2146
The Last Empire fell fifty years ago.
It has been a time of peace and rebuilding.
Most countries have formed together into smaller sustainable units called Unions or Alliances.
Upgrading their operating systems to OS2020. It’s stable. But still has a few bugs.
Hagstrom Vik is an IO Agent who works for the First Union Firewall capturing and processing Unders for banishment.
His new partner, Katija and her daughter Lizi, are adjusting to living together as a family.
At 17, school is boring and adults are annoying to Lizi. Only her best friend Kai and her Haplo pals keep her sane.
The Firewalls keep the populations stable.
But a highly disciplined outfit called The Mechanism operates in the shadows.
A new threat is emerging.
One that will test them all.
As IO, EO and IWF agents, and The Mechanism, scramble across the world to stop it, Lizi will be caught in the center of the fight.
Coming soon.
Fiction by Simon Gray
The Trail's End Mobile Ranch in Apache Junction, Arizona.
Once, a gleaming mobile home park, full of happy winter visitors.
Now it decays under the relentless desert sun.
The bleached out bones of a tin dinosaur. Tin Town.
Disabled house painter Winston Smith, is waiting to receive disability benefits.
And watching his bank account dwindle down to nothing.
But his Mulligan's stew of neighbors provide ample distraction and comic relief.
Tongues wag and opinions fly around Tin Town.
Mostly over politics or someone else's medical condition.
And opinions are more popular than facts.
Winston, and a handful of his neighbors, look for the truth behind the opinions.
But telling the truth is not popular.
And it just might get someone killed.
pdf
by Simon Gray
We are animals.
And, our behavior is more similar to the behavior of other animals, than it is different.
We have invented several ways to try to explain our behavior. We use psychology, biology, religion, and astrology.
But there may be another explanation: Instinct.
- Do you go out to eat fast food when you have healthy food rotting in the refrigerator?
- Do you believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to do most things, and you always know the right way?
- Do you constantly put other people's needs before your own?
Birds fly south for the winter. Fish swim upstream to spawn.
These are instinctive behaviors.
Our behaviors, even though they can take different forms, might still be motivated
out of the same basic Primitive Instincts that motivated our ancestors.
How we do things changes.
But why we do things hasn't changed in thousands of years.
Simon Gray
black cannot exist
without white
good
has no definition
without evil
a one sided coin
cannot exist
all things happen
in balance
unless
i embrace both
without judgement
i will wander
in the delusions
of my primitive Instincts