1991.
All of a sudden he was buying over five hundred dollars worth of alternative music by groups he’d never heard of. The Electric Hellfire Club, Mentallo & the Fixer, Godheads, Panic on the Titanic. He recognized the name Seige Seige Sputnik, but he’d never actually listened to any of their music.
The woman standing at the cash register wore glossy black lipstick, and her left earlobe was pierced by a shining shard of twisted silver. She shook her head in routine disgust as she entered the sales tax calculation.
“Total’s $588.93.”
She returned his credit card and loaded the CDs and tapes into a big plastic bag. The words “The Queen Mother’s Disaster!” were scrawled on the bag in big, blood-dripping letters. She snapped the paper receipt out of the cash register and put it in the bag.
“The taxes really increase the pain,” she said, handing him the bag. “But you’re really going to love this music.”
Morley Hunt didn’t say anything. He hoped that he hadn’t too badly damaged his credit card with this bizarre impulse buy. He took the bag and walked out into the street.
I’m in Albuquerque, thought Morley. On business. I was on my way to the airport. So why did I drop into a hole-in-the-wall music store and buy all this industrial rock?
All very odd. Morley was fairly sure that he should be in a limo, checking documents, dictating a memo, or just feeling generally pleased with himself. Negotiations were over with, everything was signed off, and he’d done all that his bosses had asked of him (plus a bit more). Stopping in to buy a suitcase-sized bag of music (that he wasn’t likely to ever listen to) was not his usual choice for a celebration.
Morley had a headache.
Definition of Confidential Information. For purposes of this Agreement, “Confidential Information” shall include all information or material that has or could have commercial value or other utility. The Disclosing Party shall label or stamp the materials with the word “Confidential” or some similar warning.
He’d been asleep. The intercom woke him up.
“If you look out the left side of the aircraft, folks,” the captain’s friendly voice boomed, “you’ll see the Grand Canyon.”
Morley liked these MD-80 flights from the West Coast: these smaller planes didn’t show you a movie but they flew lower and gave you a different kind of cinematic experience.
“In the sunset,” said the Captain. “We have a really spectacular view.”
Morley looked out of the window. He saw ragged purple and crimson streaks stretching across the curling, cracked soil. Oozing pits and steaming craters pock-marked the earth.
In the distant horizon, he could make out a gigantic, lopsided structure — like some kind of enormous cancer-infested beehive.
Morley started back in his chair and sneezed. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was the Grand Canyon, looking very nice and normal in the pleasant orange sunlight.
Good ol’ natural wonders. Safely awesome in a very familiar sort of way. Move on, Morley, he thought. Nothing more to see here. Write up your travel expenses, write a report to the research team.
Your job is to stay normal.
“Can I get you anything?” a flight attendant asked. She had a pretty, Norman Rockwell kind of face.
“I want — ” Morley stuttered sharply, almost as if he was choking on something. “I want to — not!”
The flight attendant looked a little puzzled.
“I want to not have anything to drink,” Morley managed to say wondering if he sounded like a visitor from space who hadn’t yet mastered syntax.
“Of course, sir.” The flight attendant straightened up and wheeled her trolley to the next row.
Morley trembled. By now that bizarre view out of the plane window didn’t bother him that much. Probably just an interrupted dream. No, what really shook him up was what he had almost blurted out to the woman.
I want to knock you down and fuck you.
Not my style at all, thought Morley. Sure, he might think something like that deep in the recesses of his HR-regulated Id but there was no way he would actually say something like that.
And he still had the headache. It had moved into his sinuses now and Morley knew that he was really going to suffer during the descent.
Obligations of Receiving Party. Receiving Party shall hold and maintain the Confidential Information in strictest confidence for the sole and exclusive benefit of the Disclosing Party.
Morley carefully hung the suit bag in his bedroom closet. With any luck he wouldn’t have to send anything out to be pressed.
The sinus pain had finally subsided, but now he could feel fluids building up in his nostrils and a rawness at the back of his throat. He walked over to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and removed a carton of orange juice. Morley checked and observed that the expiration date was comfortably far in the future.
You are getting a really bad cold, Morley decided. A very bad cold. A miserable cold, the mother of all colds.
A side-effect? Of what?
He hated colds, not only because they made him feel like absolute shit, but also because colds were messy. Wet and sticky all over the place, making disgusting noises through your nose, and leaving snotty Kleenexes everywhere.
Colds were offensive to Morley’s business aesthetic.
Morley poured some juice into a glass. Exactly two-thirds full, containing the optimum fluid to Vitamin C ratio. Steady now, he thought, don’t spill anything. Morley hated spillmesses.
Forget that.
Morley wondered where that thought came from.
Too late now.
Receiving Party shall carefully restrict access to Confidential Information to employees, contractors and third parties as is reasonably required and shall require those persons to sign nondisclosure restrictions at least as protective as those in this Agreement
Later. Four, maybe five hours later? Morley was bombarded by sound.
Most of it was pulsing out of his stereo speakers. The bass vibrations were making the walls shake. Morley supposed that the “music” was something like he’d purchased at The Queen Mother’s Disaster.
Cool noises!
No, they aren’t. People can’t even play their instruments properly.
Then he became aware of the pain. Bad pain. Like someone was jabbing rusty knitting needles behind his eyeballs.
He staggered off the couch; the vibrations from the stereo actually made it difficult for him to stand. He lurched forward, reached out and cut the amplifier power.
For a second, the sudden loss of sonic pressure made his headache even worse. And now he could hear other sounds:
“STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT” The high-pitched voice from the apartment below was muffled, only a little, by his carpet.
“YOU ASSHOLE!” Another man’s voice bawled out from beyond the bathroom.
“DOWN! TURN IT DOWN!” insisted someone else from behind the kitchen wall.
Morley collapsed back onto his couch, short of breath. This cold was making him weak.
Like your taste in music.
I don’t!
I also don’t remember turning on the stereo, Morley thought.
Eventually the protests faded away. Just as he was falling asleep, he heard someone knocking on his front door.
The officer was young; he had short hair and looked irritated. “Mr. Hunt,” the officer said. “Can you and your guests please keep the noise down?”
“S-sorry,” was all Morley was able to say.
“We’ve had complaints from all over the building, sir,” the officer continued.
Morley wiped his nose. A sticky clear film coated the back of his hand.
“Yeah…yes…of course,” mumbled Morley. “I must have fallen asleep with the stereo on.” He looked up at the officer. “I’m not feeling too well.”
“No kidding.” The officer looked at him critically. “If I were you I’d turn off everything and get some sleep.”
After he shut the door, Morley saw the messages light on the phone flashing at him.
The office no doubt, after the details of the contract with Albuquerque. Morley couldn’t blame them for being interested and maybe a bit impatient; technology transfer agreements could be complex and subtle things.
But tough shit.
He would deal with them in the morning.
Relationships. Nothing contained in this Agreement shall be deemed to constitute either party a partner, joint venture or employee of the other party for any purpose.
Then he slept. Morley thought that he would sleep like a dead man. But sometime in the middle of the night he started to feel something alive and active surge through his body. Like electric blood.
Then the weird dreams started. They seemed to go on for hours. Mostly, he dreamed he was having sex with alien animals.
Just making myself at home.
Integration. This Agreement expresses the complete understanding of the parties with respect to the subject matter and supersedes all prior proposals, agreements, representations, and understandings. This Agreement may not be amended except in writing signed by both parties.
Clammy sheets. Wet. Warm. Horrible. Ugh, Morley didn’t like waking up with such an untidy feeling.
This was no longer a killer cold. This was now full-blown flu. He reached over the bedside table and keyed into the voice mail.
“Call me at home if you have to,” the McHenry’s voice said. “I don’t care if it’s the weekend.”
The digital readout said “07:03”. That didn’t matter, McHenry had probably been up for two hours already: writing new spreadsheets for her two-year old, or single-handedly building a new playground for her twin’s daycare.
What an over-achieving c-word.
McHenry answered the phone by the second ring.
“Hunt!” McHenry said sharply. “I had a three hour phone call from the New Mexico regional manager yesterday. He was not at all happy and neither am I.”
“What are you talking about?” Morley experienced a sudden dizzy spell.
“Some language isn’t suitable even in locker rooms,” replied McHenry. “What in heaven’s name did you imagine their management team was going to think?”
“What?!” Morley was going to say “what the hell”, but decided not to at the last minute.
So professional. Your HR would be so pleased.
Maybe.
“Morley, listen to me,” McHenry assumed a calmer tone. “You’ve been great on field assignments in the past. What went wrong? Did they provoke you in some way? Did you have a hang-over?”
“Lynn, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Morley. His voice was thick. He sniffed back a wad of phlegm.
Tasty!
Disgusting.
“Good God!” said McHenry with dismay. “You sound terrible.”
“I think I picked up some kind of bug when I was down there,” Morley replied. He sniffed through another deposit of bodily fluids. “But, I have to tell you, the meetings went well. I reviewed all the spec sheets on the alloys and atmospheric samples, and we worked out a timetable for the materials delivery.” Another sniff. “Mission accomplished.”
McHenry sighed. “And the NDA?”
“I checked it over and the language was okay.”
“So you signed it?”
“As you directed.”
McHenry could be such a ninny at times.
No argument there.
Morley’s irritation seemed to be giving him strength: “Look, when you see the report, you’ll see what I mean.” For a second he actually felt like himself.
“You sound really sick,” said McHenry softly. “You should take a couple of days off, then we can talk about it.”
Another, much more intense, dizzy spell hit. Morley almost dropped the phone.
“Morley?” McHenry’s voice whispered from the receiver. “Are you still there?”
Important discovery, thought Morley. If I lie absolutely, completely still on this bed, I can conquer the urge to projectile vomit across the room. Handy piece of information that.
Poor boy.
Morley put the receiver back against his face.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll e-mail in my report, so you’ll have it first thing Monday.”
After he hung up, Morley slowly looked around the room. His gaze stopped at the rocking chair. He definitely had a fever. As it got worse, the chair looked stranger and stranger.
Reconnoitering…
By the time he fell asleep, he was no longer sure just what that thing with the arms and the rockers was over there.
Notice of Immunity. Employee is provided notice that an individual shall not be held criminally or civilly liable under any federal or state trade secret law for the disclosure of a trade secret that is made (i) in confidence to a government official, either directly or indirectly, or to an attorney; and (ii) solely for the purpose of reporting or investigating a suspected violation of law.
He didn’t remember much of the weekend but he did know that he’d had more vivid dreams.
In one, he was listening to more music from the Queen Mother’s Disaster on his headphones. His ears were now badly blocked by fluid, so he had to really turn up the volume—the only thing he could make out was the bass.
So cool.
For some reason he liked the feeling when his eardrums were close to bleeding.
In another dream he was downtown, browsing through a huge sex shop on Yonge Street. He was watching videos in one of the booths. Like all adult videos, they had really stupid titles. Max Bedroom was one — Splat Man and Digital Lust were two more.
Morley bought a tape called the Erotic Simulator (maybe it was the Exotic Stimulator); it had lots of badly rendered and very obscene computer graphics. The graphics somehow reminded him of the hallucinogenic landscape from the plane window.
Ha! Ha!
He walked outside, where he met an attractive young man. Very young, maybe nineteen? Probably sixteen.
Naughty boy.
Who was the naughty boy, Morley wondered. The beautiful young man? Me? This goddamned voice in my head?
Ha!
The youth had a short navy haircut and intense blue eyes. They went inside somewhere and had sex. A lot of sex.
When Morley woke up from that one, he was mildly astonished. That dream suggested aspects of his personality that he hadn’t been aware of.
It’s good to be open to new experiences.
His fever was still running high.
He watched the pale flickering patterns on the TV screen by his bed. Morley had a strong suspicion that the images and sound were conveying some kind of information…perhaps some kind of message. Entertainment?
Entertainment? Really?
Damned if he could figure it out. And what was that thing with the arms and rockers over there?
Severability. If a court finds any provision of this Agreement invalid or unenforceable, the remainder of this Agreement shall be interpreted so as best to affect the intent of the parties.
Then it was Monday. Morley thought he had recovered enough to e-mail in the report and go see someone at the walk-in clinic.
The doctor inserted a small plastic funnel into Morley’s left nostril. It hurt as the plastic tip crunched its way through the build-up inside his nose.
Ow!
The doctor shone a light into the wide end of the funnel and looked up the nostril. For a second, Morley felt like the victim of some alien abduction.
Hmmmm…
“Wow!” exclaimed the doctor (he was a small and enthusiastic medical professional) “That’s a real mess in there!”
The doctor pulled the funnel out of Morley’s nose and popped it into a wastebasket.
“I can’t show you the direct evidence,” the doctor said. “But you’ve got a very bad infection in your sinuses.” He picked up a tiny mirror and a long plastic rod with a cotton tip.
“Let’s look down your throat…” The doctor jammed the rod into Morley’s throat. “There we are! That’s a really serious situation you have in there!”
The doctor tilted the mirror so that Morley could get a good look at the internal vista of his throat. Morley gagged a little when the doctor gently scraped out a culture sample.
More ow!
“Gosh darn,” said the doctor. “You’ve swallowed a lot of pus there, but you can still see how inflamed the sites are.”
How informative, thought Morley.
Isn’t it just?
Morley rubbed the outside of his throat as the doctor dipped the culture sample into a test-tube.
“You’ve had this infection for four days?” asked the doctor.
“That’s right.”
“Wow, that’s tough,” the doctor said in amazement. “That’s really bad, really fast.”
Don’t get too technical on me, doc, thought Morley.
That’s all you need to know.
The doctor started scribbling something on a pad of paper. “I’m not going to bother to send these culture tests in. I’ll just go ahead and prescribe the most powerful antibiotics I can. Do you have a drug plan at work?”
If Confidential Information is transmitted orally, the Disclosing Party shall promptly provide writing indicating that such oral communication constituted Confidential Information.
The prescription did seem to help. Morley still felt that he wasn’t entirely normal, but by Thursday he was strong enough to go to work.
Way to go, sport!
He finally discovered what McHenry was so upset about. Apparently the New Mexico manager at General Mills claimed that Morley had gone into a ranting fit when his people had some questions about the transfer agreement. The only detail McHenry would give was that Morley was somehow the cause of a lot of “yelling, standing on tables and unbelievably bad language”.
McHenry used Morley’s days away to patch things up, telling the New Mexico manager that obviously Morley was over-worked and was coming down with a serious viral infection.
Which is pretty much true, sport.
Morley was annoyed because he didn’t think McHenry should suggest that any company representative was less than perfect. But at least he was provisionally forgiven at the office and he could go ahead and present his report to the R & D Division.
This ought to be good.
Morley stood at the head of the boardroom table, holding a small gray rectangle in one hand. The material was incredibly light; it felt like it might almost float out of his fingers. The R & D team stared at him with envy.
“Experimental Alloy 1043. Developed for the Man High and Stratolab programs back in the fifties.” Morley smiled. “The US Army and the Geophysical Survey needed an ultra-strong lightweight material for their high altitude research balloons.”
Morley held the rectangle out at arm’s length and dropped it. It bounced off the table top, very high, very fast, like an air-filled rubber ball.
Wheeeeeeee!
“Considering that this was something they developed almost half a century ago,” said Morley. “it really is a remarkable piece of metallurgy.”
Are you going to mention how it resembles all those foil fragments they found scattered all over that ranch in Roswell?
Patson, the team leader, picked up the rectangle and studied it.
Morley continued: “General Mills isn’t going to tell us all the applications of the alloy.”
“What do you mean?” asked Patson.
Morley laughed mischievously. “It has some very elastic and well…eccentric… properties. I’m pretty sure a lot of UFO enthusiasts would be pretty upset if they found out about this stuff.”
You almost told them the important part. Good for you!
“A buoyant alloy…how does it hold up over time?” Patson started to bounce the alloy sample on the table.”I went through some of the capsules they used on the Stratolab missions and did some tensile measurements,” said Morley. “No evidence of any degradation.”
Patson smiled. The whole R & D team smiled. Alloy 1043 was miracle material. There could be all kinds of incredible industrial applications here.
Oh, and then some, right sport?
After the meeting Morley felt tired, but the antibiotics kept everything under control. He wrote up the contract and material specifications and handed the package over to Patson.
Don’t forget the NDA.
McHenry was happy, the company was happy.
Once he beat this bug, everything was going to go back to normal. And then he could be happy.
What is this “normal” of which you speak?
Receiving Party shall return to Disclosing Party any and all records, notes, and other written, printed, or tangible materials in its possession pertaining to Confidential Information immediately if Disclosing Party requests it in writing.
Morley woke up in a sweat and a strange bed.
A woman with the incredibly spiked hair was sitting next to him. She looked quite a bit like the cashier at the Queen Mother’s Disaster, but even younger. She wore nothing but a cluster of complicated silver pegs in her left nostril. She held a small green vial up to her nose.
Morley knew enough chemistry to know that he really didn’t want to think about what was in that vial.
I know.
“Hello,” Morley heard himself croak. That seemed to be a safe enough thing to say. His voice was thick, the throat infection making his voice about an octave lower. Maybe it made him sound sexy.
Sure sport.
The woman grinned. “I think I caught your cold.” She popped a tiny stopper onto the vial. “It’s not chicken soup, but this stuff works wonders.”
Morley flinched a little when she put the vial in his hand. He was a coward when it came to unlicensed recreational substances.
Yes, you are!
“You should try it,” she said.
“Thanks,” said Morley.
The woman got up and started putting on some kind of leather and metal studded harness. As Morley put the vial on the floor by the bed he noticed that the woman had needle marks. On her arms, her buttocks…the back of her knees?!
Of course, thought Morley. How much more dangerous can this date get?
You might not want to know that either.
There was a pile of syringes in an old Miracle Whip jar next to the bedside lamp. The syringes looked like they needed cleaning. Morley looked down and saw a few needle marks on his own arms.
Oh god, Morley moaned inwardly. This must be the world record for the number of life-threatening lapses of judgment identified in less than sixty seconds.
Congratulations.
Fully strapped in, the woman leaned over and kissed him. It was a friendly, practiced kiss. Not like this was a one-night stand, more like they’d known each other for a while.
She pressed her palm onto Morley’s forehead.
“My hot little monkey has cooled down this morning,” she said. “First time since we met that you haven’t had a temperature of 110.”
“And how long would that be?” Morley tried to sound casual.
The woman got up and pulled on a red plastic raincoat.
“I dunno,” she said. “Seems like forever.” She walked over to the door. “You coming to the club tonight? Riot Choir will be playing.”
Riot Choir? What kind of band could that be?
Great! Sounds like a loud one!
“Oh, good,” said Morley softly. “My favorite.”
After she left, Morley wanted to go back to sleep but he was afraid to. He didn’t want to wake up in another strange place.
Where was he? What was he doing here? Who was that weird woman? Morley paced around the small, dark apartment, looking for clues. He looked out the window. There were lots of tall low-rent buildings around. It was one of those old, ugly neighborhoods where the residents try to convince themselves that the surroundings are actually fashionable and bohemian.
There were over twenty messages on the answering machine. Most were for Rita, who Morley decided must be the person he woke up with. All of Rita’s calls were from men with middle-aged voices. A few calls were for somebody called Larry. Morley didn’t know who that could be.
Me neither.
Most of his personal documentation confirmed that he still appeared to be Morley Hunt. His bank book suggested that he no longer had a steady job. The money kept coming in irregular big chunks and disappearing really quickly. Suggesting he was doing something … illegal? The last entries he remembered making were over six months ago.
We’ve been busy.
Six months. I must have lost the last six months. Morley was surprised at how calmly he accepted this piece of information. But then, it was completely consistent with the events and revelations of the last thirty minutes.
No identification left from his old job. He wondered if something had gone wrong with Alloy 1043.
Maybe something very right?
There was no clothing in the apartment that wasn’t some shade of black. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black running shoes. Hey, he’d lost about 10 pounds.
Morley put on the least unusual outfit he could find.
There was nothing to eat in the apartment, so Morley found himself wandering into coffee shops on Queen Street. Lunch was pretty bad and pretty expensive, but at least there were some bookstores. Morley compiled a systematic mental list of why bookstores were a useful resource at this time:
a) He could kill some time in relative quiet until he felt a little less disoriented.
b) He might even check out a few medical and psychology texts and try and figure out what had happened to him because this voice in his head was really starting to annoy him.
I’m hurt!
c) He remembered that he used to really like hanging around bookstores…
Six months and a million years ago.
From the relative calm among the shelves, he could make a Plan B. Maybe he’d get in touch with someone whose name he remembered and find some way to re-assemble his life.
But there were complications. He was in a store called Epiphany City, looking through Oliver Sachs’ book Anthropologist on Mars, when someone touched his arm. It was a man in his mid-fifties.
“Hello,” the man said. He spoke in a low but enthusiastic voice.
“Oh,” paused Morley, realizing he didn’t recognize the man and wondering what was going to happen next. “Hello.”
Hey!
The man put his hand on Morley’s shoulder. “I never thought I’d see you here,” he said.
“Why’s that?” asked Morley. Here’s the problem, thought Morley: does this guy know me and I don’t remember him? Or has he mistaken me for somebody else and I’ve never seen him before? Maybe he can give me some idea what I’ve been doing for the last six months.
The man grinned at him. Morley could only categorize the expression as … as lewd. “I guess, I never thought of you as much of a reader.” The man laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.
Morley decided that he didn’t want to know anything this man could tell him.
“I have to go,” the man said. “Call me, there’s some really interesting people I want you to meet.” He walked away.
You going to call him?
Absolutely not.
But he said the people would be interesting!
I’ve got more important things to do.
Maybe.
Morley skimmed through Sach’s introduction describing how mental dysfunction and brain damage reveal new insights into the human condition.
That human condition, thought Morley. It was really over-rated sometimes.
I’m enjoying it.
There was a wind outside. It cut into Morley a little harder than he would have expected. His forehead felt hot again and his throat hurt a little, too. Another fever coming on. Morley walked into a coffee shop. Maybe 20 fluid ounces of orange juice would help.
This Agreement and each party’s obligations shall be binding on the representatives, assigns and successors of such party. Each party has signed this Agreement through its authorized
representative.
Then Morley lost more time. A clock on an old, official looking building said that it was coming up on eleven at night.
He was riding on a street car. Somehow he knew he was going to someplace called the Rave Pit to hear something called The Riot Choir.
Which, he seemed to think, was his favorite band.
Yes, they are.
The street car was almost empty: there were two people in Burger King uniforms coming off shift. There were some women in fish-net stockings and body structures similar to the one he’d seen on Rita.
Maybe it was the fever, but he seemed to have trouble making out the faces of the passengers. It was like their features were scrambled somehow, though he could recognize their emotions.
Relax. We’re just settling in a bit more.
Morley pushed himself back into the vinyl padding of the seat. Why am I wearing black? wondered Morley. I hate black.
No, black is your favorite color now.
What the hell is happening to me?
To us, Morley. You want to know what is happening to us.
Who is this?!
Experimental Alloy 1043. I’m based on all that flying saucer debris picked up at Roswell. Do you remember what the people in Albuquerque said was the most interesting thing about me?
That the Alloy always returned to its original state and form, no matter how much it was crushed, burnt, torn or otherwise abused.
And they described me as?
A living metal. But that was just because of the organic and memory-like properties of–
I’m a lot more living than anyone realizes.
The words? Ideas? They felt like a jet of ozone squirting through his brain.
What the hell is happening to me? Morley looked out the window.
Happening to us, sport. Like I said a minute ago, us.
The lights of the city were bright, but they looked different. Like everything was underwater.
But why is this happening to me?
When you signed that Non-Disclosure Agreement and took possession of the samples, you started breathing in teeny-tiny particles of me.
There was that little cloud of ozone in his head, again.
That’s causing a few physiological changes at your end.
Morley’s fever was getting really high now. He felt too weak to move. He wondered if he could even get up for his stop.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
There was probably something wrong with the streetlights, but now the shapes of the buildings looked wrong…somehow irregular. Had he seen those shapes somewhere before?
I’m sure it’s been a real nuisance when I took the driver’s seat for long periods of time.
The streetcar rolled on. Morley was sweating again.
But I had a lot of things to do. People to meet.
What people?!
That may have been what bothered Morley the most. That all kinds of strange and unsavory people might be getting into his life. Into him.
That’s right, sport. Sort of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers with lots of used Kleenex and no condoms.
Fuck. A word he almost never used. Morley wiped the drippings off the end of his nose.
Disgusting.
Not at all. And by now I’ve probably been passed on to a few hundred thousand people by now.
This is getting good, chuckled Morley (at some point you have to laugh or you’re going to never stop crying). He rifled his pockets for something to clean his nostrils with. I’m writing my own science fiction story here.
Okay, what are these hallucinations then? Bizarre landscapes, the weird buildings…the fact that sometimes he couldn’t properly read emotions in other people, or even recognize ordinary objects like rocking chairs…
That’s just how this here alien entity sees your world, sport.
The ozone cloud again. Of course, this was just the paranoid fantasies you get with really high temperatures. And he sure had a fever.
This Agreement and each party’s obligations shall be binding on the representatives, and successors of such party.
Morley was drifting off to sleep. Through half-closed eyes he could see the streetcar crawl along glistening jointed tendrils…moving slowly, slowly across the pulsing membrane into the vast dripping orifice ahead.
-o0o-
Hugh A. D. Spencer was twice nominated for the Aurora Award in Canada for best short story, his fiction has been published in Descant, Interzone, On Spec, and the Tesseracts series, his novel Extreme Dentistry (Brain Lag), was released in 2014, and his audio dramas which have been performed by Shoestring Radio Theatre for the Public Radio Satellite Network. His second novel, The Hard Side of the Moon, was released in hardback in 2021 and in paperback in 2023. Read more of his work in Oblivioni Magazine.