(cross-posted from MA:46. I wrote the story in question around Fall 2005.)
You may have noticed a link to "stories" in the menu at the top of each page. What is that all about, a band with stories?
I'll tell you.
MA:46 is about telling the stories of New Angel City - a familiar place, not too far in the future. Some of the stories are best told in song, others in prose. You can read the first piece of prose, transients, in the stories section.
Transients sprouted from the sidewalks here and there. There were real tents in decent shape, ragged cardboard huts, and (my favorite) piers of plastic tarp, appliance boxes and other planar refuse. I thought of old cyberpunk stories, but instead of the smell of "long-chain monomers" (a favorite Gibson phrase), it was sweat, shit, and diesel fumes.
the daniel commented, on December 5, 2007 at 6:23 a.m.:
On one hand, (a), I like the idea that you are reading more layers and characters into my story , but on the other hand, (b), it seems that you are condemning me for writing the story, possibly mistaking fiction writing for the advocacy of violence. If (a), thank you for the great comment, and if (b), fuck off.
You may have noticed a link to ...
(relevance: 158.0)(relevance: 19.8)On the east side of the city, the husks of ...
Marquisdejolie commented, on December 5, 2007 at 6:23 a.m.:
The 'bum' killed in this story was named Lynn Burford. He served honorably and valiantly in Viet Nam as a medic, saving many lives at the risk of his own. Before he was drafted, he was a surfer down around the Palos Verdes area; a tall, lanky, golden-haired Los Angeles boy in love with the Pacific Ocean. After his military service, he was a history teacher for a while, but some form of schizophrenia mixed with PTSD and Agent Orange poisoning caught up with him and basically shut his life down. He was in and out of the Kaiser Permanente psychiatric hospital in Chinatown (not far from downtown's Little Tokyo) and I brought him cigarettes often. It's a shame he died that way, beaten to death by a panic-striken "citizen" who thought of him only as a scary "ex-human." He was a real person.