An excerpt from Duane Burry's “Electricracy”

So it was not easy for me to find an excerpt that I felt represented my story for our first edition of Here Be Monsters, but I think this works. The title for my story comes from combining technocracy and electrickery. As always there are things I see in it that I feel I would like to improve... but I will refrain. A sample of the third story should be here soonish. Thanks again.


The modifications performed on Queln took. One after the other. Week after week the procedures were successful on him. The sci-mage, Zinntar, turned out to be not only one of the best, but one of the most caring. Those who ended up under his hexes and blade were in good hands even if some of his experiments did not succeed or work as expected. Very few of his subjects died. As the mods became more popular, heavy handed industry moved in, laws and regulations to control the implantations and changes were put in place. Slowly the system became safer, but not because industry cared for the people, but because industry saw the money that could be made if things were controlled. Procedures like those performed on Queln and the junk kids of that period were never done now, except for underground. Queln himself was still learning years later of what his modifications could do. It was a subject that was a guarded secret for him, a part of his life that he shared rarely. Standing in line to be cut and hexed so he could have food and shelter for himself and one other person was a time he would rather forget. It was a symbol of his failure, a symbol of his family's failure, of his social failure, of his lack of strength. But he had bowed to the harsh world, opened himself to Zinntar's blade and hexes and here he sat, before a person who had come to the procedures years later after they had been refined, perfected, rendered safe and undetectable for the right price. Was he disgusted? No. He was awestruck and proud. This beautiful girl before him could experience what she could from the mods because of what he and others had been subjected to. Maybe he was angry at the injustice of it, maybe deep down an ember of despise, or anger, or rage was birthing, but for now it was imperceptible.