Issue Directory

OPEN VEIN by John C. Worsley

"Pokerface" by John C. Worsley
In post-war Bulgaria, an American card shark finds more than he's looking for at a gypsy card game.

"Painkillers: Book One: Scene 1" by John C. Worsley
In a society that considers physical feeling a liability, Percy Smith is a social outcast of the highest order: a "Sensitive," or "Feeler."

"Painkillers: Book One: Scene 2" by John C. Worsley
They say this school will be different, but Percy knows better than to believe anyone without the eyes they were born with. Percy, wiser than his years. But there are some things, still, that Percy doesn't know...

"Painkillers: Book One: Scene 3" by John C. Worsley
First day of school jitters, a separate-inequal divide across the aisle of the wired and the wireless, condescension and discrimination by senses. Same old story, fiber optic twist.

"Painkillers: Book One: Scene 4" by John C. Worsley
Term-triggered memories of cold, sterile mornings, needles and chemicals, wires and cameras, hallways that go the wrong way. People with nothing in common herded to attention-bound screens, internal monologue skipping the tracks, skidding back toward six

"Painkillers: Book One: Scene 5" by John C. Worsley
On the way to the doctor, through the architecture, over the wire. Energy transformed thought, thought transformed into energy, patterns against patterns against patterns.

"Painkillers: Book One: Scene 6" by John C. Worsley
Conflict, conflict, bureaucracy of medication, daylight hallucinations. The afternoon pleasures of Seripho Central Schooling House! Where even dreams get lost down spare halls and spiral down the gutter.