A large orbital death platform continued its eternal fall around the Earth.
Positioning rockets along its hull occasionally made an offering to Newton’s laws of motion.
One long, thin cone projected towards the Earth. In the control room a long, thin man sat in front of a bank of consoles. A red phone crouched next to him. The man wore a lab coat with the name “Dr. Urias” sewn across the left breast.
The red phone rang.
“Hello?” the man answered.
“This is the President of the United States. I understand that you’re holding us hostage. May I ask your name?”
“Oh, yes, that. Could we do this on video? My ear gets hot when I use the phone.”
The man hung up the phone, punched in a few keystrokes, and a popular video conferencing application loaded up. His contact list included the President of the United States of America, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, among others. Each of the names of the most powerful people in the world were accompanied by icons of adorable baby animals.
From a Guide to Moral Living in Examples: Orbital Death Platforms by Greg X Graves
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Literate zombies, alien supervillains who can’t keep their targets straight, necromancers and necromancy school dropouts… these are the creations of Greg X Graves, author of Guide to Moral Living, Codex Nekromantia and other darkly hilarious tales. Moral Living, from which the Orbital Death Platforms excerpt above is taken, is a web serial handbook for making the right choices through all of life’s little hiccups. WARNING: These are not the cautionary tales of your grandmother, unless of course your grandmother was an expert in extraterrestrials, reanimation, undeadness, robotics or any combinations thereof, in which case, can we trade? Mine makes an excellent lasagna…
Anyway, lasagna and extraterrestrials aside, Greg is one of the few chronic short story patient-ah, writers in the web fiction sphere. And by short I mean, well, not Twitter-short but maybe… Facebook short (who leaves long posts on Facebook, anyway?) Short enough to get through in a coffee break. Just make sure to cover your nose when you laugh… keyboards don’t like coffee and neither do nasal passages.
So who is this “Greg” character?
About Greg
It all began with a single, massive point, an unfathomable amount of energy contained in a lump the size and texture of a raisin [author's interpretation]. Then the Big Bang banged, spewing chunky pieces of universe all over the rapidly-expanding walls of the universe. Material began coalescing into the first generation of stars, and their death resulted in the birth of heavy elements. In the Sol system, Earth formed from the corpses of those stars.
On Earth, a few pieces of carbon had a cuddle puddle, and life began. Millions of years after that, sex was invented by two adventurous organisms that wanted the cuddle puddle to lead somewhere. Still more years after that, some pioneering organism said “Hey, oxygen in air? Bitchin!” and it climbed out of the sea and onto a piece of rock.
And that’s the story of why Greg has dry skin.
Greg X Graves is a young, angry man who is full of shit ideas. He’s a rebel, baby. You can’t take him home to Mom and Dad, because he’ll probably just start railing against the Man and his stupid Establishment, and your parents will just be like “Whoa, Daughter, no way are you dating this hooligan,” and it’ll just be a whole big scene, and Greg’ll just be like “Whatever, toots,” and ride away on his bitchin’ hog and then everyone will be sorry. Except Greg, because he’s never sorry. Once, when he was nine, he accidently dropped some ice cream on the floor and didn’t apologize. He was just like “Whatever, toots,” and rode away on his bitchin’ hog.
Now Greg is trying to capitalize on this whole “internet” thing. When asked how exactly he intended to make money on the internet, Greg just said “Whatever, toots” and rode off on his bitchin’ hog. Into the sunset.
taken with permission from: http://www.gregxgraves.com/about/
Greg was kind enough to sit down with us to address a few more pressing issues. Well, to be fair he may have been standing rather than sitting or perhaps he was laying down or dancing a jig … that’s the trouble with email, can’t be sure of anyone’s posture. The important point is we somehow managed to get him to answer some of the more important queries a writer can face. Tune in tomorrow for the interroga–ah, interview, and some of Greg’s thoughts on… things.
Until then, visit Greg at www.gregxgraves.com and check out some other cool beans.
Greg X. Graves
My position was an epic slouch, one that can only be spoken of in song.
aeliusblythe
Good to know. I’m also a fan of the slouch, the only posture to produce such a distinctive curvature of the spine. Really says “I was doing important things while my body fell into this shape.”
One day the minstrels will recognize it’s glory.