• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

M. Darusha Wehm

Explorer of Worlds Real and Imagined

  • News
  • Buy Books
    • Digital Download Store
    • Get Paperbacks
  • Podcasts
  • About
    • Bio
    • Demographic Info
    • Bibliography
    • Press Kit
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Short Stories
    • Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion
    • Fire. Escape. – Sample
    • The Foreigner
    • Major Tom and the Lucky Lady
    • The Interview
    • Lucidity
    • Fame
    • Chekhov’s Phaser
    • Career Opportunities
  • Science Fiction
    • Beautiful Red
    • Children of Arkadia
    • Andersson Dexter
      • Self Made
      • Act of Will
      • The Beauty of Our Weapons
      • Pixels and Flesh
    • Modern Love and other stories
    • The Voyage of the White Cloud
    • Retaking Elysium
    • The Qubit Zirconium
  • Mainstream Fiction
    • Devi Jones’ Locker
      • Packet Trade
      • Sea Change
      • Storm Cloud
      • Floating Point
    • The Home for Wayward Parrots
  • Anthologies
    • 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
  • Games/Interactive
    • The Martian Job
    • Alexander Systems
    • You Do You
    • if ink could flow backward
  • Books

Packet Trade – Sample

Chapter One: Pirates vs. Ninjas

“One final question, Ms. Jones, and I want you to give us your gut reaction. Don’t think about it, just say the first thing that comes to mind.”

So far the internship interview had been tough, but more or less what I’d expected. I’d done the research. I watched the YouTube videos. I knew about Google’s unanswerable questions and the lose-lose scenarios. I thought I was prepared.

The board of three interviewers were professional and they obviously knew the technical minutia of running a database cluster. It reminded me more of a final exam designed to fail half the class than anything else. That was fine. I knew my way around a database better than anywhere else, and I could talk tech until I ran out of breath. And it wasn’t terribly strange that none of us knew who the company was that was running the interviews. This could be a secretive industry.

The Computer Science department vouched for them, and Anwar, my semantic web TA, had a total gleam in his eye when I told him I’d been chosen to interview. He’d had this internship himself a few years back and all he’d say about it was that it was “the best thing ever.” It was the most desirable interview of them all; maybe the secrecy was part of the allure. Even so, I should have known something was up after that final question.

The interviewer, a forty-something Native American woman in a power suit, leaned in toward me and I forgot to breathe.

“Pirates or ninjas?”

What? I still don’t know why I said what I did. I wonder what would have happened if I’d gone the other way. Would I be sitting in some hotel lounge in Tokyo instead of a beach bar in Nicaragua?

Read on a single page

Pages: Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4

Primary Sidebar

Retaking Elysium cover

Retaking Elysium

Mars is good place to reinvent yourself, isn’t it?

Jules Morales’s life has always been a state of contact change. When the opportunity comes up, why not take a trip to Mars to work on the platinum mining operation—and make a load of money? But what if there is more to Mars than just a payday and an adventure?

The woman now calling herself Lisa Marie has spent her whole life trapped by the struggle to make ends meet, and sometimes held hostage by her own memories. On Mars she might finally find financial security, but will she also find something to care about today, and maybe even for the future?

Learn More

Free Stories

Career Opportunities

Jo-Lynn had always laughed at Charlotte, her stupid sister-in-law, who believed the crap in those so-called newspapers she bought at the supermarket every week. It was no wonder that her no-good … Read More... about Career Opportunities

Fire. Escape. – Sample

This is a novelette that explores a different aspect of the world of the Andersson Dexter novels. You can get the complete ebook for free when you sign up to my mailing list. It all started with the … Read More... about Fire. Escape. – Sample

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

Publications

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • A Most Elegant Solution
  • A Most Elegant Solution (audio)
  • 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
  • War Profiteering
  • War Profiteering (audio)
  • we are all energy

Footer

Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Connect

  • Email
  • RSS

Other Writing

Poetry

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

Non-fiction

  • 90ways.com

Copyright © 2021 M. Darusha Wehm