Are You HAPP(y)? We Can Help.

By Rei Rosenquist

A Companion to The Grey Stride.

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Ible wants to feel alive.
But in District 6, the sun never shines, the buildings clutter out the sky, and life hides in the cracks between things. 

At the suggestion of a trusted colleague, Ible visits The Grey Stride, a place of dirt, decay...and the drug Tranquility. 

Rumor says Tranquility opens up the cracks where life hides, and lets you see inside. 

But once you do...

If I’m not alive or dead, what am I?
By the time Ible learns enough to fear that question, understanding comes too late. 

Once you go Tranq -- you never go back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tangled Sky Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386548737

Rei Rosenquist

Rei Rosenquist first remembers life as seen out the high window of a hotel balcony. Down below is a courtyard, swarms of brightly dressed tourists, the beach. The memory is nothing but a blue-green washed image. Warmth and sunlight. Here, they are three years old, and this is the beginning of a nomadic story-teller’s life. Over the years, they have traveled to many countries, engaged many peoples, picked up new habits, and learned new languages. But, some things never change. For them, these are stories, food service, and traveling. These three passions have bloomed from hobbies, studies, and jobs into a way of life. These days, Rei can be found in between Tokyo, Kailua, and Bellingham, Washington pouring beautiful latte art, baking off a batch of famous savory scones, and cozying up with a laptop to obsessively write mountains of dark speculative fiction. You can find Rei’s stories and blog at reirosenquist.com. You can also reach them via email at [e-mail] or connect via Facebook (Rei Rosenquist), Twitter (rylrosenquist) and Instagram (rylrosenquist).

Book preview

Are You HAPP(y)? We Can Help

Are You HAPP(y)? We Can Help

A Short Story

Rei Rosenquist

Tangled Sky Press

Contents

Are You HAPP(y)? We Can Help

Also by Rei Rosenquist

About the Author

Are You HAPP(y)? We Can Help

It was Tuesday. On a whim, Ible had followed Fox’s very specific instructions. Purchased and soiled a brand new extra-feminine dress suit and descended from corporate town into the slum residential sector of District Five. Seeking nothing but the promise—that one moment of beautiful reality among the painfully real.

Ible ducked under a crumbling doorway and stepped into The Grey Stride. A row of little globe-shaped bottles littered the top of a bar where dirty glasses and spent-up drug paraphernalia were collected like dust. Overhead, a broken chandelier cast uneven shadows that looked strangely like cobwebs.

Spiders.

Ible shivered, filled with a sudden illogical dread that an actual living spider might crawl from one of the many cracks in the flooring.

It wouldn’t. All the spiders were dead. Their bodies entombed in harmless still images posted in kids’ history lesson docs. They’d been replaced by robotics. Free Technologies had released the first batch as an experiment. A mere three batches later, these highly efficient bots had driven the majority of insects to extinction.

The old names persisted, but that was where the similarities ended. Free’s robotics held strictly to function. They fulfilled the insects’ jobs three-fold, yet they were ugly. Rudimentary in shape and body. Not a single robot ever knew the beauty of metamorphosis. It was what it did, and eventually, it was obsolete.

It’s not just the robots. People feel it too. This obsolescence.

Point in case. Last Monday, Ible had approached Fox, a colleague who always seemed to be in the know about things. Say, I’m in a rut.

Aren’t we all, Fox had laughed. Smart smacks like that were one of