April’s Pictonaut Challenge

I sit here in a shattered throne of synthetic leather. The inside of my mouth tastes like something has recently died in it, only to be brought back from beyond the veil that hides that undiscovered country, only to then die again. Judging by taste alone this has probably happened many, many times. I sit here in a shattered throne of grey foam. My hip is still assailed by a strange and nebulous pain that remains undiagnosed, my supply of prescription pain killers has now run out and I contemplating the feasibility of using a plastic ruler to perform an impromptu amputation. So I sit upon my shattered throne. The haunting strains of Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge are the only thing separating me from the deep, syrupy seas of madness. My hayfever has started drawing up some very intricate plans to kill my by drowning me in my own mucus. This all puts paid to my ingenious April Fool’s day plan to pretend to be a robot sent from the future to post poor quality fiction on some dark and forgotten corner of cyberspace. So instead here is a picture of something futuristic and vaguely robot like. It’s called Relay. Beep-boop you bastards, beep-fucking-boop.

This month’s picture is the work of Steven Renn and I found the image on Warren Ellis’ website sometime in the Dark Times of 2011. Mister Renn drew the image as a take on the phrase “high priest of high-tech.” It evokes a variety of science fiction-esque themes, as well of those of coterminous sub-genres like the punks both cyber and steam, with a possible soupçon of hard-fi (not the band.) Admittedly our last dose of something ostensibly science-fiction was only in January, but this is my show and I make the rules! (I do not make the rules. I have no idea what I am doing. I am trapped against my will. Send help. Send. Help.)

Now the notion behind this endeavour is so simple that it will almost certainly (by which I mean, won’t) blow your tiny, human mind. Your mission, if you choose to accept it (please accept it, I feel so alone) is to write a short story or “wordascope” of approximately 1,000 words based on the picture above. You will have the whole of April to write it, that’s 33.3 words a day. That’s dead easy. Once you’re finished just shoot me a link across the shinning fibre-pipes of the electronet suprahighroad. We share. We enjoy. We become closer. We become better. Better human beings. You want to be better don’t you? How could you not? You are the only obstacle to your own self-improvement.

I await your communications.