I’m very happy and proud to announce that you can read my story Fitting A New Suit at Godfather-Of-Cyberpunk Rudy Rucker’s ‘zine, FLURB, which my friends assure me is a “HOMG!”-worthy offence. Here’s an excerpt:
“There, isn’t that better?”
Dai shifted inside his new suit. Unlike his previous one, this felt like a piece of clothing and not a second skin. He didn’t like it. “Loose.”
Kyon rolled her eyes. “You’ll get used to it.” Stepping around the treadpad in the floor, Kyon found his refrigerator. She opened it without asking. “You need anything? More protein? More carbs?”
Dai took a deep breath. “There’s a chip.”
Kyon frowned. “You want chips?”
He shook his head. “There’s a chip inside the fridge.” Kyon looked from the fridge full of protein drinks and noodle cartons to him. “It calculates what I need, and tells Support Services.”
Kyon peeked inside again. “So you can’t choose?”
“They choose what’s best.”
“Interesting.” From her tone, Dai guessed that Kyon’s image of him now involved words like “trapped” and “Kafkaesque.”
“It’s very healthy.”
“So you don’t ever want something from outside?”
Dai thought briefly of fried pork cutlet smothered in curry gravy. “No.”
Kyon shrugged. The boxy shoulders of her coverall rose and fell. “Suit yourself.” Her hand rose to cover her mouth. “That was a bad pun,” she said through her fingers. “I’m sorry.”
Dai sat on the floor. “I’d like to work out now.”
Kyon nodded. “Right. Sure thing. Let me know if there are any kinks.” She crossed to the door. She opened it before pulling on her building slippers. “And hey, wash that new suit, huh? The other one was, like, stiff.”
Dai pretended not to hear. Instead, he began the first of three thousand crunches.
I had actually worried that this story wasn’t weird enough for FLURB. I also suspected that it was far too long for anyone in their right mind to give it a second look. So you can imagine my surprise when it was accepted, much less placed in the same issue as a Bruce Sterling piece, much less talked up at BoingBoing and also at io9. Rudy says that Flurb #6 enjoyed ten thousand hits in its first week. Much of that has to be Mr. Sterling’s presence on the bill, which makes me twice as grateful that my piece was accepted in the first place.