• 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

Pixels and Flesh — Sample

“Andersson Dexter. It’s been a while.”

Dex looked up at the sound of a familiar voice and his face broke into a smile. He jumped up from behind his desk and in a couple of long strides had rounded it and come face to face with his visitor. Virtual face to virtual face, of course, as this surprise visit was taking place in Dex’s office in Marionette City. Still, even if it was only a simulation, Dex was happy to see his old friend and mentor, Zahara Zhang.

“Zizou!” He opened his arms in a hug-or-handshake shape and waited for Zhang to choose one. She stepped into his embrace and gave Dex a quick squeeze. “What brings you over here?”

“Would you believe me if I said I just wanted to say hi?”

Dex’s former boss rarely gave away much on her face, and she didn’t now, but Dex knew she wasn’t really trying to fool him.

“Nope,” he said, sliding back into his overstuffed brown tweed chair and leaning back. He smiled as the chair squeaked slightly at his weight. His office space was an unusually robust simulation; enough to almost make him feel like it was real. He gestured at the visitor’s chair across the desk and Zhang sat. “So, what’s up, Cap?”

“I haven’t been your captain in a long while,” Zhang said.

“Old habits die hard,” Dex answered, “and while I’d be perfectly happy to shoot the shit with you all day, I don’t recall that exactly being your style.” He leaned forward, a hint of a frown creasing his avatar’s forehead. “Is everything okay?”

Zhang nodded, then shrugged. “I think so? It’s just… something particularly weird has happened. And I have to admit that the first person I think of when I think ‘particularly weird’ is you. So here I am.”

Dex could tell that Captain Zhang was going to tell her story in her own time, and her reluctance to just be out with it aroused his curiosity more than her vague explanations. He knew her well enough after working for her for years that pushing was pointless, so he opened up the lower right drawer of his desk and removed a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a pair of short glasses. It was a flavour-only formulation, neurostim not being Dex’s first choice for mood alteration. Besides, he was working.

He lifted the bottle in a silent question and Zhang nodded. Dex poured two rounds and passed one across the desk. Zhang took it and clinked her glass against the one in Dex’s hand. They each took a sip, then Zhang set her glass on the desk and reached into the inside left pocket of her suit coat.

She pulled out a folded sheaf of papers and passed them across the desk to Dex. She’d forwarded him the file on an encrypted private channel, but the program which generated the illusion of his office rendered all of Dex’s online activities into their analog counterparts. His avatar took the papers and Dex skimmed the contents.

“I’m no lawyer,” he said, “but if I understand this at all, you’ve just come into quite the inheritance. An entire disk block of rez space in the Cuba Quarter? That must be worth a fortune. Congratulations! And condolences,” he added after a short but awkward pause.

Zhang nodded, her lips set in a tight line. “Thanks, but condolences aren’t exactly required.” She pointed at the name listed on the documents. Irina Nightingale, Zhang’s late benefactor. “I have never heard of this person before in my life.”

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

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

Lucidity

last night I had the most wonderful dream Carly moaned softly in her sleep, and rolled over. She dreamed and dreamed, and when she woke, she found that she still had the lingering shadow of a … Read More... about Lucidity

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