Here is a sampling of my various projects:
“There’s a present outside your window,” Singer says.
Now Brandon does get up. He pads to the window and opens it. The shutters squeak dryly. Outside, hovering, is their drone: four wings, all black, her hindparts heavy with twelve hours of surveillance.
“Hello, Tink,” Brandon says, extending his hand. The UAS does a brief identity check (it takes about four seconds) and flits over to his open palm. He carries her gently into his room, opens his laptop, watches her crawl delicately to an open USB port and insert herself there. Data streams from her body: shipment logs for aid packages, border sentry comments regarding volunteers and their orgs, patterns of food voucher distribution, search-and-record audio keyed to specific phrases associated with the black market. The afterglow of a war long waged, codified and made sensible through transfer from one machine to the next, ultimately destined for some years-from-now report doubtless coloured by self-congratulation on the part of those least responsible for its success. From “,” a story I’m working on. I quite like this bit.
Amy quickly wrapped the towel around herself. It was easier than looking at Javier’s face, and it made her feel a tiny bit more in control of herself. “Granny says I can help your clade. But I don’t know why you should trust her.”
“At least we agree on one thing.”
Amy hugged her arms. “Granny also says that I’m not really dying. But I’m not sure I should believe that, either. Maybe she’s just lying so she can use me to do more damage.”
“I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet.”
Amy looked at her toes wiggling on the bloodstained carpet. “…Can I call my mom and dad, please?” Her fingers dug into her ribs. “I’d like to say goodbye.”
The gun lowered a fraction. “…Okay.” From my VN stuff. The closest thing to hard sf YA I’ll probably ever get. Note the presence of guns, blood, and naked girls. I’ll probably cut this dialogue as I really don’t like the power dynamic at play, although the afore-mentioned ingredients will remain.
Palmer reads these prostheses not only as physical stopgaps or crutches, but as emotional coping “mechanisms” that highlight each character as an adolescent on the way to maturity and self-sufficiency. These prostheses can be figurative as well as literal, taking the form of attendant cameras or personal mentors which initiate a constant negotiation of power in worlds where technology, like adulthood, offers the mixed blessing of simultaneous opportunity and constraint. From my thesis, in a chapter on “Fullmetal Alchemist.”
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…You’ll notice the descending level of quality. I have to re-write that FMA chapter tomorrow.