Futurismic's latest short science fiction story is online. Changing The Tune
(by Jason Stoddard) is a sweet dystopian short about a world where every utterance is subject to offended micro-lawsuits from eavesdropping, entrenched Gen-X and Boomer busybodies who pretend affront to increase their incredible wealth:
"What is it you're doing again?" he'd told me one night before we left the UCLA dorms, but I'd only been half-sober and half-listening. I was more interested in how he was rolling his student loans into a small business loan that was 50 times larger, without ever having made a payment.
"Found media," he said. "Phonecam pix, IM threads, MPEG captures, all that stuff from the dawn of the media age. We track down where you appear, put it together into a coherent format, do enhancement or repair work on it, and even storyboard it."
"For almighties."
"Yeah, usually. But it's interesting, all the stuff that's got caught in the net."
"And how many boomers have had their saggy breasts bouncing on some VGA-res screen," I added.
Keith nodded. "Yeah, and that, too. Some of them like it, some of them don't. You let them pick and choose."
Working with wrinkly old fucksters all day, greedy grubby bastards always trying to see how they can forgo payment, or even fuck you with a suit, I thought. No thanks.
(Thanks, Jeremy!)
