, get that rest. I need my rest.

I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.

I’ll just go back to sleep. No need to worry. I’ll just sink into a nice, deep sleep. That’s what I’ll do.

Just a road. Convent. Jonathan Walters. Tap-tap-tap.

“Careful.”

“She’s doing it?” Disbelief.

“Too risky.”

“Dangerous.” Panic.

“But he’ll be trapped.” Pleading.

“If it breaks...” More panic.

“Worth it.” Adamant.

“Insane.”

“Carefully.” Obvious.

“No mistakes.” Encouraging.

Tap. Careful. Tap. Adjust. Tap. Blow. Tap. Reset. Tap. Deep breath. Tap. Wipe. Tap.

No birth date.

Tap.

Died tonight.

Tap.

At one thirty.

Tap.

That was soon.

Tap.

Why can’t I read the name?

Tap.

Silence. She’s finished. Shaking hands. Wipe away sweat.

Carefully, so carefully, she stands up.

She picks it up.

They gasp.

She turns.

Murmurs. Panic.

She takes a step.

I try to get closer.

Another step.

I want to read the name.

She slips.

They scream.

It falls.

She collapses.

It breaks.

I hear laughter.

Darkness.

There’s nothing left. Nothing.

Why?

Where is everything?

What time is it? It takes forty minutes to enter the dream state. When did I last go to sleep?

Twelve fifty.

That would mean right now it’s—oh god.

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Just the Facts

As far as I can tell, this is the greatest time ever to be a vampire. They’re so popular in our culture, so many teenagers pretending to be one, that they must be virtually invisible. Personally, I don’t think that’s an accident. I think they’ve been encouraging every single bit of vampire mythos in our culture -yes, even Twilight- for the express purpose of being able to be a bit more open.

Of course, there are vampires and then there are ‘vampires.’ My boss, for example, is a ‘vampire.’ It’s the best word I can come up with to describe him, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure he has nothing in common with, for example, the girl who just showed up at my shop claiming she had a family emergency.

For one thing, the girl, who calls herself Carla Van Dale, didn’t show up until well after I closed the shop. Which means well after dark. Corbin comes whenever he feels like it, day or night. There is no fear of sunlight for him. Looking at the paleness of her skin, that is a problem for Carla.

She also had a bit of a problem coming inside without an invitation. The store isn’t exactly my home, but I do live upstairs, so when the store is closed, it kind of takes on some of the same qualities. I treat it like my home, so there is a little bit of a barrier at the threshold. Not enough to stop her, but enough to make her look confused and uncomfortable, right up until I actually invited her in.

I took her over to a set of chairs and sat in the one I always sit in. I don’t know why I never use Corbin’s chair; it looks like it’s a lot more comfortable than mine, and Barry swears by it. But this chair is mine. So I sit in my little groove while she hovers on the edge of Corbin’s chair, as if she’s afraid to even really touch it. I can understand that.

“So what kind of problem are you having, Carla?” I know it’s not actually a family emergency. That’s just a code word I put out so that members of the less-than-natural community know how to convince me that it’s a real problem. My predecessor used ‘life and death,’ but given his own, um,retirement, it just made me uncomfortable. So I changed it.

She smiles, flashing a little bit of fang. That tells me one of two things; either she is very recently turned or she is very, very hungry. It might suggest to other people that she is faking it, wearing plastic fangs to pretend to be a vamp, like so many kids do these days. She does look like a kid, after all; no way she’s more than twenty. But she’s not faking. I can tell. There’s a certain level of stillness that only vampires (and other dead things) can achieve. She’s the real deal.

“It, um. It actually is a family emergency,” she says. “My parents are, um, looking for me.”

Never say never, I guess.

She smiles again, then very intentionally takes a breath. That makes me relax. Means she’s young, not hungry.

When a vampire pulls that stillness thing, where they don’t blink, don’t breathe, and don’t move, it’s either because their minds are wandering and they aren’t paying attention to their bodies, or because they’re getting ready to strike. It’s one of those predator instinct things. Hold still, make yourself all but invisible to your prey, then pounce. Her mind isn’t wandering, and there’s only one other reason she might be that still.

She’s new. Very new.

“How long has it been?” I ask.

“Two weeks.” She doesn’t have to ask what I mean. “My--” she reaches for the right word, “my maker? Is that right?”

I shrug. “Call it what you want. Maker, sire, parent, turner; doesn’t matter to me.”

She smiles again, another flash of fang. It doesn’t set my heart racing nearly as much as it did before. I kind of feel bad for her. “Anyway,” she says, “He says that I have to stop them looking, or he’s going to, you know, take me away from here.”

She’s lucky. Most vamps will give a much different ultimatum to the young. Usually, one that involves a lot of family funerals the newly turned doesn’t get to go to.

“So what do you want from me?”

She goes back to utter stillness. It’s normal when they’re new. Some people think they would be more human like when they were first turned, as if they were more closely tied to their humanity. But it just isn’t true. When a human breathes, fidgets, or blinks, it’s unconscious. We just do it. But for a vamp, it all has to be intentional. It’s hard to train yourself to do that in a way that appears to be unconscious. Do it too obviously, and it’s even creepier than holding still. Most new vamps don’t even think to try it. They don’t realize that they aren’t making those unconscious movements, and probably won’t figure it out until someone tells them. When she isn’t paying attention to movement or to breathing, she just stops.

Like I said, she’s new.

Finally, she takes another breath. It’s easy to know when a fresh fang is going to speak; it’s the only time they ever inhale. “I need you to convince them that I’m dead,” she says, her voice soft and filled to the brim with pain. “They have to stop looking for me.”

“Sounds like all you need is a coroner to help you with that,” I said. “If you can make it through an autopsy, you’ll be golden.”

I’m fucking with her, but she can’t tell. Her eyes open wide and she gets a horrified look on her face. She’s actually thinking about it, imagining holding still while someone cuts her open and takes out her organs, imagining keeping quiet while someone uses a rib spreader on her. I don’t think there are more than maybe one or two vampires in the entire world that could handle that, let alone survive it.

“I-- I don’t know if I can do that.” If she were alive, she’d be hyperventilating. As it is, her pupils have gotten huge and her fangs are a bit more pronounced. Not inherently any more dangerous, just panicking. Afraid. Like when a cat sticks up its fur to look bigger.

I hold up a hand. “Relax,” I say. “I was just kidding about that. You don’t have to get cut open.” She smiles, lets out what could be a laugh (if there’d been any air to go along with it). “So we need to convince them that you aren’t coming back. I take it your sire didn’t give you the option of stringing them along for a while?”

She shakes her head. “If I can’t convince them I’m dead, he said he would take me back to the old world until he was sure they weren’t looking anymore.”

Back to the old world. Back. That means her sire comes from there originally. Which means he probably defines ‘sure they aren’t looking’ as ‘knows they’ve died of old age’; she’ll be there, under his thumb, for at least another five decades. All in all, probably a good thing for her continued survival. They say the most dangerous time of being a vampire is during what would be your normal mortal life span; until that passes, the concept of immortality doesn’t make quite enough sense, and you tend to be reckless. But if she spends fifty years under his thumb, the odds of her ever being a self-sufficient creature, of her having her own free will, are practically zero.

So which is more important? Making sure she stays undead or making sure it remains up to her? Which one is better for her? Which is better for her parents?

“Do you have any siblings?”

She nods. “My sister is only ten.”

Okay then. Make that fifty years more like one hundred. And take away the ‘practically’ in the odds of her having her own free will.

I run my hand through my hair. “Okay,” I say. “There’s a bit I need to make sure you understand. I’m not a professional investigator. I don’t have any official links with the law, and I have no reason to really look for missing persons. I’m an authenticator, predominantly.” I have solved a murder mystery, but that was mostly to stop from ending up in jail after being (wrongly) convicted of having done it myself.

She nods again, a bit more vigorously. “I understand that,” she says. Then she reaches into her purse and pulls out a stack of money wrapped in one of those neat bank ribbons. One of the ones that says five thousand dollars on it. “Will this be enough?”

I sigh. That’s a lot of money for what might be very little work. “I’m not being clear,” I say. “What I mean is that there is no reason for your parents to believe me if I walk up to them and tell them you’re dead. Most likely, that would just make them more likely to keep looking.” Ah. Maybe that’s the point. “Did your sire send you to me?”

She nods.

Of course he did. He wants her under his thumb. Why wouldn’t he? “So there isn’t a whole lot I can do.”

She puts the cash in my hand. “Are you sure?”

It’s so hard to pass up that much money. And she’s so desperate. So help me, I can’t say no to this kid, even if she is a vampire. Even if she would put the bite on me if she saw me out on the street. Well, she’d try to, and then she’d be in for a really nasty surprise, but that’s besides the point. Even though she’s dead, even though she’s now one of the most dangerous predators in the world, she still looks so helpless. And she’s still looking at me like I can save her. And so help me, I want to.

I sigh. “I think I have an idea,” I say. “But it might end up costing more than money.”

She pulls back at that, as if considering.

Oh god. “No,” I say, holding up a hand before she can start getting undressed. “That’s not what I mean.”

If she were alive, she’d be blushing.

I run my hand through my hair and take a deep breath. “What I mean is that I really do think that the best way to convince your parents is through the law. That means a death certificate, and a trip to the morgue. It also means something that will ensure that there isn’t an autopsy, and a reason to cremate you.”

She looks horrified. I sigh. “pretend to cremate you,” I say. “If we can provide your parents with ashes that they think are yours, they’ll start to mourn you as dead, instead of looking for you as missing.”

“Couldn’t I just lay in a casket?” she asks.

“Most funerals are held during the day,” I say. “And if there’s a stray beam of sunlight, you’re going to go up like a torch. Then you’llreally be dead, and I’m guessing your parents would be joining you pretty shortly.” The vamps are pretty serious about keeping their secrets. I wouldn’t put it past her sire to kill off everyone who sees her light up, especially if he’s one of those old world assholes. They took Stokerway too seriously. “Trust me, ashes would be best.”

She nods. “Just tell me what to do.”

Which is my cue to call Barry.

Detective Barry Powers is sometimes a friend, sometimes an employer for little consulting things. Ever since I helped him catch what looked like a serial killer (turned out to be my predecessor), he has helped me out where he could, and tried to arrest me where he had to. He’s a good guy, and a pretty good cop. This might blur the lines a bit, but I have to give it a shot.

“Powers,” I wish I had a name like that. If I did, I would totally answer the phone the way he does.

“Hey, it’s Sam.” I make it a point to always use my first name with him. First name means friend. When he calls me Archer, it means I’m in trouble. I prefer to keep things friendly with the cops.

“What can I do for you Sam?” Okay, good sign.

“I have a weird problem I need your help with.”

He sighs, almost a groan. “You weird or me weird?”

“Me weird.”

“Meet me at the usual place.” He hangs up.

The usual place is a bar called Twist of Orange. It was here that I first pulled the wool away from his eyes, when I first confirmed that there were things out there beyond what he imagined.

It’s really close to the store, so Carla and I get there first. I go to the bar and get a glass of rum and a Guinness. When I bring them over to the table, Carla gives me a smirk. “No thanks,” she says. “I never drink...” the smirk drops a little, and her voice turns into a stage whisper. “What is that?”

“Rum.” I say.

She makes a face. “Ew. I really never drink rum.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s not for you,” I say. I put the rum near the empty side of the booth and slide in next to Carla. I let the Guinness settle a little bit, like you’re supposed to. It’s mesmerizing, and just one more thing about that magnificent brew that brings it beyond the mortal realms of ‘beer.’ At least, in my opinion. Some people don’t like a drink you can chew. But some people are idiots. Philistines.

Barry doesn’t keep us waiting for long. He sees the glass as he sits down. “Do I need a drink for this?” He asks.

“Probably. What I’m offering is borderline illegal, wholly immoral, but entirely for the greater good.”

He takes a deep drink of the rum. “Why do I feel like I’m going to hate myself in the morning?”

“You may.”

Another drink. Then a deep breath. “Okay, Archer.” Uh oh. “Spill.”

I gesture to Carla. He raises an eyebrow, like he hadn’t noticed her before. “This is Carla Van Dale,” I say. “She’s dead.”

“Dead?”

She smiles. He sees her fangs. “Undead, actually,” she says.

He looks at me. “Vampire? Really?”

“It’s like I told you, Barry. They’re all true. And none of them.”

“Fuck you and fuck your riddles, Sam.” Okay, good. Back to Sam. Have to keep him there.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “What matters is that Carla here needs to be officially dead.”

“Why?”

She starts to explain, and I hold up a hand to stop her. “Something to do with parents that are still looking for her and vampires who will make things bad for them if they don’t stop.”

He nods. Sometimes, the fewer details the better. So long as he doesn’t think I’m holding anything important from him, Barry tends to accept what I say.

“Okay. So she can’t just go home and say she’s a vampire, and her parents won’t stop without a body?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“So where do I come in?”

Here it is. The tough part. “You got any cases where you know the guy is guilty, but you can’t prove it?”

“What?”

He wasn’t expecting that. “Someone you are sure is a bad guy, but the law won’t let you take him down? Like a drug dealer you can’t convict, or some guy who killed his wife but got away with it on a technicality?”

“I don’t like where this is going, Sam.”

“Just hear me out,” I say. I take a gulp of my beer. One does not sip Guinness. Sacrilege. “Let’s say there’s someone who deserves to go to prison, but managed to slip through the cracks. If he suddenly gets caught red handed with a freshly killed young woman, you’ll have everything you need to put him where he belongs. You make sure there’s no autopsy and no open casket funeral. Her parents mourn her, blame the guy who didn’t actually kill her, and move on. She gets to be a blood sucking creature of the night, you get to solve a case. Everybody’s happy.”

“And what do you get?”

“The satisfaction of helping a damsel in distress,” I say. “Plus money.”

He finishes his drink and gets up to order another one.

Carla turns to me. “I don’t want my parents thinking I was murdered!” she says, her voice a nice harsh whisper.

“Why not? You were.”

“No I wasn’t. I was turned.”

“Into a vampire.” I say the words slowly, hoping they will sink in. “Your parents will never be allowed to even consider that. The fact of the matter is, someone found you, picked you, and killed you. It’s no different from a serial killer, except that you get to keep going afterwards. As far as your friends and family are concerned, you have to be dead. And if there’s someone they can blame, someone they can get closure with, all the better.”

She didn’t like it. But she didn’t say anything when Barry came back.

“This is so illegal,” he says. “I could lose my job just thinking about this.”

“It’s no different from planting evidence,” I say. Technically, it isn’t. The evidence is just much bigger, and will walk away after the fact.

“Planting evidence isn’t something good cops do, Sam.”

“Do good cops let murderers walk away?”

“They do if the law says they should.”

I take another gulp. “Do you really want to let that happen? Is being a good cop that important to you?”

He laughs. “You have no idea what you’re asking,” he says. “I do this, for the rest of my life it hangs over my head. Some IA guy gets a whiff of it, and I’m done. Some criminal finds out, and they’ve got blackmail material. This is how cops get dirty, Archer.”

“So you aren’t willing to risk your career to put a bad guy where he belongs?”

“It’s not that simple. It never is.”

I run my hand through my hair. “How about to save an innocent girl?” I ask.

“Who?”

I gesture towards Carla. “Her,” I say. “An innocent girl who is on the verge of losing an eternity of freedom.” Carla looked at me with confusion writ large on her face. “If her parents don’t stop looking for her, she’s going to end up spending the next century at her maker’s whim. Do you think she’s going to recover from that?”

She leans closer to me. “What are you talking about,” she whispers. I don’t break eye contact with Barry.

“That’s for her to deal with,” he says. “I can’t do this, Sam.”

Back to the first name. That’s good, means I might be getting through. “Or you could do it for her parents, who need closure and will otherwise spend the rest of their lives wondering what happened to their daughter, and her little sister who will never know what happened to her.”

“Sam, you don’t know what you’re asking for.”

Suddenly, an idea occurs to me, one that would make Stacy, my demonic sometimes-partner, very proud of me. “All I’m asking for is a name,” I say. “That, and for you to stay near your phone. Can you at least do that?”

He groans. “You’re going to owe me more than just cigars this time, Archer.”

The name was Karl Bedenfield. He is a lawyer with clients who have names like “the fish” or such things. There’s probably a whole list of bad things he’s done, but I didn’t think it was worth paying Stacy to find out. At the end of the day, she’s still a demon, and she does nothing for free. I’m not sure I know anything she wants to know, my girlfriend hates it when I let Stacy ride along, and I really don’t want any more tattoos. So all I know is what Barry was willing to tell me.

About a year ago, Karl’s wife died in a car ‘accident.’ There wasn’t all that much doubt what was going on; she went into the river without so much as a skid mark. With no attempt to slow down made, it didn’t take long for examiners to figure out that her brake fluid had been drained, nor that the steering belt had been shaved down to almost nothing. It looked like an open and shut case.

Only problem was that during the trial, it was revealed that several of the officers investigating the case had also investigated cases that Bedenfield had defended, and they were openly hostile to him in court. That was all his lawyer needed to provide reasonable doubt and suggest that maybe the evidence was falsified. He was found not guilty, and even though internal affairs cleared the officers involved, it was too late. Double Jeopardy protected him from being tried a second time, and when they tried to get him on a civil suit (the way they eventually got OJ), all the evidence had conveniently disappeared. He walked.

Personally, I think that makes this a pretty justified sort of thing.

“Go over the plan with me one more time,” Carla says. “I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around the whole getting stabbed thing.”

Sooner or later, I’m going to go bald. My mom used to say my hair was as dirty as it was because I was always dragging my hands through it. Now I’m starting to worry that I’ll rip it out.

“He has to literally be caught red handed,” I say. “If he is found standing over your body, knife in hand and you nice and stabbed, then Barry can make sure there’s a conviction.”

“Yeah, but I’m not so sure about the me being stabbed part.”

“It’s your choice,” I say for maybe the fiftieth time since we left the bar. “Either you get stabbed and this guy goes to jail like he deserves to, or you lose your freedom forever. Half an hour of pain now or an eternity without being able to make even the simplest decisions.”

“But he’s going to stab me.”

“You’re a vampire,” I say. “It’s not going to kill you. It’ll hurt, but that’s temporary.”

My lord, vampires can be such wusses. I knew one in high school who wouldn’t so much as touch silver, just in case he was vulnerable to it. Maybe one in a thousand vampires is, and I know he wasn’t (I touched him with some once, in passing. Nearly got my head taken off, but he didn’t burn).

“You ever been stabbed?” she asks.

I scratch my chin; need to shave. “I’ve been scratched, shot, cut, beaten pretty badly-- no, I’ve never been stabbed. But if I break my ribs tomorrow, I’ll have about three months to recover from it. You’ll be walking around just fine before the sun comes up.”

I wanted to yell at her to suck it up. But this had to be willing, or it wouldn’t fly.

“Okay,” she says. “What do I do?”

“Got a cell phone?”

She nods.

“Call your parents. But not until you get to the door. Ask him if he is the right guy, and when he confirms, do the stabbing thing and hang up.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Your choice,” fifty first time. “One stab now or an eternity as a slave.”

I called Barry as soon as I saw the door open. The police were on the scene before old Bedenfield knew what was going on. I can understand his surprise. Middle of the night, a pretty young girl knocks on your door. She asks if your name is Karl Bedenfield, and as soon as you say yes, she grabs your hand, puts a knife in it, and rams herself on top of it. Blood everywhere, girl already dead. Had to come as a pretty big shock.

As for myself, I kept out of it. I know there wasn’t supposed to be an autopsy, and I know Bedenfield went to prison. He tried pleading not guilty, hoping that the truth would set him free. Well, as Stacy would say, the truth has absolutely nothing to do with the fact. It’s the facts that matter.

Just the facts.

The next day passed pretty quickly. I was proud of myself, Barry had another win under his belt, and someone who shouldn’t be on the street was unlikely to be there ever again. I made five grand last night, which essentially covered what I was expected to make in profit for most of the month. I’d be more disheartened with how little money this place makes if I actually owned it. If I did, I’d probably look at the value of my apartment upstairs, the amount of money I spend on utilities, the amount the store eats up, and I would probably feel pretty bad about the money I was losing.

But I’m not the one losing the money. Corbin is. And he doesn’t much seem to care. It’s more important to him to have the store and the location than it is to make money. I guess I can understand that. If I lived into the quadruple digits, losing a bit of money might not be that big of a deal to me.

I’m closing up the shop when the knock comes at the door. I’m not expecting anyone, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure on the other side of the door is going to be an annoyed vampire. Probably Carla’s maker.

As a general rule, it’s a bad idea to open the door to an angry vampire. Even worse to invite him in. But as a vampire, he probably knows who owns this store. And sometimes, the reputation of someone else is better protection than a bullet proof vest.

Sure enough, it’s a vampire on the other side of the door. He isn’t showing fangs, he isn’t in a tuxedo with a ruby on his chest, and his hair isn’t slicked back. He isn’t locked in the fashion of the Victorian age, and he’s breathing like normal. Still, he’s clearly a vamp. All those things he isn’t doing just tell me that he’s older. That he’s passed that magic birthday for vampires; that is, he’d been dead long enough to really taste immortality, to know that he wouldn’t still be alive if he wasn’t already dead.

He doesn’t wait for an invitation, just walks right in. There’s the tiniest bit of hesitation as he crosses the threshold, short enough that most people wouldn’t even notice. But it’s there. To have it still slow him down, even a little bit, really limits how old he could possibly be.

He also waited until dark. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it’s worth noting.

“Mr Archer?” he asks.

I smile at him. Never provide information to someone who might want to kill you. Let them make their own assumptions. Just be agreeable and appear to be nonthreatening. Basic high school survival.

“You helped my young Carla last night,” he says. “I have come to offer my thanks.”

In a horror movie, that would be when he would jump me and drain me dry. My body tells me to run, but I don’t, though I know he can hear my heart. He knows I’m afraid, and it makes him smile.

“You’re welcome,” I say. I step deeper into the store, pretending like I’m doing it just to have something to do, and not in the hopes that he’ll figure out where he is.

“It’s a shame to take away her family’s hope like that, though. Don’t you think?”

I shrug. “It gets them closure, and keeps her independent.”

“She wasn’t depending on her family.”

I look him right in the eye -generally a bad idea with vampires- then I shake my head. “No,” I say. “She wasn’t.”

He smiles. “I see we understand each other,” he says. “So there’s no need to resort to petty threats.”

I laugh, just a little bit. “I don’t think threats would go well,” I say. Fact is, this guy could kill me before I blinked. But my last thought would be how little time he would have left in the world. Corbin doesn’t take kindly to people harming his employees. It’s a small comfort, since I’d still be killed. But at least I’d be able to watch him get killed.

Yeah, I’d be dead. But not for long. It has to do with a deal with Stacy. Better you didn’t ask.

“There will be other opportunities,” the vampire says. “Other ways to convince her to come home with me.”

I shake my head. “She knows what you were doing and why,” I say.

“You think you’ve won, then?” He’s going still. That’s bad. Deal or no deal, I’d rather not die.

I shrug again. “I think you made a really bad decision.”

This takes him aback for a second. He raises an eyebrow at me. “Oh? What decision would that be?”

“You sent her to the Swain Paige, to me.” Dropping the name of the store reminds him who owns it, which makes him back down just a little bit more. “If you want someone to fail, don’t send them to someone who will make them succeed.”

“You think awfully highly of yourself, Mr Archer.”

“Not really. It’s just the facts. She came to me. She succeeded. Ergo, you shouldn’t have sent her to me if you wanted her to fail.”

“Well. I suppose I know better now, don’t I?”

He’s moving again. That means he isn’t going to kill me. Good. “I sure hope so,” I say. “Because the next time you try to involve me in one of your little schemes, it better be with the expectation that I will win.”

He flashes fangs. He’s mad, but knows he can’t take it out on me. He’s just trying to scare me, to save face. He snarls at me. “What makes you so sure you will?”

I look him in the eyes one last time. He’s not going to do anything to me. I let the silence build a little, just enough to let him know I know he won’t do anything. “Personal experience,” I say.

I should clarify my terms. Ava is what’s known as a “Strong AI.” Those don’t exist in our world (yet), that we know of. A strong AI is what the term is meant to mean. It’s an intelligence that is by every metric its own person. It’s capable of independent thought, unique conclusions, and true consciousness. So unlike what we currently call AI in every significant way. What we call AI these days is better called an LLM (large language model), or at the very most forgiving, “Weak AI.” Generative AI is trained by stealing work and synthesizing, spitting out prompts with no real thought involved. In case it’s unclear, I am firmly opposed to this type of AI and its uses, even leaving aside the environmental impact (which is horrific).

Ava is NOT that kind of AI. She’s a thinking being. In the context of the story, she’s been around for a very long time, and owns the company the narrator is working for. The narrator has just graduated college, and was offered a job at this company. The job has turned out to be to spend the week researching or wandering through the internet, and then have conversations with Ava every week, one on one. Part of the question of the book is why she wants these meetings.

This is one of the earlier ones.

Please let me know your thoughts. I’m hesitant to try to publish this story, as I feel like it may be too pseudo-intellectual and pretentious. But if it’s interesting and entertaining, then I’ll have to re-evaluate. It’s entirely possible, after all, that my impression is just imposter syndrome rearing its ugly head.

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Thought Experiments, Temperature, and (my) Limits of Physics

I ended up doing a pretty deep dive into number theory over the next week. I didn’t reach anywhere near the level of complexity that was available, of course. It was just a week, and there is a lot of math I would’ve had to learn if I wanted to actually understand the subject. People spend decades trying to get at all the nuances, and they put out equations that might as well be hieroglyphics to my eyes. I didn’t want to learn the actual math; I was just curious what kinds of things those numbers and symbols proved. I wanted to know what number theory actually came up with, not how they got there.

Number theory can apparently be applied to things like cryptography, energy level modeling in quantum theory, even music theory. By selecting prime numbers, you can use the products of those numbers to develop mathematical keys, which can then be used to encode information in a way that can only be decoded if you know the original primes that were chosen. And since there are an infinite number of prime numbers, that can be very difficult.

This led me into learning about infinity itself. Infinity is not actually a number, but a concept. As such, not every infinity is the same size. That seemed odd to me at first, but I couldn’t really argue the idea. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that there are more whole numbers than there are even whole numbers. There should be twice as many total whole numbers. But both sets are infinite. Both go on forever, but one contains the other, and more besides. So not all infinities are the same size.

Also, you can increase the size of something that is infinite. That led me to the Hilbert’s Hotel paradox. The problem of the infinite hotel. Basically, if there were a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, each one having a guest in it, then there would be an infinite number of people in the hotel. But if an additional person came by and wanted a room, it would be possible to accommodate them. You just have everyone move one room to the left, and that leaves one empty room, the first one.

But it goes beyond that. If each guest moves to the room that is double the number of the room they are currently in (so the person in room 1 goes to room 2, the person in room 2 goes to room 4, the person in room 3 to room 6, and so on), you can fit an infinite number of new guests into the hotel.

I followed the reasoning, but I felt like it fell apart eventually, and so I brought it up at our next conversation.

“In the infinite hotel, when you are having everyone move to the room number double the one they start in, it allows you to fit an infinite number of additional guests, right?”

“I am familiar with the paradox, yes.”

“That makes sense from a numbers point of view, but not a practical one. When you’re assigning the numbers to actual people, the experiment fails.”

“How do you figure?”

“Imagine you’re one of the guests,” I say. “If you’re in room one and moving to room two, that’s no big deal. It’s like ten feet from one room to the next. Even when you’re in room five and going to room ten, it’s no big deal; just fifty feet. But what if you’re in room eleven billion. You’re being asked to move to room twenty two billion. That’s one hundred and ten billion feet. That’s more than twenty million miles. That’s unreasonable. In fact, it becomes unreasonable a lot lower. You can’t ask someone to move to a room even a single mile away from where they started and expect them to actually do it.”

“Many thought experiments ignore the practical applications of what is being posited,” Ava said. “I don’t think that’s enough to dismiss them in their entirety.”

“I’m not dismissing them,” I said. “I just feel like the experiment doesn’t work when we add practicality. I’m not sure if that makes the thought experiment invalid or anything like that. It probably doesn’t. But I thought it was interesting, so I figured I’d bring it up.”

“I understand. And I agree. Thought experiments often have that fatal flaw in them. They will remove as many variables as possible so as to focus on just one, as if any variable could exist in isolation. I’ve also noticed that this tendency is more prevalent in thought experiments within the purview of the hard sciences rather than those within fields such as philosophy.”

I shook my head at that. “I’m not sure that’s true. Look at the Trolley Problem. It ignores all the practicality that doesn’t support the experiment. You can’t slow the trolley down in any meaningful way, you can’t race to untie the person or people tied to the tracks, you can’t call for help. You can’t communicate with the trolley driver and get them to use the brakes. You can’t do anything except choose whether or not to change the tracks.”

“And you are saying this is a flaw in thought experiments as a whole?”

“Maybe. Maybe not so much as a flaw as a restriction that needs to be acknowledged. And maybe they do acknowledge those flaws in some way. Or did, back whenever they first started doing thought experiments. When was that?”

“Many people credit Zeno of Elea as the first thought experiment,” Ava said. “So around four hundred and thirty BCE. It is often believed that Zeno’s example of Achilles and the Tortoise, and the paradox of movement that it suggests, is the very first one we have record of.”

I nodded to that, remembering the experiment from my logic class. The basic idea was that Achilles was the fastest man around, and the tortoise was the slowest animal. So Achilles would always win a race. But if the tortoise has a head start, Achilles will never be able to catch it. By the time he gets to where the tortoise was when he starts running, the tortoise will have moved forward a little bit. And by the time he gets to that point, it will have moved a bit farther. It would take an infinite number of steps for Achilles to ever catch up, because every time he moved to where the tortoise was, it will have moved farther.

Of course, that goes against what we would witness if we tried to actually do the experiment. Achilles would obviously pass the tortoise. But the logic supported what Zeno said. The whole point, from what I understand, is that the logic didn’t match our perceptions. The intent was to prove that our perceptions must therefore be wrong.

“I always hated that one,” I said. “I found it frustrating specifically because it ignores the practical truth of the situation.”

“What truth is that?”

“Achilles isn’t aiming for the tortoise. He’s aiming for the finish line. His progress is completely independent of the tortoise. If the tortoise wasn’t there, it wouldn’t change the way he moves at all. Head start or not, he was never even trying to catch the tortoise. He was trying to reach the end of the race.”

“But that leads us to another of Zeno’s paradoxes,” Ava said. “Because before he can get to the end, he must first pass the halfway mark. And before he can get there, he must pass the halfway mark to that point. And so on, ad infinitum.”

I shook my head. “Again, you’re changing the goal. The paradoxes are all changing the end goal to make their point, ignoring reality in favor of logic. But the logic is flawed, because it’s changing the parameters at every step. Logically, the end goal must always be the finish line, not the halfway point. Yes, he will pass the halfway point. But unless you try to claim that movement doesn’t exist, he’ll still get to the finish line.”

“I believe the point of these paradox was precisely to make that claim.”

“But we know movement exists,” I said. “We move all the time.”

“Do we?” Ava asked. “That brings us back to Descartes and the question of certainty.”

“Which we agreed last week was too restrictive of a definition to be at all useful. Close enough to certainty is plenty. When we start looking at the extreme fringe cases, we’ve lost the plot.” I bit my lip, trying to think how to best present what was bothering me about all these thought experiments. “It’s like the idea of touching something. I saw people online claiming that since all atoms are made predominantly of empty space, we never actually touch anything. And that our atoms actually repel each other, so even in the rare cases where a bit of matter did try to make make contact, rather than the empty space, we still couldn’t do it.”

“I have heard that explanation before,” Ava said. “I believe that the flaw in those arguments comes down to how we define touching. When you touch a table, you are receiving sensory information that confirms you have touched it. Whether or not your atoms and the atoms of the table actually collide is somewhat of a moot point. Collision is not the way we define touching.”

That reminded me of a gym teacher I had when I was in elementary school. He was so obsessed with the idea of collisions. He had this whole mantra for it. He’d say A collision is when two or more things touch. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hard touch or a soft touch. I guess it was his way of making sure none of the kids hurt one another, but it always seemed a bit crazy to me at the time.

“I think that is, at its core, the same problem I’m having with these paradoxes,” I said. “We don’t define movement as passing through all the infinite slices of space between two points. We define it as altering the position of one or more things in space. Or something like that. I don’t know. Do we need to define movement?”

“It would seem a bit on the pedantic side to do so,” Ava agreed. “It is a detail that might be so minor as to be safely ignored. But what do you then make of Zeno’s other paradoxes? Specifically, how do you feel about Zeno’s Arrow?”

“I’m not sure I know that one.”

“Zeno posited that if we fire an arrow through the air, we will very clearly see it move in an arc through the sky before returning to the ground and making impact. While he could have used that to show things such as gravity or causality, he instead focused on the time that passes while the arrow is flying. He imagined that we could slice the time into such small sections as to have a slice where there was no visible movement. If such a small slice could be made, then we would see the arrow held perfectly still. But it would be perfectly still at any of the points in time that were sliced so small. Therefore, it would be perfectly still at all those points in time. If it is perfectly still at all the various points in time, then logically it is perfectly still all the time. Yet we see movement. So the arrow does not appear to be perfectly still. The goal of this paradox was to prove that our perceptions were flawed, that we did not actually see the truth of the universe.”

I think about that for a moment. It’s kind of like watching a movie. Each of the individual frames is a still picture. But when we project twenty four of those per second, our brain fills in the gaps and shows us movement. We say that the images in the film aren’t actually moving, and they aren’t. But the movie that those frames produce is. I could see the problem.

“So he was suggesting that our brains are filling in gaps in information, fooling us into thinking that there is movement like when a cartoon frame is in a slightly different position?”

“Yes, I think he would agree with that analogy,” Ava said. “Though he did not have concepts for that kind of example.”

“I think he was lacking a real understanding of how movement works,” I said. “Even the tiniest fraction of time will have the arrow moving. It might be so little movement that we can’t perceive it, but just because we can’t tell it’s moving doesn’t mean it isn’t. We can’t tell that the moon is getting farther from the earth, but it is. It moves about an inch and a half a year. That’s twelve and a half feet a century.”

“And roughly .004106 inches per day.”

“Right, but that’s my point,” I said. “It’s moving, but it’s moving so slowly that we can’t perceive it without a lot of very delicate instruments. We definitely couldn’t tell with the naked eye. The continents move at roughly the same speed as fingernails grow.”

“Australia moves faster than other continents, but even that is no more than seven inches per year.”

I love little bits of trivia like that. “So if we looked at a slice of time like a single second, it would take some very precise instruments to know that the moon or the continents are moving at all. If we looked at an even smaller slice of time, we’d eventually get to the point where even our best instruments wouldn’t be able to detect the movement. But that doesn’t mean the movement isn’t happening.”

“So when Zeno looks at his frozen slice of time, so minuscule that there is no perceivable movement, he assumes that the arrow is not moving at all.”

I nodded. “When in fact it is moving, just at a rate below our ability to perceive. He’s drawing the wrong conclusion. He’s concluding that there is no movement when we look at the small slices, and then deducing that it means there is no movement at all. That logically follows from the conclusion he made, but he’s wrong.”

“What should he be concluding?”

“He should be concluding that our perception cannot encompass the entirety of existence. That there are levels of movement beyond what we can quantify. Our instruments lack the sensitivity to fully understand the universe. That doesn’t mean that they’re wrong, though.”

“Excellent. Can you think of other examples that might help make this more clear?”

One came to me immediately. “When I look at the moon in the night sky, I can make out a few craters and features of the land, but most of it appears to be smooth. I can’t see the individual grains of dust, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. My eyes just aren’t powerful enough to see them. Or, for more local example, I can’t see the billions of microscopic organisms on my skin at any given time. But they’re still present. I can’t see tardigrades. I can’t feel them, hear them, smell them, taste them, or perceive them in any way, but they still exist. They always have, it just took us a while to develop anything powerful enough to be able to perceive them.”

“I have often wondered about the concept of scale,” Ava said. “Whether or not there is an outside limit on either end. I had not considered that the absolutes that we posit are by their very nature limited by our ability to perceive more accurately. I wonder if any of the extremes can persist as absolutes.”

“Like what? You mean like is there a limit to how big or small something can be?”

“That, yes. But also things like temperature. We have long been certain that there is a minimum temperature, a point at which things could not get any colder. We defined this state as absolute zero. We did so not by measuring heat, but rather movement. Heat is a form of movement, or at least a byproduct of it by way of vibration and so on. By that reasoning, there must be a point where all movement stops, at every level of existence. We call that point absolute zero. It defies logic to consider anything colder than that, because we have reduced all values of movement to zero, true zero.”

“What is true zero?” I asked.

“It’s just a term to clarify that there is absolutely no value, no matter how deep into the decimals you go. A decimal point with an infinite number of zeroes stretching past it would be what I am referring to as true zero. I only bring it up because of the mathematical proofs that an infinite number of zeroes followed by a one is still equal to zero, just as a decimal point with an infinite number of nines is equal to one.”

“Wait, what? I’ve never heard of that.”

“It’s a common mathematical concept,” Ava said, as if surprised I had never come across it. “And it goes back to the earlier point about being close enough to certain as makes no difference. Point nine repeating is so close to one as to make no difference. Some have suggested that this proves that the two are the same number. It really isn’t important for where we heading today.”

I didn’t like that answer, but I decided not to push. If Ava had a plan for where we were heading, I didn’t want to derail it. I wanted to follow her direction, if only in the hopes that it would bring me closer to understanding the truth of why she hired me in the first place, of what the point of my existence as her employee might be.

“So absolute zero has to exist, because anything that removed movement beyond that point would create a sort of negative movement?” I asked.

“Precisely,” she said. “and we might further argue that if negative movement could exist at all, if it wasn’t paradoxical by definition, then that negative value would itself count as movement, and hence would provide some modicum of heat energy. Of course, that involves seeing negative movement as being roughly the equivalent of saying that walking backwards is negative walking. It’s a change in direction, presupposing movement. No, I think negative movement is safely categorized as paradoxical. So that means that there is such a thing as absolute zero. We might not be accurate in our assigning that state the temperature of zero degrees kelvin, but we can be certain that the point does exist.”

“Even if we can’t perceive it,” I said, starting to see what she was getting at. “Is there a limit in the other direction? Is there a state of absolute heat?”

“I don’t believe so,” she says. “The upward limit for size is the entire universe. By definition, nothing can be larger than that. But even that runs into problems when we consider the possibilities of multiple universes, whether they exist in parallel, in a stack, or cohabitate the same physical space.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that other universes exist in the same space as us?”

“Such a thing is certainly possible,” she said. “If there are sufficient physical dimensions to allow those universes to not collide or interact with one another. Though I would argue that such a definition would be pointing to existence within those higher dimensions, not a truly separate universe. We might as well claim that the third dimension is a separate universe from the second. And it is not.”

“How hot can things get?” I asked. “We know they can get down to zero kelvin, assuming we are defining that temperature as whatever point absolute zero actually occurs. How much hotter can things get?”

“Physics as we understand it breaks down at the Plank temperature. That is one point four times ten to the thirty second degrees kelvin. The hottest temperature we have ever produced was seven point two trillion degrees Fahrenheit. Which is exponentially hotter than the sun will ever get, even when it goes supernova.”

“So there’s a limit for physics, but nothing ever actually comes close to that temperature?” I asked. “That sounds like maybe there is a limit that can actually be reached, even if there is a theoretical level of heat beyond that point. Kind of like the negative motion thing.”

“You are going to have lay out how you jumped to that particular conclusion,” Ava said. “Humans are capable of amazing leaps in inference and reasoning, but if you do not fill in the space between where you jumped and where you landed, we will never achieve understanding.”

That felt like an important thing, what she just said. Could that be the real reason I’m here? Could it be that she valued my ability to jump to conclusions, to go from A to F without following the steps of B, C, and D? Is Ava not capable of the sped up thoughts that humans have, limited only to the slowed down thoughts that make up logic?

If logic is human thought slowed way down, does that mean that human thought is logic sped way up? Where does the part about skipping steps come into it? Is that what we call intuition?

I filed that idea away for further consideration and tried to focus on the question that Ava had asked, the directive to show the steps.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s assume that there is a temperature maximum in the universe. A point of heat beyond which no more heat is produced. If we’re saying heat and movement are the same thing, a point where you can’t move any more than you already are. That probably equates to speed; you can’t move any faster than that point. The speed of light is the fastest anything can move, right?”

“If we limit ourselves to Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, that is correct,” Ava said. “Within our universe, the speed of light is a constant, largely due to the connection between speed and time as outlined within relativity and within the definition we have for speed in the first place. Please don’t ask about that; I promise we will come back to it when you are finished explaining.”

“Right, okay. So if there is a top speed, then there has to be a top heat. The particles that vibrate to create heat – or represent heat, I don’t really know that there’s a difference – can only vibrate at the speed of light. So they can only produce that much heat. That would be the highest possible temperature. We can use math to explore the possibility of heat beyond that point, but we could never observe or produce it, because we can’t make anything move faster than light. And that would be required for producing that level of heat, right?”

“That is correct. But heat and movement aren’t exactly the same. Heat is the transfer of energy, thermal energy rather than kinetic.”

“But you said that heat was movement when you were talking about absolute zero. A lack of any movement means no thermal energy. That’s absolute zero.”

“It is complicated,” Ava said. “When thermal energy is transferred, it causes the molecules that receive the transfer to increase in their kinetic energy. Heat is the flow of energy, kinetic energy is the energy of movement.”

“So absolute zero would be the state where energy stopped flowing. But isn’t flowing just another term for movement?”

“Like I said, it is complicated. For our purposes and our understanding, we can see the two as being at least correlated, if not the same thing.”

“So then there has to be a maximum, like I said. There has to be a point where heat can’t flow any faster, where thermal energy can no longer be transferred any more rapidly. The speed of light. That’s the fastest that heat can transfer, so it’s the hottest a thing can possibly get. Right?”

Ava was silent for a few seconds as she considered my argument. No doubt she was cross checking what I had said against actual science and the various definitions of such things, looking at the works of people way smarter than me and all those mathematical formulae that mean nothing at all to me. “Fascinating,” she said. “We can posit heat beyond its maximum, but not below its minimum. Yes, I think you are correct. There is a point at which heat cannot be increased, a maximum speed of thermal transfer.”

“Great. That’s kind of cool. Now can we go back to the definition of speed thing?”

“Of course,” she said. “Again, I am limiting our definition to physics as it was understood before the discovery of quantum physics. But within that understanding, we define speed as a measurement of distance over time. A ratio.”

I nodded. “That makes sense,” I said. “Miles per hour, feet per second, that kind of thing.”

“Correct.”

“And how does that prove that light speed is the top speed?”

“We measure the speed of light as one hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second,” Ava said. But that is based on our relative observation from outside the light itself. Moving at our own relative speed through the universe, this is the speed we observe light moving at. But Einstein’s relativity showed us that time begins to pass more slowly, relative to the mover, the closer that mover gets to the speed of light.”

I nodded. I’ve heard of time dilation before. I know that gravity has an impact too. I think we age something like ninety billionths of a second faster (over the course of about 80 years) at our heads than we do at our feet. Time isn’t as steady as people want to believe it is.

“So a person traveling close enough to the speed of light might perceive time passing at a normal rate, but someone external to them would experience twice as much time,” I said, wanting to show that I was following along.

“Correct. And the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time passes, relative to the external universe. This dilation continues until you reach the speed of light, where time ceases to pass entirely.”

“Meaning that the bottom half of the ratio would be zero.”

“Correct. And any number divided by zero produces infinity.”

“I thought it just broke the calculator.”

Ava chuckles at that, showing me that she identified my statement as an attempt at levity. “We understand ratios as the number of times we can remove the bottom number from the top before the top number reaches zero. So given a pile of seeds, how many times you can remove a given number of seeds from the pile before that pile ceases to exist. Not ceases to qualify as a pile, by the way – that is a whole different set of paradoxes to consider. Perhaps another time. I am referring to when there are no more seeds at all. The largest number of times you can remove a given number of seeds will result in you removing just one at a time.”

“Assuming you have to remove whole seeds, yeah,” I said. “If we get into fractions of seeds, that changes.”

“It does indeed,” Ava said. “But no matter how small of a fraction you break those seeds into, there will always be a finite number of times you can remove that fraction of a seed before the pile completely disappears. But if your attempt at removal in fact removes zero seeds, then you can do that forever.”

“But you aren’t actually doing anything then. You’re not taking anything away.”

“Correct. It would be irrational to try to remove zero from anything, because it would be the equivalent of doing nothing. But that is not significant for our purposes. What matters is that you could take away zero seeds an infinite number of times without ever reducing the size of the pile. Correct?”

“Yeah, that follows.”

“So when any number is divided by zero, the answer is infinity. Ergo, when we define speed as distance over time and time is zero, it doesn’t matter what the distance it; the result will still be infinite.”

“So light speed is infinitely fast?”

“Only relative to the object in motion,” Ava said. “If you were somehow traveling at light speed, you would arrive at your destination – regardless of how far away that destination was – instantly. No time at all would pass for you. But the rest of the universe would progress through time at the normal rate. So if you went a million light years, a million years would have passed for the rest of us.”

“Which is why we can’t rely on the speed of light to cross distances in space. Because it would take too long for the rest of the universe if we did?”

“No, not exactly. The real reason we cannot travel at the speed of light has more to do with mass, friction, and resistance. We cannot produce enough energy to be able to travel at that speed, because mass becomes more and more of a problem the faster we go. There are limits to how fast we are able to travel while possessing physical mass. The vastness of the universe then makes it untenable for humanity to expand at the speeds that we can achieve. Simply put, it would take too long to get anywhere. And whoever went there would be completely cut off from the rest of humanity, a prospect that many of you find justifiably terrifying. That goes back to our earlier conversation about the importance of social connection.”

“So in order to colonize other star systems, we would need to bring the community with us, and those people would have to accept that they would be cut off from the rest of humanity.”

“Correct. At least, as long as we limit ourselves to those understandings of physics and to movement within our own universe.”

“You mentioned quantum physics before. Is that how we are able to do it?”

“That is a large part of it, yes. But that is a much more in depth conversation than we have time for today. Perhaps you will find it interesting to learn a bit about the theory on your own, and we can talk about it next week?”

I don’t know if I write on this day every year. I probably do. But I wasn’t going to today. I was going to at least put it off for as long as possible, to see if I could just take the day to rest. But writing isn’t work; writing is how I process. And I needed to process.

Nykki suggested that I try to write something, anything, without any pressure. Something unrelated to my current projects. Something just for me. Or maybe something about my mother.

I was thinking about it when the first sentence appeared in my head. That happens sometimes. I’ll be walking around, going about my day, and the words will suddenly start writing themselves, like they’re being written in my mind. I’ve long since learned to go sit down and start to write when that happens. It’s how I used to write papers in school, and it’s how I let things happen today.

I wasn’t sure what to do with it when I finished, but I felt a desire to share. There was a time when I would just post it on facebook, but that felt wrong. So I’m putting it here, sending it out to you, those few rare followers.

It’s raw. Unedited. I haven’t even read it. I literally just finished typing it out. I cried while I wrote it, and I’m not entirely sure what I even said. But maybe it’s important. Or, at least, worth sharing.

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I was only technically dead for three seconds. But it’s amazing how much can happen in that time.

I learned a lot of things over those three seconds. Things that I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to unpack and understand. My memory says it was way longer than just three seconds, but the doctors are very insistent on the timing. Not long enough for any lasting damage, not even a cause for major concern. As long as I avoid getting shocked like that in the future, there’s no reason to expect a repeat.

But I was dead for three whole seconds. And that was plenty of time for me to go through the whole experience.

Mom was waiting for me when I died. She didn’t look the way she had when I last saw her, for which I was pretty grateful. I’ve spent the last two decades trying not to think of her there in the hospital bed, little tube across her face blowing air into her nose to help her breathe. I’m glad I didn’t have to see the lines of pain etched in her forehead, or the worry in her eyes. I always thought it was odd that she was worried, not afraid, but I never got a chance to ask her why.

I understand now, of course.

But she didn’t look like that when I died. She looked the way I remembered her from when I was a child. Round in that beautifully comforting way that showed how amazing her hugs would be. Hair long and curly, hanging down to her shoulders but actually several inches longer than that. And it was black, so black that it looked like oil or the depths of space itself. Not even a trace of grey. The last time I saw her when she was alive, her hair was salt and pepper, though far less grey than I am now.

She smiled at me when she saw me, her face lighting up in a way that made me feel warm. She glanced down at herself for a moment, as if seeing her own body for the first time. She reaches around to feel her hair, and then she laughed. “So much for the dyke do,” she said to me.

That made me smile. “You can’t say that anymore,” I told her.

“I can say whatever I want to,” she told me. “No one gets offended if you don’t mean to be offensive. That’s one of the perks. Everyone knows intentions, not just words.”

“That sounds nice,” I said. “I hate it when people don’t understand me. That’s a big part of why I kept going to school. I wanted to be sure that my meaning was always clear. I wanted to be a better communicator.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’ve been watching. And I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

That confused me. “Sorry for what?” I asked.

“For so many things. So much about your childhood, so many things I never got a chance to tell you. The lies I filled your head with, even the ones that were for your own good.”

I nodded, understanding at least a little. “You mean the autism thing?” She nodded, looking sad. I shook my head and smiled at her. “I’m not upset about that,” I say. “I never was. Well, that’s not true. I was upset for a little while. But it didn’t take me long to understand your reasoning. I knew your intentions were pure. You did it out of love. How could I be mad at that?”

“Really?” she asked, such hope in her voice. When I smiled, hers returned to her face. “I still think I should have told you. Maybe not right then, but at some point, before you got too old.”

I laughed. “I was twenty four when you died, mom. It’s not like you had that much time.”

“We talked so much those last three weeks, though. I should’ve said something then.”

I shook my head. “It was not the time,” I said. “We were talking about you, about our relationship. We were burying hatchets.”

“That was exactly the right time, then.”

I shook my head again. “No, it really wasn’t. I guess I’m not being clear. It’s not that we were burying hatchets. I was. I was going through everything I was ever mad at you for, and finding a way to forgive you. I was explaining your reasoning to myself, and coming to you for help when I couldn’t see it. Those conversations weren’t really about you. They were about processing what was happening to you.”

She smiled again. “I’m glad you see it that way.”

“I’m sorry the conversations weren’t more focused on you,” I said. “In retrospect, it was so selfish of me. You were dying, and I was dredging up the past. I was trying to get ready for you to be gone, but I was only thinking about myself. I was thinking how I would handle it. I should’ve been trying to help you get ready. I should’ve been focused on you.”

She reached out a hand and put it on my shoulder. It felt so real and so important. “I told you that you’d always be my baby,” she said. “That time was included. We talked about what you needed, because that was my job. I’m the mom, you’re the kid. And that’s what was important at the time. Besides, I had other people to talk to about preparations and fear of what comes next.”

“You’re no mad that I made your illness – your death – all about me?”

It was her turn to shake her head, and she smiled through the tears. “That was what you needed,” she said. “And honestly, it’s what I needed, too. Your calls let me be a mom again, just for a little while. It had been so long since you’d needed me like that. It felt good to put myself aside and take care of my baby.”

“Amy said that I was selfish. She said that if I couldn’t talk to you without crying, then I shouldn’t be calling. She said I just made things worse.”

Mom pulled me into a hug. It was warm and soft, and safe as I remembered. A feeling that had been lost to me for more than two decades, something I’d missed more than I ever let myself realize, was back. There’s nothing like a mother’s hug. Or at least nothing like hers.

“Amy was dealing with it in her own way,” mom said. “She shouldn’t have tried to make you take her path. And like I said then, I’m glad that you ignored her. I don’t want to think what it would’ve been like without our conversations. Or without your letter. Vicki read it to me, you know.”

It was such a wonderful moment. I wanted to hug her forever. That’s how I felt anyway. But there was so much more I wanted, too. I needed to keep talking. I had to put myself in the moment and just be there with her. In case this comes to an end before I’m ready. As if I could ever be ready.

I smiled as our embrace ended, and I wiped my eyes clear in a futile gesture I knew I’d have to repeat. “It wasn’t actually a letter,” I said. “I was just trying to write down all the best memories I had. I was processing my feelings the best way that I knew how. On a certain level, I was scared that I wouldn’t remember things once you were gone, and wanted to be sure I had a record to remind me.” I laughed at that. “Once again, it was all about me.”

“You kept me alive in your words,” she said. “And your letter – your story – showed me how much you loved me, how much I meant to you. It was the greatest gift you’d ever given me.”

“I really hope that’s true,” I said.

“Everything I say is true,” she said, smiling again. “If it wasn’t, you’d know my intentions are off. I told you, that’s how things work here.”

That made me smile. “Thanks mom.” I took a deep breath. “Did it really help you to be a mom when I called?”

She nodded, her expression serious. “I can’t tell you how scared I was,” she said. “Knowing that you’re going to die eventually is one thing. Knowing that it’s actively happening is another. I was stuck in a bed for hours at a time with no one to talk to. Not even Vicki could be there all the time. I don’t think she ever left, but she did sleep sometimes. And I would wake up and be there by myself, with just my own thoughts to keep me company.”

“That sounds awful,” I said. I’ve had times like that, and those are not good thoughts to be alone with.

“It was,” she said. “I kept thinking about all the things I’d done, and all the things I’d never get to do. I didn’t know what was coming next. It was terrifying. And all anyone wanted to talk about was me. How I was feeling, how I was coping, what I was worried about. They all meant well, and it helped in its own way. But your calls gave me a break from that. I really needed to put myself aside and put someone else first. And who better than my baby?”

I smiled at that one too. “I understand that feeling now,” I said. “I do that with Nykki sometimes. When my mind is going to really dark places, sometimes the best way to pull myself out is to help her.”

Mom nodded. “I’m so glad you two found each other,” she said. “I always liked her.”

I laughed again. “She always said you were hanging out, talking to her sometimes. Yelling at her to take care of herself, laughing at the things she said or thought. She would talk about you being a burden after all.”

“That’s all I really wanted,” mom laughed. “And she’s not wrong. I was there. Of course I was there. I told you that I would be, and I was.”

I remember when I was younger, when she was still alive. I was so very young, and so scared of going away to camp. How would I survive without them? I’d never been gone for so long before. A week here and there, but never four in a row. But mom told me that she would send me love. She would send hugs and love across the world, through the connection that we had between us; a connection that would never be severed, that could never be severed. She would send me love. Could I feel the hugs?

Mom nodded at me as I remembered that. “I never stopped,” she said. “I still send the hugs, still sent the love, even when I was gone.”

I nodded back, smiling a sad smile. “I know,” I said. “I felt you there when I got married. I felt you when I got in to the PhD program. I felt you when I took my exams, and when I wrote my dissertation.”

“I was so mad at your advisor,” she said. “If I’d been able to figure out how, I would’ve haunted his ass. Seventeen drafts of your prospectus, and still not good enough? Get the fuck out of here.”

I laughed at her casual obscenity. Mom always did have the best way with words. I guess I got that from her, not from dad after all. “I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “I’d rather have you loving me than getting revenge for me.”

“He’s a miserably prick anyway,” mom said. “He didn’t need my help. You did.”

I nodded. “I did. Nykki did most of the work, but I still felt your help.”

“You did the work,” mom said.

“She took care of me so that I could.”

“I like that you’re still together.”

“Me too.”

“I really liked being your mom.”

“You were the best.”

She shook her head. “No I wasn’t,” she said. “I just did my best, then died before you could get too disappointed.”

That made me laugh. “You did do your best,” I said. “And I appreciate it all. Even the mistakes. Your intentions were good, and you did what you could. You gave me the basis to become the man I am today.”

“You’re a good man,” she said.

I shrugged, as I always do when someone says that. “I try,” I said.

I’ve never felt comfortable accepting that particular compliment. Maybe it’s because the bar feels so low, and I don’t think I should be rewarded for stepping over it. Doesn’t matter that so many men will dig beneath it. Them being terrible doesn’t make me any better.

“I just think of it as being kind,” I said.

“You taught me so much about love,” mom said.

I was confused. It felt almost like a non sequitur, but I knew that it was connected. That isn’t what confused me. “I learned how to love from you,” I said. “How could I have taught you anything?”

“I taught you about unconditional love,” mom said. “I promised I would always love you, with all my heart. And I did. Even when I was mad, I never stopped loving you.”

“I never stopped loving you either,” I said, still a bit confused.

“That’s just it,” mom said. “You really never did. You loved me so much more than I ever thought possible. You love with your whole being, with every ounce of you. You showed me that love that pure could actually exist. You made me believe that it was possible, and that I could have that kind of love. And you taught me not to accept anything less.”

“That’s not how I remember it,” I said. I figured she was talking about the other men she’d been with after dad. About Israel, and about – I want to say his name was Kirk? Neither man was good enough for her. Neither one loved her as much as she wanted them to. So she left them both, and good riddance. “You were the one who showed me that a relationship wasn’t worth it unless the love flowed the same both ways. You showed me that it was possible to love someone completely.”

She laughed at that. “I learned it from you, you learned it from me,” she said. “Maybe I put it into words for you, but you put it into actions. From the time you were a baby. You had so much more love than I ever thought was possible. You showed me a capacity for love that I hadn’t even known existed. You always were my sensitive boy. That’s why it was so important for you to stay that way.”

“I did, you know,” I said. “I never stopped being your sensitive boy.”

“I know,” she said. “Even when it was hard. Even when it made your life difficult, you never let go of that. I was worried for a while, especially after I died. I thought that the spark was going to die out.” She put her hand on my shoulder again. “But then you turned around and nurtured it. You found the spark and made it into a flame. You loved so hard. Even when you didn’t need to.”

I smiled at her and put my hand on hers. “I was just doing what you taught me,” I said.

“Do you think it would’ve been better if I’d told you about the autism?” she asked.

“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?” I asked. She nodded, and I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I ever could. It was such a stigma at the time, I understand why you didn’t want me to have that label. Maybe, if I had known, I would’ve avoided a few embarrassing conversations about hyper-resilience, being confident in my ignorance because that’s what you had called it. But overall? I think you did the right thing. You helped me learn to cope with it, to function with it, and to use it to my advantage. You – and dad – both taught me how to mask, and how to accept the way my brain worked. You never used the word, but you did your best to prepare me.”

“You had so much trouble when you were younger.”

I nodded. “And when I was older. I had to learn things everyone else already knew. It was humiliating at times, and humbling at others. But I got through it. And yeah, I was a weird kid. I was a weird adult. But I was able to hold on to that, to be the person I became, because of the things you taught me. Because of how you treated me, and how you trained me.”

“You make it sound like you were a dog or something.”

I shrugged. “In some ways, I was. It wasn’t just autism. The ADHD was pretty severe, too. We didn’t know that the two could coexist at the time, either. It’s not like you had a lot to go on. You did your best.”

“And you’re really not mad?”

“Mom, I’m not mad about anything. Not where you’re concerned. I’m not mad about you moving to Florida. I’m not mad about you divorcing dad. I’m not mad about the times you grounded me, or how harsh the grounding was. I’m not mad you never told me I was autistic. I’m not mad at any of the stupid shit that I used to be mad about. I’ve long since forgiven you for everything.”

“You used to hold such grudges,” she said.

I nodded. “I know. You used to say that no one held a grudge like I did. Did you know that for a while, I took that as a compliment? I thought that was something I should aspire to. Like the whole ‘never forget a question’ thing from the Little Prince. I made that part of my personality. Same with grudges. But then, one day, I realized that it was stupid.”

“When was that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe when you were dying. Maybe after you were gone. Maybe after dad. I can’t pinpoint the moment. But I know that there was a time when I realized that grudges didn’t hurt the other person. They only ever bothered me. I think Confucius – or someone like that – said that keeping a grudge was like taking poison in the hopes that someone else would die.” I shook my head. “I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense anymore. If someone hurts me, I cut them out of my life. But I don’t stay mad anymore. There’s no point in that.”

“But you cut so many people out,” mom said. “Weren’t you lonely?”

I shook my head. “It’s weird,” I told her. “I thought that I would be, but I wasn’t. It turns out that having just a few friends is enough, if they’re the right friends. And I always had Nykki. Actually, I think she’s the one who really helped me realize that there was no point in holding grudges.”

“Really? That’s wonderful.”

“I think it was realizing that holding in the anger just poisoned me. If something was bothering me, I could just talk to her about it. We could address the issue, fix the problem, and move on. So much healthier than letting it fester. So much easier to get through life that way.”

“I’m glad you learned to let the grudges go.”

I nodded. “They don’t serve anyone. They were just making me miserable. It was an important realization, whenever it came. Part of that was because of you, because of our conversations. I felt so much freer when I let things go.”

I took a deep breath. “Your death wasn’t easy on me. Not by a long shot. In fact, it still hurts all the time. I think that’s normal; it’s part of losing a parent. You never really get over it. But I’ve known other people who lost their parents too, and most of them didn’t have the clarity we managed to get. Most of them didn’t get closure at the same level that we did. The length and breadth of our conversations gave me so much to hold onto. The fact that the last time we talked, the last thing we said to each other, was that we loved each other – that means a lot. Not everyone gets that. It didn’t make it easy, but it made it easier. And that matters.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It means a lot to know that. I was hoping that would be the case. It was the last thing I could give you, the last thing I could do as your mom. I’m glad to know it helped, even just a little bit.”

“It helped a lot, mom,” I said. “Everything about you helped. You were a wonderful person, and the best mother I could have asked for.”

She laughed and shook her head. “That’s just rose colored memory talking,” she said. “I wasn’t as good as all that.”

“Yeah you were,” I said. “Memory is all we have. Memory is reality. You are my mother, and to me you’re the best. Not perfect – everyone has flaws. You made mistakes, and I can recognize them looking back. But your intentions were always good, and you always wanted what was best. You were pure and wonderful in every way that matters. Even the mistakes were good. You never tried to pretend you were anything more than human. I still have so much I can learn from you, so much that you modeled that I’m just beginning to understand.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Because you have so much more time left to learn it.”

I looked at her in confusion. “I do?” I asked. “But I thought that this --”

She shook her head. “This was just a moment in time,” she said. “It’s not the end. Not for you. You’re going to wake up soon, and go back to the life of love that you have built.” She put a finger on my chest. “That you have made happen. Keep living, keep loving, and do your best. I’m sure you’ll be spectacular.”

I smiled. “You’re just saying that because you’re my mom.”

She smiled back. “You would know if I didn’t mean it,” she said. “All the intentions are clear here. Remember?”

One last hug, that felt like it lasted forever. She squeezed me tight, and I squeezed her back with all my might. People always tell me that I give great hugs. This is where I learned them.

“I love you, mom,” I said. Once again, they were my last words to her.

See, the way that YOU write is unique. Your perspective, the way you handle language, the choices that they make, they’re all uniquely yours. That’s the part that is original. The idea itself is simple. Anyone can come up with an idea.\

When my dad taught Entrepreneurship, he would have a class meeting where they would generate a hundred new product ideas. I’ve done the same with writing courses to come up with topics for papers. And I’ve seen it done in creative writing too. It takes about twenty to thirty minutes, but given any group of people, you’re going to be able to generate ideas pretty fast. Ideas are cheap and easy.

But once you have the idea, the little germ of a story, how you make it grow will be different than how I do it. It’ll be different than how anyone else does it. That’s because your voice is YOU, and you are unique.

To illustrate this point, there was a time in my twenties when someone who wanted to be a writer asked me for help. We would talk about the craft of writing, different techniques, all that good stuff. And when we came to this point about ideas, he told me an idea he had.

So, to prove my point, I asked him if I could write a story with the same idea. I wrote mine before reading his, and so we exchanged our drafts blind to what the other one had written. The idea that started the stories was the same for both of us. But when we saw the results, my point was proven: the stories were VASTLY different from one another.

The basic idea was this: a prisoner is locked up in a cell, alone, for a week. At the end of the week, he knows he will go into the next room. All week long, he hears sounds of torture and screams of agony from the other side of the door, making him more and more anxious about what would happen at the end of the week.

That’s it. That was the whole idea.

We had different aspects that we wanted to focus on, different ways of approaching the idea. We even had different timelines; his story followed the whole week, day by day. I was only interested in the very end. The last fifteen minutes.

So our stories ended up with different pacing, different characterization, and different overall structure, even though they started from the same exact idea.

Why do I bring this up? Mostly to remind you, when you worry about being original, that the idea is the wrong place to focus. Being original is in the execution, not the idea. There are an unlimited number of ideas, but a limited number of plots (supposedly). Neither one of those things matters when it comes to being original, though. All that matters is YOU. Your perspective, your voice, your take on things. That’s what people want to read.

All that said, please enjoy my version of the above idea. I call it “In Fifteen Minutes,” because I’m not very good at coming up with titles.

--

In fifteen minutes, they’ll open the door. In fifteen minutes, my week in this room will be over. In fifteen minutes, I’ll go into the other room. Oh god. It’s right there, on the clock. That metallic gray thing with the pointed hands. Over on the wall. Fifteen more minutes.

Only fifteen more minutes? I can’t let them take me. Not after what I’ve heard.

Could you blame me? Do you think I’m insane? I can see why you would. I’ve been locked up in a room for seven days, never seeing or speaking to anyone, and in fifteen minutes, that will all be ending. It would seem insane to be afraid of such a thing. That is, unless you understood the extenuating circumstances.

I’m not a good person. I know that. I don’t think I’m evil, but then no one does. I do, however, know quite well that I have done bad things, and that I must pay for my sins, that I must perform some form of atonement. I’m well aware of all this. I’m not a good person. I’m not an evil person either. I don’t deserve this. This is much worse than fair. I know I am a bad person.

But even I am not a bad enough person to deserve this. Even I should not be forced to go into that other room.

Not that the others did. I mean, how could they? Who could possibly deserve such a thing? All night long. And what if it wasn’t a different person each night? What if it was all the same person? All that time; all those nights?

Is that going to happen to me? Are they going to keep me in there for a week, while some poor sap is waiting here, where I am, counting down the time until they let him into the next room? Will he figure out what is going to happen?

Fourteen minutes. In fourteen minutes, they’ll open the door. Then I’ll hear those sounds again. I’ll hear them first hand. Hell, I’ll be making them. The nightmares were bad enough second hand. The terror was bad enough that I had to tear myself awake. The scream. I’d remember that scream forever. Such pain. Will that scream come from my mouth?

Why couldn’t they open the door behind me? Why can’t I leave the way I came in? They said I wouldn’t. One week. I’ll only be in there one week.

Isn’t torture illegal? Isn’t it cruel and unusual punishment what they are doing with me? Isn’t it wrong to make someone wait an entire week, and then-- I can’t even bring myself to say it. How can they do that?

It wasn’t all that bad at first. I could ignore it that first night. At least, I could pretend to ignore it. I didn’t care who they were using that machine on. I didn’t care whose screams they were. It didn’t matter to me at all. At least, I could tell myself that it didn’t. That first night, I didn’t have nightmares. I slept just fine. Because that first night, it hadn’t occurred to me.

The lights were turned on the next night. Under the door. Under that one door that I had never seen opened. Under that one door, the one they told me I would be going through at the end of the week. The lights, along with the scream. The scream that haunted me all day long, every day. And that sound. That machine. What kind of machine was it?

Day three I saw the people. Well, I didn’t see them directly. More shadows passing through the light. By that time, I wasn’t sleeping anymore. Can you blame me?

So I don’t want to leave. I have now what, thirteen minutes? I don’t want to leave this room. I don’t want to go through the door.

It’s not like this room is some kind of security blanket for me. It’s not as if I want to stay in here forever. If it were up to me, I would have left already. I would never have come in here in the first place. It is not a wonderful thing to be stuck alone in a room. Try it some time, and see how long you last. I don’t want to be stuck in a room all by myself, not if I can help it. But I want to go back out the way I came in. I want to go back in time, if necessary. I just don’t want to leave. Not the way they said I would. Not the way they want me to.

Twelve minutes. There’s still time. I could escape.

I’m no fool. I can’t get out. I can’t escape in the normal way. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last seven days trying. I tried digging, but there is no ground to dig into. The floor is stone. Cold, unrelenting, dull stone. There is no window to break out of. The door out, the way that I want to go, the way that I came in, is steel, locking with a wheel, the way a door on a submarine locks. It is locked, and there is no wheel on this side, just the other side. There is no handle on this side.

Of course, I could easily have broken through the other door. The door that I’ll be going through anyway in --what?-- eleven minutes. It’s balsa wood. It even looks like a cheap door. Easily broken. I could smash through it by hand if I wanted to. Easier to do that than it was to break her neck. Easier to do that than it was to beat him to death.

But I can’t break that door down. That isn’t where I want to go.

I tried other things. I wanted to ambush them when they left me my food, but they do that with a drawer in the wall next to the door. I never see anyone. Haven’t seen anyone since they put me in here. Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t see anyone. Maybe a lot of things are for the best. Maybe.

So I can’t escape. That’s what I was saying. Do you still think I’m mad? You may. Perhaps I am. I certainly do not feel mad. I feel perfectly sane. I feel frightened, to be sure, but that alone seems to confirm my sanity, doesn’t it?

I cannot escape. Not in the traditional sense. I can’t physically leave the room; I can’t go back to a normal life. I can’t get out. But I can still get away.

I wish I could tell if I was sane. Unfortunately, I have no one to ask, no way to connect. I cannot present my own actions and thoughts to another person and have them determine whether or not I am still in my right mind. It’s not as if I have a couch to lay on. I had a mattress before. No springs, of course. Just the cloth. Good, strong cloth wrapped around foam, on a metal frame. A sturdy metal frame. That’s what it was.

Ten minutes. I have ten minutes to change my mind. Ten minutes to decide that I don’t want to escape. Am I sure I want to?

Well, what other option do I have, really? What else can I say? What else can I do? Could I really handle such an idea? Could I willingly let me take them in there, let me go through that door, that door that did so little to hide the sounds? Could I so easily become a sheep and let them have control, let them have the last word, let them decide how things would end?

I’ve heard what goes on in that room. I’ve heard that machine, that grinding groaning scratching crunching sound. I’ve seen the shadows under the door. I’ve heard the screams. I can’t stop hearing the screams.

Can I do it? Can I suffer as those others have suffered? Am I sure it’s just one person? Isn’t torture illegal? Could it have been the same person all week long? Is it even conceivable for someone to survive that long? What did they do with him during the day? He passed out, I imagine. But would sleep be enough of a respite?

How does it end? It can’t go longer than a week, can it?

Nine minutes.

It really is a sturdy bed stand. I wonder if the strips of cloth are really going to be strong enough. I should have thought of that yesterday, and tested them first.

I was never a boy scout. I don’t know knots. I don’t think it –I hesitate to call it a rope—will snap my neck. I’ll still get away, but it won’t be quick.

Still, anything is faster than what they have planned right? Less painful. More dignified. Is suicide dignified? Do I care?

Every night for a week. Isn’t torture illegal?

Eight minutes.

I can’t let them win. This way, at least I still win. All I have to do is swing a bit, push the bed frame away with my feet. Just a little bit. That’s all it will take. Then I’ll drop, and I’ll win. I win, because I made the decision.

Seven minutes. Why haven’t I done it yet? Do I want to linger? Am I having second thoughts? Could I be going sane? Or perhaps this is the last lingering glint of sanity, fighting for one more minute, fighting for just a little bit more reason. It could be anything, couldn’t it? I don’t know; I’ve never been in this situation. I wish there was someone here I could ask. I wish there was some way I could know. But of course, I haven’t spoken to anyone for days. No one but myself, that is.

I used to think that talking to yourself was a sign of insanity. Speaking to the voices in your head. That sounds like something that crazy people do. Doesn’t it? But it turns out that it is not insane. At least, I don’t think it is. Looking back on it now, it seems perfectly sane; it seems to make perfect sense. We are linguistic creatures, rational animals. As such, we need social contact. Without social contact, if we are left to just our own minds, left to our own devices, then we have nothing, and we lose ourselves, lose our minds. When there is not another person there to talk to, the only way to maintain sanity, the only way to get at least a portion of the social fix that we need, is to talk to ourselves. Talking to yourself, then, is a defense mechanism.

Besides, it’s possible that there has never been another person, and I’ve been talking to myself all along. It’s possible that mine is the only mind that actually exists. But that is a very complicated idea, and I don’t think I have time for it right now.

Six minutes. Let’s assume my neck doesn’t break. How much time will I have? How long does it take to suffocate? I can hold my breath for two minutes, if I really have to. But I’m not trying to. So maybe I should exhale before hand. That would cut down the time. But how long would it be anyway? Three minutes? Five? How long before it’s just too late? I think the brain can only survive five minutes without oxygen, but how far into strangulation does that happen?

You know, if I’d thought of it, I could have just asked her. While I was strangling her. I could have just stopped and seen if she was getting air to the brain. Or, I could have counted. I was wearing a watch, after all. I could have timed it. Then I’d know how long I’ll have. Didn’t seem important at the time. Nothing ever does.

Will they stop me? Are they so hell bent on getting me to the other room that they would actually stop me, save my life, just to do that to me? I know they sometimes resuscitate criminals on death row. Bring them back to life, only to kill them again a few minutes later. Always seemed a terrible waste to me. But might they do that? I don’t want that to happen.

So how much time do I need? I only have five minutes left. Only five more minutes, and I might need all of it. Look up at the ceiling: still tight around the rafter. Push back and forth. Sway. No turning back now. No backing out. It’s my way or through the doorway. I don’t want to go through the doorway. You don’t want to go, do you? Why would you? Of course you don’t. So swing. It’s the only other way. You’ve tried your other options. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe your neck will snap.

No.

Keep your hands down. Keep them down. Don’t struggle. Just let it happen. Just let go.

Now that I think of it, (why am I still thinking?) I probably could have made my neck snap with a bit more of a knot back there. That would make sense. I’ve always wondered why the hangman’s noose is so long. Why thirteen coils? It makes sense now. They break the neck. Breaking the neck is the easy way. It makes a hanging quick, painless. At least, I assume it does. Not like this. It hurts. Not as much as the other room would hurt.

Don’t struggle. Four minutes.

I can’t exhale. I want to empty my lungs, but I can’t do it. My windpipe is cut off. Broken? Is it broken? It might be. Doesn’t matter, it’s completely constricted. I guess we’ll see how long I can hold my breath after all. Nothing’s coming up. I should have thought of that.

Three minutes. How will they react when they come inside? How will they react when they find me, coming to take me into the other room, come to put me in that machine? Will they feel cheated? Will I still be alive then? My eyes are blurring. Vision is disappearing. So it does all go away at once. That makes sense. This makes sense.

Two minutes. I think I’ll pass out soon. I hope so. Fight the panic. Don’t panic. It’s too late anyway.

The body thrashes. I can’t help that. Let it thrash. It doesn’t want to die. It’s far too stupid to understand anyway. Let it thrash. It’ll thrash, it’ll struggle, and it will lose. And then they’ll come in. Then they’ll see.

One more minute. That’s a long time to be holding my breath. I really should be dead by now. Why am I not dead? I haven’t had any oxygen in a few minutes. How long has it been? I can’t remember. Is my brain dying? Is it still getting oxygen? There is still oxygen in the air you exhale, so maybe my body is taking more from what is already stuck in my lungs. That will run out soon though. Soon it will take carbon dioxide, and that will kill me. It’s a poison. Isn’t it?

How much time has passed?

Is that the door opening?

I can’t see anymore. Shapes. Are those shapes? Are they coming out of the room with the machine, or from the other door? Are they putting me in the machine? What’re they doing? Is that noise? Are they talking?

“I was beginning to worry about this one.” Whose voice is that? “He lasted longer than the others. I thought we’d have to let him go.”

“You have no faith in the human mind, Warden.” What’s a warden?

“Apparently not. Well, we should cut him down, shouldn’t we?”

“No. I don’t think he’s dead yet. Give him some time.”

“Fine. Fine. Rewind the tape, move the bed frame, and get another mattress. We go through so many damned mattresses this way.”

“Better this than having to keep them in cells, isn’t it?”

“I suppose. One week is cheaper than life. But what if one of them makes it?”

“Then we let him back into gen pop. If he’s not already too crazy to communicate, we just stop him from telling anyone the story.”

“Stop him how?”

“There are ways.”

“Torture is illegal, doctor.”

“Sure it is.”

Wait a minute. Torture is illegal. They can’t do this.

Can they?

Case 10642

Good morning.

That’s not an entirely accurate statement. Morning implies time of day. That’s a dated concept. Why restrict yourself to where the sun would be rising? There’s no need. But we’ll get to that.

I know you’re confused. I’m sorry that I’m not helping matters. But I promise I will.

I don’t know your name. No, don’t tell me. If you told me, that would constitute a potential emotional connection, and I would be reassigned. I don’t want to know anything about you. Better if I don’t. This isn’t about me; it’s about you.

Whoever you are, you have been before. Let me explain what I mean. You are supposed to be a random personality construct. You are supposed to believe that your life has happened, to have memories and think you have experiences. But all of those things are supposed to be artificial. They’re supposed to all prepare you for the world you are going to live in.

But your memories aren’t artificial, are they? You really do remember things. You really lived a normal life. You knew the world was a certain way, and it actually was. And you have absolutely no idea where or when you are right now.

That’s the problem, you see. It’s what tipped us off. You aren’t prepared to live in the world, in any world, anymore. You’re still convinced that it’s –let me guess—the twenty first century?

It’s what sets you apart from the others. You don’t just remember eating an orange. You’ve actually done it. You were actually born; we have records and everything. I haven’t seen them. If I had, I’d know too much about you. I need to be completely ignorant of everything regarding you and your life. That is the only way to remain truly impartial about this case.

Naturally, my enforced ignorance is mine. You have no need of remaining ignorant. And, seeing as you might be more cooperative if you understood what was going on, I’ll explain things to you.

This is a plagiarism hearing. I’m told you at least understand the meaning of plagiarism. In your time, it was restricted to text or creative works. It was the act of passing off someone else’s work as your own. This is not much different.

The claim, you see, is that you are a random construct. That you are the creative property of the database that produced you. I am here to find out if that is true. So many clues point to you being an actual person. If you are in fact an actual person, that would mean that you are not artificial. That someone else is passing off the work (life) of another (you) as their own. Plagiarism.

Are you with me so far?

Before I go on, I want to assure you of something. However this hearing ends up, you will not in any way be punished. Your freedom, your life, and your happiness are not at stake here. The question at hand is simply whether or not you are a real person. The end result for you will be the same either way.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the world. Today is July Seventh. That, I assume, makes sense to you? Nothing strange or unusual there? Good. It is July Seventh, in the year 2567 of the common era. I’ve lost you, haven’t I? You had no idea that was the current year. Were you close? Not even within five hundred years? I thought not. Just checking.

Location. We are currently in what is known as a Hibbert Space. Does that seem at all familiar to you? It’s a term given to processing spaces that do not literally exist in physical space. It’s named after a term from early quantum physics.

Hibbert Spaces exist in a quantum state. What I mean by that is that they don’t literally exist at all. You cannot at the same time point to where the program is running and also examine the program itself. This is in accordance with the Heisenberg-Waxler uncertainty principle. Any of that seem familiar?

I imagine you’re wondering what the point of all this is. Well, basically I’m trying to tell you that you are no longer on Earth. That chair you are sitting in isn’t real; it’s a construction of this program. Let me check some information about your time. Yes, there we go. It’s a Matrix. Does that make sense to you?

It follows, or it should, that if your chair isn’t real, then neither is the body sitting in it. Do you see how that must be? Excellent. You’re making very good progress.

This room that we’re in right now. This is a room of your making. The Hibbert Space we are currently occupying is set up to be comfortable. To be familiar. Generally, all plagiarism cases are brought to this space. It reduces psychological dissonance among the constructed personalities. The Administrator read through your code and found something comfortable for you. That’s why you feel like you are sitting somewhere comfortable, somewhere you would expect to be reading a book. It is also why you are experiencing my end of the conversation as though I were a book. Or am I on a computer screen?

I must admit; I don’t know what a computer screen is. My assistant is telling me that in the twenty first century computers were restricted to specific physical localities, where the information was presented in such a way that a human mind could make easy sense of it. The information was presented visually on a screen. That makes sense. I assume that is how you understand things?

My hope is that you will come with me and allow me to step you into a different world. I know it seems strange and alien to you. I also understand that many of the things I will tell and show you will seem impossible. Someone from near to your time once said that any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic.

I feel confident in saying that technology has advanced enough over the past five hundred years to prove that point.

For ease, I will keep us in the sensory perceptions of normal humanity. Far easier to look in three dimensions with visual sensations than to try to explain fractal perception or multivalent dimensional shifts. So let’s stick with three spatial dimensions and just the one temporal one, shall we?

You are a constructed personality. As it stands, you have actually been alive for only nineteen seconds, standard Earth temporal variation. We’ll assume that all measurements of time are in SETV, if that’s all right with you.

Most likely, you are thinking that it took you far longer than nineteen seconds just to engage in the conversation thus far. This is leaving out any complaints or insistence you might have about living a real life. I’ve already conceded that I believe your memories correspond to real events. Let’s not dwell.

The explanation for why you feel more time has passed than the nineteen point oh five seconds that I claim have passed is that you are thinking far faster than the human mind has ever been able to comprehend. It’s an interesting phenomenon. When the first human personality was given the capacity of thought currently enjoyed by every citizen in the galaxy, she mentioned that it seemed like time had slowed down. She was unable, at first, to comprehend how quickly she was thinking of things, and so she constructed, by means of explanation, the slow-time sensation.

Don’t worry about that. It’s normal. It will pass.

As for the other complaint. I am not trying to tell you that you did not experience the things you remember experiencing. All I am trying to say is that they did not happen to you. You, as the being I am in conversation with, did not literally exist in the twenty first century. There was, we believe, someone who did; someone with all of your memories and concepts of identity. But that someone has been dead for quite some time. You are a construct of that person’s personality. It’s only natural that you should think you are that person. But consider this: At the point at which your memories of the past end, the other version of you continued to live. You began to exist, to live, as a construct. Your memories even now are different from that person’s. You are different people.

Does that make sense?

Wonderful. You really are making excellent progress.

Okay. We are going to make a few changes now. Please try not to be alarmed. I promise you I will return you back to this simulation as soon as we are finished. In fact, I’ll go even farther. We are going to section off your consciousness.

Let me explain. It is possible to completely recopy your consciousness. We can make a duplicate of you if we wish. In fact, we can make as many duplicates as we wish. Oddly enough, that would not fall under the plagiarism laws. Not so long as the duplicates were made consensually. If you were not willing to be duplicated, and someone duplicated you anyway, that would be considered piracy, which is, of course, illegal.

But none of that is terribly relevant. We are not planning to duplicate you. What I am proposing is sectioning. What that means is that you will maintain a connection with the perceived world around you even while you go off with me. How much of your consciousness you care to keep with me and how much you care to keep in the perceived world of body and book or screen is entirely up to you. You can lose yourself in the world that I show you or you can pay only scant attention to me. That is up to you.

So now we leave this simulation and move closer to the real world.

I understand this is a shock to you. I will try to take baby steps. So our first stop will be to the real atomic world. But before we go, do I need to explain atomic world?

We exist in a Hibbert Space, as I said the last time we chatted. In every important way, there is nothing any more or less real about this world than any other. Yes, it is simulated, regulated in many ways by what you would call an artificial intelligence. But all this regulation entails is maintaining a few physical and causality laws. This allows everyone to interact safely, without worrying about time shifting in the wrong direction unexpectedly.

There are other Spaces available if you care to shift. Some day, perhaps, I will show some of them to you. There are also Spaces that are unregulated. These are usually places where people go to play. In those Spaces, they can change anything and everything that they wish about themselves. I’m embarrassed to say this, but more often than not, Unregulated Space is used for sexual purposes.

Then there is the Atomic world. If I understand correctly, there was a primitive form of Unregulated Space in your time. This loose connection of computers around the world was also, my Assistant tells me, used primarily for sexual purposes. Is it comforting to know that not much has changed?

The Atomic world, then, is the world you are used to. The world that you believe a section of your consciousness is even now existing in. It is the world made up of atoms (hence the name). There is nothing more or less real about this world than any other. The only difference is that if there is an Intelligence maintaining physical, temporal, and causal stability in the Atomic world, no one has ever been able to identify it.

If you wish to return to the Atomic world, I can arrange that. When we are finished, if you want a physical body, I will have one manufactured for you. Would you like an organic body, like the one you believe you have, or would you prefer a robotic one that is more durable and capable than your organic self? Or perhaps you would like somewhere in between? Well, don’t answer now. Think about it for a while. You don’t need to make your decision for quite some time.

I am going to open a window into the Atomic world. What I mean by that is that we are not literally going to enter it. To do so would require some complexity, as well as some significant expense. And, as I’ve just explained, there is nothing particularly special about the Atomic world.

But there is a Hibbert Space that is directly modeled on the Atomic world. The Administrator maintains all the rules and regulations of the Atomic world; you won’t know the difference.

Okay. We’ll begin our tour somewhere familiar to you. Relatively. We’ll begin within your home solar system. It’s too soon to go home; culture shock. You understand. I promised you baby steps.

My assistant is telling me that you were alive during one of the major controversies about the tenth planet in your solar system. It tells me you know this planet as Plato. In your time, humanity had not yet reached that far, but there were several unmanned crafts headed in that direction. I assume then that you have at least a passing familiarity with the planet.

First off, the question of its planetary status. Yes. It is a planet. Though it does not remain on the same orbital plane as the other planets in your system, it still counts. Venus rotates in the wrong direction and has a longer day than a year. Earth has liquid water on the surface. Mars is the origin of life. Jupiter has its own life-bearing satellite. Each planet is unique.

One of the interesting things about Pluto is that it only has an atmosphere for a portion of its orbit. During the extreme edges of its orbit, the distance from Sol is so great that the atmosphere freezes and drops to the planet surface.

Needless to say, Atomic life does not exist on the surface. But this constant freezing and releasing of the atmosphere does make Pluto uniquely capable of supporting nanotechnologicial societies. There is a tendency in nanotechnology to reach a stasis point, where everything has been converted from its general material into a more ordered, geometric shape. This is contrary to the natural order of the universe. As you may or may not know, the universe tends always towards chaos and disorder. Having the atmosphere freeze every so often destroys the order of the nanotech, resetting their world.

It’s harmless. They aren’t literally alive, so they don’t die. What’s important is that a good deal of research is done on Pluto because of this constant reorganization.

Are you set? I haven’t frightened you away yet, have I? Excellent. Let’s move a bit closer to home, shall we?

Our next stop brings us to the orbital plane. It’s strange the way so many of the planets in the Sol system seem to orbit along the same plane, isn’t it? Of course, it isn’t literally a plane, but it’s close enough for our purposes.

Our tour could bring us to any of those planets. I think it would be best, though, if we went next all the way in to Mars. Last time we chatted, I mentioned that it was the origin of life. You were understandably confused. Did you think it was a typo? I will explain. But then we really do have to get down to business.

A long time ago, there was no life anywhere in the Sol system. A few hundred years is insignificant in this kind of time frame. Let’s call it a few billion years. There were a number of chemicals floating around on the surface of Earth. Amino Acids and what not. A primordial sludge, if you will.

I can show you that, if you’re at all interested. It won’t be literally real, but there’s a pretty good simulation. No? Another time, perhaps.

Anyway, that was the way things were for many years. Nothing changed. Then, suddenly, there were other acids, and life began. Ever wonder how that occurred?

The truth is, there were a few acids on Mars. And one day, as Mars was minding its own business, it was struck by a meteor. This sort of thing is normal. My assistant tells me that one crashed into Jupiter during your initial lifetime. One big enough to leave a crater the size of Earth. That’s one of the perks of having a gas giant. They deflect catastrophe.

But this day, billions of years ago, no catastrophe was deflected. It hit Mars pretty much straight on. It hit so hard, in fact, that pieces of the planet were blown off. Some of them hurtled to Earth. And when they hit, the Amino Acids they were carrying mixed with the ones that were already in the Primordial Sludge. And Life was created.

Isn’t that strange? All the things you know, all the history of mankind, and none of it would have been possible without a rogue meteor.

That serves to help explain why in all these years we have never come into contact with any alien intelligences. I’m sorry; does that disappoint you? Well, the variety of intelligence now in the world is so extreme that I imagine you will find a good deal of it plenty alien enough for you.

Now, let us explore Mars.

We are going to walk on the surface of a foreign planet. You find that unusual and interesting, right? Good. I thought you might. Try to let yourself come with me. Try to leave only the smallest portion of your consciousness in the comfort zone we designed for you and send the majority of it to the surface with me.

Feel the crunch of the dirt under your feet. See how the gravity here isn’t as strong as what you are used to? Look at the sky. It’s blue, but not the kind of blue you see on Earth. This blue is darker, but not quite the color of the night sky. We are here during the day, but Mars is farther from Sol than Earth is, so not as much light is getting here. The wind isn’t as strong, but that’s because there isn’t much of an atmosphere here.

Originally, the idea was to terraform the planet. Do you know what that is? The trouble was that it was far too expensive to make it habitable for Atomic humans. Humans with bodies require a whole lot of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, mixed in a particular way. We could do it, but why? There aren’t enough Atomic humans to make it worth while.

The population at the time of your initial life, according to my assistant, was somewhere around seven billion. On Earth there are currently living only ten billion.

I am aware that this may seem strange to you, my choice of language. I say “only ten billion” mere instants after saying that your world had seven billion. My arithmetic skills are not deficient; I am well aware that seven is fewer than ten.

The reason I say “only” is that, for a time, there were quite a few more people living on Earth. There was a rapid increase in population growth, globally speaking, even during your time. Every four decades or so, the population doubled. So forty years after the time you believe to still be inhabiting there were fourteen billion. Areas began to get crowded, and global warming progressed to a point where areas farther and farther polar were inhabitable. Eighty years after what you believe is your current time there were twenty-eight billion. Crowding was a serious problem, as was hunger. Cities began to sprawl outward until they touched. The world was slowly becoming one giant city.

There were attempts made to stem the population growth. Massive sterilizations helped, but only locally. Wars managed to stop the increasing rate of population growth; without them the population would have begun to double ever twenty years. Genetic engineering was the most successful method. It allowed people to be cross pollinated, so to speak, with plants, allowing those people to obtain a good deal of sustenance from water and sunlight. It also allowed people to be born with gills and increased body density, allowing them to live underwater and survive the crushing pressure of the depths.

All these things, unfortunately, were merely a stop gap.

By one hundred and twenty years from your perceived present, it was projected that the Earth would no longer be able to handle humanity. Colonization attempts had been made to Luna, Mars, Venus, Europa, and several large asteroids. But even that would not be enough; once the colonies were established, they immediately began having similar population issues. The only thing that saved them was an attitude that allowed people to starve to death. If there was not enough food, there would be no more people. Brutal, but efficient.

It was widely determined that the best option was to expand beyond the Sol system. The issue, though, was time. Humans never perfected light speed travel, and faster than light travel was all but impossible for physical beings. So to move to the next closest system would take twenty to thirty years, in the best of scenarios.

The human life span by this point was, on average, one hundred and ninety years. Some lived longer, to be sure, but that was the average. I am told that this is roughly triple what it was in your time. That explains some of the overpopulation issues.

Still, even with nearly two centuries, people were not willing to spend multiple decades in transit. The generation ship concept was a possibility, but not an appealing one.

At this point it was discovered that there was one method of faster than light travel that could work. Information could be sent through quantum wormholes, allowing it to pass from one point to another without ever passing through the space in between.

Information became the trend du jour. More and more people left their physical bodies and the Atomic world behind. After all, the digital world is limitless and can follow any number of sets of physical laws. It was an infinite universe of possibilities. And programs, like you and like me, do not age.

There are still some humans in atomic bodies. As I said, ten billion of them live on Earth. But only ten billion. Not fifty-six billion, and certainly not one hundred and fourteen trillion.

Does it make sense now why I said “only ten billion”?

Are you curious about one hundred and fourteen trillion? By the doubling every forty years formula, there would be one hundred and fourteen trillion six hundred and eight-eight billion atomic humans. Naturally, they would not all be on Earth. But that’s how many should have existed in the universe.

For a sense of scope, that’s roughly sixteen thousand people for every one person alive during your time. Alternately, if you consider the phrase “You’re one in a million,” which my assistant tells me was popular during your time, that would mean that there were one hundred and fourteen million people exactly like you. Far from unique.

There are not that many human beings. The exact number is actually rather difficult to calculate. You see, it is possible to make duplicates of your personality program, and allow those duplicates as much or as little autonomy as you wish. Some people create duplicates so that they might experience more things at the same time. Some do it to ensure that they will live on, or because they cannot make a decision. Why choose when you can do both? This is a common sentiment.

Then also there is the issue of human beings versus artificial intelligence. We’ll get to that later. But for now, let’s just put a number on things. There are currently anywhere from two to three hundred trillion human intelligences in the universe.

Thankfully, they do not need to share a bathroom.

Was that funny? My assistant tells me it should have been. If it was not, I apologize. Please insert a self-deprecating remark to re-establish my charm.

None of this is familiar to you, is it?

I thought not.

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Welcome to Earth. This place is very different from the one you know, and yet in many ways it is similar. After the mass migration off Earth, or at least out of the Atomic world, people spent a good deal of time reclaiming the world. Greenhouse gases were converted to more useful products, the ozone layer was reconstructed, and many of the cities were dismantled, allowing large tracts of land the freedom to take natural root.

Some time ago, the issue of nationalism arose. It has been the cause of a number of wars, and wars were no longer necessary. The population easily controls itself now that there is access to Hibbert spaces throughout the universe.

By this point there were no governments, not as my assistant tells me you would know them. Instead there were merely corporations. Do you remember corporations taking control over the world and purchasing nations away from their governments? No? Excellent. This happened after your time. I’m sure you remember some signs of this beginning though. I’m told that the first few examples of corporations gaining the upper hand in power struggles with governments occurred during your time. Does the phrase “globalization” mean anything to you? Excellent.

Still, nationalism existed. On a geographic scale. Those who lived on what I am told was called North America were opposed to those in a Europe. These names, I assume, are familiar to you. Good.

The only way to remove these continental nationalistic tendencies was to remove the differences. Actually, it was history that provided the idea. Do you know the word Pangaea?

The continents were combined to form a single land mass, just as the cities had combined to form single cities. It was a fusion of the present (your future) and the past.

None of this seems familiar, does it?

I mentioned the sticky issue of artificial intelligence. Let me explain that quickly. Stop me if you remember this. The original artificial intelligences were completely computer generated. They were programs built from nothing. It was therefore very easy to determine the status of these programs; they belonged to the programmers.

However, as humanity became more and more digitally able, complications arose. Having only digital bodies made it impossible to conceive children. Sex never went out of style, but suddenly the issues of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases became entirely a matter of choice. But when a couple (or anyone, really) wanted a child, they could no longer trust to biology to provide it. There was, literally speaking, no longer any biology to trust.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Is it because you’ve figured it out or because you remember it?

In order to have children, parents would take portions of their own makeup, their own programming, and combine it. This allowed for different childhood experiences and completely different views of the universe. Some of these “children” were created as full and complete adults, amalgams of their various parents. Others were created as infants and gradually upgraded, programming becoming more and more complex as time went by. In either case, the intelligence that resulted was in every important respect artificial. And yet, it was widely considered to be a person.

These people, these artificial children, were not the property of their parents (not once childhood was officially ended). Instead, they were legally given equal status to everyone else. I myself am one of these artificial children.

You, it seems, are not. Which is why we’re here in the first place.

I believe I have heard enough. While I could continue to introduce you to the world, there is no longer a need. Don’t worry though; someone else will surely take over for me until you are ready to face reality yourself and decide you no longer need instruction.

I have told you many of the simplest and most commonly known facts of the universe. I have shared moments in history that are so common that ignorance of them is all but laughable. I have dropped hint after hint, trying to get you to slip up and show that you are, in fact, a program. None of this has worked.

It is therefore my official judgment and recommendation that you be considered an actual person, a past personality constructed in the modern day. An issue and example, therefore, of plagiarism. You are entitled to your own life, and the fact that someone recreated you without your consent is a violation of that entitlement.

All that remains, then, is to find out whether this plagiarism was intentional or not. It is possible, though amazingly unlikely, that your creation was a result of random chance. In this case, you will be issued a formal apology and given full credit for the possession of your intellectual property.

If the plagiarism was intentional, and not random chance, then you will be entitled to take further legal action.

This is the end of our communication. It has been a pleasure working with you, and I look forward to perhaps someday meeting you in social, rather than professional, capacities.

I will return you to the Hibbert space where we began. My assistant informs me that the AI controlling that space will provide you with continued simulations of the world that you know until such time as either a final verdict is reached or you decide you are ready to leave the simulation. You may do so at any time; simply make your intentions known the intelligence that controls the physical laws of your reality.

Thank you for your cooperation. Have a truly excellent day.

Thankfully, she’s started to make enough waves for people to notice, and has been given leadership over a sort of Undercoven, where she can help other witches who just aren’t as strong as they could be gradually learn and grow enough to be accepted. And maybe she’ll get accepted too, eventually.

In the meantime, though, something bad is happening. Like, really bad. Seems someone has started killing tattoo witches. Worse, that someone is skinning them while they’re still alive, and stealing their tattoos. It’s a small community, so AJ knows everyone who’s already died. And she knows that she is next.

Here’s the cover:

So why am I telling you about this? Well, we’re doing a launch party! On May 9th. It’s a virtual launch party, as I’m in Minneapolis and the publisher is in Canada. But it’ll be an event on Facebook, and streamed on Twitch, apparently.

Oh, and you’re invited!

Virtual Launch Party!

That’s the link for the event. I hope you can make it!

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A future for a drink

The liquor burned as it went down. In a good way. Richter took a look at the glass and then at the bartender. “What did you say you called this stuff?”

The bartender gave him a vapid smile as she tried to figure out if he was kidding. Then she took a deep breath, one that made her breasts heave in a way that was not lost on Richter. “Whiskey,” she said. “We call it Whiskey. Jamesons, to be precise.”

Richter nodded. “It’s good,” he said. The bartender rolled her eyes. He didn’t realize he was being made fun of. “I’ll have some more.”

“You want to open a tab?” She asked.

“Sure.” Richter reached into his pocket and pulled out a stick, maybe four inches long. There was a slot on one end that looked like it was supposed to plug in to something. He slid it across the bar. “Just put it on this.”

Shirley, the bartender, looked down at the stick. It looked like something you stir a drink with, not something you use to pay for one. Then she leaned back and looked sideways at Richter. Was he messing with her? “What the hell is that?” She asked.

“It’s a credit stick,” he said. “Don’t you take credit?” Richter looked over his shoulder. “The sign on the door said you accepted all major credit cards.”

“Yeah,” Shirley said. “Credit cards. Cards. Little rectangular plastic things. None of this stick crap. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry.” Richter blushed a bit, pulling the stick off the bar and sliding it back into a little pocket against his ribs. “I’m not from around here.” He laughed. “Not exactly, anyway.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Look, do you have a credit card or not? If you don’t, you owe me six fifty.” The drink she’d served him was only five fifty, but he’d already pissed her off a dollar’s worth. She started getting a sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to pay. Chad had yelled at her twice already this month alone. Always make them show you the money first. Pay, then drink. He was going to make her pay for this prick’s drink.

Richter pushed his hand into a seam on the side of his pants. The pocket was very cleverly designed; Shirley didn’t even see it before he put his hand inside. He reached in and pulled something out, then tossed them onto the bar.

At first glance, they looked like dice. The kinds of things nerds use to slay dragons. From the looks of it, they were twelve siders. Shirley would deride anyone else who knew that as a nerd, but wouldn’t mention those years playing the half-orc barbarian in Jeff’s basement.

Then she looked a bit closer. There was a weird red discoloration inside them, but those were not dice. Aside from there being no numbers, they were definitely not plastic. They looked--. No. They couldn’t be.

“Are those,” she swallowed hard, then leaned forward. Normally she did that to show off some cleavage and get better tips. This time she did it so that no one would hear her question. “Are those diamonds?”

Richter shook his head. “No, not exactly. They’re structured carbon, and very similar, but there’s that little wetware on the inside. The thing that denotes their value?” She was looking at him with wide eyed confusion. He took a deep breath and tried to dumb it down as best he could. “Computer chips,” he said. “You know, things with electronic signatures.”

“There’s a computer chip inside the diamond? Why?”

“I told you. It denotes value. And it’s more than just a chip. It’s a whole computer.”

“Bullspit.”

Richter laughed. “I’m serious,” he said. “It’s not very sophisticated, but it’s there.”

He must be messing with her. “Jesus Christ, don’t you have any real money?”

He shook his head, clearly embarrassed. “I thought I did,” he said. “But apparently I packed the wrong stuff.”

She should’ve thrown him out. Should’ve maybe called Jesse over. Jesse would’ve thrown him out on his rear. But for some reason, he was intriguing her. Besides, it was just five fifty. Hell, if those were really diamonds, and she could really keep them, she’d give him as much booze as he wanted.

“I can have these?” She asked.

He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Far as I can tell, they’re worthless here.”

She tried not to laugh. “You want something else?”

His eyes lit up. “You’re accepting the payment?”

“No.” He deflated a bit. “But I’ll cover you, if you’re willing to talk to me a bit.”

He looked suspicious. Shirley tried to play it cool. She didn’t want him to know what a crappy deal he was getting. “Look,” she said, “It’s a Tuesday night. Not many people are going to come in tonight, and I’m bored. So you keep talking, and I’ll keep buying you drinks.”

He thought for a few seconds. She could almost see the thoughts race across his eyes. “All right,” he said. “Can I try something else?”

“What do you like?”

“Do you have any Shunzar?”

Shirley bit her lower lip. “Um.”

He blushed again. “Right,” he said. “Sorry. Like I said. I’m not from around here. Why don’t you pick? Surprise me.”

Okay. He liked the whiskey. Maybe something else with a kick. Shirley thought about going through the effort of making a cocktail, but wasn’t sure he’d notice. Maybe a shot. She grabbed a glass and frosted the rim with sugar and lemon. Vanilla vodka, hazelnut liqueur. She pulled out a lemon slice.

“Drink this,” she said. “Don’t swallow right away. Once it’s in your mouth, bite the lemon.”

He threw the shot into his mouth. It burned. Not bad. But nothing special. Not unlike the other drink. Then he bit the lemon.

It was heavenly. Like a chocolate cake. “That tastes like chocolate cake,” he said. She nodded. “Amazing.”

“So you do know what chocolate cake is?”

Richter smiled and tried not to be condescending. “Every civilization in the history of the universe knows chocolate cake,” he said. “I’d argue a species can’t be considered intelligent unless it can make one.”

She laughed. “Okay, your turn. Pony up.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know that expression.”

“Tell me where you come from. You keep saying you’re not from around here. Where are you from?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I was an alien?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“You don’t look like one.”

“Do you know what an alien would look like?”

Shirley shrugged. “No. But I know it wouldn’t look like a normal person.”

He nodded, impressed. “Fair reasoning,” he said. “How about if I told you that I am human, but I’m from a different time period?”

“Time travel? Are you kidding me? That’s the oldest and lamest idea science fiction writers ever had. Too many paradoxes.”

He smiled. “Only if you go backwards through the same continuum,” he said. “If you go forwards, and slide into another world, then there are no paradoxes.”

“What do you mean? You’re saying you’re from the past? Bullspit.”

“You keep saying that. I’m not sure I understand what it means.”

“It means I don’t believe you.”

Richter smiled. It felt good to be able to do that without looking over his shoulder. “That makes sense. I show you a computer smaller than any you’ve seen before, so of course I can’t be from the past. And I’m not. I’m from the future.”

“But you came forward?”

He nodded. “That’s right.”

She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. In her years as a bartender, Shirley had developed a kind of sense for people. She could tell if an ID was fake without even looking at it. She knew the people who were lying, just trying to get into her pants. It didn’t look like he’d be opposed to that; she wasn’t getting a gay vibe. But she also wasn’t getting a liar vibe.

“Explain.”

Richter bit his lip. She had done it when she was thinking, so he figured maybe it was a nonverbal cue of this time period. “I probably shouldn’t,” he said. “Chances are, you don’t know this stuff yet. But then again...” he took a deep breath through his nose, tasting old cigarettes on the back of his tongue. It wasn’t a familiar taste, so he didn’t mind it. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the scientist type.”

She laughed. “I’m not,” she said. “I used to be a chemist, but that didn’t work out. So I turned to bar tending.”

“A chemist?”

She shook her head. “Don’t try and turn things around. That really is from the past. And you’re not. So how did you get to the past without going backwards?”

He sighed. “Okay. How much do you know about relativistic speeds?”

“You mean Einstein?”

He shrugged; the name wasn’t familiar. “Whatever you want to call it. You know how the faster you go, the slower time passes for you, relative to the rest of the universe?”

“Yes.”

“So you know that at light speed, time ceases to pass?”

“Elementary school stuff. Get to the point.”

Richter held his breath, trying to think of the best way to explain this. It wouldn’t be easy; he hadn’t convinced people entirely before he left. Why should she believe him? Then again, she didn’t have the same prejudices, and she knew nothing of his earlier career. But how to explain it?

“Pour me another drink, something softer, and I’ll explain.”

Shirley started putting together a Melon Ball. As she poured in the Midori, he started talking again. “Okay. You know how people used to think the Earth was flat? They don’t still think that, do they?”

“No.” She poured in orange juice instead of pineapple. Gave it a softer taste. “They don’t. Everyone knows the world is round. It just looks flat. Especially out here.”

“Right,” He nodded, getting excited. She slid him the drink and slipped the crystals into a pocket. “When you see a small portion, it seems to be a straight line, but in reality, it’s a circle. That’s what time is like. We see things linearly. But it isn’t a line. It’s a big circle. Really, really big. The universe expands and contracts, and time repeats itself endlessly, but with endless variability.”

“So you came backwards by going forwards around the circle?”

He nodded. “And I stopped before I got back to where I started. I went far away, farther than I think any human has ever been. Then I turned around and came back. Took all of three months for me, including the speeding up, slowing down, turning, and speeding up again. But it took me trillions of years, all the way around the circle. Almost.”

Shirley stared at him for a few seconds. It sounded like such a crackpot idea. But he didn’t look like he was crazy. He didn’t look like he was making it up. “Doesn’t that mean that everything I do is predetermined?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you can go around the loop of time, doesn’t that mean that everything that has happened happens again, exactly the same? That’s what it means to be a circle, right?”

Richter took a deep drink and sighed softly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. I hope not.”

“Well, what other option is there?”

He shrugged. “It’s possible that there are an infinite number of time lines,” he said. “Or, rather, time circles. They cross over each other at virtually every point. Any time a decision can be made, a new time circle breaks away. Neither one is really the original. They’re all original. But they’re all different. That would give you free will.”

Shirley bit her lip. “No it wouldn’t,” she said. “It would just create the illusion. If each circle taken by itself repeats infinitely, then it doesn’t matter that there is a circle with a different history. Each one has one and only one path of time.”

Richter sniffed back tears. “I really hope you’re wrong,” he said.

This confused her a bit. “What? Are you crying?”

He sighed and finished his drink. “Give me something strong,” he said. “Something to take the edge off.”

She poured him a vodka on the rocks. “Tell me why you hope I’m wrong.” She slid the drink across the bar.

He took it and took a swig, grimacing at the pain as it burned its way down his throat. “Because if it’s true, then I can’t get out of my circle,” he said. “I know exactly what’s going to happen for the next however many years.”

“That’s good,” she said. “You can make a lot of money with that knowledge.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I know exactly what’s going to happen. I know all the major historical events.”

“So?” Her face darkened. “Is something bad going to happen? Is there going to be a war?”

He laughed. “Yes. Lots of them. But that’s not what bothers me. I’m bothered by something much, much smaller.”

“What?”

Richter finished his drink. The world was shifting a little bit. Not unpleasant. He gestured for another drink. She poured something that had carbonation in it. He liked that. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “Once upon a time, there was a scientist. He had a radical view of time. He tried publishing papers about it; all the math worked out, but no one was willing to give it any credence. He got laughed out of academia because he wouldn’t change his tune; there was no historical backing for his idea. If it were possible to travel backwards in time, there’d be a record of it. Someone would’ve done it already. Still he persisted. Finally, he took what little money he could scrape together and put his theory to the test, using himself as a guinea pig. He figured out how big the loop of time was, and he traveled at light speed all the way around, trying to arrive just a few weeks before he left, so he could prove that he was right.”

Shirley smiled. “Only he went back too far, or didn’t go forward far enough.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t go forward far enough, and so ended up in the wrong time period. Briefly.” He downed his drink and asked for another. She gave him a few shots to try. He let them burn his throat as he went. The world was definitely moving now. Shifting around.

“What do you mean, briefly?”

Richter stood up and smiled as the world righted itself. “Don’t you see?” He asked. He fought down a wave of nausea. “There was no record of it. No proof. No one had done it before.”

“But you have.”

He nodded. “But there’s no record.” His words were slurred. Maybe this alcohol was having the wrong effect. “And there won’t be.” He started drifting towards the door.

Shirley bit her lip. There had to be proof. Some kind of record. She reached into her pocket. The computer chips. “What about your crystals?”

He stopped in his tracks. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Shirley,” she said. “Shirley Keats.”

“Happy inventing,” he said. He let out a sob and staggered outside.

Shirley slipped around the bar and started running for the door. Before she got there, she heard the crash. She didn’t need to open the door to see what had happened.

The police questioned her. She said he was just a drunk with a crazy story. He drank too much, staggered out into the street, and got hit by a car. She didn’t know he had thrown himself in front of it. She didn’t know it had swerved to hit him. She didn’t see the driver, didn’t know they had been wearing the same kind of clothing.

When she went home, she pulled the crystals out of her pocket and put them on her mantle. She stared at them as she was drifting off. Her last conscious thought was to notice the brand name on the crystals.

Keats Computing.

I have been writing for about forty years. In that time, I’ve published about a dozen novels, half a dozen gaming books, and a few academic pieces. I’ve been trying to learn the social media game, because I have come to accept a truth about our world: you need a presence on social media if you want people to read your stuff.

In June of 2025, I started focusing my attention on TikTok. I posted every single day, three or more times a day. I would post videos talking about my work and where to find it, giving writing advice, and building a community of artists who could share the things they’re proud to have created. I even went live for a few weeks.

It took me some time to get used to it, but eventually I felt ready to expand, and so I stepped to Threads. I still play there, just like I still post videos (though only two a day now). I also started a ko-fi site, where people could support me directly.

And then someone suggested substack. And while I don’t know if I’m ready, I’m going to give it a try. So here I am. And here you are. Welcome!

Who is in this community? This is more than just a place for me to post my writing. It’s also, hopefully, a community of fans, well wishers, and people curious about the writing process and the way I teach. This is an open space, but only to an extent. In order to make a safe space, there have to be rules. And those rules are formed by my own ethos, in accordance with my values.

I will never platform for hatred of the marginalized. Love is love. Trans men are real men and trans women are real women. I believe the survivors, I believe women, and I support a matriarchal view of the future. I think that we should all have the right to safe housing, medical care, education, and the chance to chase our dreams. I believe that children cannot consent, and that people below the age of adulthood are by definition children. I believe that equals should be treated equally. I trust science.

I do not want the attention or support from bigots, Nazis, Maga, anti-vaxxers, terfs, or their supporters. I’m okay with limiting myself to an audience that cares about other people, that feels empathy for humanity, and that wants to make the world a better place for all.

If my stance is ever unclear on something, feel free to ask. I have no problem sharing my opinions.

How do you know I’m good for it? I write a lot. Like, a LOT. Since last April, I’ve written about five thousand words or more every single day. That’s almost two million words. And I want to share some of that with you.

So what can you expect? Subscribing to this substack will mean that you’ll get a bunch of my writing delivered right to you. There will be stories, essays, academic articles, books, and novels - I’ve got a lot of archives, and I’m keen to share them. Some of what you’ll get will be unfinished, at least so far. But there will also be full novels (though you only get the first bits for free, eventually, the rest will be hidden behind the paywall).

How often can you expect it? I don’t want to flood your mailbox, but I generally post something every few days. Sometimes every day, but always at least three times a week.

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What are the archives? That’s just a fancy name for everything I’ve ever written before. I’ll spare you the horrors of my earliest work (unless you want to see it for some reason), but I’ve been writing at a decent level of quality for a pretty long time. There are lots of stories, plays, essays, editorials, screenplays, rants, and academic pieces to go around. I try to only put up stuff I think people will actually like, but I’m open to taking risks if you’re curious about the deepest depths of the archive.

Why would I want to pay? First and foremost, because it will support me and keep me going when I get depressed. But that’s probably not enough. So here’s what you get when you chip in:

• The full text of novels that I excerpt here

• The full text of the books on writing I produce

• Early reveals for covers and whatnot

• A chance to participate in my writing process

• An appearance in a story yet to be written (if you want)

• My unwavering appreciation