Been a busy week here, but with it has come some good achievements, as well as correspondence from long-lost buds, including Dave Thompson. Salud, buddy.

I’ve officially tied both ends together of the novel outline I’ve been working on, and I’m thrilled. Now, a quick pass through it again to box up any loose ends, and I can start in earnest on the fun part of this project.

I am so excited. I can’t wait to bring this piece to life. It spans a projected three serialized volumes, and I’ve mapped it from the beginning all the way through the very last scene. I’ve two novels sitting in a desk drawer, so the size of the project doesn’t intimidate me at all.

Hopefully, this will be the one that moves my work up a few notches on the ole’ public awareness scales. I’m really interested in seeing if I can make a snowball instead of the flurries I’ve done so far.

We’ll see.

The amusing thing is, the ideas for short stories keep coming. I had a crazy one hit me last night – just might have to carve out the time to make it live.

So today, allow me to bring you some more free fiction. As always, this is exclusive to the site, so if you happen to want rights to it, feel free to hit me up at my e-mail address. I love any feedback, as well.

Stay tuned.

Busy as…
Copyright 2008 Jonathan C. Gillespie

Every day at 4AM, Unit 68B-43 came back online from low-power mode and swam the six-hundred feet down the underwater passage and up the other side. Once on the surface, it made its way to the bank and ran a survey of the trees along the sides of what had once been the Potomac. The trees used to be normal cedars.

Measuring carefully the sizes of each tree, it trimmed with deurtanium incisors the largest present, sending hundred-foot titans along prescribed trajectories, filling the forest with crashes and thunder as they hit the ground. 68B-43 would then collect these trees and carry them back to its endless project. Its preferred path along the riverbank was worn several feet deep thanks to its daily passes.

Placing the trees where needed, 68B-43 took the last few hours of the day to survey its work, recharging its super-efficient solar cells in the process, and taking in hydrogen from the water with each stroke of its mighty webbed feet. Pausing atop the dam, it achieved something approaching pleasure at its progress, as it had been programmed.

Its optics picked up the swathe of water that spread to the horizon, held in check by its daily efforts. Behind its miles-deep masterpiece, the Potomac was little more than a creek, and the ocean could not be seen, making the plasteel and admanticrete buildings atop the plateaus of Manhattan appear so much taller.

68B-43 sent a message to the other units. Its hyperlake was now complete. It would settle into maintenance mode, forever restraining this new body of water, while man farmed the fertile soils of the new Atlantic mountains.