by Mur Lafferty

SuicdeGirls presents the third installment of our Fiction Friday sci-fi series, Marco and the Red Granny, which is brought to you by SG columnist Mighty Mur a.k.a. cyber commentator Mur Lafferty.

Marco and the Red Granny is set in a not-so-distant future where an alien species, the Li-Jun, has transformed the moon into the new artistic center of the universe, where the Sally Ride Lunar Base soon gains the nickname “Mollywood.” These aliens can do amazing things with art and the senses, allowing a painting, for example, to stimulate senses other than sight.

In the previous installments, Marco, a writer whose career has long been in the doldrums, gets a surprise call from an agent he thought he no longer had, informing him that he had received an offer from Mollywood for a much coveted Li-Jun patronage. Keen to catch up career-wise with his ex-GF Penelope, who’d unceremoniously dumped him after being recruited by the Li-Jun two years earlier, Marco jumps on the next shuttle to the moon. Once aboard, he finds himself sitting next to a seemingly unassuming old lady called Heather, who turns out to be The Red Granny, a legend in Li-Jun’s reality show world for being a three-time champion of The Most Dangerous Game (which requires contestants to sign away the rights to their life).

We rejoin Marco shortly after he lands on the Moon. Accompanied by Heather The Red Granny and her Li-Jun bodyguard Seven Blue, who are heading in the same direction, Marco sets off to House Blue to meet up with his new patron…

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by Mur Lafferty

SuicdeGirls presents the second installment of our Fiction Friday sci-fi series, Marco and the Red Granny, which is brought to you by SG columnist Mighty Mur a.k.a. cyber commentator Mur Lafferty.

Marco and the Red Granny is set in a not-so-distant future where an alien species, the Li-Jun, has transformed the moon into the new artistic center of the universe, where the Sally Ride Lunar Base soon gains the nickname “Mollywood.” These aliens can do amazing things with art and the senses, allowing a painting, for example, to stimulate senses other than sight. When someone asks a starlet, “Who are you wearing?” she could as easily say “J.K. Rowling” as she could “Gucci.”

In the first installment, Marco, a writer whose career has long been in the doldrums, gets a surprise call from an agent he thought he no longer had, informing him that he had received an offer from Mollywood for a much coveted Li-Jun patronage. Having expected little from his day when it started out, Marco now finds himself nursing a hangover on the next shuttle to the moon…

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by Mur Lafferty

SuicdeGirls presents the first installment of our brand new Fiction Friday series, Marco and the Red Granny, which is brought to you by SG columnist Mighty Mur a.k.a. cyber commentator Mur Lafferty.

Marco and the Red Granny is set in a not-so-distant future where an alien species has transformed the moon into the new artistic center of the universe, where the Sally Ride Lunar Base soon gains the nickname “Mollywood.” These aliens can do amazing things with art and the senses, allowing a painting, for example, to stimulate senses other than sight. When someone asks a starlet, “Who are you wearing?” she could as easily say “J.K. Rowling” as she could “Gucci.”

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by Brandon Perkins

In the previous installments of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys. Meanwhile, Katya is similarly “enjoying” a night out with the girls. However, though the no-longer happy couple are experiencing separate but parallel nights out, they exist in the same universe, so there’s a chance their worlds will collide at some point. Unfortunately for Mikhail, the collision comes just as he strikes up a promising conversation at the bar with an intriguing female called Bridget.

Katya peaked around Jayson and smiled bashfully before striking a weird pose in some joke of a gesture. Whether it was intuition or the knowledge that he had ignored all those calls after breaking her heart or that Katya was just that transparent, Mikhail didn’t know, but he certainly knew that his ex was fucking furious. Her surprise and subsequent movements were aggressive, even as anyone else would probably perceive them as playful…Katya was livid.

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by Brandon Perkins

In the previous installments of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys. Meanwhile, Katya is similarly “enjoying” a night out with the girls. However, though the no-longer happy couple are experiencing separate but parallel nights out, they exist in the same universe, so there’s a chance their worlds will collide at some point…

Their timing couldn’t have been more impeccable, at least as far as the line was concerned. Anything’s bouncers had started to let people in, no longer concerned about maintaining a line outside the doors for the purpose of appearances. And yet, the club wasn’t so crowded that they couldn’t let a three-guy-to-zero-girl ratio slide by every once in awhile. The overall breeziness of the situation put some pause in Mikhail’s step and he had to fight the temptation to run. If Jayson hadn’t pushed him forward, he might’ve discovered a way back.

[..]

by Brandon Perkins

In the previous installment of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys. Unable to cut the ties completely, and with reminders in the form of text messages still causing his phone and his emotions to vibrate, Mikhail recalls his first breakup with Katya a year ago after temptation moved into the next cubicle at work. Meanwhile, Katya is similarly “enjoying” a night out with the girls. Though she’s putting lot of effort into her “over it” front, beneath the thin veneer, as with Mikhail, her mind’s in turmoil.

The scene in front of the mirror was absurd. Just wanting to touch up her mascara, Katya was finding reflective real estate hard to come by. Nipples were being forced back into tube tops as breasts were pushed together and back out. Faces ducked in close to the glass and everyone clucked away in the background. Spectacularly bedecked fingernails flicked at specs of makeup gone astray. Elbows flailed with more fury than the numerous turns of various lipsticks. A plethora of squinting and straining smiles dominated the mirror, turning the would-be reflection of harsh fluorescent lights into a pitch-black sea of narcissism. Katya couldn’t find a space to look at herself. The commotion upset her stomach more than it already was; acid churned into the swills of Smirnoff and tonic. She searched hopelessly for a sliver of space, if only to make sure that there wasn’t anything in her teeth or hair.

[..]

by Brandon Perkins

In the previous installment of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys. Unable to cut the ties completely, and with reminders in the form of text messages still causing his phone and his emotions to vibrate, in this flashback Mikhail recalls his first breakup with Katya a year ago after temptation moved into the next cubicle at work.

Despite the constant typing, the Office of Emailing People (OoEP) was a cushy job for anyone who didn’t give a fuck about words. The entire gig was built around brainstorming sessions in the morning that tried to discover new loop-holes in the legal language surrounding spam. Equally as time-consuming, the afternoons were spent circumventing the morning’s laid-out illegalities with clever scams. Some days, Mikhail was writing persuasive paragraphs about the financial benefits of a perverted pyramid scheme. Other days, he was a Nigerian prince. And then there was the completely non-sensical part of his job.

But the OoEP paid pretty well and was a significant setting in his relationships with Katya and Saffron. And he was really, really good at the work.

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