Release date: November 23, 2014
Subgenre: Dytopian, Science Fiction, Cyberpunk
About Maze of Fates
Agnise would do anything for her lover, Dolores, including selling
sexual favours in the sleazy underworld of Dominion City. They work
together out of The Elite Lounge, where their employer, Silla, has
become entangled in their romantic affairs. Into this love triangle
arrives the unwanted attentions of their gangland boss, Zoot.
Their association with the Madame of the Lounge was supposed to protect the lovers from the perils of the job. But, Zoot's intention to have Agnise and Dolores satisfy his every whim as his personal slaves, leaves Silla in a position of power from which she can dictate the course of their lives. Agnise, however, has other ideas. She will fight tooth and nail, doing whatever it takes to protect the love she shares with Dolores.
Their association with the Madame of the Lounge was supposed to protect the lovers from the perils of the job. But, Zoot's intention to have Agnise and Dolores satisfy his every whim as his personal slaves, leaves Silla in a position of power from which she can dictate the course of their lives. Agnise, however, has other ideas. She will fight tooth and nail, doing whatever it takes to protect the love she shares with Dolores.
Excerpt:
Having relinquished control
of the skidoo, Agnise brought the flyer in to land on the bustling verge of
Kandinsky plaza, by the steps leading up to the imposing House of the Specious
Charlatan with its grandiloquent facade.
Next, she took hold of the
erstwhile pilot by his surprisingly spindly and insubstantial neck, threatening
him with further violence by clenching her other fist. The feller’s chunky, angular
oddball head turned a deepening scarlet and purpling blue.
“I’ll take the wings; they’ll be
plenty enough help. Just get the fuck out now, so I don’t have to hurt you
again...”
The warning fell on deaf ears,
“This isn’t what it seems, I can assure you...”
Futile pleading, all for nought:
“Funny, cuz it seems like a skidjacking to me...” Agnise struck the pilot in
his elongated face and hoisted him by the seat of his troobs up and over the
rim of the Starburst, sending him sprawling in a contorted heap upon the
polished and shining steps of the house of credulous worship.
“There are people who can help;
it’s my job to persuade you...” The smartly-dressed freak was unusually
insistent, to the point of being annoyingly so.
“Just a tip...” Agnise dispensed
a little wisdom whilst settling into the pilot’s seat and gunning the zooter,
preparing to scoot, “...next time, try sending a woman and I might not punch
her in the face.”
“Wait...” The spindly dude tried
again, pluckily, “...I’m an androgyne.”
This announcement caught Agnise a
little by surprise, but she didn’t get what the creep stood to gain from it.
And, nor was she hanging around
to find out: “Well, try putting on a dress...”
Firing up the SpankMobile, Agnise
quit the scene lickity-splitly, leaving the vehicle’s owner agape in her wake
as, in no time, the Starburst melted into the twinkling brilliance of the cold
Dominion night.
Putting the encounter from her
mind, Agnise proceeded to address her options...
Nice set of wings: Could take her
anywhere she might want to go.
Next requirement: Credit. She had
funds stashed away which didn’t require signing-off by His Zootness, but, if
she accessed them right then, that would lead the Yardees straight to her.
She’d need to hit on a friendly and it needed to be someone unconnected to the
Yard. Wray at The Crookery would wait, Agnise wasn’t taking the gift of a ride
back anywhere near The Vapours, she was putting distance between her and The
Wrecking Yard; the further the better. So, that made The Elite Lounge and the
Hot Plate out of bounds. At least, until Agnise could obtain an arsenal and
return all guns blazing... take the fuckers down.
She thought of an old flame, a
total crackball called Cheeba; dozen-daisy crazy with a rocket in her socket.
Agnise had been tight with her as a teenster, back in the days before Dolores
blew up into her life and wondered if Cheeba still hung with the Holy Rollers
at the Mission over in SkankVille, which was nothing like as religious as it
sounded. The Mission was home to a pseudo-cult getting fat on the tax breaks
and kickbacks made available by State to minority religious orders, of which
there were an ever greater proliferation, thanks to the scheme. In reality, the
Mission was a happening hotspot, raging any time of day or night – An
all-round, general palace to debauchery. They justified their religious status
by defining themselves as an ecstatic cult deeply devoted to the Dionysian rite
of bacchanal and, in their devotion, the Holy Rollers were kept busy; it became
a vocation, almost.
Even to a good-time girl like
Agnise, the Holy Rollers dedication to the cause was mighty impressive and
actually, maybe, a little disconcerting. So, hell yeah, why wouldn’t Cheeba
still be hanging out down there – it was the kind of place that could cope with
her...
Using the ComsTex on the Orion’s
dashboard, Agnise dropped Cheeba a shout to let her know that she was heading
her way.
Then, she opened up the Starburst
and let that Gazoota fly...
Amazon
About Geronimo Bosch
Some of my best ideas arrive when I'm sleeping.
You know the type: Some clown with a melted face offers me a bag of jelly beans that contains the whole damn Multiverse; each one I eat is me chomping down an entire Universe... this one's sweet... and this one's really bitter. That one tasted like gorgonzola!
And it's not as if the clown has any qualms about this senseless devouring of reality... I ask the freak: "What happens when I eat the Universe that we're in right now...?"
And, the weirdo just looks at me with eyes that have seen too much of the heart of every star; have been baked hard, then melted, and ultimately screwed - and he says to me, this Dream Peddler, he says, "Aaah, there you go laddie: we're in all of them, at the same time, for all of eternity..."
Then, he starts to laugh, maniacally, in the manner of someone who's been given far too much adulation for far too long, and when I look again into the bag of jelly beans, I realise that I've been eating pellets of dung all along.
That sort of thing.
I like to channel a sense of dream absurdity and multi-textural reality into the high-octane, psychedelia of the dystopian, cyberpunk sci-fi that I write. It seems to me an adequate form for satirising the sheer, unbridled lunacy of life on Earth as a human in the 21st century.
Because if you forget to smile and laugh, you go mad...
You know the type: Some clown with a melted face offers me a bag of jelly beans that contains the whole damn Multiverse; each one I eat is me chomping down an entire Universe... this one's sweet... and this one's really bitter. That one tasted like gorgonzola!
And it's not as if the clown has any qualms about this senseless devouring of reality... I ask the freak: "What happens when I eat the Universe that we're in right now...?"
And, the weirdo just looks at me with eyes that have seen too much of the heart of every star; have been baked hard, then melted, and ultimately screwed - and he says to me, this Dream Peddler, he says, "Aaah, there you go laddie: we're in all of them, at the same time, for all of eternity..."
Then, he starts to laugh, maniacally, in the manner of someone who's been given far too much adulation for far too long, and when I look again into the bag of jelly beans, I realise that I've been eating pellets of dung all along.
That sort of thing.
I like to channel a sense of dream absurdity and multi-textural reality into the high-octane, psychedelia of the dystopian, cyberpunk sci-fi that I write. It seems to me an adequate form for satirising the sheer, unbridled lunacy of life on Earth as a human in the 21st century.
Because if you forget to smile and laugh, you go mad...
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