lost time incident 71 – abstention

lost time incident 71
Hello how are you I’m fine.

Okay, that’s the formalities out of the way.

I know you haven’t heard from me for a while via this newsletter. I don’t know how you’ve gotten by during the interim. It can’t have been easy for you.

I was thinking I’d start this newsletter back up, on no fixed schedule, because I’m still writing little micro-fiction things and there’s no reason not to share ’em. Especially since I’m on a social media diet at present, so I have the time back I would have spent browsing otherwise.

It’s kind of working already. A few days ago I had a multi-hour productive streak and finished gathering together bits of fiction that I’ll be turning into a self-published e-book this year. Now all that’s left is to rearrange everything, rewrite, edit, come up with a title, etc. etc. etc. But the heavy lifting of cutting-and-pasting-stuff-all-into-one-place is done.

When I’m not working on that e-book project, maybe I’ll be here on this newsletter, making something smaller that can go out the door with much less effort, so I can get that immediate serotonin hit that comes from accomplishment. Thanks for reading this and helping my brain get high on drugs it makes for itself! BAM!

Anyway here’s some stuff to read:

two game figures, a hacker and a cat burglar, standing on a cardboard square labeled COMPUTER ROOM

trying to save some time on this script by setting up all the characters in advance so I can just cut and paste later

GOOD COP:

BAD COP:

OK COP:

FORENSICS COP:

YET ANOTHER COP:

COP ON ANOTHER COP’S BACK, PART OF A SECOND LEVEL OF COPS JUST BELOW THE CEILING:

COPS CRASHING THROUGH 1-WAY GLASS, PUSHED FROM BEHIND BY CROWD OF ADDITIONAL COPS BEHIND THEM, ALL TUMBLING FORWARD AT ONCE:

A ROARING SEA OF COPS OUTSIDE, STRETCHING TO THE HORIZON, ALL OF THEIR SUNGLASSES GLINTING, EACH WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT WHERE YOU WERE ON THE DATE OF:

THE CHIEF:

 

oh heck
A general storms into a computer-filled room at the Pentagon, klaxons blaring, red alert lights spinning everywhere.

GENERAL: What’s going on, soldier?

A soldier taps at his unresponsive keyboard and every key causes his computer to make a “darn!” sound. “darn! darn-darn-darn!”

SOLDIER: I’m afraid… we’ve been hecked, General. Someone hecked our system.

“darn!”

 

wallets out
Okay, wallets out, capitalist scum, ’cause we’re disrupting the dirt market.

How? Easy: There’s an app. Duh.

You want dirt: Use the dirt app. Dirt comes to you. Fills your home. So much dirt. You unlock loyalty rewards like a marble stone with your name on it, says you’re in the dirt right there.

We got the dirt network in place. My pal Dave knows coding. You give us the funding and we’ll have everyone six feet under and the profits won’t stop ever, not ever. Money forever, dirt forever.

 

ending theme song
That’ll do it for this installment! Thanks again for reading. If you’re an artist and you’d like to know how much money I’d spend purchasing art to go into a vanity e-book project because you might want to exchange art for that money, please do get in touch because the number given will almost certainly be “More than would be reasonable.” What can I say? I like my creative projects to lose money.

Just… a lot of money.

I am a fool.

What else. If you like horror movies, THE RITUAL on Netflix is quite good. If you don’t like horror movies, uh, don’t ask any questions about the small piles of dirt that have been appearing outside your front door in the morning or the sounds of soft breathing that can be heard if you press your ear against that door, all the way up until dawn breaks and everything goes quiet.

If you like all sorts of music, well, so do I, so you might want to subscribe to The Tuned In, a different mailing list I run where I send folks 45-minute music mixes of sounds from around the world, which critics have called “exactly 45 minutes long”.

I think that’s everything, now get out.

—Michael Van Vleet


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