Posts Tagged ‘fiction’


I am enjoying a return to writing and hopefully will have opportunity to stretch my creative needs more often.  Thank you for your interested and for accepting the sporadic nature of the updates on this site.

 

 

 

Weather When Requested

 

“That’s impossible!”

A slow grin crept onto the face of Cecil Leach, a climate scientist and hobbyist inventor.  Mostly a homebody, he occasionally liked to hang out in coffee shops and people-watch.  Lost in his own world, typing away on his laptop, he was startled by the quizzical proddings of a young woman that, even at first glance, appeared to be his polar opposite.

Eden Teller had a bright streak of green in her wild hair, unapologetic horn rimmed glasses and she seems to be wearing every conceivable colour at once.  She had an infectious smile and evidently harboured no hesitation in walking up to a complete stranger, mid work-flow, and asking: (more…)


This story is somewhat inspired by documentaries such as Cut Poison Burn and Food Matters and somewhat inspired by the mere idea of looking for alternate solutions to complex problems.  As a technician I once stayed up for days trying to fix a complex Radar system while at sea.  In the end the problem was solved when I talked through the fault with a steward on board, someone with no formal electronics training.  Sometimes problems just need that outside eye to come up with a solutions that would never have arisen on its own.  I hope you enjoy reading it, if you do please share it with someone and leave a comment.  Thank you for your time.

Leave it to the Professionals

“Vitamin C.  Do you know what it does?” Posed the somewhat unkempt man at the Feed your Soul nutrition store.  To say the store wasn’t corporate would be a massive understatement.

“Well, it prevents Scurvy, so that’s good.” Replied Laura Shandler, a 45 year old confirmed bachelorette with no children who had been called kooky so often, she had begun to intentionally embody the term.

“We only know that because Vitamin C deficiencies lead to Scurvy.  Fact is, that is how we know what all vitamins do.  Deprive the body of any nutritional metric and you will start to see it break down.  In the case of Vitamin C you lose enzyme reactions, one such reaction leads to an inability to make new collagen or heal wounds, that’s what leads to the symptoms of what we call Scurvy.”

“Okay…”

“But that doesn’t really answer our question does it?  The AMA would have you believe that process elimination is enough to understand the true nature of something.  Without nutrients we die, without certain specific nutrients, specific bodily functions start to breakdown.  Therefore, we assume the positive benefits of a substance to be the inverse of the negative side-effects produced by its deficiency.  It’s all a bit of a loop really, the piece that we are still missing is what these vitamins do for us, their real purpose.  We can only discover that by taking huge doses of one specific vitamin at a time, scientific method.” (more…)


Hello all,

Back again for another story so soon, I had an inspired moment and found a new coffee shop that I really like so some writing happened.  Nikola Tesla has always been one of my favorite history figures so when my lovely wife suggested I make him part of my next writing prompt, ideas started to spin right away.  Please read on and enjoy, hopefully this sparks a fascination for Nikola Tesla in you, he is worth looking up.  Thanks for your readership.

Enjoy,

Drew

Angel Investor?

To say that Nikola Tesla was a strange man doesn’t quite cover it.  He had a very specific mental ability that set him apart from virtually every other person, living or dead.  He had the ability to prototype things in his mind, this meant that he could build complex engineering projects with thousands of moving parts by simply imagining it.  He could even troubleshoot problems and disassemble the machines to replace poorly designed parts so it would run more smoothly.  This meant that when he actually decided to build something, in the physical world, it had a tendency to work on the first try. (more…)


I am sorry if this story took a while to get out but I set up another challenge for myself.  This time the whole story is being told entirely with dialog.  There isn’t a narrative word in the whole 2700, not is a “he said”, “she said”.  Hopefully that doesn’t disrupt the flow of the story too much.  Enjoy.

The Cost of Love

“Good evening gentlemen, if you would all please take your seats. The opening portion of these sorts of talks would normally start with an introduction and a quick telling of my background to justify what I am presenting. I think you will forgive my interest in privacy and permit a pseudonym for our interactions. Once I had completed my research I sought out a discrete group of ad men, if such a thing exists. We went through a battery of titles to present the product with: DR. Love was deemed too derivative, DR. Cupid was too cutesy, DR. Fix-up sounded like an after school TV program. In the end we settled on DR. Link, so from this point forward, all referrals and interactions shall refer my organization and indeed myself as DR. Link. (more…)


I can’t and wont guarantee this kind of update rate.  When writing strikes me I will indulge it, when I need to take care of other tasks, there may be a lull.  I am after all the father of a 13 month old, and that can take up a lot of time and energy.  At any rate, here is the next Multiversal Yarn.  Let me know what you think.

Brain-Feed

Arthur Wilson was an Electronic Engineer by trade and a noted inventor. His creations had provided a comfortable life; he often worked from a shop build into the home he shared with his wife Edna. They had a very happy marriage and before long Edna had become pregnant.

As an inventor and creator, the concept of teaming up with his spouse to create a new life was something that fascinated Arthur greatly. He went out of his way to look after his wife and made sure she wanted for nothing during the pregnancy. Any spare time however, was spent busily in his shop creating new products for their child and in time for the mass market of baby products. (more…)


Drone eye

Through the Eyes of a Drone

A Multiversal Yarn by Drew Torchia

Bartholomew Alvarez was walking to work on a perfectly typical day. He worked for a problem solving think-tank organization knows as Unfuckers Inc. Because it was their business model to be “outside the box” thinkers, their rather non-PC name had granted them more business than it lost them. Bartholomew’s title on his business cards even listed him as a “Professional Unfucker”.

They had worked for major employers looking to downsize and be more efficient, small companies looking to keep up with modern technology but more than anything they worked with police and government authorities to evolve search and capture techniques, getting criminals off the streets faster than ever before. If everything worked smoothly the company would be bankrupts in days but in our busy modern reality, Unfuckers Inc. was an overnight success. (more…)


I have always been fascinated with the complexities of modern society.  It is interesting to think of all of the little innovations humans have brought to the world.  What would happen if they didn’t all happen in the exact order that they did?  What would happen if one new item was thrown in the mix?  Where would that leave us?  What would happen if “x” technology or geo-political movement were to happen today?

Multiverse theory suggests that every decision made by every human divides the universe into each of the possible outcomes of that choice.  There is a universe where you chose the green car instead of the silver one and that choice affected life in that universe.  I will endeavour to write short stories about these alternate histories and potential futures with the intent of eventually turning a selection of deserving tales into full novels. 

I invite and encourage comments to tell me what stories you liked or dislike and what caused you to feel that way.  Feel free to propose ideas for future stories and let me know if you read one that you feel deserve the time and effort of writing a full novel.  Thanks for visiting.

Also check out my self-help/Stress Management book called Appropriate Detachment.