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M. Darusha Wehm

Explorer of Worlds Real and Imagined

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  • Short Stories
    • Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion
    • Fire. Escape. – Sample
    • The Foreigner
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    • The Interview
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    • Beautiful Red
    • Children of Arkadia
    • Andersson Dexter
      • Self Made
      • Act of Will
      • The Beauty of Our Weapons
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    • Modern Love and other stories
    • The Voyage of the White Cloud
    • Retaking Elysium
    • The Qubit Zirconium
    • Hamlet, Prince of Robots
  • Mainstream Fiction
    • Devi Jones’ Locker
      • Packet Trade
      • Sea Change
      • Storm Cloud
      • Floating Point
    • The Home for Wayward Parrots
  • Anthologies
    • The Stars Beyond
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 4
    • KeyForge: Tales From the Crucible
    • Trans-Galactic Bike Ride
    • Fireweed: Stories from the Revolution
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I
    • The Dame Was Trouble
    • Dystopia Utopia Short Stories
    • Science Fiction Short Stories
    • Procyon Press Science Fiction Anthology 2016
    • Use Only As Directed
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    • The Martian Job
    • Alexander Systems
    • You Do You
    • if ink could flow backward
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Floating Point – Sample

Chapter One: Bumper Boats

There’s a reason why people say they are “at sea” when they are lost or confused or don’t know what’s going on. It’s not because life on a boat is inherently baffling — although I felt that way often enough. It’s because being in the middle of the ocean, with nothing to look at but your own ship and the horizon, is like being in limbo. It’s neither here nor there, you have no frame of reference other than a GPS-generated blip on a screen. What was like before there was even that? How many ancient sailors had gone mad from the sheer unknowableness of their place in the world?

We were safe in the harbour of Pago Pago in American Samoa as I ruminated on these thoughts. I could see the town ashore, the lights of other boats at anchor. I knew where I was, literally at least. But I still felt at sea in many ways.

I’d been aboard the Byte Bucket for half of a nine-month term, minding the servers carefully housed in the hold of the ship that were run by my employer, Really Remote Desktop. They ran the boat and paid for the crew to sail it around the world, keeping the location of their clients’ data safe from the prying eyes of hackers, competitors and governments. It was a strange gig, one that my professors at university told me was a coup for a co-op student to be offered, so I’d taken the job against my own better judgment. Most of the time, my profs had been right.

Today, though, I wished I’d turned it down. I couldn’t stop thinking about my family back in Canada, preparing for my grandmother’s funeral without me. Not only was I not there, helping them, grieving with them, I hadn’t even known she’d died until days after it happened. I hadn’t known because I was out sailing, having fun on a boat in the tropics with my friends.

At least, that’s how it felt.

“It’s your job, Devi.” Everyone kept telling me this — my dad, my other crew members. Even Mat, the captain of the Bucket, who had agreed to stick around in Pago Pago longer than she’d planned so I could talk to my family on the phone, told me not to feel guilty.

“It’s part of the boat life,” she’d said. “Hell, missing one thing so you can do another thing is part of everyone’s life.” I knew she was right, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the joy I’d felt in finally literally learning the ropes as we’d gone out for a fun sail and the crew had helped me learn the basics of sailing. I wondered what I’d been doing when Grandma passed away. Had I been laughing?

http://darusha.ca/floating-point-sample-full/“>Read on a single page.

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Primary Sidebar

Book cover for “Hamlet, Prince of Robots” by M. Darusha Wehm. A blue-green robot skull with a golden crown in the style of a neon sign, over a dark glitchy background. In the top left is a quote reading “Enormous fun and a real gift to lovers of Shakespeare or science fiction or both. Familiar and surprising, clever and moving.” From Kate Heartfield, author of Sunday Times bestseller The Embroidered Book.

Hamlet, Prince of Robots

Like Succession meets Blade Runner … an extremely compelling and satisfying read that allowed me to investigate my own place in our time of communion and interdependence with machines.

—Pip Adam, author of Acorn Prize winner The New Animals

Something is rotten in the state of cybernetics.

Elsinore Robotics is on the cusp of a breakthrough—the company is poised to create the first humanoid androids powered by true artificial intelligence. Their only rival, Norwegian Technologies, lost a publicly streamed contest between their flagship model, Fortinbras, and Elsinore’s HAM(let) v.1.

But when the first Hamlet model is found irreparably deactivated, the apparent victim of wild malware, the field of consumer cybernetics is thrown wide open.

Learn More

Free Stories

Fame

"Pupusas?" The woman's nasal voice reached Randall at the back of the bus before he saw her pushing her way down the aisle. He could smell the warm, raw meat smell of his own sweaty body, and his … Read More... about Fame

Major Tom and the Lucky Lady

I was balancing a cup of tea in one hand, while hanging on to the side of the companionway hatch with the other. I climbed into the cockpit sideways, compensating for the roll of the boat. I was only … Read More... about Major Tom and the Lucky Lady

The Interview

Originally published in Podioracket Presents - Glimpses “I was working at this stim joint, a place called Ultra-Sissons. It’s not where I’m working now — I wasn’t a bartender then, just a busser. … Read More... about The Interview

Publications

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • A Most Elegant Solution
  • A Most Elegant Solution (audio)
  • A Thorn in Your Memory
  • A Wish and a Hope and a Dream
  • Alexander Systems
  • Fear of Lying
  • Force Nine
  • Good Hunting
  • Home Sick
  • Home Sick (audio)
  • Homecoming
  • I Open My Eyes
  • if ink could flow backward
  • Microfiction @Thaumatrope
  • Modern Love
  • Modern Love (audio)
  • Preventative Maintenance
  • recursion
  • Reflections on a Life Story
  • Showing the Colours (audio)
  • The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1
  • The Interview
  • The Stars Above Eos
  • War Profiteering
  • War Profiteering (audio)
  • we are all energy

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Poetry

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • 140 and Counting
  • creation myth
  • Force Nine
  • how to make time
  • if ink could flow backward
  • recursion
  • the chrononaut
  • we are all energy

Non-fiction

  • 90ways.com

Elsewhere

  • Darkly Lem
  • Many Worlds
  • Mastadon

Copyright © 2023 M. Darusha Wehm