NOVELS and SHORT STORIES

 

REBODY: My SF-Satire.

You can read chapters 1 - 4 by clicking the menu link.

 

An extract from chapter 4:

 

Light! I’m awake. I remember now. Yes. ReBody, Inc. and that bastard Stevens. He turned me off with his little remote gizmo, like a television. Got to do something about that.
          Where am I? Someone’s apartment, by the look of things. Let’s take a look around. I have rudimentary control of my tracks now, and I have two metal extensor arms with crude grapples.
Stevens did say I’ll get much better at using them, but it’ll take time for my brain to form new pathways.
I must be okay for battery power; I’ve already experienced what happens when I get low on juice. Pain. That’s what happens.
          My tracks make a dull whirring sound as I circle the room.
The floor is some kind of light blue plastic material, by the look of it. My tracks don’t slip.
There’s a wardrobe-style mirror on the far wall.
I make my way over there, avoiding a large table and four chairs in the center of the room.
          Ugh. But the blotches on my skin have faded. Hmm. Have I been modified again? There seem to be some extra mechanical bits and pieces in a tool holder on my front surface. Wonder what they —
          “Hey! Hugh dombot! You awake?”
          Uh? I reverse the potential to one track and feed power to both, rotating in place.
          A pair of rather large boots, of dull-gray metallic material, comes into my field of view. Two legs, clad in dull black fabric. My video resolution isn’t much.
I tilt my head back inside its Perspex case.
A tall, well-built Tex-Mex man towers over me.
          “My name is Francisco Merinda. This is my place. Just do as you’re told and there won’t be any trouble.”
          “Er, where is this?” I intend to say this quite loudly, but there something’s wrong with my air supply. A tiny little voice comes out. I sound like one of those old-fashioned record players, the type that you wind up with a handle. Oh, shit.
          “They told me to expect trouble at first. Said I’d have to house train you.” Merinda bends down, his face looms over me. His lips are drawn back.
          “Okay, shithead. Get this. I work during the day. You clean up. I paid ReBody two hundred grand for you, and another eight grand for attachments. Vacuum cleaner, dish wash, boot polish, shit scraper, can opener, juicer and corer. Got that? An’ energy, she expensive. So I got to go now. An’ so do you.”

He pulls out a tiny black clicker, points it at me . . .

 

Appointment in Samara: My Action-Adventure novel.

You can read chapters 1 - 4 by clicking the menu link.

An extract from chapter 2:

            The Mattawa pressed the trigger. With a loud bang the guy's head blew apart. Bright blood, serum, and something that looked like hominy grits flew across the windscreen and everyone nearby. Women screamed. Two of them fainted, falling inert to the ground, while the men looked stunned. The driver of the mammy wagon fell to his knees and began to pray. I nearly shit myself.
            I turned to the scar-faced man on my right. "Bastards!"
            "They make the rules."
            One of the Mattawa opened the boot of the Mercedes while two others dragged the driver of the wagon, hands cuffed behind his back, toward the car. The man looked frantically around but no-one wanted to know. A large stain appeared at his crotch.
            I imagined how he felt.
            The stain spread. The men pushed the driver against the fender and then reached down, grabbed his feet, and flipped him into the trunk. I heard him yell in fear then the sound was cut off as the Mattawa slammed the trunk lid shut.
            "The one who was shot was luckier," scar-face commented. "They keep snakes in there."