I have no memory of what came before. It's as though I didn't exist prior to this moment and have just come into existence and apparated into this crowd, in this hall, surrounded by the ordered chaos of these several hundred people. We're collected here for a singular purpose, all of us waiting to bear witness, to share witness. They seem not to notice me, caught as I am in the frenetic jumble, almost vibrating in tune with the collective hum of anticipation. The reverberation rises with activity on the stage ahead and above us to crescendo as a woman appears, guitar slung low, eyes wide and bright, the room hanging on the precipice until those first chords, a familiar structure, then the space erupts into mayhem. Nothing comes close to the magic of this music, the harmony formed of hundreds of voices, of heartbeats, synchronized with the one who leads, the one whose voice and instrument eclipse the crowd, riding our energy and elevating us all to some higher plane. Beneath it all
Abby woke with a start, a conversation with someone vaguely familiar against a kaleidoscope oceanview suddenly vanishing, dulcet tones replaced with a hockey organ ringtone her ex had programmed that couldn't seem to be exorcised from her phone. "Good morning, you'll want to get a robe on, our package is about to arrive." The voice was familiar, but she wasn't expecting anything, was she? She jammed her feet into raccoon slippers, pulled on an Osaka Spa terry robe she'd liberated years ago, and shuffled towards the front door, startling as the buzzer sounded. "Sign here," the brown uniform all business, presenting a tablet and a pen, then, formalities behind them, wheeled a Pelican case taller than her into the front hall before turning and leaving without another word. There was a label stuck to the front of the case above a hand-shaped impression. "Push Here" was scribbled on the label in a typeface a little too uniform to be hand drawn. She placed her hand flat on the
Rip cleared everything off the dining room table, piling books on top of placements on the sideboard, and his discarded sweater over the back of one of the chairs. "Doris, give me a map of the continent." He'd been dreaming of making the trip from his home on the shores of Hudson Bay to Southern California for as long as he could remember. A roadtrip to end all roadtrips. "Continental map. Topographical, weather, street..." Rip cut off the disembodied voice mid-sentence. "Street maps. Local destinations, points of interest" The surface of the table was bathed in monochromatic light, a surface map of the continent in three dimensions, with a softly strobing green light at the point at the edge of the bay where they lived. "Plot me a route to Baja." A point at the southwestern point of the map glowed blue, and a spider web of light traces crawled across the map, highlighting highways and city streets as Doris carefully routed multiple possible ways of making the journey. "No
I'd never dreamed before, at least not that I could remember. Sure, a lifetime in that chair, I'd hoped for things, but that's different. Sleep was always empty, vacant. Dreamless. Ever since I've become a retread, the visions have been relentless. This reclaimed meatsuit must have been saturated in deeply emotional experiences, and when they bleached it, some of them didn't wash out. Most of these meatsuits come from habitual offenders; death row inmates, the irredeemable dregs of society. Their family gets a payout, they get off the hook early, and people like me born with a body broken in all the wrong places get another chance. Retread. I don't know where this meatsuit came from, and the plastics work had all been done before I moved in, so I can't even track down the history by likeness, but there's something about these fragments that I see when I close my eyes that are undeniable, unavoidable, unnerving. Standing here, now, at this intersection, I can understand why. The
Rachel scrolled through what passed for news on her phone, coffee slowly cooling on the kitchen table. Malcolm would already be at work, leaving her in peace for this precious little time before she herself had to get dressed and head to the office. She looked up as the kitchen light flickered and went out, and when she looked back Malcolm was seated across from her at the table. She jumped at his unexpected appearance. "What the...," she started, then froze. She could clearly see the flowery wallpaper of the far kitchen wall through Malcom's shirt, a shirt she didn't recognize, and he'd somehow managed to grow the better part of a beard since he'd kissed her in bed that morning. "Hey sweetheart," he said, his voice tinny, flat, "sorry if I startled you." She looked around the kitchen for the telltale sign of a projector, assuming that this was some kind of practical joke. "Rachel," he waited until he had her attention again, "this isn't a trick. We'll talk about this after when
They'd tested it, of course, but she was the first person they'd installed it in. The injections were painful, and numerous, the material marching through the subcutaneous layers of her flesh like an army of angry ants, and when it was done, she wore the material as a complete second skin, just beneath her own. When they turned it on it was surreal, the loading screen and debugging information scrolling down her back, and her bare chest and across her stomach before being replaced with their logo, a lengthy copyright text, all in high contrast, glaring white against skin turned to charcoal, before clearing and settling into a tanned skin tone with a subtle, shifting, luminous hue. The control unit was implanted through her navel, tucked safely behind the stomach wall, a port available for updates. They offered wireless, but the risk of being hacked was too great, so she opted for physical access only. There were light sensors in the substrate that adapted the visual output based on
"Traffic's wild tonight," the driver offered, making brief eye contact in the rearview mirror. She gave him a thin smile but didn't respond. She caught her reflection in the Plexi partition and wondered if he noticed her eyes. Wondered if this disguise would survive the evening. She reapplied lipstick and steadied her nerve. She could hold it together a little while longer. On arrival, the driver was paid without a word, a cash transaction and an unremarkable tip. She wondered if he'd even remember her in the sea of faces and fares on just another California evening. The security seemed laid back and lax, but there were familiar bulges under loose-fitting jackets that spoke of imminent violence should the need arise. The gentleman receiver scanned her invitation and checked against the guest list. "Weather's mild tonight," he spoke without looking up, "you're all set. Welcome, I hope you have a pleasant evening." She smiled a practiced cocktail smile and drifted past him without
It's cold here. Inhospitable. We've been stranded for an age, near starving, not even enough energy to move from this place, much less try to find our way home. From time to time, some small animal, a rabbit, or a field mouse will venture too far from safety, and a fox, or in rare cases a hawk will hunt, and in those moments fear and panic ripple in waves across the barren ground. We're not proud, we take what we can get, we're survivors after all. The sun is down, busy blistering the other side of this rock while we wait out the night in absolute darkness. In the great distance above us, pinpricks of light blink in and out, mocking. There's a sudden roar of approaching motors, and bright fingers of light split the night, bobbing and weaving together to form an opalescent lattice above the winding road on the hillside across the field. This is a treat. There's the slightest hint of exhilaration, of excitement perceptible even at this distance. The throaty rumble doubles and
He woke from a deep sleep, the room still dark. Had there been a noise? It was quiet now. He reached in the darkness and lifted his phone, the display coming to life just as the alarm sounded, the unexpected noise startling him fully awake. He thumbed the display blindly to silence the alarm. Six am. He hated waking right before the alarm like this, it wasn't natural. His body clock had never been so attuned, definitely not to a minute prior to his alarm. He sat up, found his glasses, and shuffled to the bathroom before heading down to the kitchen to make coffee. With the coffee ground, the machine filled, he started the brew and... Something wasn't right. He had a cartridge coffee maker, not this... He woke, sat bolt upright in bed, sweat beading on his brow. He looked down toward the nightstand at his phone as the alarm sounded, startling him. He reached for it, desperate to silence the racket but only managed to knock it off onto the floor. Swearing, he turned on the light
He'd spent forty years running rescue and salvage operations in deep space, had hundreds of engagements, many responding to distress beacons, but he had never experienced anything like this. His entire ship resonated at some experiential but otherwise unmeasurable frequency. His instrumentation registered nothing, it wasn't designed to analyze whatever this was. Rapierre himself felt more than heard the signal, and as he navigated the ship, zig-zagging in the direction where it became stronger, he found there was a sweet spot where, if he pointed the nose of the craft directly into it, the sensation became something more, a kind of beautiful, barely perceptible subliminal song, pulling at the edges of his consciousness. There was nothing to lock his navigation system onto, only the sensation in his mind, so he flew manually for days, maybe weeks, time gradually losing meaning. He slept at intervals strapped into the pilot's seat, trusting the ship's collision avoidance systems, and
I have no memory of what came before. It's as though I didn't exist prior to this moment and have just come into existence and apparated into this crowd, in this hall, surrounded by the ordered chaos of these several hundred people. We're collected here for a singular purpose, all of us waiting to bear witness, to share witness. They seem not to notice me, caught as I am in the frenetic jumble, almost vibrating in tune with the collective hum of anticipation. The reverberation rises with activity on the stage ahead and above us to crescendo as a woman appears, guitar slung low, eyes wide and bright, the room hanging on the precipice until those first chords, a familiar structure, then the space erupts into mayhem. Nothing comes close to the magic of this music, the harmony formed of hundreds of voices, of heartbeats, synchronized with the one who leads, the one whose voice and instrument eclipse the crowd, riding our energy and elevating us all to some higher plane. Beneath it all
Abby woke with a start, a conversation with someone vaguely familiar against a kaleidoscope oceanview suddenly vanishing, dulcet tones replaced with a hockey organ ringtone her ex had programmed that couldn't seem to be exorcised from her phone. "Good morning, you'll want to get a robe on, our package is about to arrive." The voice was familiar, but she wasn't expecting anything, was she? She jammed her feet into raccoon slippers, pulled on an Osaka Spa terry robe she'd liberated years ago, and shuffled towards the front door, startling as the buzzer sounded. "Sign here," the brown uniform all business, presenting a tablet and a pen, then, formalities behind them, wheeled a Pelican case taller than her into the front hall before turning and leaving without another word. There was a label stuck to the front of the case above a hand-shaped impression. "Push Here" was scribbled on the label in a typeface a little too uniform to be hand drawn. She placed her hand flat on the
Rip cleared everything off the dining room table, piling books on top of placements on the sideboard, and his discarded sweater over the back of one of the chairs. "Doris, give me a map of the continent." He'd been dreaming of making the trip from his home on the shores of Hudson Bay to Southern California for as long as he could remember. A roadtrip to end all roadtrips. "Continental map. Topographical, weather, street..." Rip cut off the disembodied voice mid-sentence. "Street maps. Local destinations, points of interest" The surface of the table was bathed in monochromatic light, a surface map of the continent in three dimensions, with a softly strobing green light at the point at the edge of the bay where they lived. "Plot me a route to Baja." A point at the southwestern point of the map glowed blue, and a spider web of light traces crawled across the map, highlighting highways and city streets as Doris carefully routed multiple possible ways of making the journey. "No
I'd never dreamed before, at least not that I could remember. Sure, a lifetime in that chair, I'd hoped for things, but that's different. Sleep was always empty, vacant. Dreamless. Ever since I've become a retread, the visions have been relentless. This reclaimed meatsuit must have been saturated in deeply emotional experiences, and when they bleached it, some of them didn't wash out. Most of these meatsuits come from habitual offenders; death row inmates, the irredeemable dregs of society. Their family gets a payout, they get off the hook early, and people like me born with a body broken in all the wrong places get another chance. Retread. I don't know where this meatsuit came from, and the plastics work had all been done before I moved in, so I can't even track down the history by likeness, but there's something about these fragments that I see when I close my eyes that are undeniable, unavoidable, unnerving. Standing here, now, at this intersection, I can understand why. The
Rachel scrolled through what passed for news on her phone, coffee slowly cooling on the kitchen table. Malcolm would already be at work, leaving her in peace for this precious little time before she herself had to get dressed and head to the office. She looked up as the kitchen light flickered and went out, and when she looked back Malcolm was seated across from her at the table. She jumped at his unexpected appearance. "What the...," she started, then froze. She could clearly see the flowery wallpaper of the far kitchen wall through Malcom's shirt, a shirt she didn't recognize, and he'd somehow managed to grow the better part of a beard since he'd kissed her in bed that morning. "Hey sweetheart," he said, his voice tinny, flat, "sorry if I startled you." She looked around the kitchen for the telltale sign of a projector, assuming that this was some kind of practical joke. "Rachel," he waited until he had her attention again, "this isn't a trick. We'll talk about this after when
They'd tested it, of course, but she was the first person they'd installed it in. The injections were painful, and numerous, the material marching through the subcutaneous layers of her flesh like an army of angry ants, and when it was done, she wore the material as a complete second skin, just beneath her own. When they turned it on it was surreal, the loading screen and debugging information scrolling down her back, and her bare chest and across her stomach before being replaced with their logo, a lengthy copyright text, all in high contrast, glaring white against skin turned to charcoal, before clearing and settling into a tanned skin tone with a subtle, shifting, luminous hue. The control unit was implanted through her navel, tucked safely behind the stomach wall, a port available for updates. They offered wireless, but the risk of being hacked was too great, so she opted for physical access only. There were light sensors in the substrate that adapted the visual output based on
"Traffic's wild tonight," the driver offered, making brief eye contact in the rearview mirror. She gave him a thin smile but didn't respond. She caught her reflection in the Plexi partition and wondered if he noticed her eyes. Wondered if this disguise would survive the evening. She reapplied lipstick and steadied her nerve. She could hold it together a little while longer. On arrival, the driver was paid without a word, a cash transaction and an unremarkable tip. She wondered if he'd even remember her in the sea of faces and fares on just another California evening. The security seemed laid back and lax, but there were familiar bulges under loose-fitting jackets that spoke of imminent violence should the need arise. The gentleman receiver scanned her invitation and checked against the guest list. "Weather's mild tonight," he spoke without looking up, "you're all set. Welcome, I hope you have a pleasant evening." She smiled a practiced cocktail smile and drifted past him without
It's cold here. Inhospitable. We've been stranded for an age, near starving, not even enough energy to move from this place, much less try to find our way home. From time to time, some small animal, a rabbit, or a field mouse will venture too far from safety, and a fox, or in rare cases a hawk will hunt, and in those moments fear and panic ripple in waves across the barren ground. We're not proud, we take what we can get, we're survivors after all. The sun is down, busy blistering the other side of this rock while we wait out the night in absolute darkness. In the great distance above us, pinpricks of light blink in and out, mocking. There's a sudden roar of approaching motors, and bright fingers of light split the night, bobbing and weaving together to form an opalescent lattice above the winding road on the hillside across the field. This is a treat. There's the slightest hint of exhilaration, of excitement perceptible even at this distance. The throaty rumble doubles and
He woke from a deep sleep, the room still dark. Had there been a noise? It was quiet now. He reached in the darkness and lifted his phone, the display coming to life just as the alarm sounded, the unexpected noise startling him fully awake. He thumbed the display blindly to silence the alarm. Six am. He hated waking right before the alarm like this, it wasn't natural. His body clock had never been so attuned, definitely not to a minute prior to his alarm. He sat up, found his glasses, and shuffled to the bathroom before heading down to the kitchen to make coffee. With the coffee ground, the machine filled, he started the brew and... Something wasn't right. He had a cartridge coffee maker, not this... He woke, sat bolt upright in bed, sweat beading on his brow. He looked down toward the nightstand at his phone as the alarm sounded, startling him. He reached for it, desperate to silence the racket but only managed to knock it off onto the floor. Swearing, he turned on the light
He'd spent forty years running rescue and salvage operations in deep space, had hundreds of engagements, many responding to distress beacons, but he had never experienced anything like this. His entire ship resonated at some experiential but otherwise unmeasurable frequency. His instrumentation registered nothing, it wasn't designed to analyze whatever this was. Rapierre himself felt more than heard the signal, and as he navigated the ship, zig-zagging in the direction where it became stronger, he found there was a sweet spot where, if he pointed the nose of the craft directly into it, the sensation became something more, a kind of beautiful, barely perceptible subliminal song, pulling at the edges of his consciousness. There was nothing to lock his navigation system onto, only the sensation in his mind, so he flew manually for days, maybe weeks, time gradually losing meaning. He slept at intervals strapped into the pilot's seat, trusting the ship's collision avoidance systems, and
I am posting this here, because I know Bill would want me to. True, it's been a decade since he's died, but I still know his heart. We owe this post to every incredible student who allowed us the privilege of being their teacher. Silence is complicity, and education is an active voice. I've seen a lot of well-meaning white and non-Black people preaching truths a breath too early, calling light to their experiences in hate and struggle, begging for peace, supporting the "good" among the "bad apples" and decrying financial and structural loss. To them, I must say: Please, do, check your privilege. Privilege is a difficult term because it's supposed to be spoken in the context of empathy but, instead, its connotations lead us toward defense of the personal experience. Privilege, in this context, has NEVER meant that a person has not faced anti-privilege in another; it simply means that there are social constructs in place that permit a particular group--in this case "White People"--to
JayHenge is happy to announce the release of Sensory Perceptions!
As an erotica and romance-ish anthology, this one is definitely unusual for me, but I had several amazing authors who asked if I would do one for them in which they could focus on good speculative fiction stories that also happened to include elements of erotica and romance. It took a while to get done, but after a lot of work, here is Sensory Perceptions!
This includes some lovely DA members like SRSmith (https://www.deviantart.com/srsmith) and ErlenmeyerKat (https://www.deviantart.com/erlenmeyerkat) and ThornyEnglishRose (https://www.deviantart.com/thornyenglishrose), and the cover art is by the amazing blazi76 (https://www.deviantart.com/blazi76)! JayHenge loves the awesome writers and artists here at DeviantArt.
Paperback versio
Kaz got close enough to town for broadband wireless access before hunkering down in a culvert under the roadway.
His suit's AI ran the standard duck and cover protocols, scouring for low-security funding resources, supplies available for autonomous delivery, and shelter that could be counted on to be quiet for the couple of days he needed to regrow his broken bits and replenish his fuel reserves.
Within a few minutes an independent credit bureau had been breached, six adjacent rooms on two floors of a motel secured, and half a dozen delivery orders placed, each for substantial quantities of food. Late on a Friday, there shouldn't be anyone
Current Residence: Ontario, Canada, deviantWEAR sizing preference: XL, Operating System: Mac OSX, MP3 player of choice: iPod, Favourite cartoon character: Calvin, Marvin the Martian, Personal Quote: It's not what you're capable of, it's what you do that counts
NOTE: Please don't ask me to donate points, either in public or via PM. I support things I believe in entirely at random, and never on request.
There are a few of you who know I'm happy to put up prizes for Lit contests, and those few of you should feel comfortable asking, but if I don't know you, no offense but the answer will always be no.
Favourite Movies
Blade Runner
Favourite Bands / Musical Artists
David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Tori Amos
Favourite Writers
William Gibson, Harlan Ellison, Bruce Sterling, Ian Rankin, Neil Gaiman
Did DA Mobile just lock us into Eclipse? I'm on the old site on my desktop, but try as I might I can't switch out of Eclipse on my iPhone. Or do much of anything else if we're being honest.
Most of you only know me through the stories I write here, or the feedback I may have given you on your art over the years. Very few of you will have ever, or may ever meet me in person, but such is the nature of this medium; we get to connect with people from all over the world, but that reach allows for connections that are forever doomed to be distant. So it goes.
My frustration with points of connection like these, and I'm finding the same with clients determined to maximize time by using conference calls, text, and emails instead of face to face meetings, my frustration is that we, you and I, can't read body language when we communicate
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming - Wow! What a Ride!”
- Hunter S. Thompson
This decade has certainly contributed to the wear and tear of it, and if I could go back and describe the last ten years to 2009 me, even I don’t know that I would believe me, and I create outlandish works of fiction all the time.
I’m exiting the decade with less in all the right places, and more in all the right places, and a greater appreciation
I just want to say your writing is a constant source of motivational inspiration. Your flow, structure, and character building are amazing and I appreciate the work you share on here.