The Drunk and The Ugly

Freedom has always come with asterisks, footnotes, and apologetic parentheticals. There is no total freedom; we are bound by causality, space, physics, time, ability, location, background, wealth, the limited freedoms of others. Yet, there are small freedoms every day in the choices we make, consciously or unconsciously, and in the infinite choices we choose not to make. Corporations, politicians,...

The docks had been closed for months now, its runners knee deep in one of the last and most powerful labor strikes in the city. No scab dared cross the picket line, the union bosses cold as ice and deeply respected by their allies. But as infrastructure in the city became ever more unwieldy, and liquid cash became easier than ever for the ever-larger shipping companies to dredge up, they simply di...

Addiction is a powerful thing. Or maybe more relevantly than addiction, the expectation of instant gratification and constant stimulation. The jury is out on just how addictive those cycles can be, and that jury may always be out, for its own concerning reasons. Children move from toy to phone to tablet and back, while adults move from phone to computer to television. These avenues have always bee...

It was the same as it had always been. “Open enough boxes of Cracker Jack” became “use your decoder goggles,” which became “get a full set of hidden stickers,” which became “scan the right QR code.” And always for a prize that could be, but was statistically unlikely to be, a higher cost than the variable number of items purchased to earn it. A model...

Look, gunshot wounds take a while to heal, okay? After all, It’s Only Business. Side Chatter MUSIC CREDITS “Lightless Dawn” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) PLAYERS Greg – Andrew Burke. An aging corporate spokesman, Andrew has worked for many companies to defuse tense situations and make questionable sales pit...

Sometimes you get fucking shot. After all, It’s Only Business MUSIC CREDITS “Lightless Dawn” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) PLAYERS Greg – Andrew Burke. An aging corporate spokesman, Andrew has worked for many companies to defuse tense situations and make questionable sales pitches. After surviving can...

The casino business had changed. Not as much as anyone thought it was going to, but it had changed. With the advent of the chip that changed the world, sleep no longer existed in a meaningful way for most. The night stretched on and on, with anxiety and fatigue weighing you down. The sun takes away the light, and reminds you that you are cold and alone without it. A perfect opportunity for a compa...

There are few who would disagree that the meaning of life is more than the collection of good experiences to a degree that they maximally outweigh bad experiences. But how MUCH more? In their centuries of debating hedonism, utilitarianism, stoicism, and a hundred other worldviews, philosophers have considered the thought experiment of shaving down one’s brain to the minimum required to maint...

Sometimes, when you work on your own for long enough, your plans become inseparable from you, attached irreparably to the way you think. This is all well and good until the plan leaves your grasp, and others start to grapple with it, only to find that what has been created wasn’t made for them, despite that being the original point of the project. Once past the rose-colored glasses, the plan...

The cogs continued to turn, squealing under the friction of the grit placed within them, but turning nonetheless. Tired, twitching fingers fretted at the keyboard, eyes bouncing between shorthand sections of past plans. The links were there, even if a good number of the boxes were marked with a small, passive aggressive “x”. At least when part of the plan failed, it didn’t requir...

Another day, another demand. The city had long since stopped paying for the upkeep of the few remaining public prisons, after years and years of shrinking budgets. Strategic privatization meant only so much of the city revenue came through the tax system, and it became politically difficult to allocate that money to the housing and well-being of people the public had been encouraged to despise. Th...

Monopolies are often more complicated in the modern era than the board game would have you believe. With the size and complexity of the business incorporation space, a corporation of a certain size often needs to build both horizontal and vertical integration. A certain size above -that- often needs to start spending a great deal of money in Washington to make that expansion process go smoother. H...

Some days it was better than others. Today was not one of those days. Some days it was a minor annoyance at the back of his mind. Today, it felt like lightning was pouring through his nerves. Another day in the dark, fingers clutching at the remote as he scanned for something to distract him, when he knew full well that what he sought to avoid would be doing the distracting. His fingers balled int...

[BEGIN COMMERCIAL] [BEGIN MUSIC, SOURCED FROM “CALMING” AND “CALL TO ACTION” PSYCH TAGS] [FADE FROM BLACK TO REVEAL CEO, VIDEO EDIT TO SOFTEN FACIAL FEATURES, CREATE WARMTH] CEO: Welcome to GeneHome. Where your legacy is assured through your contribution to science. [SWING SHOT, HALF-SMIRK TO ENSURE KNOWLEDGE AND CONFIDENCE, ADJUST LIGHTING TO PROMOTE DISSATISFACTION WITH C...

Our blood-shot eyes disguise their lies Our cries all rise up to the skies God help them when they realize Our knives arrive to end their lives They never let our city sleep They count on us to be their sheep The pens are full, the labor cheap But they’re the crops our blades will reap So now I lay me down to rest I’ll put the wires to the test When sunrays next caress the west We&#821...

Since time immemorial, the powers that be have valued entertainment. It doesn’t only pacify the masses, leaving them blind to the injustice and the exploitation of the system that contains them. They pay for it too. This leaves the powerful to search for the most potent, resonant messages, and when those messages are revolutionary in nature, a peculiar sort of dance begins. The powers that m...

The conditions were perfect. Or at the very least, in the very particular setting of this tube, they were perfectly designed to accomplish what the bosses wanted. Restful, continuous, and above all, predictable sleep. It was dark. Sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit on the dot, he’d heard them say, with continuous modifications to account for his changing body heat. Not a single sound, but for his...

The system had never specialized in long-term investment for the future. Or at least not the future of humanity. How would you justify it to the board of investors when all of the other companies are part of humanity too? What the system DID specialize in was finding a need and offering an affordable, market-valued solution. So when the sun began to beat down in the city squares, light-mitigating...

The legalization and proliferation of an commercially-offered implanted brain chip, especially one that interfaced with the notoriously vital hypothalamus, was met with public outcry and legislative difficulty, to the surprise of no one. However, the surprise over the speed with which that public outcry and legislative difficulty drained away was more than enough to fill the void. First came the r...

When trying for a role in a criminal enterprise, and with the right connections, it doesn’t take much for an outsider to see results. The question is whether the results are the ones you want. Ask the right questions, and exert the right (lower-case-L) leverage, and your life is liable to change very quickly. Sometimes that puts you on a task force to change the world for the better. More of...

San Francisco is a very different place than it used to be, but not by as much as one might hope. In the near future, corporations have almost complete reign over local, state and national governance, with Silicon Valley used as a testing ground for not only new technologies, but policy born in think tanks and board meetings. In this age defined by tracking numbers, personal identification, and th...

After a splitting of their tribe, a bunch of goblins are left to strike out for someone else to live. They reach a campground near a large, heavily forested canyon that should suit their purposes, but troubles lurk in all directions. Strange cults and dark prophecies threaten their new home and they’ll have to work hard to keep it.

Every goblin knows that when you’ve got nothing better to do, you listen to Free Guff on the only working radio station. When the day comes where he realizes he’s been broadcasting all along, he puts out a call for anyone who can provide him with music; CDs, records, instruments, anything that can play a tune. As the only goblin band to ever understand the concept of music before now,...

The Rowdy Riders are a band of goblins known for two things: riding on something and doing anything for pay. To go through with a trade, the Riders are hired to escort a truck full of explosives to its destination, hoping that thieves, mutants and the local Redcap problem don’t blow them up (or stop them from getting paid).

Another year, another Gen Con.  Our largest party so far traveled to Indianapolis and all have stories to tell of steps walked, games played, and unusual botanical liquors consumed.