Residual Suspension; or, Life after Debt

Read the story on Kaleidotrope. ●●●

My first story publication! A narrator heads to an appointment about a routine debt reckoning and receives life-changing news.

Residual Suspension; or, Life after Debt is part of a long-term research project in which I play out scenarios wherein music or other manifestations of the aural collide with systems that, via the familiar capitalistic tradition, promote novel technologies without examining them beyond their ability to generate short-term wealth for their promoters.

I was early for my appointment with Mss. Elcat and Pfîc, JEs., but I didn’t mind. Waiting had never bothered me.

In this instance, our narrator—like everyone in his community—is a corporeal debtor, a literal subject of one of the megafirms that jointly govern this far-future society.

But the malignant legalese of these megafirms is swallowed, confused, and refracted by a novel (to us) form of music that attacks the mainstream ontologies of both visual and auditory.

My deepest thanks to Kaleidotrope editor Fred Coppersmith for the acceptance and his edits.

The illustration is a cropped extraction from Carly A-F‘s “Wanderer,” the cover art used for Kaleidotrope‘s Autumn 2024 issue.