That's All Folks!

Well, that's it. All ten part are out, and this will be the last post to this blog (probably). 

State of Change is now available as a single pdf document here, laid out as an A5 document to simulate a mass market paperback - print it out two pages per sheet and it'll be just like a proper book!

If you want to read it online the links, in order, are:

Part One: The Fear
Part Two: The Offer
Part Three: A Bit Like A Lobotomy
Part Four: The New Direction
Part Five: The Silver Machine
Part Six: Body Fuck/Mind Fuck
Part Seven: Psychedelic Super Nazis
Part Eight: Cuba Street Improv
Part Nine: The Not Quite Death of Arlo Makepeace Dylan
Part Ten: The End

I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think.

In the meantime, I'm continuing with my regular blog at Pointless Philosophical Asides and so maybe I'll see you there!

Part Ten: The End!

QUESTIONS PRESENTED THEMSELVES IMMEDIATELY
Is this the afterlife? If so is it heaven or hell? Maybe it was some strange ethnic afterlife I didn’t know about?

I found I could range across my memories at will. I moved up and down the stream of my life examining each moment in detail to see if there was any clue as to what this was supposed to b about. My younger years yielded little that was any use: painful lessons in the obvious, gradual discovery of the basic facts of life: dog eats dog, possessions make you powerful, lust fuels endeavour - the usual stuff.

There seemed little to learn from the revolution either, primarily a picaresque tableaux of sexual and violent excess. Now I had no body I couldn’t feel the pleasure and pain that this period of my life seemed built around, but the raw data was all there on the sense track for dispassionate consideration..

At university, my studies yielded slightly more of interest but memory of them, in both backward and forward versions, was sketchy. My courses had been mainly practical and non-assessed, so I never bothered much with the theory. Then I began working at the Ministry, for several years the memories were very incomplete: many were lost, corrupted and fouled by, I must assume, the drugs I was taking.

THIS COULDN’T BE THE AFTERLIFE
I was still alive, I could tell. Something nagged at me from very near the end of my life. Manisola, talking to me, trying to tell me something very important. “There’s something else I found out, about the device."

Part Nine: The Not Quite Death of Arlo Makepeace Dylan

AT THE FLAT
There was no sign of Chrissy, but Bobby was in the lounge, robot on the floor, outline shimmering like a vibrating string on a cello. This was something I’d only heard about: Frohedadrine, JJ-180 as it was known.

Frohedadrine had been developed by Hazeltine Corporation in the States before the revolution, its development sponsored by the UN for reasons that had long since been forgotten. It was widely regarded as the most dangerous drug ever invented, and was totally banned, even by Hazeltine itself. It was instantly addictive and addiction led inevitably to death in a couple of months, the drug reacting corrosively on the microtubules of the brain cells. Some people, and Bobby was obviously one of them, regarded the hit as worth the burn-time. The drug apparently transported the taker in time, sending them into the past or the future, depending on the dosage and method of administration. I say “apparently” because there was no definite evidence that the user actually travelled in time. There was enough doubt, however, to have the drug suppressed with extreme prejudice.

How Bobby got hold of it, I’ve no idea.