The Beacon, launch

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

beaconCoverIt is with great pleasure and zero ounces of pride, that I’m announcing the release of The Beacon. This is included as a free download from this site, or if you want you can go buy it off of Amazon to read on yr kindle. Whichever works for you. What is The Beacon and what is it about? Let me attempt to summarize.

Occasionally things that are close and familiar can grow grotesque with time and shifts of perception. The original intent of a product grows distorted the further the origins of the product exceed the present moment. When we examine the toys of yesterday or read the works of authors long dead we interpret and experience these products through our current cultural sensitivities and expectations. The Beacon is an attempt to forecast the perceptions and interpretations of long-dead intellectual property. What was once a cultural phenomenon is subsumed by the characters unique views and present circumstances.

The plot is irrelevant. The language is obtuse. As a written work it is opaque.

It’s currently “under review” by Amazon. So that’s exciting. Once it’s live on there I’ll include a link and a way to DL it for free, cuz I mean really?

Moarhacks, an Echo Chamber(wt) excerpt

Posted on by Arthur Challenger

She leans on the handrail on the steps outside, clings to it like a parasite to host. The railing has supported many, from butts to hanging child forms, to anthropomorphic visitors, and all the custom mods that create the populace of the caravan. This careworn revolutionary is the least of the rail’s burdens. Azul dangles, her lips dry and cracked, her voice hoarse. She scrambles for a lozenge and dryly sucks it into her mouth. It dissolves in a hydrating rush and her pores sigh with relief. Her lips plump, her scalp loosens, and she relaxes once more. As her brain chugs back to regular speed she closes her eyes and thinks back on her vision. She must maintain momentum. She must meet, she must organise, she must campaign, she must overcome and overthrow. Azul realises that to see Geary again she must begin the slow lonely work of revolution.

 

Geary pours a cup of caff over the green sponge leaves of their newest hab guest. The life-form wriggles orange roots through the neoplastic container that holds a quantity of dark compost tight against its base. “Welcome home,” Geary murmurs as they prepare to pour another serving of caff for their self. “I’ve waited for something like you. Soon enough you’ll be big enough to harvest and then we can both ride the ‘trodes into Night City together.” The sponge fronds’ pores dilate and suck the caff.

Geary flicks the incinerator switch and watches the discrete packaging turn into dust. So simple it is these days: put out some feelers, head down to negotiate a quick favour, print some pamphlets, receive an illegal sentient narco-lifeform and having done that, harvest its organs, join the symbiosis and immerse oneself fully with the SimEnt network and stage a takeover of the entertainment systems, then infiltrate the different ship and fleet subsystems one by one until voila, the caravan becomes one’s arms and legs.

Geary sees themselves connected into every hab, every air duct, every processor. Their vast limbs reaching across the stars. The thousands of ships of the caravan encircling planets, systems, all while the human race blindly continues on a blind and ignorant mess inside.