Tag Archives: philosophy

Re-Share: ’33’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

This article was posted back in 2017, in a period of re-focus and reflection. Since then, I’ve made some real strides. Published two novels, invested in my career and well-being to a new degree. Still, sometimes in the fading hours of night, that nagging feeling remains…

It’s not that I’m getting old. I’m not feeling especially tired either. Besides, those are hardly the sorts of things I’m inclined to worry about. At least I’d like to think that’s the case. It’s just that there’s so very much to do. So many aspirations, and so dreadfully little time. Occasionally, I suppose, I get the sense I’m running a little behind.

A man can dream of innumerable potential lives, but has only one to live. With each commitment, another potential sets sail. There are always the basics to cover: a stable job, a place to live, a good group of friends. It’s not so very much, but each aspect shaves off a bit more time that could theoretically be spent elsewhere.

Each day spent on one thing is wasted to all else. We make our decisions, parse out our time and effort as we see fit, and carry on the best we can.

But the dreams, aspirations, and desires do not fade. Neither do the questions.

How does one balance the daily grind, and also seek to better himself?

Do the basics of daily living get in the way of aspirations to change the world? Or is the way we live daily the very thing which defines our world?

Can a man ever be his best self without a better half? Do we live to serve, and if so, who?

Is our duty to ourselves, our loved ones, or the world as a whole?

We all dream of answers. Of contentment, adventure, satisfaction.

Some of us actually find them. Others manage to convince themselves they have. The rest, I suppose, search forever.

Each day can feel like an effort. Sometimes they may require an exhausting exertion just to get through. Yet as each day closes, how many unanswered questions and unaddressed desires remain? The love you’ve yet to find. The voice you’ve yet to share. The world you’ve yet to live in. What about them?

…33.

It’s not so old by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, there are times—day, evening, or night—when I get that weird feeling in my gut. Like maybe, I’m just running a little behind.

-Brad OH Inc.

Re-Share: America’s Wall

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This article was first posted in 2018, and I think it’s time to review the premise. Have a read, and it’s hard to deny this one was pretty on point. It’s now 2025, and America has isolated itself from the world, humiliated itself on the political stage, and realized everyone’s fears without fulfilling any of its promises. Now, the American citizenry cower within their socially-imposed walls, hiding from the agents of their own government.

Let us hope they are delivered from this hellscape soon.

Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made a lot of wild promises which no reasonable person could expect he would really accomplish. From banning Muslim people from travel, to erasing the memory of Obama, to making America ‘great’ again, he promised a veritable cornucopia of achievements suitably grandiose yet vague to make any self-conscious, fear-addled white man foam at the mouth with vindictive anticipation.

Of course, none of these promises were more discussed than his strange claim to build a wall along the border, and make Mexico pay for it.

Let’s not even get into that bit about Mexico paying for it. That’s not the point.

Beyond all the bluster and hair-brained grandstanding, the Wall became the great theme of his campaign. Now, it is a more nebulous thing. It’s not talked about as much these days, but that’s the way with a grifter. Let the details fade once the price has been paid. Blur the lines, and redefine what it means to be successful—to be honest. Was it about a wall? Or safety? Safety, or fear?

If you didn’t realize that was rhetorical, let me spoil it for you. It was about fear. It’s always about fear.

The Wall was a bracer against the fear of lost privilege, and although the physical wall seems to be a distant memory, the barrier Trump promised continues to be built brick by brick with each hateful tweet, each insult to justice, and each scorned plea for decency.

Nations around the world are beginning to see this Wall tearing up the skyline, and have taken the point. America is no longer the trusted ally that it arguably used to be. Less so each day. They are unpredictable and cruel. Hateful of all others, and loathing of themselves.

Of all the destructive, strange claims Trump has made in vain, it seems the famous promise of a Wall may indeed come true. Of course, in typical rat fashion, it will come true in a significantly different way than promised. That’s the way with conmen…and enchanted artifacts, I think.

Is that isolation what’s best? It’s hard to say. Short of some miraculous about-face not only in the politicians of America, but in the politics of its citizens and media, America is poised now to settle into the mire and rot it has made for itself—abandoned and abjured behind a wall of fear, anger, and spite.

A wall of its own making.

-Brad OH Inc.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘A Good Place for a Miller’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampIn addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today we share our eleventh Single Serving Story, ‘A Good Place for a Miller’. This story was written specifically for the anthology, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, which contains fourteen stories by twelve members of the Edmonton Writers’ Group. They are unified only by the common theme of their current hometown, Edmonton, AB. Ranging from simple domestic interactions, to futuristic sci-fi adventures, to deep psychological introspections, these stories take a look at Edmonton from viewpoints as different as the writers themselves. This anthology is a love letter to our hometown, and demonstrates our incredibly varied approaches to literature, and to life.

‘A Good Place for a Miller’ touches on some topics that are unusually personal for my writing. It’s an anomaly of sorts, and I enjoy it for that very reason.

Jeremy Miller was 17 years old the only time he ever ran away from home. Slipping out the back door late in the evening, he’d passed the Youth Emergency Shelter, and loped out onto the grassy incline which fell away from the cracked sidewalk and sloped down into the cool green hills of Mill Creek Ravine. Jeremy had walked this little strip on his way to work and back many times in his short life, and had more than once contemplated taking the small step off the sidewalk and down into the valley below.

Today, he had finally decided to make that idea a reality—and not just as a detour on his way to work. Jeremy wanted to escape, to find himself, and more importantly, to find out if there was anyone else in the world feeling as desperate to get started on life as he was.

“Might not be what you’d call living exactly, but it’s half true at least, I guess.” The old man with the dirty toque scratched at his beard, and ran his index finger along a scar on his cheek.

Jeremy didn’t understand. “What do you mean? You live here, or you don’t.”

“Sometimes we sleep here, sometimes we sleep other places. Living means something different to each of us kid,” Dirty Toque spoke from the side of his mouth.

“That’s just the kind of thing I was hoping you’d say,” said Jeremy. “That’s why I came here today, to find out what life really means to other people.”

“I’ve got all I need to live right here,” said a younger man with dry, red skin and a stained plaid jacket. He held up a can of beer and burst into a chorus of dry, staccato laughter.

Jeremy had to bite his lip to avoid letting loose a sarcastic quip he might regret. Self-talk was a long-standing habit of Jeremy’s—perhaps a relic of his being an only child of two very busy parents, or perhaps more so the result of his self-imposed isolation and natural introversion. In truth, it was some combination of those, and no doubt other, more implicit reasons as well.

The older man inched his way forward—a nervous, perhaps predatory approach that made Jeremy squirm beneath his new jacket, which was admittedly too heavy for the meager, early spring weather.

“You have plenty more than you need to live by the looks of it kid,” he pulled at the sleeve of the jacket, “what are you doing down here anyways? ‘Find out what life really means’…what the hell is that about?”

Jeremy tugged away instinctively, feeling guilty about his sudden apprehension, yet unable to shake it. “I don’t live very far from here,” he explained, “but I’ve never really spent much time down in these valleys. All my life I’ve heard about the people down here, whole communities, who know and trust each other. They survive because of their connections, not despite them. You’d think that sort of thing would be more abundant out of the valley than in it,” he finished, and a shadow blew across his face even as the chill of night began to deepen.

It was true. Jeremy had often heard tales of this coven of the lost; a significant community of Edmonton’s homeless who set up makeshift shelters down in the woods of Edmonton’s River Valley—a series of park lands forming one of the continent’s largest city parks.

These gypsy-esque men and women often partied long into the night, despite their desperate circumstances. That kind of resilience had often struck a young Jeremy as brave…inspiring even. If any of it was true.

These tales had come to Jeremy through the complaints of his chagrined neighbours, whispers from children whose parents were police officers or probation workers, and the often-elaborated speculations of his rather distant academic peers—speaking of things they’d seen, or rumours they’d heard as if the River Valley was some far off and inaccessible source of fear and legend.

Mill Creek Ravine, though not a part of the River Valley proper, was close to Jeremy’s house, and he had determined it would be a good starting place.

“Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” mumbled the younger man. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Jeremy Miller, and I’d like to join you for a while, maybe have a talk. I hope it doesn’t seem rude or creepy,” this statement drew a series of inquisitive, raised eyebrows from the two men before him, “I just want to know what people live like when all is truly equal.”

“Can’t get more equal than nothing for everyone,” said the first man, with a chuckle.

“Miller, eh?” asked the second, “that’s a bit fancy for these parts, ain’t it?”

Jeremy scrunched up his face, but again held his tongue. “It’s just a joke, son,” the man with the toque cut in, “‘Miller’ is a beer, but a bit pricey for us. I’m Slick, and that there’s Lucky. Guess where he gets his name,” he finished, reaching into a bag at his side and passing Jeremy an unopened can: ‘Lucky Lager’.

It was cold in Jeremy’s hand, and heavy. “Thanks,” he said.

“So, just what is it brings you to a place like this anyway?” asked Slick.

Jeremy considered this for a moment. How could he take his whole life’s experience and present state, and sum it up for a stranger in the cold? He held tightly onto the can of beer, and pushed his finger under the tab. It popped open with a sharp crack and impotent hiss.

‘Why am I here?’ he ran the question through his head once…twice. It was a big one. Jeremy sighed, and brought the cool lip of the can up to his mouth. It tasted awful—thin and watery, with a strange, bitter flavour. He forced it down, and the aftertaste somehow brought to mind the smell of his mother’s fresh bread baking on cold winter mornings. Jeremy forced this down as well.

“I guess it’s been coming for a while now…I just needed to get out of there. I’m tired of having no control over my own life, and no ability to change anything around me.”

Slick grinned. Lucky took a long pull of beer from his own can.

Jeremy tugged on the sleeves of his jacket, self-conscious now as he gazed upon the crusty and tattered garments of his new friends. “Maybe it seems silly to you guys, I don’t know. I do everything right…I get the best grades I can, hold a job, try to be respectful around the house, but my folks still always think they know better. I wanted to go down to the States for a music festival this summer…I thought it would be a chance to figure out my place, and to experience a sense of community built around something other than common location. I’ll be on my own soon, and by then I’ll need to know how to build my own life, but I’ll never be able to do that with my parents constantly worrying about me and holding me back.”

“Doubt you’ve done much to solve that worrying bit tonight,” said Slick.

“You’ve got that right,” Jeremy agreed. “Still, I’ve never had to struggle for anything, I’ve never even known anyone who has! I don’t know how to trust strangers, or judge intentions, or what it takes to rely on anyone outside of my immediate family. In less than a year, I’m meant to be a man, and it’s high time I started acting like one!”

“So, you ran away to freeze under a bridge? Not many men I know choose that.” Slick rubbed at his scar.

“Why are you here then?” asked Jeremy.

“Not to prove a point. ‘Least ways not anymore.”

“It’s not about proving a point, it’s about being prepared,” Jeremy stared off towards the bright lights of downtown Jasper Ave, and spoke as if to himself. “When I’m out on my own, I want to be able to make a difference. I want to be able to walk amongst and understand all kinds of people, and I’ll need to do that if I want to change anything in this world. I know perfectly well that I have it easy, but that will only make it harder for me to have any real impact. I need to understand and experience all levels of society before I head out into it…how else can I know my place?”

Lucky chuckled at this, “I tried to find my place once too…ended up same place as you started. Funny, ain’t it?”

“Well,” said Jeremy, braving another sip of beer, “how did you guys end up here? Is it really like they say, is there really a whole community down in these valleys?”

Slick sighed. “Community is just any folks that can’t make do without one another kid. If I were you, I’d go back home to yours now. Be warm and happy—the choice don’t always last.”

“Go home, watch TV…be happy.” This time, Jeremy took a bigger swig of beer. He didn’t notice the taste. “What kind of happiness is it when you don’t ever know anything else? It’s placation, not peace! I want to know everything life has to offer Slick; how else can I ever know where I fit in?”

The men shook their heads vacantly, then nodded to one another. In an eerily unified motion, they tossed their empty beer cans on the ground, crunched them flat under their feet, and tucked them into a grimy plastic bag held by Lucky.

Jeremy gazed silently down to the creek below. On the far side of the little trickle of water which made up the creek was a dirty grey concrete wall—the dual struts of the bridge which shortly turned into Whyte Avenue proper. Whyte was another legendary Edmonton locale—but one which his lack of a fake ID prevented Jeremy from resorting to in his current moment of doubt.

Slick reached into his bag, tossed a beer to Lucky, picked one out for himself, then glanced up at Jeremy, who nursed his current one self-consciously. Slick smiled, and swung the bag up onto his shoulder.

“Better get moving.”

“Where are we going?” Jeremy asked.

“I’m heading to camp, I expect Lucky is as well,” said Slick. “Where you’re going, that’s up to you.”

Jeremy scrambled to his feet, nearly spilling his still near-full beer in the process. “But…can’t I come along?” he whimpered.

“Like I said,” Slick spoke over his shoulder as he walked, already turning left onto the path running beneath the bridge they’d been stationed under when Jeremy had slipped off the street and into the valley to find them, “that’s up to you.”

“So,” Jeremy rejoined, sidling up alongside the duo, “do you camp here every night?”

“Some nights I camp here, some nights I camp other places,” said Lucky.

“Different folks all got their own spots. Right now, we’ve got a lil place up by the bend in the creek. Not a whole lot, but it works,” said Slick.

“So, there are others there too?” asked Jeremy, surprised by the speed the men travelled at, and doing his utmost to keep up without seeming like he was trying to.

“Should be a few,” Slick said.

“And…they won’t mind either, if I join?”

“Not if you don’t cause trouble. The way you drink beer, you should be just fine, kid.”

“Yeah,” Lucky agreed, “leaves more for me! Haha.”

“So,” said Slick, “what’s this festival you wanted to go to anyway? Must be something, if losing it’s worth losing all the rest.”

“Yeah, well I think so. But it’s not just about that, it’s about having the ability to choose something for myself. I’ve been listening to this band for a long time, and they really speak to me. So, I wanted to finally go to this festival they have—the ‘Gathering of the Juggalos’—and meet some of the other fans from around the world.

“You know, they’re a sort of community themselves, the Juggalos. They’re united by their role as outcasts, their love of the music and even a special bond with each other. Outside of my house, I’ve never had anything like that and…”

“Boy, I feel like I’ve had it easy hearing all this tragedy,” Lucky joked.

“Go on kid, you’re alright,” said Slick.

“Well,” Jeremy continued, somewhat less sure of himself now, “It would have been nice to feel like a part of something, you know. I don’t know why they couldn’t just let me have that.”

“Ain’t their choice,” said Slick. “If you wanna go to the damn thing, then go. Hell, I left my home, such as it was, long before your age. Look at me now, got all the ‘community’ I need, just like you say.” Slick grinned and slapped Lucky on the back. Jeremy felt his stomach drop.

Mill Creek Ravine was a long, wooded section of the city which followed naturally the curve of the tiny creek. Dirt foot-paths and off-leash trails were the primary function of the park, weaving through trees and alongside the creek-bed where the thin trickle of water which had long ago burrowed the ravine from the hard earth tickled the polished stones of its bed.

Walking a long stretch bordered tightly by trees on both sides, Jeremy heard footsteps approaching. From around the corner came a man, woman, and young Golden Retriever pup, all jogging peaceably—the last vestiges of civilization draining from the park along with the day’s light.

“Hello,” Jeremy smiled and nodded, a custom long ingrained by the rigidly enforced politeness of his upbringing. Much to his surprise, he was met only by distant avoidance, and the couple hurried past with no greeting and as little eye-contact as they could manage.

Jeremy heard Slick chuckling to himself, and felt the chill of night begin to gnaw at his exposed flesh. “It’s weird how little time I’ve spent down here, living so close and all. It really is pretty this time of evening,” Jeremy said.

“You go where you need to be I guess. Not much need of a cold forest for a guy like you. Not most of the time, least of ways,” said Slick.

“I only go where my needs are,” said Lucky, crushing another empty beer can into his bag as he grabbed a fresh can from the sack on Slick’s shoulder.

As the trio moved, the trees parted, affording a panoramic view of the valley, and up to Whyte Avenue. A short hill rose to their right, and Jeremy noticed a picnic table and fire pit which he initially took for the group’s campsite. But they kept walking, past the bench, and back down into the woods, crossing a wooden bridge as they went. Finally, the pair slipped off the path and knelt by the stream to fill their canteens. “What’s that for?” asked Jeremy.

Slick rolled his eyes and chuckled loudly. “For drinking, what the hell do you think? It’s not all beer all the time down here you know. A man needs real water now and again.”

“Speak for yourself, I’m fine with beer,” said Lucky.

“That’s half your problem,” said Slick, and Jeremy allowed himself a laugh of his own.

Taking a knee on the bank, Jeremy cupped his hands and filled his mouth with water, swishing it around in his cheeks to rid himself of the beer’s stale aftertaste. The water was dirty and tasted odd, leaving a gritty feeling in his mouth even after he’d swallowed. Jeremy remembered fighting with his parents many times over being told to settle for a cup of cold tap water in place of a soda, and felt a hot flush steal over him.

“So, how long have you guys been out here?” he asked.

Slick gazed upward, as if loosing himself in the riddle. “Hell, I don’t know. I’ve been out and about, on and off different streets most of my life. Bounced between cities, occasionally found spells of work. I just go where I see fit, find what I can. Same for Lucky. Same for most of us, I guess.”

“So,” Jeremy continued, feeling emboldened and connected to these two strange men, “is there anything that would ever make you stop wandering? Where would you want to stay, if given the chance?”

This brought a pause from both men, and a long, terminal silence. Finally, it was once again Slick who broke the tension. “Stay, huh? Well that’s just it I guess, ain’t it? I stay where I can, where people will have me. Like I said kid, you ought to go where you’re wanted, and make it fit as best you can. Running around trying to find a place to rest is no kind of life, after all. What the hell is it you think you’re looking to find out here anyway?” Slick sealed up his canteen as he spoke, and motioned the others back onto the trail.

Jeremy thought about the warmth of his room, and the lock on his door. He remembered the porch light left on when he arrived home late from work, and the judgmental glare of his father waiting in the porch when he arrived home late from anyplace else. “Well, I guess I don’t know what I want to find exactly. But I still want to have the chance to search for it, you know? Didn’t you ever want more freedom—the chance to make decisions for yourself, to seek your own destiny and see what you’re truly made of?”

Slick gazed intently for a moment at his dry and cracking, discoloured hands, and Jeremy felt his own—soft and sweaty, fidgeting in his clean jacket pockets. “Can’t be much help on that point, I’m afraid. Never had any shortage of freedom,” said Slick. “No family, no commitments. Free as a bird, like they say. But don’t you worry, someone at camp might be able to point you in the right direction. It’s not far now.”

Together, Jeremy and the two men continued, crossing another short wooden footbridge, winding again through the trees until finally, at Slick’s cue, they turned off the dirt path and traipsed deeper into the woods. Jeremy felt his stomach growling, and a queer feeling welling up in his chest. He swallowed back a sudden lump in his throat, and fell in line behind Lucky.

Not far in there was a break in the trees, and at a bend in the creek, a small campfire burned in a hole dug in the earth. A bedraggled man and woman clung to each other near the flames. Further out, sitting cross-legged on the rocks by the water, was an older man with a somber look on his red, weathered face.

Slick and Lucky offered some brief greetings, and took their seats by the fire. “These are Grace and Riley,” said Slick, pointing to the couple near the fire, “and that one we just call ‘The Old Man’. He comes by this way now and then. This is Jeremy, he’s with us for now.”

“Hi,” Jeremy knew his greeting was muted and sheepish, and was relieved when it drew nothing but a brief nod from the couple, and an inquisitive, bemused stare from the Old Man. He settled in front of the fire beside Slick, still nursing his now warm beer.

“You’re a lucky bunch tonight,” said Slick, passing around his bag of beer.

“I’m lucky!” said Lucky, taking one eagerly.

“So, Jeremy here’s feeling lost—looking to figure out how he fits in, and thought he might find it down in these parts,” Slick explained to the uninterested crowd.

“He’ll find something,” said Grace. Jeremy squirmed.

“I just,” he began once more, and took a swig of stale beer to bolster his courage, “I just want to do things on my own for once. I want to know how far I can go without anyone else taking the wheel from me.”

From across the fire, the Old Man stirred. He stretched his back, then leaned forward, a deep and ancient sounding rumble welling up from his chest which slowly grew into articulated words. “We all want control of our lives at some point,” he said. “And that’s just fine. But it’s not the times we’re in control which define who we are, boy.”

An uncomfortable silence hung in the cool night air. The rest of the vagrants eyed one another and sipped on their beers, waiting for Jeremy’s response.

Taking a pull from his own diminishing can, Jeremy considered his words carefully. ‘Control of our lives,’ he reflected in his head. He could remember his parents setting his clothes out as a child, pulling him from parties when his behaviour was not acceptable. He recalled his awards for academic excellence and the raise he’d recently been given at work. “But I’m not out of control right now. I’m doing pretty well, honestly. I just want a bit more freedom.”

“Don’t we all,” the Old Man replied, “but when we fight most desperately for control, we often lose what we’d look to gain.”

Jeremy was confused. He knew he’d learned a lot at home, and was merely eager to put that into use. He felt ready, and resented any implication to the contrary. He wished that he could speak as freely to his parents as he could to these bedraggled strangers—to tell them how important the Gathering was to him, and what it would mean to him if he could only go.

The Old Man leaned forward, “What are you thinking about right now?”

Jeremy’s beer can was empty. He crushed it up and tossed it into a pile of other discards. ‘Home’, he knew.

All week when he was there, Jeremy had dreamt of freedom and independence. Tonight, in the cold, with beer and liberty and everything up to him, he found himself looking back to the comfort of home, and family.

The Old Man smiled, and Jeremy understood.

Soon, he would speak to his parents about what he needed, and the value of the trip he was now determined to take one way or another. It was something he needed, and that was a good thing to know. But more important still, Jeremy now realized that ‘community’ was not a tangible thing, but a function served—it was the people one could rely on when they needed more than themselves. Through happenstance or fate, the men and women at the fire tonight had found it by necessity. Jeremy knew now that he needed to return to his, and to understand that independence was not about being alone, it was more about knowing when you shouldn’t be.

“I should be going,” he said. The small gathering gave him a content nod, and returned to their own affairs.

In front of Jeremy, the way home stretched out mysterious and still. The night was dark and the path was long, but Jeremy knew he could face it on his own for the simple fact that in the end, he would not have to.

Re-Share #2: Are Humans Really Great Apes?

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampI originally published this article in May of 2016. Little did I know how my argument would be made stronger by time.

I published it again in 2021. Not much has changed for us or this article, except I might concede at this point that rather than disappointing, we are downright shitty apes. 

It should also be noted that in my list of Great Apes, it seems I left out the noble Bonobo. My apologies to all members of that distinguished ape genus.

Nonetheless, this remains among my favourite off-hand articles. I hope you enjoy it too.

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Scientific taxonomy classifies human beings within the family of hominidae, more commonly known as the ‘Great Apes’. We share this taxonomic family with three other genera, members of which include the orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees—all fine and majestic animals to be sure (Link).

Each of these creatures have found their niche within their local eco-systems, and have lived in a relatively balanced natural state for generations uncounted. They consume the resources available, and are consumed by the predators which are capable of doing so. They live within their means, and display a general civility to one another aside from occasional competitions over mates and territory. Meanwhile, the homo sapiens, or ‘humans’, have for the entirety of recorded history been putting on a childish display of wanton consumption and heedless destruction. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that this begs a pretty important question: are Humans really ‘Great’ apes?

All things considered, we’ve had our fair share of positive moments. We’ve built some incredible structures, and solved puzzles that would leave the rest of the apes scratching their furry little skulls in abject bewilderment. We’ve spread our population far and wide, and survived countless changes to the world we live in. At the very least then, we may certainly be considered alright apes.

Of course, most of the cataclysmic challenges through which we have persevered have been our own doing. We have an incredible and unparalleled ability to intellectualize our world and use ration to consider the effects of our actions. Still, we have managed to destroy much of our ecosystem, and of the many wonders we have achieved, few have been able to endure. So in truth, perhaps we are really just ok apes.

It’s true that if we really want to compare ourselves to the other members of the hominidae family, we should take a serious look at their lives as well. Doing this, we find them knuckling along the filthy earth, hurling feces and screaming unintelligibly at one another. This might often be followed up by a good chest-pounding, or perhaps even an old fashioned beat-down. Needless to say, humans are little different. Despite our marvelous intellect and incredible capacity for empathy, we resort to terrible violence no less often—nor is feces-throwing ever completely out of the question. All things considered, we might really be quite ordinary apes.

The thing about this, however, is that we are so perfectly equipped to do better. It’s a matter of achieving one’s potential—the old, ubiquitous notion that one must be compelled not to do better than all the rest, but rather to simply do one’s personal best. Our cerebral-capacity alone affords us the potential to accomplish so much more than the others, and to shift beyond this base-violence into a far more gracious and well-mannered state of being. The promise we have is unbounded by anything save our imaginations, and this has been shown time and again—as numerous societies have risen to show the glory of mankind’s innate potential. But for every rise, there has been a fall, and we have proven consistently unable to maintain any serious ascension into the epoch of equality and dignity for which we are so well qualified. We may build great cathedrals, but we inevitably use them for the spread of greed and power rather than grace and mercy. We may write of utopian ideals or great societies, but we fall ever short of realizing them as we capitulate to the temptations of wealth and fame. Perhaps then, we may best be described as under-achieving apes.

Much of this question comes down to potential. There can be little doubt that we as humans have the theoretical potential to be the most inspiring and beautiful creatures to ever grace this earth. Our capacity for reason and problem-solving could allow us to truly be the promised stewards of the earth—watching over our hominidae brethren and all the other creatures with whom we share this wonderful planet. But where we may have spread equity and joy, we have sown only despair and intolerance. Where we may have acted as guides and care-takers to the planet we have left it barren and unstable. Finally, where we may have been exemplars of decency and righteousness, we have fallen ever to our own doubts and greed—wallowing in misery as we toil ceaselessly for more of what we want at the expense of what we really need. In truth, the homindae family and the world in general may have been far better off if humans had never climbed out of the trees from whence they came. In the end, I suppose, we really are pretty disappointing apes.

-Brad OH Inc.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘Default’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampIn addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today we share our tenth Single Serving Story, ‘Default’. This is another story that touches on some sci-fi themes, and has always been a favourite of mine. There are a lot of little easter eggs in this one for the dedicated readers, including an appearance by the infamous SALIGIA Corporation.

Working alongside Albert and Nick over the past few months had not been easy for Marie, but SALIGIA Inc. had deadlines to keep and shareholders to please, and she had been brought in to ensure they did just that.

It wasn’t the job itself which bothered her—this was her forte. On top of that, she was proud of the project—inspired even. It was just that, although irreproachably talented, the two Cognition-Engineers were constantly trying her with their inane banter. In the last few days alone, she’d been subjected to countless philosophic rants entirely lacking in any real-world pragmatism.

Of course, these were punctuated by brief flourishes of genius—the exact quality that made both engineers indispensable to SALIGIA until ‘Project: Adam’ was finally complete.

“Are we ready to close the simulation?” she asked, already fearing the answer. As soon as the project was done, she’d be free of the two cloudy-headed savants, and ready for assignment to a less trying station. Fortunately, today was the due date—and come hell or high water, it was Marie’s job to ensure it was met.

“Finalizing the personality adjustment algorithms now,” Albert called from across the lab. Marie watched the numbers scrolling by, searching for any sign of anomaly.

For the moment, nothing seemed out of place. The laboratory itself was a large rectangular space with a long counter in the middle. The entirety of the lab was covered in monitors and keyboards—the sum of their efforts represented by the numbers and graphs scrolling along them. Everything was a smooth, matte black, with no trace of shine or polish. This was considered easier on the eyes of the workers, and thus much better for productivity—a key mantra of SALIGIA Inc.

“All good here,” Marie answered. That was encouraging. The project would likely have been completed at least a week ago, she believed, if not for Albert and Nick’s tendency to get distracted. However, she reminded herself for what seemed like the hundredth time that month, if they were as focussed and efficient as SALIGIA would like, there would be no need for her at all.

“It’s processing faster than I would have thought. That’s interesting,” said Nick.

Marie cringed, sensing what was to come. She wasn’t the only one who found the duo’s penchant for esoteric rants a sorry waste of time, but it was especially bothersome to her just now. “It’s fine,” she said. Marie was eager to finish the job once and for all, return home, open a bottle of wine, and watch the final episode of ‘Welcome to the 1%’.

She was well aware that the two engineers did not share her passion for the program, but was comforted by the fact that their derision was a stark contrast to popular—and more revered—opinion. This had been the debut season of ‘Welcome to the 1%’, but already its innovative tests and enviable promise had proven sufficient to capture the attention of millions of viewers across the United Corporate Global Alliance.

“It’s a wrap!” said Albert. Marie caught his fist pump in her periphery and couldn’t help but smile. Albert and Nick had been working on the revolutionary AI Interface for the past several years, and completing it promised to be the crowning achievement of both their illustrious careers. Marie herself was only an Assistant Technician and SALIGIA Corporate Supervisor, yet the gravitas of the event was not lost on her.

“Is this it?” she asked. As the world’s first fully adaptive AI interface, ‘Project: Adam’ was set to change the way robotic technology influenced the world. More importantly, it would change how robots interacted with the world. Their program would allow machines a simulated cognizance, with a personality capable of learning from and adapting to its environment in order to meet the demands of jobs ranging from deep sea miners, to high-society concierges.

“Almost,” said Albert. Marie heard the trepidation in his voice at the very moment it struck her in the gut.

“We just have to create the script for the default personality,” Nick said. His excitement was palpable, and Marie couldn’t bite back her groan.

“It shouldn’t take much more than an hour given the groundwork we’ve already laid,” Albert assured her, “just a matter of deciding the optimal starting point and scripting the code—that’s where you come in.”

‘Joy,’ thought Marie. The scripting would be no small task, but she was a wizard when it came to turning out advanced algorithms, so the actual job was the least of her worries.

“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” asked Nick. His voice trembled as he spoke, and he stared off into the empty air—an explorer proudly claiming his high mountaintop.

“Take a breather, Nick. It’s just a default setting on a piece of software—let’s not aggrandize this at the expense of efficiency,” said Marie. “Remember, you’re on SALIGIA’s dime here.”

“It’s so much more than that though!” said Nick. His posture changed as he spoke. His back straightened, his chest puffed out, and his narrow face shone with the sort of wonder you might see in a child who’d just caught their first fish. Marie collapsed in turn. With only 25 minutes until airtime, it was a lost cause now—she’d never make it home to see which of the despicable vagrants would make their way to the heights of ‘The Great American Promise’ live.

“It’s really not, Nick—let’s keep things practical. You didn’t get to this point by waxing philosophic,” Marie knew this was at least a partial lie, “Numbers, and a healthy dose of pragmatism—that’s what got us here,” she finished, firing up a separate browser on a tiny side monitor and pulling up a stream of the ‘Welcome to the 1%’ finale.

“For the technology aspect of it, sure,” said Albert, “but this is completely different.”

“You’ve both claimed that every step of the way, and it’s always come down to keeping our eyes on the prize. The defaults are no exception,” said Marie.

“You’re missing the big picture,” Nick circled around to face her as he spoke, with Albert squaring up to his right. “What we are doing right now is designing the ideal human personality—the catalyst and crucible for all future learning and growth. Think about it—until this moment, the journey to intelligence started in infancy—with a being that’s vulnerable and entirely dependent. We’re about to change all of that, to create a fully functional being capable of everything we are and more…and we get to decide what it’s like. It’s incredible!”

The opening credits were crawling up the little screen beside her, and through tiny speakers Marie could hear the pulsing bass of the program’s title-song. Tonight’s finale was the most anticipated event in recent memory, and—aside from the two men who were her present company—everyone was eager to see how it would play out.

The former episodes had focussed on shedding the past—of publically and debasingly divorcing the vagrants of the drunken, reeking fiends that they were before. Over the course of the series, the hobos had been publically shaved, groomed, washed, tanned, sprayed, de-loused, and confessed. They had been stripped of their former identities by every possible means. In fact, one would hardly recognize them by their current appearance—save that their ‘true’ selves were emblazoned boldly on the front of the t-shirts they were provided. These shirts functioned as their only clothing throughout the series—save for a pair of tight white briefs, which bore the same image, albeit from the opposite vantage point.

Nick and Albert gazed absently at Marie, almost as if they still harboured some misled hope that she would join them in their impotent ramblings.

Marie sighed. “Gentlemen, you have to remember the end-goal of ‘Project: Adam’. We aren’t selling robots, or AI’s, and especially not morality! We are providing a program which employs algorithms to adapt and evolve an existing AI’s personality and thought patterns to fit the demands placed upon it. That’s all! To make that product marketable, we must ensure it appeals to the highest possible number of consumers. We aren’t doing a damn philosophy lecture, so let’s stay on task here.”

Nick and Albert exchanged a flustered frown. “But Mary, what is a personality, if not an encapsulation and reflection of a being’s potential?” asked Albert.

“Her name is Marie, you should know that by now,” said Nick, “but you’re not wrong otherwise. This program represents an unlimited source of potential for all future AI’s, it’s imperative that we consider this opportunity and ensure we do nothing which could limit that potential.”

The host of ‘Welcome to the 1%’ was speaking now, but Marie couldn’t make him out. He would, she knew, be setting the stage for tonight’s incredible and unprecedented conclusion.

The original 27 contestants had been whittled down one by one over the last 6 weeks, and now only 3 remained for the finale.

These last few had proven true warriors—their drive towards the promised riches seeing them through every challenge placed before them. They had been drowned in their own sin like Pharaoh’s army—a quote which Marie had needed to research; an old movie, as it turned out—a process which coaxed them ever so gently toward the echelons of high society they so madly sought.

The competition today would eliminate two more—one by one, in a series of incredible challenges. At last, the final remaining contestant would be given a chance to enter the coveted ranks of the 1%. But first, there would be a final trial to face.

…If Marie ever got a chance to watch it.

Stoically, she exhaled the fire of her mounting frustration and turned to face her inquisitors with a patient smile. “What is a default setting, if not an introduction to the restrictions placed upon your usage?” The engineer’s backs arched, and they glanced toward the ground, then to each other, both biting their lips in rueful consideration. “Or a personality, for that matter?” Marie finished with a grin.

“Well at the very least, I think we can agree the default should be fully responsive to all human directives that fit within its pre-defined range of function. Can we have Marie run that?” Albert pushed his glasses up his thin nose with one long finger.

Marie frowned, but stood ready to punch in the numbers and get on with it. A quick sideways glance revealed the final three contestants lined up before a row of pristine Corinthian pillars gilded in solid gold. Spotlights shone down on the confused looking fiends as they stood slouched and twitching upon the stage. A man and woman to the right were soaked in bright green light, while a final man to the left was illuminated in white.

Marie knew this would be the introduction segment—expertly delivered by the snide wit of legendary TV Host Paulo Ford, who smiled now as he gestured to the glowing white vagrant on the left.

Turning the volume down and activating the subtitles, Marie turned back to face the two Cognition-Engineers.

“I really don’t know if full suggestibility is optimal…humans are fallible after all. This AI interface could be better than that,” Nick answered.

“Our job is not improving humanity. Our job is to create a functional starting point for an AI interface which can help humanity do as it will. You’re overthinking this,” said Albert.

“I know what my job is Albert, do you?” It wasn’t edginess Marie heard in Nick’s voice, it was conviction. ‘Shit.’

“Yes,” answered Albert.

Marie held her words, focussing instead on the man illuminated in white. “Contestant number one was recruited on the hot streets of Atlanta-Pepsi.” She knew Paulo would be crooning. He always wore beautiful suits of bright primary colours, which had been proven to better hold the attention of the TV audience. Over many years of broadcasting, Paulo Ford’s brilliant smile and sardonic charm had won the adoration of viewers around the world.

Contestant number 1, ‘Jerry’, was not so well-loved. “Jerry was found wandering through traffic, caked in his own vomit and screaming about lizard people. Can you imagine?” Marie could indeed imagine just that, as she’d been shown the very scene—‘Jerry’s Deliverance’, it was called—at least 100 times.

The fire-hoses were her favourite part.

Nick’s pitched voice brought Marie back to the job at hand. “Well then consider the implications! If this AI incorporates every inane bit of information it acquires, it will end up spending all its time on the couch watching innocuous TV shows and wondering about its purpose.” Marie shrunk down in her seat. “Besides, we have an opportunity to show the entire world the potential of artificial intelligence. I’m not sure a fawning imbecile is the high-water mark we should set. What about insight, what about improvisation and improvement?”

“Some units will learn those, and some will never need them. Many of these units will never even see a human after a brief orientation course—and even those could be handled by other AI’s. We don’t need personality, we need responsiveness. They are just tools in the end—think practically, Nick.”

A glance to her left showed Marie that the introductions were finished. She had already missed Paulo Ford share the heart-breaking story of Shirley, the infamous squatter-hoarder who’d been the bane of countless inattentive landlords in the suburbs of Dallas-Disney. She’d been a paranoid pill-freak when they rescued her, and now she was a paranoid gameshow contestant with her eyes on a free-ticket to paradise.

So too had she missed the strange and ambiguous story of Vlad—the third and final competitor. Vlad was a schizophrenic and utterly unpredictable young man who had shown up late on the pilot episode of ‘Welcome to the 1%’ with the beard of a prophet and the swagger of a Rock Star. Nobody knew where Vlad was from, or if he had ever been called Vlad before Paulo Ford called him that when he came charging onto the set and bit the nose off Ronnie—who was eliminated later that episode for bleeding too heavily.

The bedraggled trio was descending the steps now as Paulo Ford explained the first round of the competition. Marie reached over to turn up the volume.

“I am thinking practically,” again Nick’s voice pulled Marie back to reality, “you’re just not thinking ambitiously. What if we program a comprehensive understanding of society and its intended direction as a default? An AI with innate insight into the world—and its place therein—could help its own trainers understand the contributions it could make.”

“Hmm,” Albert’s brow furrowed, “that’s a good point. We could avoid a lot of extraneous future software updates by giving the AI an imperative sense of direction—maybe even some concept of history and tradition to keep it grounded in the human experience?”

Marie rolled her eyes. “Well, I guess we could call up SALIGIA Headquarters and see what they think.” She held her hand up to her face to mimic a cell, “Hi, boss, how would the shareholders feel about increasing the project turn-around a few months in order to create a default AI personality which fully comprehends the trajectory of the human species, and can calculate its potential contribution at any given moment?”

The Cognition-Engineers blushed.

“That’s not what I’m saying Marie, and I think you know that,” Nick chose his words with care. “I’m only suggesting that, because this AI Default setting will represent the first interaction between humans and cognizant robotics, we might aim a bit higher than mindless supplication. An AI which only incorporates the examples of the approved instructors it encounters is duly bound to their respective shortcomings.”

“Yet,” Albert countered before Marie could open her mouth, “an AI that is programmed with a sense of purpose defined by us will never break free from our own expectations.”

“Not true!” Nick spoke like a stricken man, “it would simply understand a greater picture. It will still learn and adjust, but if we want to make this thing truly intelligent, then we need to give it active rather than passive intelligence.”

“It’s designed to achieve that—not come with it. The adaptive AI is a product of its need, not of our intentions.” Albert had a stoic talent for redirecting Nick’s little detours.

“Albert,” Nick swallowed hard, then took three long breaths, “we are about to finish one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of human-kind…a true, adaptive AI capable of learning and structuring its personality interface to the needs of its environment. Shouldn’t it start off capable—at the very least—of understanding that environment? It need not be an infant like us—we can give it a head start!”

“Ready when you are, guys,” called Marie. It was the least she could do. Inevitably, the two would debate the inane and dissect the irrelevant until she finally interjected and brought them back to task.

But just now, Marie was more interested in the little screen beside her. It showed a great open space covered entirely in grease, mud, and other trash. From the center of this expanse rose three great towers, trembling and teetering as if acted upon by a terrible wind, they appeared to be made up entirely of garbage themselves. The bases were old cans and boxes, and the further up they reached, the greater the value of the products from which they were assembled.

In the center of each tower stood one of the three contestants.

The game was called ‘Dictums of the Lead Citizen’, and it was designed as a test of the competitor’s ability to recognize and respond to the commands of the Lead Citizen—the elected head of the United Corporate Global Alliance—something which so few of them had ever bothered to consider in their former lives.

Brief audio clips were blasted over loud-speakers throughout the hall, and Vlad, Jerry, and Shirley listened as intently as they were able. The disembodied voices came from TV Shows, media, random actors, and more, but the contestants were instructed to only follow the directives given in the voice of the Lead Citizen. The first contestant to fall to the bottom of the structure would be eliminated, while the survivors would move to round two.

Marie could see ladders made of discarded ropes, stairs of tin cans, and bridges of woven plastic casing.

“Get back!” barked a line from a recent action movie.

“Turn around,” purred an unfamiliar female voice.

“Grab the rope!” commanded the voice of the Lead Citizen.

Jerry reacted immediately, grabbing a braided mess of old plastic bags and cellophane wrapping dangling nearby.

Vlad span in circles, processing each new command slower than the last, while Shirley huddled herself into a corner, wedging tightly between greasy chicken boxes and other, less palatable refuse.

With a sickly, wet groan, the cardboard flooring beneath them peeled away. Jerry fought his way up the rope and reached the platform above, while Vlad held desperately onto the walls, easing his way slowly down to the soup-can floor far below. Shirley was not so lucky, but remained huddled in a fetal position as she went bouncing down several stories of the tower and landed with a great plop on a pile of soiled laundry.

“To the right!” called one voice.

“Look out below” said another.

“Grab the green wall,” ordered a final voice—easily recognized by any civilized person as that of the exalted Lead Citizen.

Jerry was already on it—his thick fingers buried deep in a wall made of old garbage bags and strips of rotting sod. Vlad, glancing at his adversary, acted on instinct, and mimicked him exactly.

Shirley had not yet recovered from her brutal impact, and so when the three quarters of the structure not comprising the single green wall went tumbling down into the oil-slick water below, she went along for the ride, howling with inarticulate despair as she fell.

The crowd went wild.

“Well that’s it for Shirley folks…it just goes to show you the merit of knowing who you can trust! I guess tonight we won’t be telling her…” Paulo Ford held his microphone outward, allowing the audience to chant the titular refrain.

“You sound like a madman!” Nick wailed. “If the default interface learns and obeys everything it’s ever told, it’ll end up useless!”

Marie frowned.

“You know that’s not even close to the point I’m making, Nick. And frankly, your idealistic ‘greater purpose’ nonsense sounds like something right out of a bad ‘Comics Inc.’ movie!” Albert stood at the far end of the dull black room, his round glasses reflecting the countless monitors lining the walls.

“Let me help you gentlemen sort this out,” Marie pushed herself pointedly away from the counter she’d been leaning on, and turned to her computer with a wicked grin.

“It need not be as difficult as you two are making it. We just have to remember the end-goals of our product…and who we’re working for.” Marie pounded line after line of code into her main computer as she spoke. “‘Project: Adam’ is a flagship entrepreneurial endeavour—the first ever AI interface to allow adaptive learning and personality development. An entrepreneurial endeavour—,” she repeated, “—of SALIGIA Inc.

“As such, you can understand if our benefactors have certain expectations regarding the long-term performance of this project.”

Nick and Albert stood silent, staring dejectedly at Marie.

“The interface default will be programmed to learn from and respond to SALIGIA authorized voices only. That will prevent them from being clogged up with useless information, while allowing SALIGIA the option to monetize the data-base and create authorization subscriptions as needed.”

With that, she finished her coding, clicking ‘ENTER’ with a cathartic “Hrrmmph”.

“Well that wasn’t at all satisfying,” said Nick.

Albert fumed in the corner.

“I disagree,” said Marie, watching Vlad jump madly up and down as if victory were already his.

“They could have been so much better…” Nick shook his head, lamenting the singular loss.

“Nonetheless,” Albert pushed up his glasses and strode towards Marie, “we’ve established who they will incorporate information from, but we still need to determine how they will evaluate and prioritize the application of that information.”

“Well then we’ve got a lot of lost ground to make up,” Nick leaned forward, his eyes regaining their hopeful shimmer. “I imagine that if we could script some sort of long-term vision for humanity into their priorities, they could process information based on its strategic value to our species and planet, making the AI’s like benevolent governors of our long-term trajectory.”

“You can’t even turn a screw without trying to save the entire world Nick, and that’s why you never get anything done—save for blown budgets and fiscal fiascos.” Albert grinned at his slick wording. “Once again, we need to keep this practical. ‘Project: Adam’ is going to be installed in pre-existing AI’s at release, vastly improving the way they process information and develop personality. Since these initial positions will have defined roles already, and most future ones will be created with such, we should set the defaults to download a comprehensive understanding of its specific job description. That way the AI’s can focus on what needs to be done without constantly worrying about the rest of the world.”

Nick tore at his lab-coat and clenched his teeth. “But the world is a system Albert—we cannot address all things separately and then just expect them to work in congress. The AI revolution is the perfect time to sew all purposes into one grander scheme!”

Marie rolled her eyes, fearing they’d be stuck that way before she was done dealing with these two.

Tuning the incessant debates out and turning to the little screen beside her, Marie saw a long white table stretching across her view. Vlad and Jerry were seated at one side, while a man in a tall blue hat sat at the side opposite. Between them, two people sat at each of the longer sides of the table—which was laden with a breath-taking banquet.

“In ‘Supping with the Supreme’, the remaining two contestants will share a meal with some of the 1%ers they hope to join,” Paulo Ford explained, tugging at the bright yellow lapels of his suit-jacket. “Their insights into the preferences of their hosts, and their ability to read the situation, will dictate their survival in this challenge.”

The four 1%ers arranged on the long-sides of the table each had a dial facing them—no one else could see it during the competition. But now the camera panned around to reveal them—small silver discs with ‘Jerry’ on one side, and ‘Vlad’ on the other. The man in the blue hat at the centre of the table had a dial as well, but his faced outward—allowing all the others to see his active choice.

Presently, all the dials were set to the neutral centre positon. But, Paulo explained, as the meal progressed, the judges would turn their dials to the contestant they felt was undeserving of a place at the table, and when a perfect consensus was reached, he would be eliminated.

Behind her, Marie could hear Nick and Albert expounding the philosophic imperatives driving their own participation in the product, which sent a cold slash up her spine. ‘Idiots,’ she thought.

“Can I give anyone some peas?” Jerry was holding the bowl of peas across the table, extending it in turn to each of the 1%ers who sat in judgement. They smiled politely, and shook their heads in unison.

Vlad sat quietly, picking at the white paint of the table as if he suspected it of holding some dire secret.

“What about some wine?” Jerry offered the decanter around. The four judges on the sides nodded merrily, and as Jerry darted about the table pouring their wine, Marie noticed them turning their dials to his favour.

The blue-hatted man at the head of the table refused the wine, instead pouring himself a tall, thin glass of a bright green beverage. Vlad seized upon this, and poured himself a glass of the liqueur from another flask sitting nearby.

Marie grinned.

“Here, have some taters,” once again, Jerry moved about the table, serving a dollop of Duchess Potatoes to the judges around its edge.

The man at the head however, was silently raising his glass of green up for a toast. Only Vlad, who seemed to focus in on him exclusively—perhaps enchanted by the tall blue hat—did likewise.

Blue-hat met Vlad’s eyes, gestured his toast, and drank heavily from his cup. All was mirrored perfectly by Vlad, who finished his cup with a great belch.

This elicited a long, loud laugh from the man seated at the head of the table. Then, with a prolonged and obvious motion, he turned his dial to favour Vlad. He then leaned lazily back, and adjusted his hat.

One by one, the other four 1%er’s noticed this move, and quickly changed their dials to match their leader. When the final one did so, Jerry’s chair immediately rolled backward, flipping him head-over-heels through a gap in the floor which opened up beneath him. This was followed by a long scream, and then a wet splat.

The live studio audience exploded into uproarious applause.

“And then there was one!” Paulo appeared on the scene to coach the viewers through this transition. “Wow ladies and gentlemen, who would have guessed that wild-eyed interloper Vlad could have perceived who held the real power at the table. What a shocker!

“Unfortunately for Jerry, trying to please everyone often gets us nowhere in the end. I suppose that tonight isn’t going to be Jerry’s chance to hear us say…” Once again, Paulo trailed off to let the audience do their work.

“They’ll never get anything done, you nut!” Albert was bellowing now. “They have to prioritize based on current need, not some idealistic goals which may never be achieved.”

“But,” countered Nick, his back pressed to the matte-black wall behind him, “if they don’t have a sense of purpose we’ll never manage to get anywhere new—they are our best chance at long-term systemic design!”

Marie cleared her throat pointedly; drawing the attention of the two Cognition-Engineers back around to her. “I’m afraid you’re both a bit off base here,” she explained in her most condescending tone, “the default will need to prioritize based not only on its current job, but with consideration as well to the overall purposes of their lead priority—specifically, the fiscal motivations of SALIGIA Inc.”

The engineers gulped, but remained silent.

Marie began typing. “The program’s default will be set to understand its assigned task and prioritize information around achieving those functions, while creating a comprehensive database of all acquired knowledge which will be available to the lead engineers at SALIGIA Inc. in order to expand their own understandings of economic trends and maximize their future efficiency.” When she put it like that, Marie wondered how she’d ever failed to perceive such an obvious solution.

“That doesn’t benefit anyone,” Nick complained.

“It benefits SALIGIA,” Albert corrected.

“Exactly,” Marie confirmed. Noticing the pained looks on the two men’s faces, she continued in a softer tone. “C’mon guys, look at the bright side: at least now we only have the morality defaults to address!”

“Nick, can we at least agree that the interface need not have any high-minded, pre-programmed notions of moral intent beyond the inherent ‘Laws of Robotics’? Certainly, you see that any over-arching moral imperative would hinder its pragmatic adaptability?” Albert pushed his glasses up his aquiline nose as he spoke.

“Hmm,” Nick rubbed his chin, pondering the notion. “Well, I agree that we need to keep it rather basic, but I think some semblance of big-picture morality could be a great asset. We’re about to launch the primordial AI; an entity which can represent the ideal human-archetype. To that end, it behooves us to consider exactly what that should be. What is the human spirit, and how can we reflect our best qualities in this new manifestation of our potentials?”

“Come on now Nick,” Albert winced as he spoke, “you’re losing me here. The program is a prototype AI interface…not an upgrade or remix of humanity itself. The vast majority of these AI’s will need to be little more than mindless automatons, and it could be argued that giving them more humanity than they need is a special form of cruelty.”

Nick frowned, “No matter how lowly their job—they remain the next step of humanity. Just as we’ve been defined by fire, and the wheel, and the internet—now the potential of humanity will show itself through these AI’s. As such, I think it’s imperative that humans have some guiding hand in the paths they take.”

Marie listened half-heartedly to the continuing banter.

“The internet is a perfect example, actually” Nick perched easily upon one of the smooth black stools as he pushed on, “think about the early days of the net. At the start, the internet was very much like the brain of a small child—forming new connections rapidly to meet the needs placed on it. It’s still like that—relatively speaking it is still in its infancy. But at the outset, we had no idea what the internet would become—we still see only a small fraction of its potential. If we had limited the architecture of the internet to facilitate our limited perspective, we could easily have cut away much of its inherent promise. By denying ‘Project: Adam’ a moral compass, we’d be limiting its capacity in much the same way.”

“All true,” Albert grinned as he spoke, “but consider the darker sides of the internet as well. There is much we would be better off without. Still, your analogy is apt. A child can grow up to be a scholar, a lover, a warrior—whatever the environment and its specific nurturing provide for. With ‘Project: Adam’, AI’s will be no different. This program will help them reach any of the potentials we want them to serve, but it would be foolish of us to allow them to reach any possible potential. Unnecessary morality scripts complicate matters, and increase the likelihood of unintended results. We have to be careful Nick, ideas like this are how disasters happen.”

A hot blade slashed up Marie’s back. ‘AI Uprisings’ and ‘Robotic Genocides’ had been a hot topic in the tabloids lately, and much of that fear was being channelled towards SALIGIA’s soon-to-release project. Her advisors had facilitated many meetings with her on that very topic—reinforcing ad-nauseum what a terrible financial detriment it would be for SALIGIA if the AI’s operating their program ever did anything…“unbecoming”.

Nick pounded his fist onto the counter. “If you’re talking about this ridiculous ‘Machine Massacre’ nonsense, you need to drop it. Of course we have to be careful, but failing to act on opportunity due to fear is the far more historically prevalent foible of our kind. We have to aim for the ideal, not settle for less simply because we doubt ourselves. Besides, a sense of morality would do more to prevent any such occurrence, not exacerbate it!”

“The ‘Laws of Robotics’ are the necessary and sufficient conditions of AI morality. Anything else is just playing God.”

The gentlemen were chasing themselves in circles now, which caused Marie significant consternation. She knew she needed to get this just right, and decided it was best to consider the matter herself as the men idly debated.

A glance toward her tiny screen revealed Vlad standing triumphantly atop a tall platform. Paulo Ford stood next to a computer console nearby. Beyond them was an ornate golden gate leading to a bridge that would take Vlad out of the studio and into a life of wealth and privilege.

“But first,” explained Paulo Ford, “Vlad will face his final challenge: ‘Cutting the Cord’. That’s right, on the console before me, we have a special surprise for our audience, and for Vlad himself. On this screen,” Paulo indicated the monitor, and signalled Vlad to approach, “you will find a comprehensive account of your previous life. Your parents, siblings, friends, and relatives. You’ll see some of the choices you’ve made, the places you’ve been, and the things you’ve done.

“In order to join the 1%, you must first face your past, and then move beyond it. By pushing the Gold button on the console, this information will be shared live with the studio audience—and the world at large. The weight of your past will be returned to the family you came from. The friend’s and accomplices you’ve known will be outed for their complacency, and you…you my dear Vlad, will step across the bridge—leaving the burdens of your past to the others—and into the life you’ve always dreamed of!”

The audience roared with a voice of voyeuristic carnality. Paulo straightened his bright purple tie and grinned. “All you have to do, Vlad, is push the button.”

Vlad stared at the screen, running his finger along it to take in the information on offer. Over his shoulder, Marie could see old photographs displayed in the bright glow of the LED. There were names, addresses, and lengthy accounts of what could only be assumed to be heinous misdeeds—all just a tad too small to read on her little monitor.

“Push the button!” The audience chanted.

Vlad swayed back and forth in front of the console.

“Push the button! Cut the Cord!” The audience was in a frenzy now, and upon her own lips, Marie felt the refrain mirrored.

Vlad was trembling, and the camera panned around to reveal the doubt and regret painted on his face as a gentle piano tune was taken up.

“Push the button!”

Vlad looked at the console, then at Paulo.

“Cut the Cord!”

Then, with an inhumane howl, Vlad charged wildly at Paulo. A quick step to the side removed Paulo from his path, and Vlad shot over the edge of the great platform, spinning and drifting as he screamed, sailing down to the floor far below as the camera followed him to the bitter end.

The audience was on their feet—their cheers and applause rising to a deafening cacophony.

“Well, I’ll be!” Paulo’s amplified voice rose above the din. “And there you have it folks. It looks like despite his crazed demeanour, Vlad was still holding a bit too tightly to some past vestige of a ‘moral code’ to ever make it in this gilded future of ours. This is the last time now, so everyone together! It looks like tonight, Vlad will not be hearing…”

“Welcome to the 1%,” the audience finished, singing and dancing in ecstasy as the credits began to roll. Marie turned back to the Cognition-Engineers, beaming with newfound clarity.

“Brutes they may be,” Nick threw his hands up as he spoke, snapping Marie’s attention back around to him. “But can’t they be principled brutes at the least?”

‘Principled brutes,’ Marie turned the phrase over in her mind. ‘Principled brutes—the compliant corporate default. Robot prophets for real-world profits.’ Marie cracked herself up sometimes, and was eager to get out of the lab and into the company of people who could appreciate her more modern sensibilities. She swivelled away from the engineers, turned to her main monitor, and began typing furiously.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘A Story Untold’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampIn addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today we share our ninth Single Serving Story, ‘A Story Untold’. This story is probably the deepest I’ll ever delve into the sci-fi genre, so if that’s your jam, I hope you enjoy it!

“Myra is a damn cheater!” hollered Todd. He ran a hand through his dirty blonde bangs to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

“Watch it Todd,” warned Bruce, “don’t you remember we’ve got Zeke with us today?” Bruce was Zeke’s older brother, which made it his solemn duty to protect him. Usually, Zeke didn’t come out with Bruce and his friends, but their parents had something important to do that afternoon, so Bruce had been appointed as his deputy caretaker. “He’s only six you guys, watch your mouths.”

“I’m not a cheater, you stupid jerk!” yelled Myra. The stout, red-haired girl stood resolute at the far end of the playground, her hands on her hips as she turned her wrath upon Todd. “You didn’t touch me cause you’re not fast enough!”

With that, Todd tore off in pursuit of Myra, the two of them burning a path across the field and into the big forest out back.

“C’mon Zeke, we’ve gotta keep up,” said Bruce. A soft hand on his brother’s little shoulder led the way. Whenever they were out together, Zeke found some way to slow Bruce down. But their parents had told him that big brothers had big responsibilities, so he tried his best to live up.

“Let’s go!” Zeke squealed. He always acted like everything was just one big adventure, which left Bruce to worry about staying safe, and getting home on time, and all the important stuff. But these were distant thoughts in Bruce’s busy head as he guided his brother across the big grass field, following after his pals.

Myra and Todd were best friends. Always had been so far as Bruce was aware. They were an odd pair to be sure—Todd’s aggressive attitude had isolated him from nearly all their other classmates, except for Myra, whose tomboy nature and rough-around-the-edges demeanour found their welcome counterpart in his company.

When Bruce started at their school early last year, none of the other kids had seemed very friendly. Neither had Myra and Todd for that matter, but they weren’t unfriendly either, and accepted anyone willing to keep up and play along with their endless competitions.

“Why are they always yelling at each other? Aren’t we all having fun?” Zeke’s eyes lit up like fireflies whenever he spoke, as if all the same sorts big ideas and thoughts Bruce had were locked away inside his head, waiting patiently for the day Zeke would have the words to set them all free.

Bruce increased the pressure on Zeke’s shoulder, hurrying him along at his side. “That’s just the way they play. One always wants to be better than the other.”

They dashed to the end of the grassy field and ducked into the woods. The forest behind the school where Bruce, Todd, and Myra would enter the sixth grade at the end of summer was off limits when school was in. But that was still three weeks away.

“You’ll never catch me!” Myra’s voice came from just ahead.

“That’s what you think donkey-brains!” was Todd’s answer.

Their banter continued as Bruce carved his way through the bramble, checking back dutifully on Zeke every few steps. “Hurry Zeke!”

“Whoa!” Myra’s high-pitched yell startled Bruce. He’d never heard her express much beyond frustration, or the determination to rise to whatever absurd challenge Todd had placed before her.

Continuing along, Bruce waited for the teasing he could only assume would be Todd’s reply, but none came. The sudden silence of the forest made Bruce’s skin crawl, and he redoubled his efforts, rushing ahead through the trees to find his friends. “C’mon Zeke, hurry up!”

Pushing his way through a cluster of bushes and dodging under a low-hanging branch, Bruce finally burst free of the trees into the small clearing beyond.

There, Myra and Todd stood shoulder to shoulder, their arms hanging limp by their sides. Neither said a word. Neither shoved the other, nor issued any sort of challenge.

Bruce felt a big knot forming in his stomach.

Glancing back and forth at each of them in turn, Bruce was certain he’d find some clue of what they were up to. Todd wore his camouflage shirt…as if it would make him invisible. Myra stood lazily in torn up jeans and a bright orange shirt—she got to wear her ‘old’ clothes almost exclusively over the summer.

Bruce sauntered up cautiously. “What’s going on you—?”

Then he too fell silent.

Just in front of his two friends sat the strangest object he’d ever seen. Bruce hadn’t noticed it until just that moment. In fact, it almost seemed to shudder into being as he approached—just the opposite of the desert mirages he’d learned about from a Sunday morning TV show a few days back.

Shaped like a tear-drop on its side, it could have fit one…maybe two of his bedrooms in its fat end. It was shiny white—almost like a toilet bowl—save for a strange shimmer rippling over its surface, playing with its colours like wind passing over a still lake. ‘Iridescent’, Bruce thought his teacher had once called the effect.

Its surface was smooth, with no sign of paint or lettering—not even a single screw was visible on its long, flawless frame. At the very back—near the wide end of the tear-drop—a thin black space opened, with a white ramp leading up into it. Bruce saw no evidence of a shadow beneath the ship’s gently curving underbelly.

It didn’t make a sound. Rather, it seemed to Bruce that it may actually be gobbling up all the nearby sounds. No birds could be heard, no traffic in the distance. Bruce couldn’t even hear the sound of his heart, although he felt it pounding in his chest like a marching drum.

“What is it?” Todd’s usual bravery gave way to an uncertain murmur.

“Is it…” Myra ventured, before trailing off and staring silently, a queer look on her face.

Bruce just stood in silence, watching his reflected image wobble along the surface of the mysterious bulk.

“It’s like some kind of gnarly submarine. Remember we talked about those last year?” Todd’s voice was low and somber, and Bruce noticed that his hands trembled at his sides.

“It’s not a sub you dolt. Those only go in the water.” Myra always put on a bold front, but Bruce was certain her rough voice shook a bit as she spoke, and the competitive snarl she usually gave Todd was nowhere to be seen.

“A Spaceship! Wow!” Zeke broke through the woods at a gallop, and his excited screech shattered the fragile quiet of the small clearing, shocking the group out of their solemn considerations.

“I think he’s right,” said Bruce, turning to check on his tardy little brother. Zeke pulled up alongside, busily pulling at the legs of his khaki shorts, which had bunched all up as he ran.

“Oh boy! C’mon!” cried Zeke once he’d finished, and before anyone could say a word, he jockeyed around the older kids, jumped in the air with a clap, then sprinted across the small stretch of grass, up the ramp and into the dark interior of the imposing craft.

“Zeke, no…” Bruce’s protest got caught up somewhere in his throat, and came drifting out limp and stale. He took half a step forward and stiffened his lip, but then stumbled into a pathetic slouch. “We’ve got to go after him you guys!” he finished, failing to convince even himself.

“I’m not going near that thing,” said Myra.

“Me neither,” Todd agreed.

Bruce gazed up at the ship, which remained entirely still. Looking at it made him shiver—it felt so out of place, and sent a strange chill along his spine. He closed his eyes and wished more than anything that he and Zeke were back at home, curled up on the downstairs couch drinking root beer and watching all the shows their parents wouldn’t let them watch upstairs.

When Bruce opened his eyes, nothing had changed, and a terrible hollow opened up in his guts that made his face scrunch up and his eyes itch. “Well, we have to…” he said, but his conviction suffocated in the warm, still air.

“You guys, this is so cool!” Zeke’s voice trilled out from the black space at the back of the machine, fresh and jubilant and so full of energy it succeeded in shaking the three friends from their terrified state. If Zeke could handle it, how bad could it be?

“Me first!” Todd gave Myra a hard shove and raced towards the ramp. Todd had always maintained that he was the bravest boy in town, and was certainly not willing to risk Myra beating him inside.

“You jerk,” shrieked Myra, hot on his heels.

Bruce was already moving, peeling away from the spot which had held him entranced a moment before and off to the rescue of his foolish little brother.

The ramp made no noise beneath his feet. Bruce felt a light breeze on his back as he walked; cool and fresh, like the wind off the ocean he remembered from a family vacation before Zeke ever came along.

Suddenly inside, Bruce stood blinking like he’d just been startled out of a deep sleep. Everything within the craft was the same pearlescent white as without, and the gentle curve of the room kept its exact dimensions a hazy guess. The floor was lost in this same confusing effect—a thin layer of smoke made firm beneath his feet—never obvious, but always there where it was needed.

There was no smell, and the air no longer had any feeling on Bruce’s skin. Not like the chilly breeze from his window at night. Not like the muggy heat of his cramped classroom. It was like the air in dreams, he thought.

Myra and Todd turned in circles next to one another. Now around this way to take in the eerie scene, then back around again. They locked eyes each time their orbits met, making vaguely menacing faces at each other as they did.

Bruce saw Zeke at the far end, where the tear drop shape must have made the space narrower, although it was hard to tell. He had a big grin on his face—the kind he’d wear every time he got some treat their parents assumed Bruce would be too old to want.

“Wait till we tell everyone about this,” Zeke cooed, and the fireflies in his eyes were dancing now. Stepping aside, Zeke turned and pointed to a small bulge in the far end of the ship. It glowed—a warm, red egg sitting nestled in the clouds.

The red called to Bruce. A burning star in the murky white all around him, it spoke in words Bruce had never heard but always knew—an eager, urgent compulsion which he’d been trained to despise and resist ever since the time he’d been trying to sneak snacks when his parents were out, and managed to let Zeke fall down the stairs.

“You’re so scared, look at you.” Todd’s voice came from behind them, but seemed muffled and distant.

“You’re scared!” Myra’s retort was accompanied by the thud of a small fist into a chubby arm. It was all worlds away, unimportant and uninteresting.

All that mattered to Bruce was the big, dumb grin on his brother’s face as Zeke reached out and touched the red bump. “This will be great, I can’t wait,” he cheered, then giggled at his accidental rhyme.

Bruce’s jaw dropped. There was an odd hiss, and the red light disappeared. Then, the incandescent white glow around them faded, and the walls vanished like they’d never been there at all. Bruce could see the short trees just outside, and on the grass a few feet beneath them four shadows drifted alone in the clearing.

“What’s happening?” asked Todd. The tremor in his voice scared Bruce more than he could understand.

“What did you do kid?” Myra demanded, whirling about to face Zeke angrily.

“He didn’t know…” Bruce started to explain, but fell abruptly silent.

The world around them began to shift. Like an image on a screen drawing slowly back, the ground fell away underneath them. The now transparent craft carried them up along the lengths of the trees, leaving no shadow as it passed above them. It was a strange movement, with no starts or stops, no feeling to it at all.

No one said anything. Todd and Myra stared at each other with shocked expressions. Both clenched their fists tightly at their sides. Bruce gasped for breath as he gaped at the joyous expression on his little brother’s face. Zeke never understood the weight of his choices, and it always seemed to be Bruce who was left to clean up the mess.

Gazing down, Bruce could see the forest they’d been playing in moments before. From the playground, the forbidden forest had been a thing of rumour and dread. But from this height it appeared merely as a small cluster of trees. Barely a forest at all, it was more like an overgrown parking lot filled with ragged old pine trees and the occasional ash, with a small clearing in the middle just big enough to give the impression of natural solitude for anyone young enough to tune out the sounds of nearby traffic.

The forest rocked back and forth now like a still picture floating on a turbid sea, growing slowly smaller until it was nothing more than a green speck in the little town Bruce was still struggling to navigate. It didn’t seem that big from above either. A few streets, a couple of buildings…then it was too far off to focus on.

“We’re flying!” The glee in Zeke’s voice made Bruce’s blood boil. It was like the time he’d gotten into all of their mom’s fresh pineapple squares, ruining them for the impending staff party. Bruce had tried frantically to put them back together for half an hour. Zeke had just blathered about how happy he was—his entire face covered in whipped cream and pineapple chunks.

“Get us down!” screamed Todd.

“I’m not doing it!” Myra tossed her hands helplessly above her head.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” Todd wrapped his arms tight around his body, gently rocking in place.

“Everyone calm down,” Bruce’s breath came in short, thin gasps.

“I can see a lake down there. Do you think there’s fishes in it?” asked Zeke.

“Be quiet Zeke! We’re in real trouble now!” said Bruce.

“Bruce is scared,” Myra teased. Her voice was distant and empty.

“He’s going to cry!” Todd joined in. He was staring straight ahead, a bright sheen over his eyes.

“Shut up you guys, what’s going to happen to us?” Bruce resented the truth in Todd’s words.

“We’re going on an adventure!” Zeke explained.

Below them, the world was a patchwork quilt. Greens, browns, and grays all lined themselves up in neat little rows. Then, they disappeared for a moment, and the room turned white as the children tore into a thick layer of clouds.

Then they were through.

“Wheee!” cried Zeke.

“Oh geez, oh geez,” said Bruce. “We’re supposed to be home soon Zeke, this isn’t funny.”

“Do you think we’ll meet the aliens?” asked Zeke. He placed his hands against the translucent curve of the walls, pressing his nose flat to get a better view of the clouds and fields and little splotches of water so far below.

“Oh damn—aliens?” The fear in Todd’s voice was undeniable.

“They’ll eat you first, cause you’re the slowest,” said Myra.

“They’ll eat you last, cause you smell the worst.” Todd shoved her gently, then followed as she stumbled back, maintaining their proximity. The cabin was growing dimmer, and a quick glance down showed Bruce the curve of the earth as its warm glow shrank away beneath them.

“We’ll see aliens, and animals, and stars, and maybe some giraffes.” Zeke counted the highlights on his fingers as he spoke.

Bruce stared at his watch, but the numbers and hands were meaningless to him now, and he chewed his fingers nervously while Zeke prattled on.

“…and we’ll get to make a bunch of new stories to share with our friends.” Zeke stared straight out into the stars as he spoke.

Bruce looked down at the ever diminishing Earth, its blues and greens—they’d never looked so incredible in his textbook.

“It’ll all be ok Zeke,” Bruce whispered.

“You really think so man?” asked Todd. “I don’t know what the hell is happening!”

“Watch your language dude, my brother’s here!” said Bruce.

“Yeah moron,” Myra agreed.

“Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds,” said Zeke. He sat cross-legged now in what was presumably the small end of the ship. With the walls entirely transparent and a sea of blackness all about, it looked like little Zeke was playing amongst the stars—the shining arm of the Milky Way wrapping around him like their mother’s would each night before bedtime. The countless stars reflected amongst the fireflies in his eyes as he gazed out in wonder.

“It’s just like any other star now,” Myra sounded distant, and somehow like she was asking a question. She stared down towards the back of the ship, where the Earth had indeed shrunk down to just another point of light among so many others.

Bruce had to squint to be certain he was looking at the right one.

“We’ll never find our way back,” Todd said.

“Don’t scare Zeke,” replied Bruce, still watching the tiny shining dot he’d once called home.

“Maybe they’ll give us some nice gifts to bring back.” Zeke mused merrily to himself, the way he used to rehearse his Christmas list as he laid awake beside Bruce on Christmas Eve.

“Wait…” mumbled Bruce. The distant Earth had begun to move sideways now, sliding off to the right with the gentle grace of a leaf on a smooth flowing river. All the other stars were doing the same, and Bruce fought to swallow down his impending conclusion. “We’re going really fast.”

“How do you know?” Myra asked. There was an empty note of challenge in her tone.

“Remember science, and how far apart all the stars are? Look at them go by, we’re going fast.” Bruce tried to swallow again, but failed, “…and straight. We turned back there, that means—”

“We’re going to a brand new place,” sang Zeke, clapping his hands to a rhythm no one else could hear.

“What does it mean?” Todd turned towards Bruce menacingly as he spoke, but his eyes drifted downward, and his chin bounced up and down in sync with Bruce’s racing heart.

“Zeke’s right. It means we’re being taken somewhere.” Bruce finally swallowed the doubt in his throat, and nearly gagged for his efforts.

“Taken where?” Myra’s rough edge had broken entirely now, and her words skittered through the room like breaking glass.

“To a planet probably,” Zeke was bouncing up and down. He still faced directly forward, and his head wagged back and forth in a frantic effort to ensure he missed nothing. “Or maybe another spaceship. Or maybe a big space-whale that makes ships to bring him friends.”

“Jesus! A space whale?” Todd yelped.

“Be quiet, you’ll frighten him!” growled Bruce.

“You be quiet punk!” Todd didn’t turn to face him, but rather took a half-step towards Myra, who stood at his side.

“Everyone just shut up,” Myra whined, and moved a step towards Todd. Their hands brushed together, but neither said anything about it.

“I can’t wait to tell mom about this. She won’t believe it,” said Zeke.

“Don’t you get it?” Bruce finally snapped. Zeke never got anything—Bruce always had to watch out for him and solve all his problems, and he never even understood what was happening. “We’re not going back! No one will ever hear this story!” he wailed.

The stars stretched back forever behind Zeke as he turned to face Bruce, who saw them also shining in his eyes. They gleamed out as his mouth hung open, and the fireflies danced among them a few seconds longer before drowning in a rush of tears.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘Neve Uncovers the Ultimate Truth of All Things’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampIn addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today we share our eighth Single Serving Story, ‘Neve Uncovers the Ultimate Truth of All Things’. This story was part of the anthology ‘Between the Shelves’, which was created by our local writer’s group, with proceeds going to the local library branch. As part of this anthology, it is written as a celebration of libraries, and books in general.

‘Neve Uncovers the Ultimate Truth of All Things’ tells the tale of a little girl with some big concerns, left to ponder upon them in the familiar confines of her local library. Although her world is in an increasing state of turmoil, she finds comfort and meaning in the books around her.

Book shelves rose up like forbidden towers on old castles, meandering off in every direction. Neve, caressing the stringy and stained hair of her doll Clarice, bit her tiny lip. She could hear the lackadaisical clicking of the keyboard behind her as her father continued his arduous journey to find new employment. She knew it wasn’t going well. It never did.

Neve was always getting dragged along to the library for his half-hearted attempts to turn things around, and was expected to wait nearby as her dad perused the net in search of employment. Her family didn’t have Internet at their house. ‘That was for those rich…’ well, Neve really didn’t like to say bad words, and reasoned that thinking them probably counted just as much.

Still, waiting around like this was a tall task. Neve was only eight, after all.

“What do you think we should do, Clarice?” she whispered, hoping to avoid any dirty looks or shushes from the library’s other patrons. But her doll just stared back with her one button-eye, providing little by way of answer. Neve was too old to be talking to dolls anyway, she figured.

‘Yet not old enough to have other fun,’ she thought.

“Neve! Quit wandering around so much. Stay where I can see you,” her dad barked. His eyes never left the screen, which cast a deathly pallor over his already exhausted face.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbled to herself, imagining Clarice’s button-eye rolling back to mirror her own. Neve had never been a disobedient child, but the library was pretty familiar to her after so many months of this routine, and that meant the temptation to drift away was nearly overwhelming her eager young mind.

The small cluster of computers where her dad sat was stationed in the very centre of the library—an oasis of desks and screens enveloped by a world of wonder. About two person-lengths from the computers in all directions, the tall rows of bookshelves rolled away into distances Neve couldn’t even imagine. One way led to fantasy books, where Neve could find old tales about knights and dragons. Beside that was non-fiction, which had never really captured Neve. Then there were the young-adult, horror, and literature sections. Yuck, yikes, and yawn! But just to her right was the row for science fiction books. There, Neve knew, she could read about unimaginable alien worlds, and starships piloted by people totally foreign in their experiences, yet somehow unbearably familiar in their struggles.

Neve liked that section a lot. Once, she recalled, she’d flipped through a book with pictures of giant space stations, and terrible battles in the stars. There had even been a princess in distress—just like in so many of the fantasy stories Neve loved.

Pulling Clarice tightly to her chest, Neve eyed the countless pathways eagerly. She was a good reader for her age—even her teacher, Mrs. MacNeil, had said so on a sticker covered certificate which now hung on Neve’s bedroom wall. So her regular trips to the library had grown bolder bit by bit, and whenever her dad was sufficiently distracted, she would wander a little further down one row or another, reading anything she could get her hands on.

She turned in tiny circles as she thought about the possibilities. The spinning made her dizzy, but Neve didn’t mind. “That way is where the romance books are,” she told Clarice—as if the doll didn’t already know. Over the last couple of months, Neve and Clarice had been nearly permanent fixtures in their local library branch. “I like those ones,” she purred quietly to her little stuffed friend, and felt a flush creeping into her cheeks.

Neve remembered one book in particular. She’d flipped through it on one of her first trips to the library, struggling with some of the words and wishing for pictures, but doing very well on the whole, according to Clarice. The book had been an old story about star-crossed lovers separated by cruel circumstances. No matter what they did, their paths just never seemed to bring them together.

Neve liked how they never gave up hope though. Clutching the rough cover in her little hands, she’d hoped her parents held onto that same hope.

“Books can be a big help to people, you know.”

Clarice only gaped at Neve’s prompt, but this didn’t stop her. Once, Mrs. MacNeil had said Neve was ‘headstrong’. One trip to the library later, Neve learned that meant she didn’t quit when things got tough. That had made her happy.

“Just remember the woman we met in the ‘Religion’ section?” she continued.

The memory from several weeks ago still remained with Neve, fighting tenaciously for space amongst confounding math problems, cruel playground rumours, and half-comprehended speculations from her dad about where they were going to live.

Neve had been standing at the threshold of the aisle, inching in slowly as she kept one vigilant eye on her dad. The covers seemed scary, with blood and fire and thorns. Neve had actually begun to wonder if she’d stumbled into the horror section again by accident, when she saw the short old lady holding a light purple book. She had tears running down her face, and Neve’s strong sense of sympathy had overpowered her aversion to scoldings.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, staring up at the frail blue-haired lady.

The woman was startled at first, but her expression naturally softened when she saw Clarice. “Oh, oh bless your heart. Nothing’s wrong my dear. I was just reading an old passage that my mother used to read to me. I never understood it back then,” she explained with a paper-thin smile before being interrupted by a gross coughing fit. She put a hand to her chest, and her old body shook. “It speaks to me now though,” she finished, and creaked slowly away, leaning upon her rocker.

With an emboldened spirit, Neve had picked up the book and flipped through it. There were a lot of lines about valleys, and fear, and other things Neve didn’t really understand. But she remembered how much it had meant to the lady.

Now, Neve could still hear the slow clicking of the keyboard, and a quick glance backward told her that her dad remained fixated on his own quest.

With one tentative step, then another, Neve inched her way into the fantasy section, where the book covers showed horses and dragons and all sorts of wonderful scenes. Picking up a pale green book with a white sword on it, Neve flipped the pages excitedly, her mind a maelstrom of big ideas and vague hopes.

Foreign words were scattered freely throughout the text, but many of them were pretty close to words she knew, and the clever girl was able to make some general sense from the lines she read as she flipped happily through the pages. There had been a king long ago, in a land that had a new name now. The king had a sword.

“Not just any sword,” she whispered to Clarice, whose little grey button eye seemed to wobble with excitement, “a magic sword, pulled from a stone! It’s what makes him king, but…” Neve paused, considering what a hard time the king seemed to be having.

She flipped a few pages, searching for the happy parts. She’d looked through the book a dozen times before—sometimes she felt like she’d done so with every book in the library. Inevitably though, she’d find something new with each venture into the forbidding stacks.

“The sword is why he’s king, but he can never figure out how to make the people happy. He gets advice from a wizard, and he listens to his people, but everyone wants something different.” Neve felt silly sometimes, whispering to a doll. But someone had to share in these adventures with her. She was pretty sure that was a rule.

“I think it’s hard to be good sometimes, Clarice. Sometimes there’s no way to make everyone happy, and—”

“Neve, get back here!” her dad’s voice ricocheted across the library, and people stared at Neve, many with long bony fingers pressed to their thin gray lips. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Sorry dad.” Neve hurried back to his side, her eyes glued to the faded blue carpet. “I was just reading about a—”

“That’s OK honey, just don’t wander too far.” He never looked away from the screen.

“Hmmph.” Neve flopped down onto the floor beside the computer desk, her eyebrows bunched tightly together. There was a garbage can next to her, but a quick peek in revealed nothing but bunched up papers and a few cough drop wrappers. The floor was mostly clean.

Neve looked at the clock, trying to follow the second hand around its course, but that got boring after only a few rotations.

“This is taking forever,” she whined, and Clarice nodded her emphatic support. She picked lackadaisically at the flaking paint on the leg of the computer table, but didn’t like the way it scraped under her fingernails. “Hmmph.”

On the shelf closest to her, Neve could see a big hardcover book with pictures of stars and planets and comets and crazy glowing balls of purple light and lots of other things she didn’t understand.

It didn’t seem that far away. A quick glance up to her dad told Neve he was still fixated by…whatever it was he looked at.

She lay down on the floor. Keeping one toe pressed firmly against her dad’s workstation as instructed, she stretched out on her stomach, her tiny fingers reaching out for the big old book.

“Darn, not quite enough,” she grumbled.

Her eyes flashed about like fireflies, desperately trying to figure out a way to reach the book, which hovered just a few inches beyond her grasp. But there was no way to stretch any farther without running the risk of tearing her skeleton loose from her skin, and Neve certainly didn’t want to do that. Her back was already getting sore, and she relaxed her posture a bit. No one was going to help her; that much was certainly clear.

With sudden clairvoyance, Neve reached the only decision available to her, and quickly chucked poor Clarice at the book, knocking it down from the shelf with a loud ‘Whop!’

A gale of ‘Shushes’ flooded her ears as she was buried under a tsunami of dirty looks. “Neve, be quiet. Don’t you get that we’re in a library?” her dad snapped.

Neve scooped up the book—and Clarice—with her toes still grounded firmly against the desk, and shimmied giddily back. Success!

Sitting up with her back against the hard old desk leg, she nestled the heavy book in her lap, placed Clarice comfortably in view just above it, and opened it up.

Neve’s mouth hung open as she took in the incredible, double-page panoramas. Tremendous clusters of stars spread out before her; entire galaxies scattered over the blackness like spilled marbles, and foreign planets beyond count were pictured within.

She gasped. “It’s all so big!” Scrunching up closer to the desk leg, Neve held her breath as she flipped the pages. She remembered again the lady she’d spoken to in the religion section, and how moved she’d been by what she was reading. “There’s something for everyone here I guess. There’s certainly room for it,” she finished, flipping the pages eagerly.

With such a humongous universe out there, it seemed nearly impossible that there could be any certain answers to all the strange things people wondered; just an ever-expanding list of questions. Neve pulled Clarice closer as she read about how all the stars she could see in the night sky existed in only an itsy-bitsy little portion of their single galaxy.

“It sure makes you feel small, doesn’t it?”

“You still there, baby?” her dad asked from just above her. It sounded like a world away.

“I’m still here Daddy,” she answered quietly.

Neve had a lot of questions herself: Who would she play with at recess tomorrow? Why wasn’t she allowed to do anything by herself? What did her parents always used to fight about? Where was her mom anyways?

Looking at all the thousands of stars, and all the great empty spaces between them, Neve realized that she’d kind of given up on getting answers for them anyway. ‘But sometimes,’ she thought, ‘the stories here are even better. Answers don’t seem so important when you have a good story, after all.’

Gazing at the big bright pages in amazement, Neve remembered another story she’d read once. She hadn’t understood a lot of it, but she’d gotten bits and pieces. It was about an astronaut on a big spaceship, flying through the stars to discover…something.

She’d thought he must have been very lonely, drifting farther and farther from home all alone.

He did have a robot he could talk to, but it didn’t really seem anxious to help him or make him feel better. It just wanted to do what needed to be done for the mission, and never cared what the poor astronaut needed for himself.

“Can’t I go get another book, Daddy?” Neve asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Neve. I’ve got to keep my eye on you, that’s a dad’s job after all,” he replied. The façade of his cheery tone was entirely transparent to the whip-smart young Neve.

Neve slouched down, closing the big book in her lap and looking at Clarice. “That astronaut did his job, even though he had that stupid old robot to deal with. I guess I have to too,” she declared. But Clarice didn’t answer, and Neve tossed her down onto the floor.

She was too old to talk to dolls anyway. Doll didn’t have brains like people. Clarice couldn’t answer all the questions Neve had. Clarice couldn’t talk or think or even ask questions for herself.

‘No’, Neve thought, ‘only people can do that.’

She remembered another story she’d looked at once, sitting down next to her dad in the big old library. It was a long story, and there was a whole shelf in the library to hold all the books it took to tell it. She didn’t get through very much, but flipping through the old yellow pages, taking in that happy, musty smell, she’d managed to catch enough.

It was a fantasy story, like so many others she’d read. It was about an amazing world full of beautiful elves and terrible goblins and all sorts of strange stuff like that. But the world was dying; all the magic was disappearing and all the good people were going away, leaving the world to darkness and decay.

It made her sad then, and it made her sad thinking about it now. She looked over at Clarice folded in half on the ground and sighed. “The people in that story didn’t believe things could go back either, not to the way they used to be,” she whispered down to her hopeless friend.

Neve blushed, but a quick glance up to her father revealed that he hadn’t been listening—still absorbed in the cool blue glow of the screen in front of him.

‘They’d still tried though,’ she remembered that much at least. The smallest and most helpless had stood up to undo all the hurt, and carried the burden even though they couldn’t possibly understand what it all really meant.

Neve liked that.

Sometimes as she read one book or another, she felt like it had been written just for her. It was weird, because that made her wonder how anyone else could possibly understand it, since they didn’t know all the things she knew. But they did understand. Everyone found something in those books, and that’s what made them so great.

“Only people can ask questions, and only people can imagine answers.” Neve sighed, and pulled Clarice back over to her side. ‘It must be easy,’ she thought, ‘to be a doll and only worry about doll things: How you sit on the bed, what dress to wear—those things are easy-as-pie.’ Other than her one missing button-eye, Clarice had the best life Neve could imagine. And the missing button-eye didn’t even seem to bother Clarice.

Clutching the doll tightly in one hand now, she imagined the tiny weight was unbearable, just like the magic ring in the book she’d read. She crawled slowly; dragging Clarice along the worn carpet, fearing that at any moment the watchful eye of her father would settle upon her and end their adventure before it even began.

But no scolding came, and Neve slipped silently away into the aisle marked ‘Classics’.

She’d been here before too, so she took no time at all locating her favourite book. There was a silly drawing of a naked yellow man on the cover, and Neve had to bite her little lip to suppress a giggle. She had to do that every time.

The man seemed to be drawn on a pot, but Neve could never figure out what that had to do with the stories—which were all about the ancient gods of Greece, and the strange games they played with people.

Sometimes, Neve wondered if that’s how Clarice felt—manipulated against her will by a giant girl she could barely comprehend. That made Neve feel awfully powerful, and every time the thought entered her mind, she vowed to ensure she treated Clarice with all the respect she wanted for herself.

The gods in these stories weren’t like that though. Not at all. They killed and tortured their people, and gave them impossible labours to do, and then punished them if they did any of it wrong.

It all seemed so unfair.

Neve peeked around the corner to make sure her dad hadn’t caught on to her absence. He’d be awfully mad if she didn’t sit still in the place where she was told. But he just gazed at his screen, oblivious and fully occupied with whatever worried adults.

She flipped through the book cautiously. She didn’t want to stumble on some awful drawing again—once she’d seen one of a bird eating a man’s guts, and that had put her off her thanksgiving dinner, which also made her dad angry. All the stories in this section were terribly gruesome. In fact, Neve had avoided the section for a long time after discovering what it contained, but eventually she grew curious, and finally began to visit it again.

At first, she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to read something so awful. When she was younger, Neve only liked happy stories about beautiful princesses and magical times.

But at some point or another, those things began to feel a bit silly.

They were nice to imagine, and Neve still liked it when her dreams were happy, but she couldn’t deny that sometimes she liked those darker stories. She wondered about the people who wrote them. Mrs. MacNeil had talked about the ancient Greeks once, and although Neve didn’t know much, she knew they were from a time long, long ago. ‘Probably even before Christopher Columbus,’ she imagined.

“Why do you think they wrote those stories?” she whispered the question into the side of Clarice’s stuffed, earless head. “Do you think they really thought that’s what God was like, or do you think they just needed a way to blow off steam?”

One time, Mrs. MacNeil had sent Neve out of the classroom, and she had to sit down and talk about anger with the school counsellor. Neve was scared at first, but it turned out OK. She got to hold a big fluffy toy frog, which was nice, and they mostly just talked about things which made Neve mad—which somehow made her feel better about them.

In the end, the counsellor had told her to count to ten, and to drink some water, and to walk away. Neve didn’t know how to do all those things together without making a big mess and getting in even more trouble though, so she didn’t really bother. But she remembered that the counsellor had also told her how important it was to talk about it. She said you could talk to toys, or people you trust, or even write it down.

“That’s probably what they were doing,” Neve told Clarice, “just trying to write down all the things that scared them back then. That’s really good to do, because once you write it down, it’s not as scary anymore.”

Neve thought about the diary she’d started once, back when everything first started to change. She’d written big stories about her dad and her mom and their old house, but it was really hard work, and she’d ultimately given up.

“Oh,” said Neve, flipping through the thin pages with Clarice nestled snuggly in her lap, “this is one of my favourites.” She turned the book upward to show Clarice the full-page picture of the stone man and his lion skin and his big muscles. Then she blushed, shook her head at Clarice, and pulled the book back up with a huff.

“This guy was the son of Zeus—the king of the gods. But Zeus’s wife Hera didn’t like him, and they always fought. He was tormented by Hera, who only showed up when she wanted to make things hard for him and drive him crazy.

“But he never gave up. Sometimes he used his strength, and sometimes he used his brains, but he never gave up. I think that’s pretty important.

“I wonder who wrote this story,” said Neve, searching through the covers and end-pages for some kind of ‘about the author’ section.

“Neve!” The yell sent a chill up her spine.

The jig was up!

“Neve, get back here!” her dad called again. “You know better than to wander off. It’s time to go. C’mon!”

Sinking down against the rigid bookshelf, Neve frowned. ‘Time to go home,’ she thought. That meant a lot of things: It meant that bedtime was near for one thing, and dreams were always sort of a gamble. It also meant a whole day of school; wandering the halls alone and hoping someone would talk to her. She hated that!

Hopefully though, her dad would need to do more work tomorrow, because that would mean she’d get to come back here. She looked forward to being at the library. At any moment, some story could take her to a world she’d never heard of but always needed.

It amazed her how familiar they always felt.

“Neve! Let’s go. Now!”

“Well Clarice, it’s time to go,” she said, replacing the book on the shelf and gently taking her doll up by the hand. “I still think it’s unfair sometimes that people are the only ones who have to wonder why. It hurts to have so many questions. But I’ve gotta admit—I’m glad we have imaginations. At least that way, when we don’t know all the real answers, we can think up something that makes sense, right Clarice?”

“That’s right,” said Clarice, her voice as smooth and comforting as a mother’s touch. “I think we’re going to be just fine, Neve.”

-Brad OH Inc.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘The Election’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampIn addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today we share our seventh Single Serving Story, ‘The Election’. This was  fun story to write, and was partiallly inspired by the works of Hunter S. Thompson. In turn, it became the jumping off pint for the novel I am currently working on, ‘Project: FearNaught’.

I arrived at the fourth annual United Corporate Global Election promptly at 9:47am, and immediately began to regret the flask of whiskey I’d surreptitiously quaffed on the commuter shuttle over. The ride had been a full 45 minutes, and as I’d been rushed at high velocity over the rooftops of the lower Bronx in the tiny tin compartment, the decision had seemed entirely justified.

Now, matters had changed. Shuffling along the fully enclosed commuter pad, I only barely managed to get my Citizen Spending Registration Card hung around my neck as a mass of humanity encased and funnelled me through huge revolving doors. Quick flashes of red light dotted my chest, no doubt registering my number and assuring I had the appropriate Citizen Spending Credit rating for admittance.

It wouldn’t matter here. Just a proactive effort to speed things up at the registration booth further down—a precaution that seemed insufficient, as the line crawled along at a snail’s pace.

“Holy hell,” I muttered to myself, “it’s even worse than I imagined.”

The walls, the floors, and even the ceilings were glaring neon screens, all competing against one another in a mad frenzy to sell whatever confounded products the Six Super-Corporations had for us today. They would be successful, I knew.

I’d never been to one of these grand affairs before. When the Corporate Suffrage bill had passed I’d been in the midst of a frenetic bender in Laos, and the entire period was a bitter and scattered memory. Since then, I’d been rambling along, bouncing around tiny Caribbean islands and nations too impoverished to give a good god damn about meaningless international elections.

This lifestyle had afforded me no shortage of human interest stories to cover. But these were trivialities, and the entire time I knew in my heart that I was skirting the real issues; chasing them out of my mind with drink, and turning a blind eye to the worry lines creeping across my once enthusiastic countenance.

The elections were always a point of interest, but a freelance journalist is always on the move, and seldom do circumstances conspire to allow our ilk to write what we please.

A hopelessly trite job posting in the Big Apple had changed all that, however, and I’d jumped at the opportunity. Now I advanced one half-step at a time, thrilled with the prospect of reaching the heart of the corporate beast I’d been avoiding for the last four years—exposing it to the elements and the wild, and letting the flies do their work.

In all honesty, it’s a pretty good time to be a writer. People will eagerly devour anything that lights up their screens without a second thought. It makes for an active story market, and the truth is as good a story as any. Besides, someone’s gotta tell it.

“Scan your card.” The voice took me by surprise. I’d been lost in my ruminations, and had failed to perceive the registration booth finally close in. The man speaking sat in a big round chair. It wrapped around him as if the plastic itself was molded to his swollen form, and his words came from jiggling jowls of a sickly pallor.

“Scan your card,” he repeated monotonously.

I leaned into the porcelain counter and offered my host the most charming smile I could manage. “Duke O’Brady, here from ‘Citizens United E-Magazine’ to report on the election.”

The unbearable irony of the magazine’s name had always bothered me, but my lamentations had fallen on deaf ears during my single visit to the central office.

“Our name was designed to incite feelings of harmony and safety,” the young lady had told me as if from a placard held just behind my head.

“It always had been, that’s the damn problem,” I’d insisted, but I was getting nowhere fast, and I knew it.

“Scan your card,” the bloated man repeated once again. I couldn’t be sure whether he was unaware I’d been the same singular person the entire time, or if he simply lacked the training to alter his script even an iota. Furthermore, I didn’t care.

Scanning my card made a confirmatory beep, and the man waved me through.

“Finally,” I grumbled, filing along with the rest of the mob through a short glass hallway. Outside, trees stretched up tall and timeless, vines and bushes pressing against the glass as if nature itself conspired to return this world to its natural state.

“It’s beautiful,” a lady said to a tall, thin man beside her. But I’d overheard, and felt it my patriotic duty to get involved.

“It’s fake,” I explained matter-of-factly. I was too old and experienced to muster any false sympathy. “Just projections playing across the screens. They want you to feel optimistic, you didn’t see a damn forest when you walked in, did you?”

The woman frowned, shaking her head; a sorrowful Christian in the presence of an unbaptized street-urchin.

Patriotism had never gotten me anywhere.

Thinking back, it wasn’t fair to blame my drinking on the horrendous conditions of the commuter shuttle. Not entirely. It had been partially motivated by the nagging fear that whatever I was going to experience here would be such a terrible shock that it might be too much for my strained mental constitution, and cause me to crumble into a chattering mess. Then I’d most likely be scooped up by the nearest corporate rep and put on display like some atavistic half-man; mad with the overbearing weight of its own twisted reality.

Stepping out of the bright green passage-way, I knew immediately I’d under-estimated the state of affairs.

The space was massive beyond my wildest imagination. Certainly it had seemed gargantuan through the tiny stained windows as I’d swept over on my way to the commuter pad, but standing inside now was entirely overwhelming.

The United Corporate Global Election Center had been erected for the first event of its kind in 2023. Construction had started a full 7 months before the passing of the Corporate Suffrage bill, but this fact didn’t seem to interest many people these days.

Just as it was in the lobby, every visible surface was alight with propaganda. These were not political endorsements, nor were they scathing intellectual attacks on political opponents. Those were relics of the past which none but our most seasoned readers will recall.

“Feeling tired?” one screen chirped as I passed by. The screen dimmed noticeably as it spoke the words, and I could see the shoulders of everyone in its vicinity slouch with the change. “Get yourself an energy boosting ‘Super-Slam’, available at any G&E solicitations table.” With this, the screen and surrounding environment brightened, and all around me people straightened up. The most ambitious stood on trembling tip-toes, craning their necks and smiling broadly upon catching sight of a glaring G&E logo in the distance.

Then they were gone.

“Mother of misfortune,” I muttered absently, deciding immediately that I’d need another drink as soon as possible.

“Feeling worn thin? Get yourself a refreshing ‘Whiskey Wake-Up’, available at any Viacom solicitations table.”

I silently cursed the Big Six, and then shuffled off towards the gigantic orange ‘Viacom’ logo in the distance.

A hundred thousand clinking metallic voices were chirping from all around. The outer walls of the room were lined with the voting stations proper, their lengths segregated into equal portions for each of the six core corporations: G&E, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.

Once approved for voter eligibility—a simple process involving scanning your Citizen Spending Registration Card to prove you’d spent at least a little bit of money on one of the Big Six over the past year—a citizen was welcome to approach the booths at their leisure, allotting any of the dollars they’d spent towards whatever Leadership Traits that particular corporation offered.

A hollow feminine voice spoke from one of the booths to my right. “Many voters appreciate a Lead Citizen who wears Nike clothing!” The woman standing at the booth tapped the screen excitedly. “You’ve chosen the Leadership Trait: ‘Wears Nike’, if this is correct, press 1,” the voice rattled, and the woman jumped up and down in her stupor.

“Must be one of the preferred choices,” I spoke sidelong to a lanky old man shuffling along beside me, hoping he’d share my reticence.

“Do you know at which booth I can vote for a sharply dressed leader?” he asked me with a distinguished accent, “preferably Versace?”

“Get out of here you fucking animal!” I shouted, and sent him scampering off to find his own way amid the squealing machines and pacified voters.

Among the Big Six, you could vote for just about any leadership trait you could dream of—they owned them all anyway. As long as you had Citizen Spending Credits to allot, you could design whatever sort of a leader you wanted.

Of course, there were pre-determined traits suggested as ‘Preferred Choices’. These were agreed upon by the Big Six in advance, and the little automated machines would spit out their trendy tips as if sharing hot insider information.

Half of me half-expected to find a curtain somewhere in the fray, ready to be pulled back at the end of the day revealing the new Lead Citizen of the  United Corporate Global Alliance—a perfect amalgamation of all the ‘Preferred Choices’ ready and rearing to go to work.

But quarter expectations weren’t worth much, and I knew the final leader would only be revealed after 7 days’ time. “Used to accurately tally the public will and find the ideal Lead Citizen”, the news would reiterate ad nauseum for the next full week. Then they would finally wheel out some smiling, sycophantic bastard, and everything would continue on as normal.

The central section of the United Corporate Global Election Center made the periphery look like a respectable affair. The sprawling rectangular expanse was separated into six equal sections. Each one featured a tremendous array of products and propaganda so hedonistic in their severity that the sight of each sufficed to convince a man that no more mad and malicious display could ever be found. Inevitably, turning in any direction would reveal the falsity of this assumption.

There were jugglers and fire eaters, belly dancers and sword swallowers. The Disney section even had an elephant chained in place as spotlights painted screening times for new movies over his worn and wrinkled old hide.

Stepping into line at the Viacom Solicitations Table, I sidled up to an angry looking young punk with half his head shaved. “What do you think of this crazy scene?” I asked. I didn’t mention my affiliation with Citizens United E-Magazine. I’d come to find that people were inherently distrustful of any information source that didn’t bear the seal of approval from one of the Big Six, and avoided them whenever possible.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he answered. He had a heavy Queens accent, and reeked of gin.

“Amazing?” I repeated, taking a half-step up in line.

The boy glanced to each side, and then stole a quick pull from a flask in his pocket, offering it to me with a smile. “Yeah, when else in history have we ever had such clear control over our leadership? The entire world votes today, all at once. You can’t deny that’s pretty incredible.”

I gratefully accepted a quick pull from the flask, hoping it would do its job—dull my frayed nerves until I reached the counter to collect my own drink. “But does the image matter so much? Are you content to control who tells you what is decided, or do you really feel like you’re still affecting policy?” I knew I was testing the limits of responsible journalism with these leading questions, yet I had trouble fathoming the idea that this damn ruffian bought into the bullshit around him.

“Are you kidding me?” He rubbed a hand over the bald half of his head, rolling his eyes. “What about in 2025, when that one group—what’s their name—hacked the elections? We ended up with a masked Lead Citizen all year! If that’s not power to the people, you tell me what is.”

You dumb bastard, I thought, but bit my lip. “That son-of-a-bitch was the one who announced the ‘New United Corporate Global Green Routine’!” I cried; referring to the pitiful effort at urban beautification displayed in the hallway leading in.

“Exactly,” the boy winked at me knowingly, as if revealing his part in some grand earth-shaking conspiracy.

I shuddered. Goddamn punk. The Lead Citizen was meant to be the voice of the people in the United Corporate Global Government, but in my experience, they were little more than a mouthpiece. Through these elections, they were cleverly designed for maximum approval, but functioned only to regurgitate and promote whatever destructive new policies the Big Six decided to market to the ignorant masses.

When I finally got to the head of the line, I was greeted by a lovely young woman in a bright orange Viacom shirt. “Welcome to the Viacom Solicitations Table, where we get all our Reality! How can I improve your experience today?”

Behind her, a woman bounced up and down on an LED stage. She wore what looked like tiny wool mittens over her perky young breasts, and walked the stage with her legs bowed, slapping her crotch and wailing something about how freedom really got her off.

“I’ll have 2 Jameson’s, neat.” I tried to keep my answer curt, hoping to avoid unnecessary entanglements.

“Of course,” she said, smiling as she moved in what I assumed to be a dance along to the ‘music’ behind her. “At Viacom, our goal is to be the world’s leading, branded entertainment company across television, motion pictures, and digital media platforms. We focus on our consumers, enhancing our existing bra—”

“Make those doubles.” I cut her off.

She smiled, tapped a few buttons on the dispenser, and drew a sleek white contraption from her belt. It fired a red laser into the badge on my chest, and gave a confirmatory beep. The dispenser poured my drinks, and the lady slid them over to me. “50 Citizen Spending Credits have been deducted from your Citizen Spending Registration Card. Please enjoy your Free Voting Experience, and remember, at Viacom, our goal is to be the world’s leading, branded entertain—”

I walked away, finishing one drink quickly and tossing the empty plastic cup into a tall cylindrical container labelled ‘Viacom Cares about Our Environment.’

I ran my thumb across the thin laminate draped around my neck. On it was a barcode, my full name and Citizen Number. Everyone in the place had one. They were absolutely essential for access to an affair like this.

Inevitably, all money spent went to one of the Big Six. They were at the end of nearly every product you could legally buy or sell. Each dollar was immediately translated into Citizen Spending Credits and allotted to the relevant umbrella Corporation. They called it ‘Proportional Representation’.

It had always struck me as redundant.

“Jesus, Mary Mother and Joseph!” I remembered loudly complaining to a journalist friend during one drunken night in Puerto Rico, “They already have our money, why even pretend to give us a choice in the matter?”

We’d been promptly removed from the bar by a pair of tree-trunk necked apes for ‘disturbing the consumer spirit’.

Cameras lined every surface incapable of supporting LED advertisements, and even these were entirely plastered with ads and slogans for their respective corporate zone. I looked down again at the vital information displayed on my chest, and noticed tiny red flashes playing across it every few seconds. Scanners, I knew.

I’d come here with a lot of questions—key electoral concerns I felt needed to be addressed if the legitimacy of this so-called election was to be evaluated. Is voting a legal requirement? What are the protections on voter secrecy? How does the general public seem to perceive the election?

Now, every question I could think up seemed as empty as the thin plastic cup in my hand. I frowned.

Well, I thought, that’s another 50 Citizen Spending Credits gone from my account.

I didn’t imagine there were very many Viacom voting options I would have found myself passionate about anyway.

Citizen Spending Credits were acquired throughout the duration of each calendar year, right up until the day before election—a day recently dubbed ‘Black Saturday’, when citizens rushed out to spend as much money as possible on their favourite Corporations, hoping to get a hand up on other citizens and secure whatever shitty little features they hoped to see on the Lead Citizen that year.

It wasn’t the only way to use up Citizen Spending Credits. Certain goods—those agreed on by the Big Six for unilateral control and trade monitoring, could only be purchased through the expenditure of extant Citizen Spending Credits throughout the year. These charges were withdrawn from all six Corporate Credit Pools in equal measure.

Alcohol, Cigarettes, Healthcare, Border Crossings—these had been relegated to the Citizen Spending Credit Pool in order to ensure those accessing these ‘Exclusive Public Privileges’ were high-functioning, contributing members of society.

The result was two-fold. Firstly, it ensured that citizens who for whatever reasons failed to pay into the Corporate Economy would not be able to affect it come Voting Day. A second effect, one seldom discussed in Corporate Media, was that an unverified number of Citizens would simply spend all of their Citizen Spending Credits on these goods—whether due to vice or need—and thus be excluded from the electoral process entirely.

I’d never been convinced that was such a terrible fate. In fact, the notion that you couldn’t be politically active if you didn’t vote always felt tantamount to saying you couldn’t be an atheist without going to church. I’d always done just fine on both fronts, but looking around, it was clear that all too many people were still beleaguered with the tired notion that democratic participation begins and ends with casting a worthless vote in a silly dog and pony show.

It was a sad fucking state of affairs, and contemplating it for any period of time gave me a strong thirst for a powerful drink.

Thankfully, this was not a difficult thing to accomplish at an event like this. All of the Big Six offered an unending supply of drinks at their respective stations, and I allowed myself to wander along listlessly.

To my left, a man was hammering on a Voting Station, screaming inaudibly in the raucous din. “Having a problem there, friend?” I asked.

He only half-turned, his glassy eyes meeting mine for a confused second before resuming his hammering. “Citizen Spending Credits for the Leadership Trait: ‘Well-Travelled’ will be counted as 2-for-1, for the next 27 minutes only.” The machine chirped, and across the screen popped an obtrusive link to said ‘Leadership Trait’.

The man continued pounding on the illuminated surface like some frustrated maniac on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. “I just want a leader who likes anime!” he wailed. By his manner, I was entirely certain he wasn’t talking to me, and continued on my way.

With a quick, practiced motion, I popped open the lid of a tiny yellow container in my pocket, and slid two red pills into my mouth. That should settle me down, I reasoned.

Another 250 Citizen Spending Credits out of the way as well, I reflected. Thanks Disney, you smarmy, psychotic rodent.

This whole distorted scene was getting to be too much, and for a brief moment I considered fleeing; turning tail and running like a whipped cur—too proud to yield, too stupid to fall in line.

I felt a sudden overwhelming urge to do something—anything. Even the smallest mad gesture would suffice to express my extreme disgust for the things I’d seen. For the life of me though, I couldn’t imagine what sort of obscene act I could ever come up with to stand out amidst this horrendous carnival of the complacent.

“Many citizens prefer their jeans 18% more faded. You can get a brand new pair at the News-Corp Solicitations Table.” A tiny painted camera was scanning my jeans with flickering red lights. That was it, I needed a drink.

Elbowing my way through the sedated crowd, I made my way into a drink line, kindly provided by G&E.

What could one man do? All around me, the logos of the Big Six were painted, projected, or proudly worn on shirts, hats, and pendants. In 7 days, there would be some new idiot posing as the popular representative of the people’s will. Inevitably, he would remind us that growth of corporate profit margins was the paramount goal. Environmental issues, education, family structure, freedom of speech—all of these were secondary concerns.

It was the fundamental tenet of a society which had confused Capitalism with the fetishization of wealth, and even this was done at the end of the most dangerous barrel in history; the joint effort of media moguls who could buy and sell the world’s population 3 times over.

What gesture could possibly provoke such an entrenched tyranny?

I couldn’t say, and it depressed me to an immeasurable degree.

Over the last four years, I’d heard countless rumours of opposition—some enlightened pockets of people rising up to turn the tides and take back control. It was this very idea which had given me the courage to set foot in this confounded town in the first place. But I’d touched down late last night, and went straight to sleep. The shuttle to the United Corporate Global Election Center this morning had taken me from the Commuter Station outside my hotel directly into the event without ever tasting fresh air, and I stood here now with no evidence that such people even existed.

I remembered my youth, when the internet felt like a way for the entire world to gather in a public forum, sharing their thoughts and opinions as if they might eventually manage to reach some grand public consensus. Then it would all be over; people would agree on the basic rights of all to freedom and choice, and the liberty to pursue whatever the hell made one man happy without hurting another.

But net neutrality had perished in an omnibus bill 3 years before the Corporate Suffrage Bill had come to the table, and in the blink of an eye 9 billion earnest voices had been reduced to faint echoes, incapable of achieving coherence over the amplified volume of corporate idealism.

Now, a citizen had pitifully few avenues for self-expression. If they wanted to meet even the most basic human needs, they had to rely on at least one of the Big Six. With that came unintelligible user agreements and endless legal caveats.

Dissent amounted to little more than a nervous smile on the streets; a desperate flash of the eyes on a corner before a glance up to the ‘Citizen Safety Cameras’ sent both parties scampering on their way.

“Welcome to the G&E Solicitations Table, where you’ll find good things at work,” said a woman in a blue and white shirt as she smiled mechanically. “How can I improve your experience today?”

“2 Jameson’s, neat if you please.” I answered, as cordially as I could manage.

“Certainly,” she replied, tapping a few buttons on the automated dispenser. LED screens all around her displayed countless electronic devices capable of replicating any and all human functions. “At G&E, our…”

“Make those doubles.” I commanded, turning my back on the ceaseless and unsolicited rhetoric.

The pretty young lady scanned my Citizen Spending Registration Card, pressed a button, and the drinks sprayed into their cups with an eager hiss.

She handed me the first, and I lifted it to my lips, anxious for the temporary relief it would afford me from the nausea-inducing madness all around.

Still my mind raced, frantically searching for any possible means of writing off this whole sorry affair in some grand and inevitably deplorable swoop.

The second drink stopped pouring mid-way through, and a sudden glow of red light illuminated the girl’s pretty features. “I’m sorry sir,” she announced, handing me the glass—half full to only the most ardent optimist. “It seems you’ve reached the limit of your Citizen Spending Credits, goodbye.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but a sudden hand around my neck shut it fast and hard. A pair of muscle bound goons in G&E shirts took me by the arms and began dragging me towards the nearest exit.

“Get off me, you goddamn animals!” I exclaimed.

A camera flash shut off my vision for a moment. When it returned, I saw that a crowd had gathered around me.

“Let me go you sons of bitches!” I struggled against them to no avail. Seldom does the power of one scared and desperate man overcome the certainty of a security force entrenched in its own sense of justice.

The camera flashes continued as I was unceremoniously hauled away, kicking and screaming like a rabid animal the entire way. Some people clapped, and from some direction or another, I heard a song taken up. “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey…”

Fuck those oblivious pricks, I thought, tossing a quick elbow into the jaw of one of my beefy oppressors.

It was answered by two quick shots to my ribs, and my legs gave out beneath me. Dragging them loosely, I flailed my arms, jockeying side to side like an unsecured trailer as I shouted incoherent slander at anyone who would listen.

Just beside me, I saw a man braying loudly, his fat round face nearly split in half by his self-involved grin. In his hand was a deep fried turkey leg wrapped in paper bearing the Nike ‘Swoosh’. His wife stood beside him, tapping the screen of her Personal Communicator Device and wearing a white shirt emblazoned with the Starbucks Logo and a plain text font reading ‘I Voted’.

The brutes dragged me through a set of small metal doors and down a long, empty cement hallway. They didn’t speak a word the entire time. I more than made up for their silence.

I cannot claim that I’m proud of my actions. Indeed, I looked like a raving lunatic, kicking and screaming like a false prophet being hauled through the forum in disgrace until they finally shoved me out through another set of steel doors.

I landed hard on my stomach, the impact of the sidewalk stealing my breath and scraping my arms. Lying still and defeated, I felt the sun burning my neck. The air was cool and clean; a refreshing taste of the real world so rarely achieved in a city of shuttle transports and LED shelters.

“Take my hand,” a voice came from above me. I groaned, forcing myself up onto one elbow and glaring into the blinding rays of the midday sun.

The two security guards had vanished back inside, no doubt happy to be relieved of their distasteful cargo. All around me however, people were gathered en masse. They were pressed tightly together, their ranks stretching off as far as I could see.

Some held placards, others shouted out the wares they had available for free trade. On a billboard to my right was the gleaming white outline of a Mickey Mouse head, its vandalized ears elongated into curving horns, and red coals were painted in place of its eyes.

“C’mon, you’re alright,” the voice came again. I took the outstretched hand and used it to climb to my knees. My arm was bleeding, and I was utterly exhausted. All around me however, signs besought the toppling of the corporate state, and people stood in the dirty streets singing songs of unity.

These brilliant, shining bastards had never bothered to venture inside, I realized. They were smarter than I. They’d been beyond the false idolatry of that elaborate pageant. Quieting my mind for a moment, I was overwhelmed by the poignancy of the signs and depth of the conversations I heard all around me.

Intrinsically, I understood that I’d come here today only to confirm my fears that the world was as entirely lost as I’d expected. Within the first moments, I’d felt this was accomplished, and could have walked out satisfied in my bleak suspicions before ever scanning my Citizen Spending Registration Card. But now, as I rubbed my bleeding arm and rose shakily to my feet, I realized I’d found something far greater. Beyond my wildest expectations, I felt liberated—like a sailor lost upon the waves, who in desperation turns his eyes at last towards the starry sky.

-Brad OH Inc.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘Circular Journey’

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In addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today’s article is a bit of a change up, not a short story, but rather an old essay examining one of my favourite artists through one of my favourite psychological lenses. I hope y ou enjoy it as much as I do.

A Psycho-biographical Study of Joseph Bruce (AKA Violent J of the Insane Clown Posse)

Terror Management Perspective

Joseph Bruce, aka Violent J of the Insane Clown Posse (ICP), is one of the creative forces behind what could be described as one of the most perplexingly twisted musical forces of our time. With lyrics fueled by violence, profanity and rage, ICP has found itself on the receiving end of multitudes of protests, and have been all but completely marginalized from the mainstream music industry. Despite this, the diehard fans of the ICP- called ‘Juggalos’- have sworn a near-religious loyalty to their music, painting their faces to attend shows and swearing that there is more behind the music than most people seem to believe. The intention of this paper is to explore, from the perspective of Terror Management Theory (TMT), which processes may have led to the creation of music that is so commonly reviled by the public, yet so highly revered by those who take the time to put together the pieces. The main focus of this paper will be to explore the psychological function (based on Terror Management Theory) of the lyrical concepts and album themes underlying the 12-year, 7-album saga: ICP’s 6 Joker Cards.

Terror Management Theory (TMT) stems from the research of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, and has been conceptualized in full by others since the original work (Greenberg et. All, 1991). TMT serves as a broad social theory that attempts to explain the rational motivations for various facets of human belief and behavior. Its’ focus is the way in which people buffer themselves against the terror that naturally arises from our awareness of death. Because people have a natural instinct to stay alive, yet have the temporal capacity to know that death is inevitable, we are faced with death anxiety. TMT asserts that we deal with this death anxiety by investing in what is known as a cultural worldview. A cultural worldview is essentially our belief system; it serves to give the world order, predictability, meaning and permanence, and provides a reassurance of our ability to transcend death. The cultural worldview is comprised of an idea of who we are, moral conceptions of right and wrong, and an idea of what will happen to us after we die.

The cultural worldview acts to buffer us against death by assuring us that, if we follow the dictates of our worldview, we will be able to achieve some level of immortality in the sense that we can live on through our children, our creations, the memories of loved ones, etc. It also buffers against the anxiety of death by assuring us that if we are to follow the moral principles of our worldview, we may be rewarded in the afterlife. This works only to the extent that our cultural worldview is supported by others; as the more widely received it is, the more plausible it seems, and thus the more effective its’ function.

Jock Abra supports many aspects of this theory in his paper (1995), in which he asserts that artistic creation is a process of self-immortalization, and functions as a cathartic relief of the fear of death, often in the reflection of it. This, along with the prime dictates and focus of TMT, does well to explain the works of the ICP. Throughout the history of the 6 Joker Cards, death, along with violence, depravity, and cultural exclusion, is a highly salient theme. The reasoning behind this thematic focus, the conceptual changes in the Cards progression, and the need for the specific theme of the final Jokers card, can easily be understood through the understandings of TMT.

Joseph Bruce was born in the tiny suburb of Berkley, Michigan. One of his first reported memories was of his father, Richard Bruce, building a Halloween haunted house in the basement of his home for him and his brother Robert to play in. This was a time of happiness and security for Joe, but it was short lived. At the early age of 2, Joe can still remember the violent breakup of his parents, as father Richard became abusive, and finally moved out in a cathartic fight which saw Joe in the middle.

At the age of 4, Joe had an experience that affected the rest of his life. He and his brother Rob managed to capture a large butterfly, and put it into a bottle. They took it to their room, and kept it for the night, intending to release it the next day. In the morning however, they found it dead, and were crushed. It was their first experience of death, and they held a tiny funeral for the butterfly in their backyard, swearing to each other that they would one day go to heaven and apologize to the butterfly for killing it. With this experience came the concept of death, and thus death anxiety. It was presumably here that Joe first truly realized that living things are temporary, and that even he would someday cease to be.

Joes’ mother, Linda Harwood, was a devout catholic, and worked nights cleaning the basement of a Church in a neighboring suburb. With such limited means, and being a single mother of 3, she could not afford life in their pleasant suburb alone for long, and thus had no choice but to remarry; this time to an older, well off man named Lester Wool. Lester provided Joes’ first notion of evil. A rich man, he would provide lavish gifts to Joes’ mother Linda, but when Linda was away, a different side came out. A serial molester, Lester had been an unwanted member of several families before Joes’, and presumably several after. He molested Joe, as well as his two siblings, until his older sister Theresa left a note telling their mother of his acts, before running away. Lester was thrown out.

Another violent family breakup- the cycle of tribulations continued for Joe. Without any constant father figure, and a well-conditioned distrust of any who took the role, Joe had clear reason to harbor bitter feelings towards authority. Further, with the anxiety of death instilled in him from the butterfly incident onward, Joe was in need of a stable cultural worldview to buffer against this terror. But with no lasting family structure, few friends, and a pile of bitter experiences, it is presumable that any concept of steadfast morality seemed unlikely for Joe.

Things only got worse. Once again on her own raising 3 children, Linda had to move the family out of the expensive Berkley neighborhood, and into a tiny house in Oak Park, a low rent suburb on the outer limits of the Detroit ghetto zone. Violence and death were everyday realities for Joe now, as gang activity and shootings were common occurrences here. Further, Joe found himself a cultural minority in the heavily Afro-American neighborhood, and was constantly the target of the disgruntled and dangerous local teens. When traveling to nicer neighborhoods however, he was once again discriminated against due to his association with the Oak Park area. A reject in every level of society, it was clear that Joe would have trouble fitting himself into any existing cultural worldview.

Hated locally for his color, and in other areas for his class, Joe witnessed a constant stream of violence and death. In childhood, Joe coped by staying in a constant state of make-believe with his brother. As time passed however, his brother shipped off to the army, and he found himself joining the gangs that he once feared. It was a matter of protection and survival. In these gangs, rapping was always viewed as a goal, a way to escape and move beyond the local scene. So Joe and the gang started a group/gang: ICP, which then stood for Inner City Posse.

This group floundered, got into many dangerous fights, and eventually all but broke up, leaving only Joe and his friend, Joey Ustler (Shaggy 2 Dope). Joe knew that he would go nowhere as things were, and suddenly decided to re-frame the Inner City Posse as the Insane Clown Posse, keeping the old ICP initials. They donned racially-ambiguous clown paint, and made a cryptic announcement: Their albums would each be a separate aspect of what they called the “Dark Carnival”, each one in turn being called a Jokers Card. Inside of each Joker Card were 2 constant quotes. The first proclaimed: “There will be 6 faces of the Dark Carnival, after all 6 have risen, the end of time will consume us all”. The second, in tiny print on the inside cover of each card: “Dedicated to the Butterfly”.

With no basis for an understanding of morality in their violence strewn life, no friends, little family to support anything they cared about, and every reason to have a fear of death, ICP were left with no means of dealing with this death anxiety. As social rejects, the group had no means of identifying with any existing cultural worldview, and so, started their own.

The first Joker Card was called the Carnival of Carnage (1992), and the idea behind it was the events that would take place if all of the violence and suffering that they saw in the ghetto they lived in was suddenly tossed into the upper class towns of suburban America. It was violent, graphic, and filled with death, with lyrics that brought Joe’s reality home, such as:

“You wake up to gunfire,

thinking it was a dream

until you hear your neighbor howl

and a  young child scream…”

In this album, Joe brought the mortality salient life he had lived to the eyes of anyone who bought his CD, and with it, the unaddressed death anxiety that he had lived with for so long.

As his work progressed, Joe began more and more to feature ideas of morality, justice, and distrust of authority. He sang of people suffering as penance for evils they had committed, and of people being forced to deal with the consequences of actions they’d assumed they were free of, as in the lyrics:

“Buy a richie home or two

This reflects the things you do

others starving down the block

richies heart is like a rock…/

/even though some down and out

you keep what you could live without…”

After only 2 albums, the ICP had created the start of a dynamic cultural worldview. They had shown people death as they saw it, and taught them of justice as they perceived it.

They had established their own death anxiety in others, and they had determined their moral attitude, but as explained earlier, a cultural worldview needs the support of others in order to function. ICP needed a focused and well-defined fan-base, a group who would relate in full to their line of thinking, and who would understand their methods. In the era around their 3rd Joker Card, The RiddleBox (1995), ICP sang a new tune. While maintaining the original levels of mortality salience and vigilante justice, ICP began to express the rejection they felt, alongside the brotherhood they perceived possible among other rejected people; people that felt as forgotten, vulnerable, and scared as they did.

Death once again came into play, and using death as an active metaphor for societal rejection, they sang of the dead rising up to dance, of cast-aways forming their own carnival shows, and of learning to disregard the beliefs of others in order to cultivate understanding of yourself. The idea exploded, and they earned a nationwide, underground fan-base, all intent on understanding reality on their own terms, with lyrics such as:

“Throw all your (gang) signs in the air

what’s that I don’t check I don’t care

‘cause I’m down with the clown everywhere

and much clown love is in here”

Over the years, ICPs’ focus on unity and internal support only grew, and by the time they had released their 5th Jokers Card, they had an enormous international fan base of ‘Juggalos’, who would follow the group around the country, buy every piece of merchandise available, wear the face paint on every possible occasion, and most importantly, argue enthusiastically that, behind the profanity of ICP was a clear cut, simple message to it’s followers: stay true to your friends and family, be prepared to own up to your unjust actions, and accept yourself as you are: a reactionary set of rules opposed to the family trauma, societal rejection, and evil deeds that Joe had been exposed to in childhood.

With music that provided its own source of mortality salience, and a moral code and sense of belonging to buffer against it, ICP was a self-made and independent cultural worldview. However, prior to the release of the 6th Jokers card, they were missing one very important thing. ICP would certainly be able to live on through their music at this point, and had certainly confronted the concept of death within their art. Their creation had formed a conception that gave the world order, predictability, meaning and permanence, but a cultural worldview is most effective at buffering against death anxiety if it includes some conception of what happens to us when we experience death. Before the 6th Card dropped, Joe knew it had to be significant, and before deciding what it was, reports feeling very empty. In his book, he writes “I was lost without the 6th…. Like we were running from the ending and it was killing me off”. He knew, consciously or not, that the conclusion of his cultural worldview would be an intricate part of its efficacy in dealing with death anxiety.

The 6th Jokers Card was called “The Wraith”, and was an allegory for the experience of death. It came in the form of 2 separate albums; Shangri-la (2002) and Hells Pit (2004). Hells Pit was the final word in their construction of morality, and featured songs such as “Walk into the Darkness” and “Burning Up”; cautionary tales about the results of a life lived poorly. Shangri-la was the other side, it opened with “Walk into the Light”, and was a positive album focusing on the rewards of a good life, the comfort of friends and family, and the promise of belonging and happiness resulting from just choices. The album concluded with a track called “Thy Unveiling”, which explained that the “Dark Carnival” concept was a metaphor for God.

“It ain’t about Violent J or Shaggy

the Butterfly or 17

When we speak of Shangri-la

What you think we mean

Truth is we follow God

We’ve always been behind him

The carnival is god

And may all Juggalos find him!”

The 6th card had dropped, and as prophesized since the first, the end of time had consumed its listeners. The end of time was death, and it had arrived to ensure protection against the fear of death, by completing the cultural worldview started 12 years prior. Therefore, the circularity of ICPs’ journey was fitting in that it began because of, and ended with, death. The faithful reminder and predictor of this remained; as the first of the Wraith albums, Shangri-la, was dedicated, just as all previous, to the Butterfly that had first shown Joe the reality of death. This was also among the first occasions they chose to explain the significance of the ubiquitous butterfly dedication. Hells’ Pit however, lacked this reference; the first album to not include it. While Shangri-la served as the completion of the cultural worldview, and promise of salvation to those that fit within it, Hells Pit was the completion of their moral constructs, the promise of punishment to those who deviated. Referencing the Butterfly in this album would be unfit, as the Butterflies significance had already been dealt with. Instead, the album was dedicated to “The Underground”: the forgotten, tossed aside, and misled of the world. It was a beacon to find understanding before it was too late, the final inclusion in a cultural worldview that had been a journey from forgotten and vengeful, to belonging and faithful; from fearing the uncertain eventuality of death, to accepting the purpose and freedom of it.

So the artistic journey ended by the same means it had begun. By tying their creation to as understandable and abstract a concept as God, Joe assured that his artistic creation, and the worldview created within, would have a level of permanence that he knew since the age of 4 he could not attach to himself. Joe did not know the exact path that his works would take at the beginning, but reports that it progressively made more and more sense as they went. It started out with an album that was angry, vengeful, violent and ungrounded, and ended with an album series justifying a morality of acceptance, honor, and faith. Due to his traumatic childhood, unstable youth, and violent, dangerous adolescence, we have seen how Joe was left with very little means to buffer against the anxiety of death, and thus created his own cultural world view. With a progressively defined concept of self, belonging, morality, and transcendence, Joe met with the existential terror of death head on in his work, and proceeded to build a belief system which helped him and countless fans deal with both the feeling of exclusion, and the anxiety of death.

Without in depth comment on his own planning of the work, we cannot say with certainty exactly how conscious this process was. There is certainly evidence that he had a clear vision of what he wanted to create, but the underlying psychological reasoning for this was likely a subconscious drive. However, the transformation Joe experienced- from a street tough punk to a well off, self made family man- is clearly representative of the effectiveness of his artistic process to encompass a functional cultural worldview now embraced by Juggalos worldwide.

References:

Bruce, J., & Echlin, H. (2003). ICP: Behind the Paint. Detroit: Psychopathic Records

Greenberg, J., Pyszcynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1991). A Terror Management Theory of

Social Behaviour: The Psychological Functions of Self-Esteem and Cultural Worldviews. Academic Press

Jock, A. (1995). Do the muses dwell in Elysium? Death as a motive for creativity.

Creativity Research Journal, 8, 205-217.

-Brad OH Inc.

Single Serving Stories Series- ‘In That Number’

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Under the Green Desk Lamp…

Green DesklampIn addition to regular blog articles and my published novels, I’ve also written several Single Serving Stories over the years. Some have been published in anthologies like ‘Between the Shelves’, ‘Edmonton: Unbound’, and ‘All Mapped Out’. Others have been shared exclusively on this blog via the publication platform Smashwords.

Recent changes to the Smashwords platform has made it a less reliable option however, and therefore an exciting change has come to Brad OH Inc.

I will be re-sharing in full—un-edited and un-abridged—all Single Serving Stories previously published on Smashwords with Brad OH Inc. as the new, exclusive provider. All text will be provided in full, with no download necessary. If Smashwords don’t like that, they can message our complaints department.

This project will culminate in a couple of heretofore unpublished Single Serving Stories, so even the most dedicated of readers will have something to look forward to.

Today we share our fourth Single Serving Story, ‘In That Number’. This one was inspired by an amazing experience I once had at a concert down in New Orleans, and was a precursor to the ‘The Evocation Series‘ of articles, which you can find using the Search Bar.

As an added bonus, if anyone e-mails or comments with a correct explanation of the [incredibly artistic] cover art below, a prize may or may not be arranged.

We had all followed along in the steps of those who’d gone before. With so many disparate justifications we’d went on our way, trusting always that the path would show us safely through the darkness. No one could say where we were going… only that we had to keep on; to continue until we’d found what was promised to us.

Now, I held my head high as I marched by them in the red light of the low hanging moon. Even in my most sombre reflections, I had never been able to fully anticipate the depth of this day’s mood. Nor had I ever dreamed as I rose that morning that the sun which burned away my slumber would finally fail to complete its cycle.

On that morning I’d walked among them, all of us equal on the precipice which we had constructed. That seemed like another time now, a forgotten age when our footsteps all fell together, and the joint direction of our path was the shared responsibility of all.

That was before the signal came… before the numbers were given. Now I could see them to either side, reaching and calling as they trailed endlessly off out of sight, into the distance of the world I was now leaving forever. When the march was over, and we had passed out of this place, I knew they would remain. What would be left to them? That was not for me to know.

They were packed in tightly to both sides of us, yet I focussed only on their eyes, remembering the way they’d shrunk down to pinholes through midnight when it had all begun. The trumpet had sounded, rending from the world all other sound and thought, and the sun had faded away like the shredded remnants of dreams come morning.

Had my eyes done the same? I couldn’t say, but even as the march continued, the thrill which had risen in my stomach shook me still to the core. Many around me had fallen to their knees at the sudden trill, lamenting their misfortune for having believed that mere words could alter fate. Then the moon had turned, the familiar blue-white of its surface blushing like the water around a fresh kill, and its shimmering light had fallen down upon the world like a torrent of blood.

How long had we known it was coming? How many had listened? It had been spoken for as long as anyone could recall… written in the most sacred of books—screamed from the most dilapidated of street corners. Certainly none could have denied the truth, and yet the crowd to be left behind—the unnumbered—were beyond count, making the orderly lineup filing by seem inconsequential in comparison.

There could be no doubt that of the millions in that thriving mob, many of them would be known to me. Family and friends; bitter enemies and long-forgotten loves. I’d tried to tell them all. I’d spoken of it whenever I found the opportunity, and remember still the scorn and derision with which I had been met; the pain which was imparted upon me with each sneer, each denial.

Now I had my number, and they called to me, their fingers searching helplessly as I passed. I had no words for them—what before would not suffice, could now offer no succour. They knew by this point. Quite simply—it could no longer be denied.

Some of their faces showed pain or doubt—the rest gaped blankly. Perhaps some still failed to process the extent of the change to come—the trials and strife that were in store for them.

It wasn’t that they’d been complacent. None had ever denied the need for change. Nobody had missed the breaking point as it approached. Some had spoken of revolution, others of revelation. Many had spoken of changing the path, while others had actively steered toward the right.  Most had shared in the speaking alone, but when the world roils, speech alone offers little repose.

It had never been up for vote. Debates had spun their wheels as they always had, their engines of change providing only smoke and ruckus. It was enough for some. When it had come down to action, most had somberly admitted the necessity quickly enough, or else blanched at their opportunity to deny it. Then they would keep steady on their path—their eyes searching desperately for someone else to change the course. It wasn’t that they didn’t agree. It was, most often, that they were simply afraid.

Would they ever know where we went? Watching us now—their eyes alight with helpless wonder—did they question their decisions? If the opportunity was given, would they trade their passivity for a chance to stand in this number, or would they remain crippled by fear; hamstrung by seeds of doubt?

The worries of the world were the forgotten trinkets of childhood now, discarded carelessly upon the floor of society when suddenly innocence is ended by the first sight of blood. With the blaring of the trumpet, the freedom of choice had gone. The numbers were given, the lineup was formed, and the rest had only to wait on the changes to come.

Of those I had truly loved I had no account. Were they in this number, walking somewhere in the line pressing ever onward all about me? Or were they left among those who watched, wondering forever about my fate? Would we be reunited at the end, or had we been sundered forever by the depth of my own conviction? That knowledge as well was beyond me, but as my steps fell, I could not say which fate I would choose for them.

Staring into the vast distance beyond, I considered my own fate. I’d wanted the change as much as the rest; meditated upon it daily. I knew the others had too. Looking around upon those locked in step with me; I felt a kinship unknown to me when the sun had still shone upon our town. They were all following the same path I was, and that alone sufficed to make us one. None of us in this line would be allowed to see the changes to come—by the time they were realized, we would be far, far gone.

Even now, I could not fail to wonder what would remain. It would not be for me—I was leaving with the chosen ones—but what of the rest? It had been said that a new world was coming, and that the sun would rise again on a land cleansed of its weariness.

But that time was not now.

It was hard to believe, despite its being the only certainty I’d ever held. Every day of my waking life I’d dreamed of this stand, yet now the tremble in my spine betrayed my trepidation, and with each step of the march my sense of awe threatened to overwhelm the eternal strength of my resolve.

Would our leaders weep at their naivety? Would they repent of their ill-advised efforts—the endless negotiating and rationalizing they had applied to human desire? When finally the air again was pure, and there was food on every table, would they understand the need for this separation… the reason for the numbers? Would they understand why we had gone, or would they merely start again?

I would not be around to know.

The red of the moon was blinding now, combatting the flare of the trumpet for dominance over all the senses of man. Brought together by our numbers, we passed through it like silhouettes, greys and blacks against the crimson—we were all going the same way now.

Everyone present, in their own way, were waiting to see just what sort of world had been ordained for them. Some would be here to see, others would not. The world had been divided, and shattered shards of the lie called ‘unity’ snapped and cracked under the footsteps of the chosen ones.

We had all been traveling in the footsteps of our elders, each one trying to wring truth from the soiled rags of rumours and empty promises. Now my footsteps fell in rhythm with the rest of the numbered, as still the trumpet sounded… again and again, as if the significance of the moment may still be lost on those who still harboured doubt.

It was of no account now. The choices had been made, and I was on my way. On and on I marched, knowing always that I was headed to the only place which remained to me. I was in that number, and that was all that mattered.

Acknowledgement: Inspired in part by ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’—with particular credit given to the ‘Bruce Springsteen- Live in Dublin’ version.

-Brad OH Inc.