Before The Run

That's No Fun

A Contextual Forword:

As I continually prep for my two upcoming NaNoWriMo projects (prep meaning playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Netrunner way too damn much and rewatch Psycho Pass) I got sidetracked along the way with a minor contest held by Fantasy Flight Games and hosted minorly by the podcast Terminal7. Llllllllink! *https://www.idlethumbs.net/terminal7* The prize for it was a hardcover limited edition of the new Android novella written by Leigh Alexander. Well I believe it's Leigh Smith now as she got married. Congratz!

During NaNoWrimo I was going to attempt to write an Android novella of my own for funsies and then refocus on writing the lore for my friends card game. Whenever I write something studying the genre is a must so I can make it as good as possible. So diving heavily into genre is a good way to find new content. Shadowrun and the Android books are nigh perfect reference material for my upcoming projects, Psycho Pass' themes are carried well via their diverse villains, I still haven't watched Ghost in the Shell (please don't kill me) but I'm so ready. And etcetera and so on and so forth.

My point is that Monitor is literally mandatory reading in my life along with the slew of new Android novellas coming out. Incidentally,

THANKS FOR MESSING UP MY PLANS FOR MY PROJECT BY ANNOUNCING A BOOK ABOUT KEN TENMA FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES. MAKE ME READ MORE WHY DON'TCHA.

But yes, the Terminal7 contest was simply meant to be a fun little thing for the book. So naturally I went full try hard mode cause #IWANTGIMME.  I had to write it fast and it's probably my least favorite thing I made so far. But practice is practice nonetheless. Humbly I wanted to wait till they officially posted a new episode before I prematurely touted my minor victory online.

The topic of the contest was to imagine that you were striving for a position at NBN and had to submit something that would convince an executive your right for the position.

I listened to that idea. Mulled it over.

And well...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Humming noises. Maybe be an air cooling unit? Virt displays lining the lobby? Did virt monitors make noises these days? Remembering details like that was something of a chore in this atmosphere.

I remember reading post after post in chatspaces and on blogs. Walking into an NBN office you could feel the eyes on you. Bearing down and honing in on your every movement. Algorithms coldly scrutinizing your choices and then fine tuning that data to more efficiently send pop up ads to your PAD based on your "preferences".

Smoke must make a killing off that ad blocker application.

My fingers wouldn't stop their nonsensical rapping at my side. Supposin' I should calm myself and focus on something other than getting home in time to catch the mailman. They might identify me as a "suspicious character" after the fact. Supposin' there's quite a number of things I could do to pull this off smoother.

But honestly now that's no fun.

My PAD's preset alarm thrummed. T-minus five right?

After a collecting breathe, I finally affixed my tie so that I looked at least semi presentable. Then moved towards the front desk.

"Excuse me. My interview with Ms. Atravar wash scheduled for noon correct?"

The receptionist took a moment to process my question. It was a bit strange talking to a receptionist that wasn't an AI, or a bioroid, or a clone for that matter. Spending the majority of my time hooked up to my rig meant long stretches of staring at the abstract landscape of cyberspace. Only occasionally awaking from my synthetic dream to pay the Tenma clone delivering my pizza with medium size gog slices on it. This man was human through and through however. Maybe this firm prefered human labor to the alternative. Or maybe they caved to social pressures of the Human First movement. Who knows? Not me. Who cares?