MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Category: Fiction

  • The Palimpsest Engine

    The old man, who preferred the anonymity of shadows, sat at the head of the polished mahogany table. His eyes, still sharp beneath the cataract veil of age, studied the young man across from him, a temporal archaeologist by reputation, a skeptic by demeanor. In the room, the air was thick with the must of…

  • Checkpoint

    The agent crouched low in the alley, the flickering neon lights jerking like a mind caught in a seizure. Shadows danced on the walls, erratic as neurons firing in a dying brain. The Interzone hummed with the static of fractured realities, a buzz that bled through everything—glitching, fraying, as bits of half-thoughts and lost memories…

  • Pipeline

    “You don’t like me. Hell, you think I’m despicable. You sit in your faculty lounges and tweet from your ivory towers about ‘consultants ruining education,’ about ‘corporate greed infecting the academy,’ and you pin that target squarely on my back. But let me tell you something: You want me here. You need me here. Because…

  • My Father Ran A Prison

    The air hung heavy in the valley, as though weighed down by the burden of secrets left unsaid. Beyond the murmur of the waterfall, there was silence, save for the faint rustling of leaves, as though the earth itself conspired to remain quiet, afraid to disturb the ghosts that lingered in the minds of men.…

  • HyperRust

    The highways hum like electric rivers, flowing nowhere but into themselves. Neon crosses bleed light into the night, baptizing the lost in false salvation. Beneath the rust of the boxcar lies the ghost of gold—both gone and waiting. The jukebox preaches its gospel to a congregation of empty barstools. A dollar bill folds like a…

  • Rover

    The screen flickered again, its harsh blue glow casting jagged, angular shadows across the cockpit. Rover Unit R-VR07 adjusted his position within the cramped confines of the escape pod, his articulated limbs whirring softly against the silence. Somewhere deep within his titanium chassis, algorithms churned in quiet frustration. They found no solution. The barren rock…

  • The Ghost of Mittelbau-Dora

    Von Braun’s steel-tipped dreams hum with blood and gasoline. A factory of shadows, all twisted spines and raw hands—dying by the hundreds, whispering curses in languages he never cared to learn. “Build me a ladder to the stars,” he says, boot heels clicking on the concrete, the sound swallowed by the choking wheeze of the…

  • The Ralph’s Doctrine:

    Groceries, Geopolitics, and the End of Civilization by a Drunken Lunatic with a Cart Full of Frozen Burritos Power is unequally distributed, but it’s not supposed to be this obvious. Walk into any Ralph’s supermarket at 11:45 PM on a Tuesday and you’ll see what I mean: exhausted cashiers managing checkout lines longer than a…

  • The City of Ten Thousand Doors

    The room has been thick with smoke, curling in lazy rings under the ceiling fans, the walls stained amber in the dim light. Tangiers has pulsed outside, the city flickering in neon, shadows shifting like restless ghosts. In the corner, beneath a cracked light, the boss has leaned back in his chair—Moroccan leather, worn with…

  • MAGA

    Scene: Suburban Kitchen – Morning RANDY, a middle-aged man in a “Save America” t-shirt, stands proudly in his gleaming, newly remodeled kitchen, giving CARLOS, a stocky Latino man in a worn uniform, an enthusiastic handshake. Carlos holds a clipboard and offers a polite, guarded smile. RANDY (grinning, voice loud and cheerful) Carlos, my man! Good…