Erica L. Satifka - Busted Synapses

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praise for

Johnny Mnemonic goes Millennial. Cyberpunk is not dead, and Erica Satifka is its queen. ( Silvia Moreno Garcia, award-winning editor of She Walks in Shadows )

Busted Synapses is the cyberpunk cry of Generation Screweda shrewd look at transhumanism through the lens of insurmountable debt and a thoroughly dehumanized workforce. A stunning novella from a unique voice in the literary class war.

Satifka is a working-class writer for our incomprehensible times, turning out endless truths in fiction and speaking for a generation lost in debt and dead-end jobs. This novella cuts through the cyberpunk future we were promised like a high-interest credit card lining up ketamine dropped off by a drone. Do lines of this book and dream of your own electric sheep.

A book for the people whose lives are all online and whose friends are always on the brink of unlivable lives. Busted Synapses is the kind of painfully true that only great science fiction can be: it reads the future in video cards and credit cards and shows us fear in a fistful of medical bills. A grim and bitter triumph. ( Meg Elison, author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife )

What constitutes a human life? Erika Satifka asks that monster of a question in Busted Synapses , and the answers offered arent for the faint. With poignant sensitivity and science-fictional rigor, Satifka proves herself an uncanny chronicler of the humanand inhumancondition. ( Jason Heller, author of Strange Stars )

Busted Synapses

by Erica L. Satifka

Published by

Broken Eye Books

www.brokeneyebooks.com

All rights reserved.

Copyright 2020 Broken Eye Books and the author.

Cover illustration by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor

Cover design by Scott Gable

Interior design by Scott Gable

Editing by Scott Gable

978-1-940372-58-7 (trade paperback)

All characters and events in this book are fictional.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

S hit, Dale says, getting his keys out again. Forgot my smokes.

Jess tugs at his sleeve. Ill buy you some. You can call it your birthday present.

What about the tickets?

I can get you more than one present, Dale.

Dale pushes her off with a smile and heads back inside. Jess pulls her light jacket tighter around her. The lights of what passes for downtown Wheeling are going out, and by the time they get to the theater, the previews will have already started.

And thats when Jess sees it. A New Woman toddling down the street, its eyes roving over its surroundings as if the town around it is something new and strange. Its dressed in a crisply ironed blazer and skirt, its dark brown hair pulled back in a bun, its skin an even copper with no blemish.

A New Person in Wheeling, West Virginia. Jess cant help but stare.

See, told you it wouldnt take long. An unlit cigarette dangles from Dales lip. Whos that?

Lets just go.

Hey, you! The woman-thing turns its head. Dale lights the cigarette. Are you lost?

Now , Dale.

I think shes lost. Jess tries to pull Dale away again, but hes become a rock.

Excuse me. Its in front of both of them now. Can you tell me where River Road is? Its voice is halting with long gaps in it.

They talk like stroke victims, Jess thinks. Cant get that part right. Yet anyway.

Dale wrenches his way out of Jesss grasp. Sure, you just take a right at the end of this street and a left once you get to the mini-mart. Cant miss it.

Thank you, the New Woman says. It rolls its eyes back in their sockets slightly and continues down the road, legs pumping like a metronome.

Jess snorts.

See, that didnt take so long.

Why did you help it?

Dale stops short. Youre being a

Thats not a person.

Isnt that a matter of opinion?

Jess shakes her head. Forget it. Lets just get in the truck. She doesnt even want to go to the movies anymore. But I will, she thinks. I already bought the tickets.

The truck rumbles to life beneath them. They dont talk the whole way to the theater, and when its over, Jess doesnt even remember what the movie was about.

J ess pinches herself awake and starts another intricate doodle in her sketch pad. The phones of the local branch of the Solfind Remote Call Center have rung exactly three times today, and none of them came through on her line. Jess feels a yawn coming on and bites down on her pen to stifle it.

Excuse me, where is the personnel office?

The halting, formal-sounding voice echoes across the open-plan office, and Jesss body shoots up straight. She isnt tired anymore.

One of her coworkers, Larry or Barry or some name like that, points to a door. The woman-thing nods, smiles, and knocks.

What is that thing doing here? Jess doesnt normally talk to the woman who sits next to her, but its out before she can stop herself.

Gretchen frowns. Cant possibly be asking for a job.

Who let it in here? Why?

Maybe this is the end. Gretchen shrugs and picks up her knitting. Probably shutting us down. She says it calmly, like she doesnt care.

Jess turns away and taps her pen on the handbook. She tries not to look too closely at the door to Kathy the supervisors office. They cant be hiring a New Woman for a call center. Thats a waste. Islands dont waste. After an interminable amount of time, the door opens, and the woman-thing and Kathy exit. They shake hands.

Not looking good, Jess says to Gretchen. But her coworkers needles keep clacking away, the orange scarf attached to them getting incrementally longer every day.

The New Woman surveys the office, its eyes eventually falling on Jess. Theres a slight flash of recognition, and then the woman-thing leaves.

Jess stands up, the folding chair that passes for a seat collapsing behind her. Im going to the bathroom.

But what if you get a call?

Jess puts her graffitied handbook inside her desk. Im not getting a call.

She throws the lock on the door and whips out her phone. That thing we saw on your birthday is at my office.

The New Woman? Dale replies.

I think they gave it a job.

There is a short break. Dale must be in the middle of an order. They dont live here. They live in Islands.