All the Retros at the New Cotton Club

By DeAnna Knippling

Bernice had a good life with Bobby. She mighta been the second wife but to him she was number one. Then he died of cancer--something that not even the modern docs who could treat a ninety-year-old man to look like he was twenty-five again could cure.

Most of the money went to his kids. She'd get a house and enough to live really good on if she hosted an illegal copy of his A.I. for three years--his "ghost."

It was almost like having him back. They could go to underground clubs and hang out with the other A.I.s who were slumming it with the living. She could see him, talk to him, feel his touch--

And hide him from the people who were lookin' for him. And who mighta just found out where he was hidden...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wonderland Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370996360

DeAnna Knippling

DeAnna Knippling is a freelance writer, editor, and book designer living in Colorado.  She started out as a farm girl in the middle of South Dakota, went to school in Vermillion, SD, then gravitated through Iowa to Colorado, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She now writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, and mystery for adults under her own name; adventurous and weird fiction for middle-grade (8-12 year old) kids under the pseudonym De Kenyon; and various thriller and suspense fiction for her ghostwriting clients under various and non-disclosable names. Her latest book, Alice’s Adventures in Underland:  The Queen of Stilled Hearts, combines two of her favorite topics–zombies and Lewis Carroll. Her short fiction has appeared in Black Static, Penumbra, Crossed Genres, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and more. Her website and blog are at www.WonderlandPress.com.  You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Book preview

Table of Contents:

Copyright Information

Start Reading

Author Information

Copyright Information

Copyright © 2016 by DeAnna Knippling

Cover design copyright © 2016 by DeAnna Knippling

Interior design copyright © 2016 by DeAnna Knippling

Published by Wonderland Press at Smashwords

Discover other Wonderland Press titles at www.WonderlandPress.com and Smashwords.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All the Retros at the New Cotton Club

The top of the bar was solid Brazilian mahogany, the kind that looks like it’s made out of bourbon-colored smoke. The wood underneath the projected illusions of the New Cotton Club was real but it was the far less expensive oak.

The dame at the bar looked vaguely familiar, like Charlie had seen her before but never at the bar—like it had been a while. He slid her a gin rickey in an Old Fashioned glass and she rolled him a virtual coin across the bar. He closed his hand around it and made it disappear. She started stirring the ice cubes in her Old Fashioned glass with the tip of her finger. She had the whole getup on—Marcel wave, cigarette in a long black holder, and a black-and-gold striped dress that ended at her knees in black fringe. Voices chattered and forks rattled on china plates. On the stage at the other end of the hall a trumpet player in a penguin suit was using a tinny mute at the end of his horn to good effect. The trombone and clarinet players were trying to keep up.

Out of the corners of Charlie’s eyes the room looked like it was swirling with smoke, but it was just the rendering overlay. Tonight there was a heavy retro presence in the room and it was causing the servers some headaches. Over the last hour there had been about a hundred minor virus warnings. Somebody was infected. The system was trying to track down the source but it seemed to be coming from every direction. At any rate, some of the finer details up around the ceiling looked cheap and misty but otherwise there was no sign of the heavy server load. The floor was packed and the balconies were filled to the brim. A quick glance showed that the other bartenders were in the weeds but not so bad that they needed to break character. Just another Friday night at the club.

Later, when the diners finished eating and the amateurs left for the night, they’d clear a space in the center of the room for dancing. Miss Alice and the rest of the swing band would come up on stage and dancers doing the Charleston would take over.

Charlie mixed up a tray of cocktails for one of Dolores’s tables: a Mary Pickford, a Corpse Reviver, a retro Hanky Panky, and a bourbon on the rocks. Whoever ordered the bourbon was going to regret it. The stuff was authentically terrible. It didn’t contain anything that could kill you like it could have in Prohibition times—then as now,