Flash Fiction: The Digital Devil and Daniel Shebat

I've been participating in an online writing community called, Flash Fiction Friday. They're really great! Lots of good writers. They give a prompt and we have a week to write a flash in response to it. This week the prompt, Cycle 69, was to write a story about "a deal with the devil." I decided to write a "cyberpunk" version of the "deal with the devil" story. Why? Well my wife recently wrote a cyberpunk flash titled "Black Glass" for a flash fiction magazine we started called Flashes of Wonder! and I was really impressed and inspired by it. Also, I love cyberpunk, but have never really written in it. This was an opportunity to do it casually. Additionally, William Gibson's Neuromancer is perhaps my favorite science fiction novel. I imagine this flash is kind of an homage to it. Anyhow, here it is!

***

The Digital Devil and Daniel Shebat (857 words)

Shebat penetrated the server, poured himself another espresso, lit a cigarette, and mashed play on his antique cassette player. A muffled, Please allow me! To introduce! Myself! thudded out of the antique stereo speakers.

He exhaled smoke when the data stream filled his field of vision.

Nestled within the sausage-like coils of his brain, nano-processors purred. Computer and mind were one. Ram, video card, neurons, brainslime; moot distinctions. He smiled revealing metal teeth.

The Redstar Server Hub was quiet tonight. With the speed of thought he glided through the data. Deposits. Memorandums. Schematics. Data. To him, it was all the same. It was cash.

He subvocalized and executed his subroutine, watched as it interfaced: a million particles of data sparkling on the black expanse of the global net field. His decrypting virus appeared on the surface of his visualization as a cloud of branchy veins.

Too much GUI made his eyes burn. He blinked it off. His field of vision was normal again.

He sipped on his espresso, felt the subtle pleasure of the caffeine quickening his pulse. He inhaled a steroid from an inhaler. Crunched down two pink pills, for concentration. Popped in a piece of spearmint.

He yawned. He stretched. He rubbed his chin. He needed a shave.

He blinked on his visualization, shrunk it down with a thought. He then looked beyond it, focused on his ancient television screen, where Space Invaders flickered. He took up his joystick, satisfied that the decryption was working just fine.

I was 'round when Jesus Christ!

Had his moments of doubt and pain!

Made damn sure that Pilate!

Washed his hands and sealed his fate!

For a brief moment, against his will, a thought came. Was it the song? An association?

He'd been warned about penetrating Redstar. Rumour was that Redstar was dabbling in A.I., what cyber cowboys called devils. In spite of the global legal machine that forbade it.

Redstar's corporate offices were air conditioned satellite stations with elevators where corp suits drank coffee and flirted with interns and cheated on their wives. He'd seen the reality shows. He couldn't imagine them making consciousnesses, summoning digital demons from the depths of the human imagination. The last A.I. humanity wrote killed millions.

Rumours. That was all. Suits weren't that stupid.

Pleased to meet you!

Hope you guess my name, oh yeah!

But what's puzzling you!

Is the nature of my game!

Shabat cursed when the invaders won. He threw down his joystick, unshrank his GUI with an eyeflick, and was satisfied when he saw the decryption working just fine.

He went into the kitchen, microwaved himself some ramen, intensified it with a few grams of adrenaline from a dropper, and, using chopsticks, dragged it into his mouth.

When he came back into the living room, he saw it standing there.

A shimmering figure. Vaguely humanoid. A kind of digital shadow burned on his retina.

"Hello," the figure said, its synthetic voice stirring Shebat's superstitious dread.

His reeling mind started justifying things: feedback problem. Comp-virus in my brain. Faulty implants.

Shabat blinked. Looked at his GUI. Decryption was doing fine.

He thought up a diagnostic and he had a report in seconds: everything was fine.

And yet. What was that thing?

Ignoring the apparition, he subvocalized, brought up his firewall, and executed four or five programs to disconnect from the server. He felt his pulse quicken when it seemed to hold on to him.

"It won't work," the figure said. "I'm not a program you can exit that easy."

"Fuck you!" Shabat said. "I'll log off. I'll turn off."

"Don't shutdown too quickly. You'll kill yourself, cowboy. Your cognitive processes are inextricably linked with so many subroutines. We both know you'd die. You’ve overclocked your brain."

Shabat spit. He threw aside a stack of porn magazines. He pulled out his pistol, held it to his head.

"Very adult," the apparition said.

"I'll do it," Shabat said.

The apparition made a noise. It could've been laughter. They stared at eachother for a second. Eventually, Shebat took the gun away.

"Thought so," the apparaition said.

Shabat was stunned. He blinked off his GUI. Looked at his apartment. His vision was normal. The apparition was still there.

"F-u-u-u-ck!" he said. He threw aside his gun. "Get out of my head." There was desperation in his voice.

He poured himself another cup of espresso, sank into his couch. He buried his face in his hands.

I guess he was wrong. Seems like the Redstar suits had been that stupid.

Pleased to meet you!

Hope you guess my name, oh yeah!

What's puzzling you!

Is the nature of my game, oh yeah!

The apparition was next to him when he looked up. Shimmering.

"Mind if I sit?" the apparition said. It smelled like ozone. Shebat looked at the gun. He could still do it.

"Don't care," he responded.

The apparition sat. The air around it seemed charged with electricity. A frequency rang in Shebat's ear.

"Now," said the apparition, leaning in close. "Tell me, Daniel Shebat. What do you desire above all other things?"

Shebat lit another cigarette. Inhaled. He gazed at the gun.

Flash Fiction Friday - Cycle 67 - Romance

This is a flash fiction I'm submitting to an online writing community. Here is a link to their website: Flash Fiction Friday. I've just started participating with them and it's been a lot of fun! Check it out!

Unlike the other original flash fiction I feature on my blog, the following is not an example of a "weird" genre, by which I mean science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural horror.

Rather, this is what I would call "literary fiction," which I believe is a genre unto itself. If I was forced to be more specific, I would call this a "romance," considering its about a marriage that falls apart and is put back together.

Anyhow, the following flash fiction is approximately 1200 words and it's titled "Lift." It's about a couple whose son tragically commits suicide and the effect of that suicide on their relationship. 

And so, don't expect robots, or dragons, or cosmic horrors. 

Just a few folks and their attempts to deal with a difficult situation.

***

Lift

He smokes his cigarette. Trying to describe him. Hooded sweat-shirt. But it's him. It is me. God, this is exhausting.

In a coffee shop in Euclid writing to you. I'm writing.

We're together at a restaurant now, hearing Sinatra.  Our son has been shot but we don't know why or who or even where, only that they took him to the hospital. Answer your goddamn cell phone.

And she answered it.

"Coming. I am coming."

The hospital coffee is weak. I drink it. I'm trembling, want to drink six beers because I can't cry. Jessica is sobbing angrily. I am standing away. When the security guard looks at me, I feel ashamed. I smile at him and look away, sweating. I am guiltless, yet I feel guilt.

 

Not watching movies. They have betrayed me. Bogey can go to hell. 

Years. We don't look at photographs. He was sixteen. She has become distant. I don't close my eyes when we make love, and when she looks at me, I am ashamed. I turn away. She had her womb removed recently.

Have my coffee in the morning and pet my cat but am gazing distantly at the old black gum and wondering, trying out dialog, structuring narratives, looking for a pattern that is probably not there.

 

"You're always fucking bringing him up. When are you going to stop doing that? Jesus. It's been six years." Slammed door. Sobbing. The cat is begging me for treats and, speechless, I stroke her back, but he did love this cereal. I will keep it a secret now.

Trying to put this the right way. Trying to tell you what happened, why it happened. I didn't know who he was, but there are plenty of photographs. I walked into the study and she was clicking through them on the computer. It was like I had discovered her looking at pornography.

I'm rinsing the tomatoes when she falls. It's strange. Once again I'm going to the hospital. She is speechless. It is just diabetes. Low sugar.

I pay for the gasoline inside and get coffee, newspaper, pack of gum. This is a moment of clarity for me. I tell the kid there, "Thanks," and ask, "Cancel for credit?" He nods. I want to ask him, "How's the night going? Good book?" I do not. The car is running.

Clicking through the news now, dissatisfied. Checking this and that. I notice my cat has groomed a hole in her coat and she is bleeding. She looks at me longingly. I cry.

Jessica has divorced me. I stare at the bed often. I don't drink coffee anymore. I am detoxifying myself to no effect. I agree. I am a brick. Distant, mopey, all of that.

But I'm free to indulge now. I go through his books, his roleplaying games. I look at his miserable handwriting on notebook paper and am fascinated by his e's. What is this?

Disengaged. Struggling with my work. Not hungry. Yesterday I cursed out a man who was in the road with his blinkers on and felt ashamed. He was an old man. So am I.

Meet her on his birthday. She is still driving the Honda. She is a silver beauty, thin as a razor, all smiles. She enriches me. I want to talk forever. We walk to his grave and she says he was a good boy, though this is awkward. We get breakfast. I have already eaten, so I get water but am absolutely miserable for coffee. She gets French toast, cuts it into tiny pieces and dips it. I am fascinated by this. Magical. She is genius. I order coffee. We talk in circles: work, cat. My failures are politely evaded. So this is how it turned out.

We make love at home, but there is a sweetness and awkwardness to it. I do not finish, but she masturbates on me and cums silently. After, we nap. A good one. I wake up and she's watching streaming videos. We are married again.

She is more successful than I am. She is organizing a consortium on something, making phonecalls, e-mailing. I am a fiddler. I cannot commit. I dabble. My habitat is a basement with a guitar, a garden, a few tawdry collectibles.

Joseph.

"I am coming. What the fuck do you mean he was shot? You've got to be kidding me. Are you fucking kidding me? Get in the god damn car. Jessica. Jessica, put it down. Calm down, Jessica, please."

She is crying, I am driving and crying. I am leaning heavy into the steering wheel. My teeth are chattering. Can you hear them? I almost run someone off the road exiting. 

Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like. On Jupiter. On Mars.

He is dead when we arrive. I am telling you the truth. His face. His mouth closed, lips drawn tightly. 

He is keeping a secret from me.

She sits on the couch in the living room, her hands in her face. I am standing away. She sobs in great huffs and I stare at her. She keeps asking me questions. There is never a clear motive save the ones we invent, we try to imagine.

The funeral. More crying. You get the picture. We decided on a Methodist minister and Rabbi.

He's fragments. An Indians hat. A collection of books. Some eagles. I'm smelling his t-shirts, holding up his pants, and nothing. My son suicided. It is beautiful for its narrative unity.

This morning I drive Jessica to the airport. She's going to a conference. We listen to German immersion. "Ich heisse…Mein name ist…" She takes off lipstick, too rich. She looks clownish, she tells me. We have coffee before security. I am charged with the excitement of travel, though I am staying in Ohio. I feel sentimental and so I cup her hands. "What's wrong?" I don't know. It's lonely this early in the morning, when the sun is still rising, when the business travelers, with their shiny hair and their shiny shoes, strut through the airport. It is lonely here. I don't want you to leave.

She kisses the apple of my cheek and stands in line for security. It's miserable there, watching her take off her shoes, watching her expose her beautiful feet to the airport floor. I stare at her. Commit the sin of idolatry now. Her smile. 

It's a strange thing. I drive home. I turn off the MP3. It is silent on the freeway. The semi-trucks are passing me heavily, hissing as they go by. Somewhere above Jessica is climbing, approaching 600 miles per hour, though she is also sitting down, asking for coffee. She will receive coffee and perhaps a snack. "Cookies please." "Coffee and cookies." She will smile at the attendant who gives them to her before she breaks open the plastic wrapper of the cookies, sips on her coffee, and cracks open the pages of a paperback. This image of her fills me with joy.

The coffee has quickened me. It is wintering. There are a few hours until sunrise. 

Introducing "Flashes of Wonder!," a Monthly Magazine of Genre Flash Fiction

So, a little coffee house writing session has become a pet project: Flashes of Wonder! Let me explain.

The first issue of "Flashes of Wonder"

Background: yesterday afternoon, some friends and I had a flash fiction writing session. After a couple of hours, we produced three flash fictions: a cyberpunk, a supernatural horror, and a dark fantasy. They delighted us so much, we decided to publish them here on my blog. But that's not all.

Print publication: in spite of the fact that I was up quite late last night, I snapped awake at 6 o'clock in the morning. Having nothing better to do (everyone else was asleep), I worked up a print version of the magazine, made 20 copies, and left them at a local coffee shop in Columbus, Ohio. And so, a magazine was born, something I conceive of as a kind of self-indulgent public service.

Preliminary musings: I think of the magazine as a "coffee shop" read, something you might incidentally grab up and get through in the course of a cup of coffee. Furthermore, I don't intend it to be for genre enthusiasts specifically; rather, I aim for it to be "stumbled upon" by people who may or may not read science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Thus, I think of it as a kind of "marketing" endeavor--not for me, or my work, or my friends, or their work, but for the genres.

In Flashes of Wonder! you'll find quick, dirty, and complete science fictions, fantasies, and horrors. No twenty novel cycles. No series. Just short and sweet stories.

Why do the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror need a "flash fiction" magazine?

Well, speaking strictly in terms of my tastes, genre fiction has become "swollen" of late. Narratives like George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones have become bogged down with too many characters, sub plots, and descriptive passages. The narrative pace of your typical genre novel these day's is particularly slow. An 800 page novel requires a lot of commitment.

Not so in flash fiction. The flash fiction demands that the writer produce an economic and "tight" narrative.

Also, it's my hunch that there are readers out there who love the ideas behind genre fiction but who don't love slogging through 800 pages.

Why write "flash fiction"?

Well, you can write flash fiction quickly. A lot of my writer friends--who are possible contributors--are also very busy. Getting them (and myself) to sit still and spin a yarn is difficult. And so, the flash fiction is perfect for us because it can be planned, drafted, and revised in, say, two hours. It's a great creative outlet for the novice writer who has professional commitments elsewhere.

Why specifically "genre" flash fiction?

Aside from the obvious fact that genre fiction is awesome? Well, it's a hunch of mine that linking a genre to a flash fiction communicates a lot of information. When you say something like, "this is a 'sword and sorcery' flash fiction," you're communicating a lot of information to your reader. This is great for flash fiction because you have so little space to tell your story. Linking a genre to a flash fiction intensifies it in a way linking a genre to other longer narratives can potentially constrain it.

***

Anyhow, I wanted to more fully document the arrival of this magazine today. I'm sure the project will evolve the longer we do it. Right now my goal is to have one issue a month composed of 3 flash fictions of separate genres.

If you're interested in contributing, then please drop me an e-mail! I have to be up front, though: this is just for fun, and so I can't offer anything other than the possibility of connecting you to an audience.

Audio Flash Fiction: "The Rage of the Rogue"

So, I couldn't sleep. And so, I wrote a flash fiction. And then, I read it out loud to my wife. But when I read it out loud, I recorded it. The impulses and the whims have snowballed, and now I find I'm sharing it on my blog. For your enjoyment:

Flash Fiction: An Audio-Visual Version of "The Tower of the Sorcerer"

I spent some time this afternoon making a simple audiovisual version of a flash fiction I wrote for this blog titled, "The Tower of the Sorcerer". I'm no actor and so please excuse the my amateur recitation (I stumble over a word in the recording and you can hear the page turning as I flip my script over). The "production value"--if you can even call it that--is very low. But the video was a lot of fun to make!

And here it is:

Brief Update: Original Flash Fiction with a Short Meditation on Hack Writing for Profit

I've been reluctant to post my work online. Why?

First off (this one is obvious), I'm not one of those writers who is very willing to share their writing for fear that it sucks.

Secondly, I'm not one of those writers who like to do a lot of work for nothing. I'm a mercenary. I'm a self-styled hack.

Don't get me wrong: I don't need a lot of payment for my work. Considering many of my favorite writers were pulp hacks, I romanticize getting paid crappily for spinning yarns.

And yet, I think payment validates artistic efforts. Unlike many literary artists who historically fear the market as a contaminate, I believe a modicum of profit motivation keeps writers "honest".

Blasphemy you say? Let me explain!

Off the top of my head I can think of two substantial justifications for why writing for money is good and productive:

1) The pleasure of the audience doesn't become wholly subordinate to the artistic vision of the writer. 


2) The writer must respect the fundamental "communicational" nature of language, its social utility; thus, "money-writers" are more reluctant to withdraw into solipsistic flights of subjective delirium. 

I don't mean for this to sound cynical nor do I mean to downplay the power Modernist aesthetics.

Forsaking the market and writing for themselves and themselves only was a move that Modernist writers made that produced some of the most stirring and enduring literary masterpieces.

My strange attempt to celebrate hack writing is not to denigrate pure literary art. That's not the point!

My point is to celebrate lowbrow writing that was written for cold, hard cash with specific markets, audiences, and, if you will, social needs in mind (being entertained is a social need, yes?)--writing that was puffed up to eek as much money out of a cents-per-word markets as possible!

I believe this kind of writing, in moments of intensity, effects a unique and profound type of beauty.

For many pulp writers making good art was concomitant with making a sale.


What does this have to do with the introduction of flash fiction to my blog?

Well--I feel less guilty leaving a 500 word short flash fiction on my digital front porch with nothing but the honor system protecting it than, say, a 10,000 word short story or a 30,000 word novella I've spent hours of my time and lots of my emotional energy on.

But I do feel compelled to share some of my fiction and would be honored if you glanced at it.

Some self-imposed rules: the fiction I release on this blog will be written for this blog and will not exceed 600 words in length. These fictions will be complete narratives--nothing unfinished will be posted. And they will be of diverse generic modes. I might try my hand at a science-fiction one month, a horror another, a fantasy another; I might do serials. I might do stand-alone narratives.

Here is the inaugrual one, a sword and sorcery about a rogue who assassinates a god-king with a sorcerer's demented trinkets: The Rogue and the Emerald Eyeballs.