K Tate and Lala settled into an easy rhythm, the days sliding under the door and into the void, Chicago streets teeming, Panopticon humming.
The glass globe empty, no sign of activity from Kindred or Dick Overtone, the chase petrified, on hold, if it ever existed, brainstreamed.
K Tate took a job unloading carrots and beets at FoodFeud, pallets disgorging vegetables by the ton, he grew stronger by the day, musclepop.
Lala rode his brainstream through thunderclaps concussive, interpreting future past, but she could sense his timeslippage was nearly done.
Some sudden event, some unexpected smacker, some sneeze or snort or clanger. K Tate on the edge now, it wouldn't take much to send him home.
Brainstream dwindling, the beckoning embrace of 2012, life where it belonged, where data blew through leafless winter oaks, up city noses.
It happened on a dull gray Wednesday at a quarter to three. K Tate had just lifted a bushel of onions onto his shoulder and there he was.
Kindred standing near the powerlift, still as stone, flat eyes cold. K Tate defenseless, Kindred programmed by Dick Overtone, time to kill.
But Kindred softened. How could he kill his own son? He lifted the onions from K Tate's trembling hands, 90 pounds as if the box was empty.
And just like that, K Tate's brainstream ended, he was lit from within neonblue and flaring, countdown to the future, Lala ready to ride.
Kindred: Take me with you. Grabbing K Tate's arm and electronpull surge snapwhipped all three of them forward, tumbling dice, purechance.
Vague impression of the eastern floods, New York awash, bankers adrift in leaking boats, westward ho. Across Ohio and Michigan, 30,000 feet.
In a heartblink they landed exactly where they were, in Chicagoland, behind the same foodmarket, Kindred grasping K Tate's arm, Lala too.
But now it's 2012, past was prologue, gone but not forgotten, K Tate where he belongs, liberator hero, data flowing in the air, freebasing.
Lala bone exhausted, she had been riding K Tate's 1960s brainstream for eons. Kindred wary, carried forward in time well past his own death.
Cats wandered by, skulls burned bald by datastreamsear, painless side effect of submolecular postInternet syndrome. Kindred's head expanded.
Methane Man released a red balloon, skipping pap pap pap scuffing along the brick wall of the Joy Motel, extension of self, explorer cell.
Redlatex invitation, note on redstring: Join me for an evening of realtime discussion in the restaurant at Joy Motel, come one come all.
Your rooms are reserved and paid for, courtesy of Methane Man. You'll be next to me. Kindred on one side, K Tate and Lala on the other.
K Tate pocketing the note, a glance at Kindred: Follow me. Down undulating hallways, turbines rumbling, Overtone there even when he wasn't.
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A twitter novel
The Boston Phoenix says: "Joy Motel is a microblogging book worth scrolling upward for."
Joy Motel is an unconventional sci-fi narrative that was written in real time in 140 character bursts on Twitter, the Internet's fastest-growing social networking platform.
It takes its freeform, disconnected style from the randomness of the Twitterstream itself.
This is a novel for the 21st century, captured in quick bytes by a 5-time Bram Stoker Award Finalist and a Gold Award winning adman, who are transcribing the 'brainstream' flowing inside the neural net of its lead character, Kindred.
He has unknowingly purchased an untested, corrupt brainstream from a black market uploader, which has become an uneraseable part of Kindred's persona as he grapples with an ever-shifting sense of reality, dreams that twist into nightmares, and unreliable perceptions of time and space.
At the center of his struggle, a psychiatrist he calls Psychdaddy is attempting to resolve Kindred's repressed childhood memories of the 1945 Trinity nuclear blast in New Mexico and decode his father's role in a radical collective of bomb-worshippers called the 12 Disciples.
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