MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Category: Fiction

  • Harder To Fix

    INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY A group of young software engineers, fresh-faced and idealistic, sit around a sleek, glass table in a high-rise office overlooking a nameless, sprawling city. They exchange glances, uncertain. At the head of the table, PETER COYOTE leans back in his chair, a wise yet weary expression on his face. He…

  • Our Town

    The bus wheezed to a stop on the edge of a town that didn’t seem to exist on any map I’d ever seen. The paint was peeling off every wall, and the street signs looked like they’d been stolen from a historical reenactment village. In fact, everything here had a worn-out, mock-serious look to it,…

  • Have a Cigar

    Scene: Dimly lit record label office, smoke curling through the air. Peter Coyote lounges at the head of a massive leather couch, cool, calculating, sizing up the young band sitting across from him. The musicians look equal parts excited and nervous, caught somewhere between awe and dread. Coyote lights a cigar, gestures grandly for them…

  • Happy Place

    Scene: A stark conference room, mid-afternoon. Peter Coyote addresses the room with razor-sharp authority, eyes scanning his fellow executives like he’s reading them the unvarnished truth about the consumer game. His tone is clipped, impatient, punctuated with sharp pauses. Peter Coyote: (leaning in, voice sharp) Let’s cut the romance, shall we? We’re not in the…

  • The Garage

    Ray: “It’s the garage, Bill. The garage itself. Not some ordinary space filled with nails, wood shavings, and the detritus of middle-class American living. No, this garage, it’s alive. Like one of those shops in the old stories, the ones that weren’t there yesterday and won’t be there tomorrow. But today? Today it hums with…

  • The Long Runway

    The colonel stood before the vast, sun-bleached expanse, squinting into the distance. The desert stretched on forever, flat as a dinner plate. In his hand, he held a rolled-up blueprint, its edges curling from the dry wind. Behind him, a gathering of officers waited—silent, sweating in their khaki uniforms. A half-mile away, the airstrip shimmered…

  • A Load Off My Chest

    They didn’t grow the pie, didn’t retire. They stayed. Sat on the nest, getting fatter, tighter. Locked their grips on whatever scraps were left, and called it progress. That’s what they told themselves—progress. Progress for who? Not for us. Not for the ones who came after. The ones who had to scrounge for the crumbs,…

  • Riddles

    1. What am I? I am the shadow of regret cast by two cruel suns, but I burn less bright. I am the bitter fruit that is eaten, but with fewer seeds. I am the choice that stings, yet I sting less. I am the poisoned apple, but with a sweeter bite. 2. What am…

  • The Astrologer

    In the annals of forgotten kingdoms, there lived an astrologer whose name has slipped from the tongues of men, but whose arrogance remains etched in the memory of history’s most peculiar fables. He was not an astrologer in the traditional sense, for his craft did not concern the mere movements of planets or the transient…

  • A Life Of Isolation

    It was late November when I arrived in Chengdu, a city whose greyness reminded me more of an overcast London afternoon than anything I had imagined of China. The air hung heavy, swollen with an autumn mist that blurred the edges of the streets, the buildings, even the people hurrying along the wide boulevards. I…