YouNiversity 2015 is underway! We are open for business!

Starting September 2015, the YouNiversity will give two students, one in New York City and one in Colorado, the opportunity to do a hybrid mentorship program. Students will work with one of us in person and the other remotely, while developing multimedia skills and improving their artistic talents.

In order to submit, email a 2-3 page writing sample to youniversityproject2015@gmail.com and include your name, address, and phone number. Applicants must be between the ages of 19–55. New York applicants must live in the New York Metropolitan area, to include northern New Jersey and Connecticut. Colorado applicants must live in the Front Range metropolitan area as far north as Boulder and as far south as Pueblo. Applicants must be able to travel to Colorado Springs for occasional meetings.

Entries will be accepted until July 20, 2015.

For more, see our recent press release via Latino Rebels: http://www.latinorebels.com/2015/06/07/the-youniversity-project-seeks-colorado-and-new-york-based-writers/

Graduation – See You Next Year

And so the YouNiversity draws to a close. This experiment has grown in ways neither Chris nor myself ever expected, and we look forward to the year ahead as we put together the YouNiversity 2016. Next year we will focus on Latino writers, and we hope that you see this blog and see the work we have done and decide to participate in future projects. But don’t take our word for how this program has been a success, we recently asked our students for their feedback on the program and here is what they had to say:

“I was both surprised and delighted by how involved everyone in the program was, from the mentors to the participants to the guest speakers. I feel more able to go after my dreams of publishing poetry because of all of the knowledge I have gained from this program. Whereas before I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of receiving my undergraduate degree and then moving away from my contacts in the writing world (my professors and classmates), I now feel more secure in having begun to build a network of helpful and encouraging people.” –Emma Mayhood

“This is an outstanding program. I consider it a privilege of the highest order to be involved with the YouNiversity. It was a detailed and comprehensive full-spectrum introduction to the ins and outs of the publishing process. My initial thoughts were that this was more directly related to actual writing. I think it is fair to describe the program as a mentorship on the business of writing more so than generating creative content. In that regard, it is more valuable than a writing internship. What I mean by that is there are any number of top quality opportunities to learn how to write better. Whereas it seems the “school” for learning the publishing industry is the school of hard knocks with all its attendant mishaps, ripoffs, anxiety, and depression. The value comes from the rarity of what you are doing. Also, we all know if the writing is brilliant but your business skills suck, it effectively cancels the writing.” –Yma Johnson

Emma’s Final Query Letter

Emma Mayhood

emma.mayhood@gmail.com

Attn. Mr. Machlin:

Stagnancy plagues generations that have lost the ability to live in the present and only look ahead, constantly updating and faking connections with a like, a comment, or a link shared, and through this idleness time has collapsed into a fleeting dream.

Your request cannot be processed at this time is a poetry collection exploring relationships forged behind a technological screen and the repercussions of fashioning our relationships after the fleeting nature of technology. Technology both eases and complicates relationships allowing more contact with more people in more places but leading to less time spent in the present. Time has become a convoluted concept we strive to catch up to and grasp. We incessantly ask for more time but its slippery nature prevents us from being able to hold and ultimately capture it. This collection oscillates between immersion in relationships in a technological age, perceived to be contrived, and isolating abstention from the cultural shift entirely. Asking and attempting to answer questions about time, what it means today, and how we can effectively spend it results from the confusion between embracing and renouncing technology.

I am a recent graduate of the Creative Writing program at Eastern Michigan University where we were exposed to various forms of contemporary writing including sound poetry and lyric essay. Coupled with these experiences was my first exposure to social media and the puzzling and, at times, anxious feelings that come with losing personal connections.

This collection focuses on an audience of late teens through mid-thirties who grew up with a plethora of technology and the expectation of constantly emerging technology. The collection is intentionally concise to raise questions about time to explore, reflect, and answer individually. I plan to market using social media in an attempt to reach people who have difficulty separating technology from themselves.

Poems in this collection range from a few lines to a few pages, at times hovering between poetry and prose, and use layout to increase meaning in each poem and the collection. Futurepoem books focuses on innovative and contemporary poetry. This collection asks important questions about how relations between people are mediated by technology.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Emma Mayhood

Yma’s Final Query Letter

Dear Ace/Rock Books,

Set in the post-apocalyptic Blast Lands, Oracle Jack chronicles the journey of a fallen sorcerer-priest as his addiction to red penance fuels a life of increasing violence and criminality. In a world where traffickers and addicts are always shot on sight, Oracle Jack awakens from an overdose to find himself locked up with a junkie called Hanged Man and awaiting an unknown fate. This science fiction novel weaves symbolic imagery from the major arcana of the tarot deck with allegory around mass incarceration, substance abuse, and pharmaceutical experiments on prisoners.

I selected Ace Books for its history of publishing iconic cyberpunk books like Phillip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” and William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.” Oracle Jack is a complex anti-hero in the tradition of bounty hunter Rick Deckard and console cowboy Henry Dorsett Case. He is a marginalized fringe-dweller hustling in a landscape of social decay and unrestrained corporate greed. Novels by Samuel R. Delaney show Ace/Rock Books commitment to the subtleties of world building and craftsmanship at the sentence level.

With two decades as a journalist in San Juan, PR and Ann Arbor, MI, I have seen how poverty, addiction, untreated mental illness, and a society unable to manage these issues leads to rampant incarceration. Oracle Jack comes out of these experiences and my work teaching poetry at a women’s prison.

My short story, “Captain Blood is Coming”, has been accepted for publication in the “Encyclopedia Project Vol. 3 L-Z” edited by Tisa Bryant and award-winning author Miranda Mellis. “August Lokken” will be published in an H.P. Lovecraft-inspired story collection “Chtulhu Lies Dreaming” (Ghostwoods Book, England). “A Bed for Damaris” won first place in the 2012 Current Magazine Poetry and Fiction Contest. In 2015, I received an honorable mention from Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest. I am a master’s candidate in the creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University.

This book will appeal to readers who enjoy science fiction and dystopian novels. The United States marketing strategy includes readings, a book tour, reviews, and interviews networked through my contacts at Eastern Michigan University, the Ann Arbor Area Writers Group, University of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Observer, Drexel University, Aignos Publishing, and Davidson College. I also have editorial connections in England, Portugal, and Puerto Rico. I intend to work with The Michigan Center for the Book and the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association to coordinate regional author events.

My international digital strategy targets the major English-language markets: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. I also plan to market in Latin America with a focus on Puerto Rico. I will use my online presence as an exploration point for the exploding e-book markets in Turkey and China.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Yma A. Johnson

Author Manifesto for Emma Mayhood

In our final month and a half of the YouNiversity Project, we will take what we have learned and apply it to two assignments which are vital for any writer. A public appearance and refining the query letter. To create a public appearance, we will be posting video manifestos proclaiming who we are as writers and what we wish to accomplish with our work. The videos are meant to engage viewers to start a digital conversation with us. Next up is Emma Mayhood, our poet in residence. If you have not read her works for us, scroll down after you see this video. She is the real thing.

Video Manifesto for Jonathan Marcantoni

In our final month and a half of the YouNiversity Project, we will take what we have learned and apply it to two assignments which are vital for any writer. A public appearance and refining the query letter. To create a public appearance, we will be posting video manifestos proclaiming who we are as writers and what we wish to accomplish with our work. The videos are meant to engage viewers to start a digital conversation with us. Our first video is from mentor Jonathan Marcantoni, and can be seen here

Emma’s poetry rewrite

Screen

Peering through the window focus

trees focus screen like memory

approach and see

one scene, another

together residue of the leaves

light squinting through the squares

frame comes into focus

on the tree a painting rustling

the breeze, your hair

the window, your eyes

are closed

in a room without a window

a view but within your mind

memories create

imagination creates

memories

inside this box

of sleep of dreams of daydreams of

what we remember.

On

Rotating

he was reminded

of the again

and again

he watched and

waited

wondering if

when

how

and the infinitesimal

why.

Repetition

he thought

was the answer to re

living

to fixing and re

doing

but he wasn’t

doing living fixing

any

one or thing

he was repeating himself

while others

move.

2

those that present define one another

ration an aspect as distinct, eternity

ration as distinct eternity: a system

measuring passage

I’m interval between two: youth

son, an effort limited before once

in contemporaneous not prehistoric

the sign: experience of, an, the, it

est. life, formal

force son spare hope, take “I’m”

define it?

etc.: proper, ever indefinite

characteristic of

me, relative

me, rhythm

me, duration

it’s poetic

being temporarily present

gain delay into occasion

lock moment: speed to fix 15 minutes

understand one travels quickly with progress

again and again, age at life.

3

The: of event as to (any) future continuous events succeed one another as a distinct eternity to come from measuring or limited between two particulars. end of a prescribed particular (formal term) imprisonment take a definite point break. extend rapidity of duration.

rest.

passages donate pertaining speed, stoke late attack. unisons limit early quit. achieve good, understand correct, observe quick quickly, alternate one’s own, designate one’s experience (me) (one).

rest.

Oracle Jack in the Blast Lands (rewrite) by Yma Johnson

The Magician was late so Oracle Jack reached beneath the stolen skyrider’s seat and pulled out a box of Red Penance. He needed to get high and make sure no one saw him. Jack scanned the loading dock and adjacent warehouse. A group of human-replicant hybrids moved with mechanical purpose between the building and trucks, probably loading up black market water and reflective tunics bound for rich districts beyond the Blast Lands. Nothing to worry about there.

The police had stopped coming here once Earth blew off-orbit frying half of humanity and most of the planet to hell. The Blast Lands rose from the ashes, isolated and lawless. A perfect place, the only place to dump a stolen skyrider. Also a perfect place to get dragged into the sun and have your dope stolen. Once an oasis of succulents, date palms, and blue streams, it had become a parched obscenity littered with black craters, outcroppings and boulders. An occasional tree twisted in the landscape, white and waiting to ignite in the relentless heat.

Sweat spread out in musty semicircles from under Jack’s arms. The skyrider’s cooling unit rattled with ominous inconsistency. He had run it hard to make his meeting with The Magician. If it died in the Blast Lands, so would he. Fleeting fear of death melted into gratitude for the second moon, extra light made an ambush unlikely. Oracle Jack jerked a test tube caked with Iridium 5 substrate from his tunic pocket and stirred in six drops of Red Penance. He shook the tube until its contents liquefied and glowed phosphorescent magenta in the peculiar light which wasn’t daylight, but couldn’t be called night either

Jack knew about the cameras and that The Magician hated his runners to get high, but the crawl of need crushed better judgment. He had snatched the skyrider as a special order, so if The Magician didn’t want him getting high by the docks, then he could steal his own shit. His guts clenched and steamed, with trembling fingers, he shoved one end of the straw in the liquid and the other in his nostril then inhaled. Too hard, too greedy. He choked on the burn as it cut corrosive lines down the back of his throat. Before the drug blew back from stomach to brain he knew he had taken too much. Oracle Jack’s skin glowed magenta. He clawed at the skyrider’s steering control, and as the drug crested he thought, I don’t want to die like this. Legs jerked, arms flailed of their own accord; his whole world shook with the percussive ricochet of gun on bone. In the seizure’s empty afterglow, chin dangling to chest he saw his marrow glowing white through flesh and started to scream.

***

Oracle Jack jerked awake in a horizon of pain which expanded as he became more alert. His eyes shifted into focus and the sting of his flesh on unfamiliar fabric alerted him that he was no longer in the skyrider. The bed with thick sheets would have been comfortable to anyone but a rave fiend in the belly of withdrawal, comfortable to anyone who didn’t want to peel their own skin off with a knife. He was in a large gray-walled room, perhaps some kind of metal. In fact, everything – the floor, ceiling, sheets, the twin sinks – was the same antiseptic shade of gunmetal gray. A cloth divider separated him from what? The question bloomed with an instinct to run his hands over his head. He was bald. Someone had shaved him bald.

“What the fuck?” Jack lurched from the bed in a clumsy frenzy. His feet tangled in the sheets, and he snatched at the dividing cloth tearing it loose from the ceiling as he lost his balance and thudded to the floor. A thin bald man, his skin also magenta from a recent overdose, scrambled to the other side of his bed, eyes luminous with terror. Oracle Jack’s heart throbbed in errant beats as he tried to rub away the pain where his knees had struck the ground. The junkie spun in and out of focus as Jack willed his eyes to work. Somewhat recovered from Jack’s startling entry, the man, who was also wearing grey flannel pajamas had edged back towards him.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Fuck no, I’m not okay! Where the hell am I? Who shaved my fucking head?”

“I think it was scorch-proof hybrids,” he said in a loud whisper, half-covering his mouth with one hand. “They call me The Hanged Man.” He paused, looked over his shoulder then stared back at Jack, watery pink eyeballs trembling in his head. Saliva glittered at the corner of his lips. His words erupted in a stammered rush. “I guess they could be human. They look human, but there’s something … I don’t know, not human. They don’t talk. Well sometimes they talk. It’s weird man, I – ”

“Dude, calm down. Please.” Jack waved a hand in the air as though he might diffuse The Hanged Man’s mania. “Where the hell are we?”

The man lowered his voice until it was barely audible, “You tell me, then we’ll both know.”

Oh, God, thought Jack – the skyrider, all his dope, The Magician. Everything was completely fucked up. “How long have I been here?”

“Three maybe four days, not sure,” he said. “Not sure where here is exactly. No, not too sure. I’m The Hanged Man.”

“Yeah, you said that. Oracle Jack.”

“Yeah, yeah. Nice to meet you. Yeah, you been here three days, maybe four – it was a bad overdose.”

There was no such thing as a good overdose. You blew past the high and woke up sick, crazy sick, a ton of wasted rave mix and no buzz. The Hanged Man kept looking over his shoulder like he was trying to catch something or someone sneaking up behind him. His eyes skittered from one corner of the room locked on a spot then moved to another. Jack wished he would stop. The movement was giving him motion sickness, and he looked down at the floor to steady himself.  Jack’s face began to twitch, his hands trembled. He clutched his head and managed to say, “Do you have any dope?” just as the chatters descended. With flesh ache and sudden fury, he was sucked into a tunnel of blinding sound, immersed in the disembodied teeth click, click cracking over and over again.

The Hanged Man scampered to the floor and tried to lift him, “You better get back to bed.” He was smaller than Jack and lost his balance trying to steady both of their weight so he half-yanked, half-dropped Jack into a writhing heap on the bed. The Hanged Man glanced at the door and with a look of pure fright said, “They’ll bring you some mix. Don’t worry they’ll bring it. Push the white button on the side of the bed.”

Oracle Jack dragged the sheets and blankets away from the metal bed frame, and found half a dozen buttons. He mashed them all five or six times and his empty insides rattled as the bed jerked up and down, alternately raising and lowering his feet, head, and midsection.

“No, the white button! Hit the white button!”

Jack forced himself to focus, found the right button, and pressed it so hard his finger cramped. He managed to slow his breathing and burrow into the tangle of bedclothes. Warmth chased down the chatters to low level ticking which, combined with the hum of the cooling system, stabilized his body to a tolerable level of discomfort. This was just the beginning, he had maybe an hour maybe two before another avalanche of chatters descended. Over the next day, acute withdrawal symptoms would lengthen until they gathered into a ceaseless noise storm followed by hallucinations. Jack jabbed the button one more time and stared hungrily at the door. Maybe he could find where the mix was stored.

“Forget about it, man. We’re locked in,” The Hanged Man’s voice came as flat echo bulging in the air around him. “I’ve tried a bunch of times to get out. I don’t know … I was waiting for the Magician in block nineteen. You know The Magician?”

Jack nodded. Everyone knew The Magician.

“I had just boosted this skyrider and I guess the guy was a dope fiend because I found substrate cake and shit ton of Red Penance in the console.” Both of them stared at the door as The Hanged Man sped through his tale squeezing his bald head and rocking back and forth. “There were some works so I decided to bang it.” Jack caught The Hanged Man’s eyes and a jagged silence descended. “I don’t usually do that, I-I like I’m not super into that … you know banging.”

Right, thought Jack. Nobody just decided to bang mix. Needle users were executed, no trial, no jury. Just dragged out behind the black boulders and shot. Jack hated selling to them. They spent big money, but they were also notoriously and unpredictably violent. Bangers didn’t live long in the Blast Lands.

“I only did a little, at least it seemed like just a little, but I od’d. Wicked, wicked overdose, worst I’ve ever had.” The Hanged Man’s voice shook, and for a moment Jack thought he might cry. “But the bones… I saw bones, I saw my own bones through the skin. Now look at this, look at us.” He clutched the sheets, twisting and untwisting them, twisting and untwisting. Then he yelled,  “Look at us! We’re fucked up, man. We’re really fucked up and we’re locked in.”

Out of the sudden silence after The Hanged Man’s, came footsteps. Oracle Jack tensed and The Hanged Man’s eyes widened with fright. He could hear the door unlatch then it slid sideways into the wall with a slow grinding sound. It was made of metal and very thick. No escape. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have rushed the door or been waiting with a weapon. He had no compunction about beating someone beyond recognition to get out of a bad situation. Bangers risked immediate execution, but so did traffickers. After six years in the Blast Lands, he understood survival on a level that most people could never conceive. All that maniac bravado now narrowed to a single point – to stave off the chatters.

Special guest interview with Luigi A. Juarez, who speaks to the YouNiversity about his new book, Covered Paces!

 

Jonathan Marcantoni: How would you describe your style? What is the story behind this book?

Luigi A. Juarez: My writing style leans literary (that is, away from the style of most genre fiction). I teach and study canonical works of literature as a career so I think that makes me subconsciously prefer the freshness of language (phrases and descriptions) over making sure I hit all the watchwords that plot the perfect action scene.

It’s funny, I was at a point where I was writing three short stories at once. The first was a Hollywood satire, the second was a fantastical tale, and the third, a domestic dispute, visceral and ultra-realistic. There was a woman in each of those, and I quickly realized that they could all just be the same person. And so, Linette Velazco came to life as a failed Hollywood actress who’s had her head in the clouds but needs to come back down. It then took me over four years to create a constellation of characters that make sure that happens, as she moves back East to pick up the pieces of her life.

JM: You mention how your style leans literary but that you are also a student and teacher of literary canons. Reading the synopsis I was struck how it reads very much like a traditional romance novel as far as the plot points go, but that the text itself is much more emotionally involved and complex than the usual romantic drama. Is it fair to say that genre tropes are a difficult thing to avoid even as you mold them to your own uses?

LJ: I would say that it was never about me wanting to “subvert” genre. It’s not like I had the romance genre in mind and tried to subvert it. Rather, my subject matter here happens to be the girl meets/loses/what-have-you story which also happens to be a perfect template for category romance, but I approached this with a preference for introspection, as more of a character study, as it were.

The literary writing style also, I believe, lends itself well to creating a timeless piece. I have these modern settings and youthful characters, but the language of introspection has a fundamental classic quality to it. One last thing: writing good genre fiction may be a different beast but in many ways it’s even tougher. There’s definitely an art to crafting the perfect romance or the perfect thriller.

 

JM: What was your methodology in figuring out what to keep and what to excise while you wrote the book?  

LJ: Edits are always difficult but always necessary. My process is I edit things as I go (for better or worse time-wise), but whatever you do has to be in service of the story. So in the case of the Hollywood satire inclusion, I toned that part down considerably to where it’s more about Linette leaving Hollywood but not so much about any kind of satire. Satirizing Hollywood adds nothing to the overall arc of the love story, really. This is just one example.

JM: What about your background or personality allowed you to enter the mind of Linette? Did you seek guidance for writing a female character or what or whom did you model her after?

 

LJ: No guidance, actually (although I did grow up in a very loud house of sisters and aunts). Linette happens to be a woman but the story I wanted to tell was all about how you can shove love off to the side but it has this way of always boomeranging back to you, especially when you least expect it.

 

JM: What emotional experience do you intend the reader to go through in this story?

 

LJ: I hope readers experience a whole range of emotions, actually. Linette’s journey is often sad, often funny (I’m thinking very much about Valeria and Paul’s interactions in the book), but there’s plenty of happy moments, too. Hopefully, I made it so that readers feel they are right beside her as she makes strides to get her life on a path where she assumes complete and total agency.

 

JM: Have you evolved as a writer during the course of writing and editing this book and if yes, how so?

 

LJ: Yes. I’ve evolved in this sense that I feel comfortable writing book-length stories now. Like many writers I know, I started out just writing short stories. Then, I got to the point where I had written enough that I said, “Let me try my hand at a novel.” From here on out, actually, I’d like to write novels.

JM: I think writers who try to do novels first miss out on the fun of short works, which really allow you to find your voice in large part because that lack of intimacy allows you to be more playful. A novel is very much about consistency in tone, character, pacing, etc. which is especially hard to maintain over a long period of time. How did your life, while writing Covered Paces, reflect on Linette’s journey and vice versa?

LJ: I think the important thing is not just to keep writing until you find your voice but also to have enough life experience. And there are some who might disagree, but this especially involves meeting people from parts of the world outside your hometown/city. In my case, I moved up north for college, and then again for grad school. But the point I’m making is that you don’t need to pursue degrees to replicate those things. It’s about making the journey itself, which is what Linette does. Whether you decide to live halfway across the country or accept a new job somewhere else or even just take a few road trips, you need to interact with different kinds of people in different kinds of places to be able to hone your voice.

 

JM: What drives you as a writer and how did that relate to this book?

 

LJ: I’m constantly thinking of original ways to express what I observe. That’s definitely the driver, because you feel gratified whenever you’re able to stand behind what you’ve expressed precisely because it’s your voice that did so. In this book’s case, I wanted to create a modern love story, I wanted it to be told in a classic way, I wanted to render big city life (LA, Miami, Boston) in an accurate way, etc., and all those things combined became my voice.

 

 

JM: What themes in your work stand out to you as particularly important?

LJ: As I’ve stated, love often finds you when you aren’t even looking for it. And that makes other aspects of your life a lot more complicated. This is especially true of your 20’s, which I’ve mentioned in the Press Release for the book (that it’s this weird time in your life where there’s a lot up in the air but you definitely know better about a lot of things). Finally, I do have to mention that it’s important that this be considered a Latino book as well. Like myself, Linette is a Panamanian-American, the first generation in her family to be born in the United States. And like I did, Linette definitely faces some of the burdens of the immigrant child: upward mobility at all costs, and financial-striving over emotional satisfaction. We all know there’s not a lot of money to be made being a writer, and when I told my parents that that’s what I wanted to be, it didn’t go over too well (but they eventually came around).

JM: I like that you brought up your heritage and the immigrant experience, particularly coming from a sub-group of Latinos (Panamanians) which not only Americans but many Latinos do not know much about aside from infamous figures like Noriega or the Panama Canal. What about your culture and your people’s history do you want others to learn from your stories, not just this book, but future ones as well? 

LJ: It’s interesting, I grew up in the Hialeah area of Miami which as many people know is predominantly Cuban. Being Panamanian-American, I’m technically a considered a minority there! So I’ve encountered weird but true Spanish-language differences all my life like how, what my family and Panamá calls “patacones” is what Cubans and many others call “tostones.” This is just one example of many word differences. So I do feel a responsibility to filter my unique experience moving about not just other groups but other sub-groups as well, while still staying true to my own proper heritage and customs.

 

JM: Do you have plans to write stories set in Panama? Do you feel responsibility to be a voice for your community, and if so, what message would you like to convey?
LJ: I’d definitely like to eventually be associated to the literary tradition of Panamá. I kind of “announce” this when I use verses from writer Rogelio Sinán as my novel’s epigraph. Like you mention, not a lot of the country has had the opportunity to voice itself out of common identifiers like the Canal, so I’d like to do so. Currently, the only other Panamanian-American writer who does this is Cristina Henríquez (check out The World in Half, by the way, as it’s pretty awesome). I currently have plans to set my next book entirely in Panamá. I actually test-drive this perspective at the end of Covered Paces, with a chapter that sends several of the characters there briefly.

For more on Luigi and how to purchase Covered Paces, visit his website http://www.luigiajuarez.com

For more on his publisher, Editorial Trance, visit http://www.editorialtrance.com/

Oracle Jack in the Blast Lands by Yma Johnson

For the month of February, our YouNiversity students will be contributing new works to be critiqued. After receiving their critiques from our readers and the mentors, the students will re-post their newly edited works. We ask that your critiques be helpful and honest. Abusive critiques will be deleted.

The Magician was late so Oracle Jack reached beneath the stolen skyrider’s seat and pulled out a box of Red Penance. He needed to get high and make sure no one saw him. Jack absorbed every detail of the loading dock and adjacent warehouse. A teaming mass of human-replicant hybrids, probably loading black market water and reflective tunics into trucks bound for rich districts beyond the Blast Lands. Only hucants could work in the scorch, humans bubbled like skin on a griddle. Although recently, rumors of mass malfunctions among the hucants were sifting like dust through the Leftover Cities. Jack was getting hot, face damp with sweat and the console’s cooling unit had a strange rattle going. He had run the skyrider hard to make it in time to meet The Magician. If the cooling unit died in the Blast Lands, so would he.

The police had stopped coming here once Earth blew off-orbit frying half of humanity and most of the planet to hell. The Blast Lands rose from the ashes, completely lawless. A perfect place, the only place to dump a stolen skyrider. Also a perfect place to get dragged into the sun and have your dope stolen. The oasis of succulents, date palms, and blue streams had become a parched obscenity littered with black craters, outcroppings and boulders. An occasional tree twisted in the landscape, white and waiting to ignite in the relentless heat.

Jack was grateful for the light of the second moon because he could make sure no one snuck up on him. It wasn’t always visible, but it was inextricably linked to the new Earth, the desiccated Earth, a planet with a stringy pulse ringed whose atmosphere had been replaced with viscous globs of pollutants. Oracle Jack jerked a test tube caked with Iridium 5 substrate from his tunic pocket and stirred in six drops of Red Penance. He shook the tube until its contents liquefied and glowed phosphorescent magenta in the peculiar light which wasn’t daylight, but couldn’t be described as night either.

Jack knew about the cameras everywhere and that The Magician hated his runners to get high, but the crawl of need crushed better judgment. His guts clenched and steamed, with trembling fingers, he shoved one end of the straw in the liquid and the other in his nostril then inhaled. Too hard, too greedy. He choked on the burn as it cut corrosive lines down the back of his throat. Before the drug blew back from stomach to brain he knew he had taken too much. Oracle Jack’s skin glowed magenta. He tried to grab the skyrider’s steering control, and as the drug crested he thought, I don’t want to die like this. Legs jerked, arms flailed of their own accord; his whole world shook with the percussive ricochet of gun on bone. In the seizure’s empty afterglow, chin dangling to chest he saw his bones glowing white through flesh. That’s when he started to scream.

***

Oracle Jack woke in a blazing horizon of pain which expanded as he became more alert. His eyes shifted into focus and the sting of his flesh on unfamiliar fabric alerted him that he was no longer in the skyrider. The bed with thick sheets would have been comfortable to anyone but a rave fiend in the belly of withdrawal, comfortable to anyone who didn’t want to peel their own skin off with a knife. The room was large with gray walls, perhaps some kind of metal. In fact, everything – the floor, ceiling, sheets, the matching sinks – was the same antiseptic shade of gunmetal gray. A cloth divider separated him from what? The question bloomed with a simultaneous instinct to run his hands over his head. His fingers still pink from the overdose scrambled across his scalp. Someone had shaved him bald.

“What the fuck?” He lurched out of bed in a clumsy frenzy. Jack’s feet tangled in the sheets and he clawed at the dividing cloth which tore from the ceiling as he lost his balance and thudded to the floor. A thin bald man, his skin also magenta from a recent overdose, scrambled to the other side of his bed, eyes luminous with terror. Oracle Jack’s heart throbbed in errant beats as he tried to rub away the pain where his knees had struck the ground.

The junkie spun in and out of focus as Jack willed his eyes to work. Somewhat recovered from Jack’s startling entry, the man had edged back towards him.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Fuck no, I’m not okay! Where the hell am I?”

“You tell me then will both know.” The man, who wore the same grey flannel pajamas as Jack, was still whispering and his eyes jerked in paranoid little arcs around the room. “They call me The Hanged Man,” he said giving his street name.

“Oracle Jack.”

Jack touched his scalp and his face, which for the first time in months was free of rough stubble. “Who shaved us?”

“I don’t know. I’m freaking out.”

“Do you know how long I’ve been here?” Jack wished The Hanged Man would stop swinging his head from side to side, the movement was giving him motion sickness and he looked down at the floor to steady himself. He was dope sick and very scared, but tried to hide it.

“Three days, maybe four – it was a bad overdose.”

There was no such thing as a good overdose. You blew past the high and woke up sick, crazy sick, a ton of mix wasted and no buzz.

“Are we in jail?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Oracle Jack cocked his head at The Hanged Man who, upon second appraisal, looked younger than he’d first thought. In fact, with his raggedy thinness, light magenta skin, and shaved head he looked almost fetal. “This is definitely not jail. For starters, it’s clean and we have matching pajamas and sheets.”

“Then how come we’re locked in?” The Hanged Man pointed to the door which had one tiny opaque window cross-hatched with some kind of copperish material and no handle.