It’s felt like an incredibly light filled summer. Not because it’s been any different than any other year, but because I’ve been going to bed earlier. Before Roby, when I’d wake up later and go to sleep later too, the winter months felt like a perpetual dark. But that was nice and cozy because I spent so much time doing things in that dark, like writing and video games and drinking whiskey.

This fall and winter I’d like to do some writing. On a type writer, by the wood stove, and with fernet instead of whiskey.  I got a nice bottle of local stuff from a family in Marshfield, they’ve got six kids and Abby wants to be friends with their mom, I wouldn’t mind getting to know their dad.

On my walk this morning I came up with a few short story ideas and I’m going to write them, not like last time when I said I’d do that, not like last time at all. I’m going to write them badly, then edit them like they’re not mine. I helped edit a book that wasn’t mine recently and my first draft cut that thing up. It’s not that it was bad or anything, it’s just that editing isn’t like writing, it’s very much unto itself.

Here are a few ideas:

Joyride
A little girl comes across a vintage car driving slowly through a hay field. The thing noses her like a curious animal, and they go on a ride. Inhabited by the nascent digitized mind of her grandfather after a failed attempt at immortal upload, he’s a digital ghost.

Deere Hunter
Four John Deere salesmen found dead, several more wounded after they attempted to fiddle with the software of local farm equipment. Last summer when it was discovered that some farmers had jail-broken their combines the corporation sabotaged their machines, resulting in a ruined harvest. In defense of this happening again the machines were boobytrapped to attack anyone manipulating them without permission.

The Town Barber
The first Waldo (tele controlled robot) of any sophistication in the county was Janet’s hair and dye bot, some of the best folks from New York could control it to do things you wouldn’t believe. It wasn’t long before folks were hiring it out to dentists in Cincinnati and car painters in Miami, a surgeon from the VA in DC even cut out Paul’s appendix when the town doctor was down with something. It was a good thing until somebody hired a tele-hitman to cut Richard’s throat while he was getting a shave. Nobody used it much after that.