Okay, so here’s the thing: I write subversive short stories. Really. They harbor dangerous ideas, thoughts that could wreck your world. Welcome to KlurgSheld. Most of what you’ll find here is fiction, even some of the conventional posts. For example, there are a few items here by the ‘Bank Shot Blogger’. These posts were written … More Welcome
“Yova. Is it ready to be worked yet?” Azanna and Yova had first met in a little-known wing of the great Interdimensional Library. He had been doing some research prior to one of his earlier works. She, on the other hand, was doing what she most enjoyed: exploring. It is a peculiarity of the Library that one can only find what one is looking for, and although this is usually the case elsewhere, it is more so here. A single-minded visitor will experience The Library as a rather cramped single room. Others might find it to be a long corridor with a series of rooms along its length. Azanna had yet to find a dead end, although there were sections which, to her, appeared to be suspiciously blank.
“What do you have in mind?”
“We’ve been watching your progress –”
“Yes. I know. You could have been a little more quiet, you know.”
“– and, as I was saying, we noticed a rather painful lack of detail.”
“Hmmm?”
“You work well with a bulldozer, but it’s hardly the tool for sculpting flowers.”
Teshti understood the twinkle in Yova’s eye when he smiled at her briefly before replying to Azanna. “I suppose you can do better?”
“Perhaps our more varied backgrounds could lend some subtlety to your pursuits.”
Yova looked at Vorst. “Are you sure of that?”
“Quite.”
After a moment’s internal debate, Yova looked toward Teshti, then back at Azanna. “All right. But there is a condition.”
“There’s always a condition. Why is there always a condition? Ever since I had you for a student, you have never done a single thing without some kind of condition. Why is that?”
“Hern, shut up. Please shut up.”
“I’ll shut up. But what is your condition this time?”
“Simply that none of you three may subjectivize in it. Do you agree?”
“Of course. But why?”
“I’ll tell you later.” … More Short Story: “MindSpace Continua”
How we encounter content on the Internet has changed immeasurably over time. It may be easier now, but it’s also caused a great deal of damage. The algorithms behind profit-making search engines and social media platforms serve the companies that pay the bills, rather than the people who use them. If that’s what we know of the world, then we might as well be living in VR. … More Algorithmic Jeopardy
“A Simple Twist of Fate” was the first of two ‘collections’ that I made in March of 1976. I finished it on March 8th, and quickly followed it with “My Brother” six days later. My life was in flux, because Deb had made plans to join me in Chicago once she’d finished classes, and that … More Mixtape: “A Simple Twist of Fate”
By January 1976, when I finished creating “Highway Star” on open-reel, I was doing a 45-minute commute to my 2nd software contract since moving to the Windy City. The 1st one had involved making changes to existing insurance company programs to migrate to IBM’s latest mainframe OS, which was their first to handle peripheral management, … More Mixtape: “Highway Star”
vember 3rd, 1975, because I created both the previous mixtape, “Dreams’, and this one on the same day. It was a few months past the long-scheduled re-union of college friends at DisneyWorld, and I would have been looking forward, with some trepidation, to having Thanksgiving with family in New York. There weren’t any blow-ups, but because I’d left the faith some years earlier, family gatherings could become awkward. … More Mixtape: Wizard
It was now early November 1975. Plans set years before had come to pass, life was getting more interesting, and my ongoing interest in ‘the occult’ had begun to be reflected in the books on my shelf. It was time to make another ‘collection’. … More Mixtape: Dreams
A lot had happened since creating “Goodbye Again”, my first mixtape, a bit over a year earlier. By March of 1975, I was ready to record my second mixtape, using some tracks from LPs I borrowed from new friends I had made in Chicago. … More Mixtape: “Embryonic Journey”
It was January of 1974. My nascent IT career was getting traction. I’d dabbled with fiction by this time, but now the muse was nudging me in a different direction: using existing music as a mosaic. … More Mixtape: “Goodbye Again”
When the Covid-19 pandemic upended the world, it also derailed the novel I’d been writing and publishing here, so I switched gears and reconnected with an older part of my creative work: building mixtapes as a form of expression. In the mid ’70s, about a decade before a short story I’d started work on took … More Striking a Different Key
Do you have a role model? Are you one? When we’re quite young, we’re too busy experiencing new senses, exploring our little part of the the world and becoming aware of ourselves to notice that we’re doing so by imitating those around us. We model our own behavior on whoever spends time with us; We … More Essay: Role Molding
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