Note: Been busy all week writing assignment for Professional Writing 2: Writing Across Fields. Pro Writing 1 entry can be found here. Apart from writing things like press release and such, the last part of the assignment is a freeform 1000-word write-whatever-the-hell-you-want deal. So I did a short story. Not really happy with it because to keep it to around 1000 words, I had to edit out a lot of elements that flesh out these characters’ online relationship with each other. Friends to the End Drained and bone-weary, Abu fell onto a large, dusty rock in the middle of the near-empty city. Several heartbeats later Chong came upon him. It took Chong only two seconds to identify him. “Abu?” he said. Panicked, Abu sat up quickly, his arm reaching for his backpack. Chong interjected quickly with his arms in front of him and palms outwards, “Hey! It’s me. It’s Chong!” […]
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Moment of Faith
Note: This short story is slightly edited from a 1500 word assignment for Professional Writing 1: Core Competency submitted on July 14. I thought it would be prudent not to throw around too many (or too funky) posthuman science fiction concepts in this story, just in case the tutor would be unable grok it. Faith Jinnouchi drew her Ruger-Miroku Egocapture pistol from her overcoat pocket. She casted her Ego Enforcement Department ID across the local network to all the other patrons of the café. Her words rang like a bell across the café. “Somerville Olafsson. Your Ego ID has been confirmed to be false. You are under arrest for being an Altered Ego under New Amsterdam’s EED Regulations Ten-Seventy.” The Egocapture pistol’s smartlink had confirmed this criminal act. So Faith fired at the distressed Olafsson. Transferring an Ego from one shell to another takes hours of scanning a neural scanning, […]
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A Bunch of Boys Bled on Boulders By the Beach
by Khairul Hisham Note: This essay is slightly edited from a 1000 word assignment for Professional Writing 1: Core Competency submitted last Sunday June 30. The story is a composite of several experiences I had as a teenager. Not sure if the right people as mentioned were present for the bulk of this story. If you’re reading this and you were there but I didn’t mention you, let me know. Not you, Ming Fang. You pipe down. The cerulean sky had not the slightest taint of cloud above us as we dismounted our bicycles upon our arrival at Teluk Batik beach. I don’t recall whose idea it was but it was the consensus among the four of us that we would walk the trail over the hills to Teluk Rubiah beach and then headed back to Teluk Batik by way of the shore. Ming Fang adjusted his glasses and excitedly […]
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My Pet Cthulhu
It was show and tell time at school, so little Ayumu Kasuga brought her pet that she found washed ashore along Osaka bay. She could not really recall how she came to have it, or how she brought it home… or even how she got it to school for show and tell, but there it was like a shadow upon a shadow deep from a lingering nightmare. When it was her turn she began to speak. She was somewhat aware that she spoke in a tongue both beautiful and ugly to hear but she thought nothing of it. Some of the sounds she made did not seem possible to have vocalised by a human but she also thought nothing of this. But her voice carried, and everyone who heard it came – even ones who were too far away to listen. Soon her class was filled with students from other […]
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