War Channel - New Short Story
Latest in the Glitchfall Continuum universe: media machinations, the power of individual choice, and extradimensional intrusions
Very excited to share my new Glitchfall Continuum short story entitled, “War Channel.” It’s my longest short yet, at 25 pages. It felt good to deepen into this story more. While I worked on it I realized that it shared some resonance with a novel-length manuscript I have on the agenda to publish next year. Getting psyched to release my first novel in the near future, as it’s been brewing for over a decade now.
“War Channel” is a bit of a play on words, as those who have read some of my earlier metaphysical posts may know that my own spiritual emergence was catalyzed by esoteric information from channeled sources(e.g. Nature of Personal Reality, Law of One, Course of Miracles). And I have also personally explored insight via shamanic trance and sisterhood circles of channeling. I believe that we are all channels, and that everything generative involves opening the conduits to higher self/higher consciousness/the source of which we are each fractals.
So this latest story is about an actor named Mara Day who has achieved overnight success playing a take-no-prisoners commander of an interstellar warship. Then she begins to have visions that this other world is not just make-believe, and that her bloodthirsty alternate persona is actually wreaking havoc within another dimension. She then faces the choice to continue on as usual, or take dramatic action to change the status quo.
Some of what I personally reflected on in creating this story was the impact of our choices on the greater world, the importance of choosing love, compassion and connection, and the willingness to take leaps of faith, push on that comfort zone and summon the courage to go beyond the mundane into the effable mysteries of life.
Now all that being said, part of me hates to convey anything about my own mindset in the creation of a work. Because I believe that any piece of writing (or all art, for that matter) necessarily interacts with the reader/viewer/participant. As such it can helpful to approach the work without being predisposed on how to interpret it. I see the giving and receiving of a creative work to be a process of co-creation. Each party brings their own imagination into the picture—to make it whole and alive within themselves. In this way, it is digested and integrated into something unique for each person while also collectively embodying a communion of souls. Maybe this is why we get such a kick out of being a part of a fandom.
So with “War Channel,” that may mean that some folks enjoy this story and decide it’s really just a simple tale of someone hallucinating a whole other reality. I think it’s always nice to leave wiggle room in interpretation. Maybe that’s the tranceworker in me. Like pioneering hypnotherapist Milton Erickson talking about “the spaces between words” and directing a focus to “what isn’t there” as well as what is. I’m drawn to those liminal headspaces.
Below is an excerpt. It has a flavor of a Twilight Zone/Black Mirror to it. I always did love a certain kind of sci fi/speculative fiction that describes that hallucinatory, “what is reality” feeling that has persisted within me for as long as I can remember. Like Philip K. Dick’s stories with their hall-of-mirrors disorientation—technology enveloping us so completely, the real and unreal become increasingly hard to distinguish. His stories got made into movies mostly in the first decade of the 2000s (of course, Blade Runner in 1982 and Total Recall in 1990 being the two earlier films). Dick’s visions turned out to be incredibly prescient for our current times, as we find ourselves oscillating between cyberpunk dystopia and transhumanist utopia. Now I’ll leave it for another post to discuss how there are some authors such as Dick whose ideas I love, but whose authorial voice grates on me. Underlying message and aesthetic style really are two separate things, in my estimation.
Excerpt from “War Channel”
The lights hit Mara Day like a firing squad—blinding, searing, impossible to ignore. Sweat gathered beneath the standing collar of her commander’s uniform, though on camera it would read as controlled ferocity.
“Action,” Nolan barked.
Mara stepped to the mock bridge of the warship Resolute, staring into the lens as though it were the enemy itself.
“They are vermin, and vermin must be burned from their holes. We will scorch their skies, poison their seas, salt their dreams until nothing remains but ash and obedience.”
The words left her mouth like venom. But before the director could shout cut, the air rippled.
Green screen stars shifted into windows looking out onto a burning sky. She saw ships falling and bodies tumbling. Eyes stared from the smoke, luminescent and pleading. They weren’t human eyes, yet the same sentience glowed from within.
The set had vanished. Rubble replaced it, the air thick with iron and ozone. An alien soldier knelt amid ruins, clutching something child-shaped to its chest. Its gaze met hers. Your words cut deeper than blades.
“War Channel” is now available on Amazon as an ebook to buy, or borrow via Kindle Unlimited.
As always, I hope it finds you in one of those lucid moments between worlds—when the static clears, and something deeper starts to speak.