Story by Dan Hekate
Kate Macmillan had been following Specimen July 13th all week. He fascinated and beguiled her in equal measure. It had been months since she had been this intrigued.
Kate liked to follow people, to capture them unbeknownst. She hoped one day to put on a solo show somewhere in Shoreditch, ‘Waking Life’ it would be called. She had decided long ago there would be no interaction with the subject, that only through a lack of information could she portray an unbiased portrait. As a rule she would only follow her subject, her specimen for a day, for no more than two hours and always in a public space.
This week she had broken almost all of her rules. It was now the 19th; she was crouched behind a wrecked Ford Astra with her zoom lens pointed a hundred metres across an industrial marshland as Specimen July 13th rummaged through a skip.
July 13th’s hair was a bush of grey curls that defied gravity as it arched back from his receding hairline. He wore a mish mash of clothes or what first appeared as such, an old waistcoat, a new rain mac, a long wooly scarf. Although incongruous, the items somehow matched, blending together in a murky array of browns, blacks and dark greens. From afar he could easily be taken for a homeless man but up close it was apparent how cared for the clothes were, not that she had got up close. She had used the zoom. She had been careful, Kate was always careful. [Read more →]
The jungle foliage became a mist of green, the sandy floor a streak of brick red. Jamaal’s bare feet kicked up a cloud of dust as he tore down the road. There wasn’t a pigeon in the nest faster than him, but today he was late. He checked the timer on his wrist, he had thirty minutes. It was the short cut through the Itinerant Terminal, or he could kiss his legs goodbye.
Tarpaulins flapped on top of makeshift dwellings formed from planks of wood and pieces of corrugated iron; kids dressed in rags batted a hover ball back and forth with glow gloves that had seen better days. A group of ten IT’s huddled round an old laptop while two women peddled hard on a static cycle power conversion system. Jamaal ran onwards, these were not his people. He looked at outsiders partly through jealous eyes with their liberty to roam, but more than not with a sense of sadness. Yes, they might be free but they were generally hungry, homeless, and susceptible to the elements: vicious sand storms that rose from the West and acid rain that rolled down off the Eastern mountains.
The Terminal disappeared behind him and the path narrowed as it snaked round the side of a steep hill. At the top of the bend stood Shila, a thin girl, one of her front teeth missing and a look of mischief on her face. She was dressed in clothes made from rubbish, the faded logos of long since dead multinationals printed across dirty white straw.
“Where are you going all in a hurry, eh?” she asked.
“I don’t speak to Termites?” he replied.
Shila stretched out a finger and pushed it into his port. A flap of skin that shielded a socket mounted on his stomach. He slapped her hand away.
“Do you even know what message you’re carrying?”
“It’s not for you,” he told her.
“You don’t know what it is, do you?”
[Read more →]
Is this an introduction or a tangent into the befuddled mind of a fantasy writer? I guess I’ll leave that for you to decide, I mean if you’re willing to delve into the dark recesses of the many warped, angry, deep thinkers and music makers (not always mutually exclusive) who have delivered the contents of this Datacide collection, then you should at least be able to think for yourself. Yes you’re right this is not a paper version of ‘OMG nothing could have prepared you for…’ mindless click bait or some Youtube video you can zone out to, this isn’t a coffee-table whatnot or something to flick through when you’re tired of the old issue of Viz your mate left in your bog. Engage or jog on.
And so to begin. The first I heard of the book I was sitting in Datacide HQ, the cold winds blew their glacial breath over the frozen north and inside it wasn’t much warmer. We sat huddled in our jackets and no, dear reader, we were not wearing balaclavas, there were no Kalashnikovs on show and the heterogeneous theory for the invisible insurrection of a million minds was accompanied by tea and biscuits. [Read more →]
Story by Dan Hekate from Almanac for Noise & Politics 2015
An array of lights blinked across the gleaming hard black plastic of MooD’s head as slinky welcoming music box sounds came from his hidden speakers. Seth Lindstrum waved his hand in front of the sensor and the door slammed closed.
“What fuck brain ordered me a MooD.” Said the hulking figure of Seth as he strode into the middle of his own welcome home party.
“Are we gonna spend the whole night arguing over whose go it is to load a new tune or let MooD handle the whole shebang?” Said Vince who had served with Seth in the battlegrounds of the Basque country.
“I thought you boys liked toys?” Said Zanda, Seth’s petite fiancé, as she waved her hand in front of the door. MooD entered exuding an Afrobeat and strutting a slow moonwalk.
“I hate those things and now I’ve got one in my pod, it’s like Marky died for nothing.”
“Shouldn’t you be petitioning on MeMe or shining holoboards out in Westminster with the other Ludds?” Said Zanda. [Read more →]
Spent Nuke cartridges, expired bots and other assorted trash littered the street in section 56. Somehow Fiona and Gil had found their way down to the lower levels. Fiona had wanted to show Gil where she had grown up and then they had just started wandering, lost in the moment.
Gil complained he didn’t like going anywhere they didn’t have teleportation facilities. Fiona knew he didn’t like section 56 because it was where all the perps, half breeds, and disjunkts hung out. The fact he put on a brave face meant he cared.
‘You’ve got that look’, said Gil. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing’. She said
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. I’m just happy’.
Suddenly out of the doors of a particularly dilapidated and soiled sales outlet ran a man clutching his hand and shrieking at the top of his voice. Gil rushed over to see if he was all right. The man kept screeching, Gil grabbed at his wrist. The man stopped screaming, and looked down at his hand, Gil did the same thing. There was a loud bang as the hand exploded, taking the two men with it. Fiona was covered in bodily fluids and viscera. She did not scream or weep, but stared at the bloody mass that used to be the love of her life.
Two men dressed in mutated lab outfits ran out into the street, and dived into the entrails. Body parts meant creds and Barrington Spliessenhausen was under no illusion that unless they got their hands on some fresh meat he could kiss his latest upgrade goodbye. Krun was just hungry, he quickly found what he was looking for and it was not long before he was happy again, busy masticating on a testicle. A stern attractive woman was close behind her colleagues. [Read more →]
