Author: Mike

Hello, my name is Mike Jackson. If you have any comments about the post you have just read I'd love to read them.
A frail dying old man, emaciated face with sunken cheeks and deep wrinkles. Wearing a heavy, rusty cyberpunk neuro-helmet over his head with glowing red interface lights.
Posted in stories

Lost Memories: A Tale of Memory Extraction at Seventy-Three

Posted on by Mike

They told me it would be painless. They always tell you it will be painless.

I was seventy-three when they fitted the first interface. A volunteer, they called me. Pioneer. That word tasted sweet once. Now it sits in my throat like old copper wire. They needed someone whose mind had already softened at the edges, they said. Someone whose memories had grown loose, easy to pull free like teeth from rotting gum. The young ones held too tight. Their thoughts fought back. Mine, they said, would cooperate.

Continue reading “Lost Memories: A Tale of Memory Extraction at Seventy-Three” →
Posted in Featured, stories

After

Posted on by Mike

The appointment ran fourteen minutes over schedule. Sandra noted this on her way out, because noting things was easier than feeling them.

Outside, the Compliance Centre smelled of rain and exhaust. March in Manchester. She pulled her coat tighter and walked, because the form she’d signed said walking is encouraged as a mood-regulating activity and she was, above all else, a person who followed instructions now.

Continue reading “After” →
Posted in stories

The Finishing Touch

Posted on by Mike

The old man’s hands didn’t tremble anymore. That was the first thing people noticed, though they rarely lived long enough to mention it to anyone.

“Hold still, dear,” he murmured, tilting her chin upward with one weathered finger. The brush, so small, so impossibly fine, traced the curve of her lower lip. Vermillion. Always vermillion.

Continue reading “The Finishing Touch” →
Posted in Featured, stories

The Cost of an Apple

Posted on by Mike

The child places the coins on the counter. Copper, not credit. The shopkeeper doesn’t look up from her screen.

‘Just this,’ the child says.

The apple sits between them, bruised along one side. Through the window, the grey towers catch the afternoon light, their upper floors bright with panels that drink the sun. Down here, the queue stretches into the street. Nobody speaks. The shopkeeper’s fingers move across her screen, logging, calculating.

Continue reading “The Cost of an Apple” →
Landscape photograph of a medical waiting room where seven people sit beneath a digital clock frozen at 10:47. An elderly woman watches a cloudy fish tank with three goldfish circling. A woman in a purple cardigan stands with a handbag, a child kneels on the floor with a wooden block, a man in paint-spattered overalls enters Room 3, and a magazine lies on the floor while others scroll on their phones.
Posted in Featured, stories

The Queue At 10:47

Posted on by Mike

Margaret has been watching the fish tank for forty minutes. Three goldfish circle endlessly. The water needs changing.

“…said it was benign but I don’t trust…”

The woman in the purple cardigan shifts her handbag from one knee to the other. She’s been doing this every few minutes. The leather handle has left a red mark on her wrist.

A child drops a wooden block. It rolls under the radiator. His mother doesn’t notice. She’s staring at her phone, thumb scrolling, scrolling.

Continue reading “The Queue At 10:47” →