Sentence
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
This is the opposite of solitary confinement. It’s called ‘tearing down the firewalls’. They’ve removed my filters. I am plugged into the raw datafeed now for the entire world.
The receivers in our heads are tuned to accept the messages of friends. They are tuned to receive only the transmissions of the channels we’ve subscribed to. Our lives are spent testing, trying, and then sculpting and whittling our channels down to a comfort level that allows us access to friend’s emails, VHBlogs, and current local news, whatever we’re interested in.
My data crimes have been numerous. Previous punitive measures were unsuccessful.
My headcase was cracked after the sentence and my CPTU was infected with probes far beyond my capability for defense.
They brought the noise.
I’m stumbling through the streets with a rage of static in my head. Every trivial conversation is mine to overhear. Every phone call. Every voicemail. Every e-mail. Every h-mail. Every advertisement in the midst of every show on every one of the millions of the 24 hour-a-day channels. There is no rest. There is no pause. I have learned to sleep with this noise.
From every major network down to every teenager’s pirate station. From every bot programmed to spam to every fanatic with a grudge for the whole world to hear. They removed all of my illegal codebreakers so every encrypted message hisses like static now. There are a lot of them.
In front of my eyes, pictures overlaid on pictures flicker past in an endless barrage of logos, news feeds, and entertainment.
I am blind and deaf with data. My own thoughts are only one layer amongst billions.
They will turn it off by remote three months from now.
Or I may turn it off before them. The only way I can.
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows
The Past
365tomorrows launched August 1st, 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since. Our stories are a mix of those lovingly hand crafted by a talented pool of staff writers, and select stories received by submission.
The archives are deep, feel free to dive in.
Flash Fiction
"Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated."
Kathy Kachelries
Founding Member
Submissions
We're open to submissions of original Science or Speculative Fiction of 600 words or less. We are only accepting work which you previously haven't sold or given away the rights to. That means your work must not have been published elsewhere, either in print or on the web. When your story is accepted, you're giving us first electronic publication rights and non-exclusive subsequent publication rights. You retain ownership over your story. We are not a paying market.
Voices of Tomorrow
Voices of Tomorrow is the official podcast of 365tomorrows, with audio versions of many of the stories published here.
If you're interested in recording stories for Voices of Tomorrow, or for any other inquiries, please contact ssmith@365tomorrows.com