Short Story: Spacemonkeyz Vs. Gorillaz - Laika Come Home

I packed a suitcase with a few essential belongings and headed outside to the waiting cab. It was early that Saturday morning and I still had a hard time believing my good fortune. I'd been selected to pilot the first orbiting music studio in human history, a joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Apple Computers.

A few months before this, the head of the project contacted me through my website to let me know I'd made the short list to head the LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Remix division. It seems that my essays on astropolyrhythmics had made some waves with management. Soon I was confirmed for training and tendered my resignation to my then employer, Beat Science Ltd. I spent three months in a training facility in California, getting my body into shape for long term low gee and learning from the Duboligists at the newly founded Institute for Low Gravity Recomposition.

So the day had finally come and I stood there staring out into the horizon when the cab driver hit the horn and gave me a nasty look. I had spent my entire professional career studying astropolyrhythmics and the time had come to put it into practice. When we arrived at the guard shack in front of the launch site the entire facility was in a state of complete panic and disarray. I found the rest of my team near the crew prep area and was quickly filled in by Ian, my Chief Beat Engineer for the mission.

It seemed that the monkeys that were used to test our module had broken out of their holding pens about half an hour before then and were putting the ship into preflight checks. The monkeys had shut ground control out of the systems and the capsule was designed to be completely secure, guarded against industrial espionage. The rocket lifted off that morning packed full of a $150 million in experimental studio equipment and three stoned out test monkeys.

The world watched and listened in wonder as over the course of one year, the Spacemonkeyz released one of the greatest dub concepts ever given form track by track back to the planet on pirate radio. People ask me if I'm upset by this turn of events and in interviews I always say the same thing. Those monkeys have fulfilled my greatest dream, to remix an album in orbit and elevate the science of astropolyrhythmics to legitimacy.

They're still up their and last week I sent them new source material from Thievery Corporation, Scientist and King Tubby.

Good for: Traveling without moving. Founding a colony on Mars based entirely on slick beats and reverb.

Get into orbit on Amazon.

Short Story: Broken Social Scene - Bee Hives

The swirling dirt and dust around her feet seemed to guide Julie forward, waving in her direction from ground level. Hoping that the air could tell her what last night could not, she followed the tiny vortex down the quiet concrete of the abandoned main street. Two birds flew quietly overhead as she crossed to the other side, still following this jinn of cigarette ash and road dirt. Clouds gathered overhead, threatening to mask the rays of a wan and silvery sunlight that pervaded the atmosphere of Stuart Nebraska.

Julie Wainsworth was not a tall woman. This particular morning she reflected that it is at times an advantage to be short, the wind passed over her while the trees looked as though they might lie down for a nap after straining so long to stand up. She had been born to a mixed family, her mother's Omaha side lost somewhere in the history of family bibles and alcohol and her father's ancestry some uniquely American mix of French-Canadian, Irish and something else. Her mother had been a quiet woman and she inherited most of her features, broad face, good hips, short height and a quiet demeanor. The other people here had always treated her with a distanced respect and she preferred it that way.

All of this past seemed to fade into dream as she continued following the tiny tornado west out of town and into the endless fields of commercial farming and cattle. It always hit her like a punch in the gut, seeing the pesticide laden soil groan under the weight of profit and the endless ambition of American business. Trying to find an audience for her feelings had always been impossible in a town of a few hundred farmers and their kin. Julie spent her nights alone as a child, staring out at the stars from a tree and wishing there was some way out of here, laughing deeply as age and wisdom taught her that "out there" was no different for a thousand miles on either side of the town.

It was mid-morning now and the crowded farm buildings gave way to the open sky and endless fields of their pursuits. Her feet stopped short as the vortex halted suddenly next to an access road, about 20 feet in front of her. It moved very slowly down the access road and she stood there, wondering just what the hell she was doing. She was certain that the bank manager had been calling her mother's house for several hours at this point, she was at least three hours late for her shift. Why did it seem so far away? So unimportant? Fuck it, she thinks and walks down the access road, chasing this tiny spirit.

An hour and a half later, the jinn stopped again near a telephone pole and suddenly dropped it's payload in a poof of dust and ash. Julie coughed and wiped her eyes , red sparks playing against her eyelids and Nebraska trying to force it's way into her throat. As the faerie light of her eyes cleared into the glare of the afternoon, a pay phone resolved into focus sitting next to the pole. It looked as though it had been there for sixty years, wind worn and faded from a life in the wild. A wild pay phone? Is it tamed?

The musings of herds of wild pay phones broke into iron tinged fear as the phone began to ring, piercing the windy solitude of her portable temple. Three shrill rings and she stood there, petrified at the way her day had gone. Silence for a moment, a released breath escapes her lips. The phone rings again and her chest seizes up. It's still ringing. Her hand reaches for the receiver, shaking and terrified. As the earpiece hits her ear and she begins to say hello, her lips freeze mid speech as the tinny speaker springs to life.

A sound like bees swimming through an ocean of digital waves gives way to a guitar in the distance telling the tales of her life. She strains against the hot black plastic to hear each note as the story unfolds in her mind's eye. The ground gives way beneath her, an earthquake lifts the red brown dust into the sky and the farm folds back in on itself. Every emotion of her life is turned into a digital pulse, converted by the aged and worn out telephone system and output through this minuscule electromagnet. Her eyes roll back in her head as the sky stares down at this strange sight, birds chirping their questions at the trees and the trees retaining their knowing silence.

Julie Wainsworth is dead now. That's what everyone in Stuart knows to be true. The county coroner confirmed that heart failure led to her demise. If he only knew how true that was. Her heart had failed years ago, this tiny town had never spoken to her and it was sheer willpower that kept her limping along. I know the truth says the tree. She has gone home across the wires around my fingers. Her body lay at my feet that spring morning, but Julie was racing across the plains, waving her goodbyes to the land that gives us life. Julie was my friend, she lived among my branches as a young-ling and stared at the stars until her tears fed my roots. I know Julie Wainsworth, I know her fears, I know her wishes and I know she smiles now.

Julie Wainsworth is not dead.

Short Story: DJ Cheb i Sabbah: As Far As: A DJ Mix

The low red sun burned through the fog of the last few sleepless nights. I rolled out of the borrowed sleeping bag and onto the hard packed dirt floor of the tent. Camp coffee, cruel black gunk that burned like lava was all that we had left in the supplies so I launched a healthy dose down my throat and got dressed. The clothes I borrowed from Madin three days ago were stale and smelled like I'd borrowed them three years ago. We'd been waiting for almost a week to get into the Bhimbetka rock shelters to see the petroglyphs with our own eyes.

Moving to India in my early twenties was an impulse move. Tired of the relentless pace of Western life and the excesses it brings, I packed a bag and headed to the subcontinent with no real plan. How could I have predicted that that shit would follow me, even here. Now every corner of India is plastered with ads for American products, Internet cafes and cheap knockoffs from up north in China. Authenticity in the age of plastic is a fools dream, but I have always been a fool.

Thusly did I find myself staring at 10,000 year old human settlements squinting in the early morning with Madin, my friend and mentor. Well dosed on shitty coffee we parted the tarps covering the nearest cave and set up our mats just inside. I had been practicing my meditation techniques and learning from Madin since I'd arrived in India and I quickly stilled my mind and peered past the rock carvings and into the earth. I saw the hands of a thousand generations lain upon this stone, trying to see what the carvers had meant so many years ago.

As the glyphs settled into the back of my conscious mind the cave fell away and the scene opened up on the sea of green spread before me. The jungle went on as far as I could see and for the first time I saw the India I had come looking for. The land before even the times of Siddhartha Gautama. The rhythm of the land swept through my mind's eye and shook the last bit of disbelief from existence.

In a rush the world around me blurred as vision ans sensation fast forwarded. Time and space become concepts as I moved through Asia and into Arabia. Before I could catch my breath the mighty empires of the Middle East and North Africa rose and fell in front of me. Egypt ascendant, then nothing but wind blasted monuments to an era long past. The vision swept me north once more, to the high mountain reaches of Nepal. Past the endless expanses of the Tibetan highlands and into the Gobi. When I arrived here the journey stopped.

All of these visions came at once then, threatening to overwhelm me. Just when I thought I could take no more, I woke to the cool inside of these ancient caverns to find Madin smiling softly at me. I lay cold and shivering on my mat inside the cave and confused, my body stiff and sore from what felt like years of sitting.

There it was, in a moments flash. I realized then that this endless quest for the real was but one more illusion to strip from my awareness, one more bridge to cross in life. I bowed deeply to my friend, to the cave and to the thousand hands that came before me. Outside, the air had taken on a new lightness. I realized in that moment that it was I that had become lightness, laughed and put my feet upon the road once more.