Well, this is unexpected, and not the post I had been meaning to write either, but apparently I wrote a short story this morning. (Around 1500 words as a computer counts.) Like my protagonist I’m a little off from my usual schedule today, and so somewhat reluctantly I found myself returning from the pharmacy at half past oh-dark-hundred with the ingredients for True Nyquil (combine: modern Nyquil and a Sudafed tab), ie. the ingredients of a good night’s sleep — the one thing I was notably lacking in that moment.
The seed of this was a comment Neal Stephenson made at his recent appearance at MIT, saying that he doesn’t think wearable computers like Google’s Project Glass are actually going to look much like the wearable computers in his novel Snow Crash, and that these days he works at a treadmill desk for its health benefits, combined with my own personal frustration at spending forty hours a week staring at the inside of a cubicle while working an office job. Walking home that got me the first line and once I sat down (hah) it spiraled endlessly on from there; low blood sugar and critical caffeine depletion were the only things that forced me to tie it up.
It’s a much more technology-forward sort of story than I tend to write, and it needs editing, but for now the web site has fiction on it, and that seems like the kind of thing the web site of a science fiction writer should have.
(Footnote markers are where links should go; I’ll round them up in a bit.)
“Walk to Work” by Kellan Sparver
I’m a little off from my usual schedule this morning, which means a different route, but I have a lunch meeting with some potential investors in Kendall Square practically downstairs from my apartment, so I can’t loop up to Davis for Thursday Redbones lunch with my team like I usually do. Davis is about three miles if I walk the most direct way, practically a straight shot up Beacon and Elm, which takes me about two hours at my usual pace, almost exactly right to leave at 11 and arrive just past the peak. I’m a bit of a night owl, as are most of the rest of my team, so we meet up when we need to and adopt a generous definition of lunch and that works for us. But today although I woke up a bit early I’m operating on investor time, so I’ve got a bit over an hour, meaning about a mile and a half, to kill.
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