So yeah. “Clinical sadness” is exactly the sort of description that I love to hear applied to my writing. I think this story more reflects my fiction voice than anything I’ve written for you-know-who. And I fought over the dialogue, so if it works, I am vindicated. I wanted it to be as naturalistic as possible.

As for it reflecting the future and the present, well. I am not sure about the future — I think the story will be proven wrong (I mean, USB sockets?)

Let you into a secret: it was always about the present. The sci-fi (and let’s face it, I am not really one for the sci-fi, really) is just a buffing on top of a number of ideas and experiences about work wrecking your life. Certainly, a couple of scenes near the beginning of the story are near-literal retellings of things that happened to a close friend working in a sub-editorial department.

I think I’m least happy about the digressions — the soul transplant story; the closet — they veer too far into the realm of whimsy, perhaps, and although they’re relevant to the course of the story, in the end, their length is self-indulgent. I don’t know.

You’ve done a number of things in this overall work that stick in my head. The lean dialogue (told so often in txts), the *bdeet*, the clinical sadness with which you write, but I think the thing that sticks with me the most is a quiet, rumbling fear that this work represents:

a) Our actual future
and
b) Our metaphorical present

Quite a triumph, sir. Thunderous applause.

A tiny point on this ultimate chapter — last couple of lines are bunched-up together.

– c.