Everyone has their fave material. The world’s like it’s in a state of flux with all the content that is out there. Books, films, graphic novels, manga, and virtual story-centred video games. There are literally walls of fiction produced in multimodal mediums, making it hard to find your next great experience. Or, even worse, you may just miss out on a real gem. I turn your attention to something that receives little coverage beyond what is initially pitched, written and printed in magazines: the short story. A novel can lurch on for days if it doesn’t hook us. But for shorter pieces there is beauty in brevity.
This is where Jeffery Thomas comes in. A novelist of well received stories such as Deadstock and Blue War, he also spun his magic with the short story, Motherboard, published in Issue 263 of Interzone. This piece is quintessential for any writer or reader looking to master or absorb the art form. Illustrated by long-time Interzone illustrator, Martin Hanford, the story follows the life of a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) assembly worker called Leep. Straight up we learn that the young man lives in two worlds. His fascination with the virtual world of Cholukan, the Holy Monkey, reveals a deep desire for escapism. The playable character is from a video game in which he willingly loses himself. In this artificial land he can perform heroics, stroll along the streets of a peaceful hamlet and speak to people that are far easier to relate to than the real world. Leep’s reasons for immersing himself go beyond his awkward social graces and his way of coping with a dreary working life at Oki-Me Electronics Plant. It is also a way to distance himself from people and a darker truth: the death of his sister, which occurred while he played the game when he should have been watching little Fhu Fhu. But then he discovers little cities. Tiny lives being lived on the factory produced mother boards. Copper wires are roads and spaces are open parks. He sees them as great space ships, launched from other worlds, but who deign not to disembark in his uninhabitable world.
Leep becomes more and more enamoured with the orderly life he sees, quickly finding that he possesses a rare talent: the ability to transport himself into the world of the motherboard circuitry to a place where his sister still lives and life is safe and simple because it operates through coded rules. As Leep becomes more dreamlike and disconnected, he discovers that he can transport himself to the motherboard world at will. And soon, the world of manicured gardens, straight streets and fatherly figures becomes more appealing that the real world. He gradually becomes more disengaged. He asks himself if the spirit can be uploaded as data. After all, he believes its possible for his long-dead father to live on as an electric ghost, coursing through the wires. If he can live on, in another world, why can’t he?
By J.K.A. Short
