Telesphere

By David Rees-Thomas

5 Tales of the weird and eerie
These are stories with strange edges. Science fiction, the grotesque, glitchy tales of weirdness!
Shrooms, is a cozy catastrophe, a world where humanity scrambles to survive..
Factory is Crawley's tale, a life of unrelenting servitude and weirdness..
Telesphere gives us VR in the 1960s, and one woman's eerie adventures with the inner world.
Substance to the Rumor is a short piece, which probes the eternal question of hope.
Head of Department gives us Kafka in The Matrix. A quirky little story.
David Rees-Thomas has written many short stories and books in a variety of genres, including horror, mystery, science fiction, and even the occasional literary foray.
He has also worked as an editor and first reader on magazines such as Waylines, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Nightmare.
He is currently at work on a new mystery novel series, and also writes under other names. This short story collection as well as others, can be found in most online bookstores.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Rees-Thomas
• Release date: Jun 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201085940

Book preview

Table of Contents

Introduction

Shrooms

Factory

Telesphere

Substance to the Rumor

Head of Department

About the Author

Telesphere

and other

Weird and Eerie Tales

A short story collection

Copyright © 2022 David Rees-Thomas

Published by Acid Publishing

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

For all the mirages and the moonmadness.

What about a blues in W, in the key of W?

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Introduction

This volume of short stories is my 13th collection. It has, perhaps arbitrarily, been placed within the Weird and Eerie Tales category. The Hauntologies have so far been reserved for tales which have the common factor of being set in South Wales, aside from volume 5, which contains stories solely set in Japan.

The other reason is that these tales offer up a peculiar combination of genres, never quite settling into any closeted sub-genre. It’s science fiction, it’s grotesque, it’s weird, it’s glitchy, and it also borrows from other strands of narrative.

Shrooms is the first story. It’s not the best title, but it’s what we’ve got, so let’s deal with it. There are definite echoes of Triffids and other British cozy catastrophes, and I also feel that it suggests a larger story which would be fun to play around with. This short story sets up a world we’ve maybe seen before in films and books, but one in which I think many more human-sized dramas could be explored.

It works fine as a stand alone story, of course, and there’s always the possibility that I’ll change the title one day if I can think of something better.

Factory is a shorter piece, a moodier number, which gives the reader an entry point into Crawley’s wider world and how he’s come to interact with it in the past, and possibly, in the future. It’s a stark and unrelenting world, where the structures dictating his ability to exist and function are dark, and becoming darker.

It makes us question the nature of serving, and when that service becomes something altogether more insidious.

Telesphere comes from another aspect of how our structures confine us, sometimes without our knowledge, or at least, our full understanding.

There was actually a device patented in 1960 by Morton Heilig, called the Telesphere Mask, which basically looked like a modern day VR unit, and was supposed to interact with television. Apparently, Heilig referred to it as a telescopic television apparatus for individual use.

The story is not so much directly about the Telesphere unit, but more an exploration of the main character’s life, and her understanding of that life. The Telesphere is what allows this exploration, and I think our relationship with the machinery we create is one worth examining. Not just in the usual sociological manner, where the emphasis seems to be solely on how bad or good the technology is for us, but more on a personal level, where the importance still rests with the individual.

Substance to the Rumor is short, but roomy enough for questions about the nature of hope and thoughts about the future to breathe. I think I was re-reading Dhalgren by Samuel Delany at the time. Not to say this is like that, because it isn’t, but the astonishing space he allows himself in his stories was definitely in my mind as I was writing.

Head of Department is an exploration of the weird liminal spaces which humanity can inhabit when the framework of logic we’ve been presented with up to a certain point begins to dissipate, or disappears altogether, all at once, and in a deafening vacuum. It’s time and space which was never there, and even in our own memory, the firm structures which had guided us through life start to unravel, the connectors flashing no new electrical signals.

It’s happening on a wide scale, and often, even the perpetrators and the practitioners are not fully aware of their intended and unintended consequences. It’s the practical results of much of what came to be termed as postmodern theory being implemented. Not a good game.

Of course, these are stories, not weighty political messages. But, stories allow us routes into which we can maneuver and examine our (mis)understanding of the complexities involved within the motion of life, the swinging and the backs and forths, the explosions and the entropy.

Enjoy!

Thank you

David Rees-Thomas

Nishinomiya, Japan

May 2022

Shrooms

The earth is churned, not like when Tilly uses the plow to create perfect rows of mounded soil. It's churned like kids have been chasing each other all over the vegetable allotment, like they haven't noticed the scattered carrots and the tangled nets of runner beans in a heap by the edge of the river.

And the smell of damp soil is newly rich, turned far more recently than when Tilly last tended the earth. It reminds her of rain in the English springtime on her grandfather's allotment in the dead past, the rain enriching the mud, loosening the rich scent of wet peat.

All it needs now is an old man smoking a pipe and the picture would be perfect. But, this is not that England anymore. Not for her, not for anyone.

She sits at the stream's edge, clutching the net, a few bean pods already fallen off, scattering the steep banking, some even rafting down the slow moving water. She sniffs the air, something acidic like rotting oranges releasing their potent moisture. Familiar, but the wind steals it away, and she's distracted by the trees.

Grunts and fast rustling noises echo from the nearby forest, gradually getting quieter. It wasn't kids, and the damned animals only stopped because she came along, all loud and human-shaped, scaring them off, at least for a short time.

She reaches out for the remaining bean pods, and stows them in a canvas bag with a wide opening she seems to have permanently strapped around her shoulder. The pods are damp from the dew on the grass, and the bitter odor of fresh, green vegetables is in her nose.

Animals, as hungry as the people in Tilly’s community, but better able to adapt to this new world, a world where the shrooms changed everything, forever.

She closes her eyes, and all she can think of is how Dan makes the stew. All they've got is a few battered pots and pans, some salt and pepper and other random spices liberated from wherever the hell they could get them. But, he has a way with food, a way which she has never felt within her. He has a patience, a genuine joy.

And, of course, they still have the supplies. Carefully rationed, but enough to last a few years more.

Tilly wears practical clothes for the allotment. Just because human civilization took a hard punch, doesn't mean the black flies, and other scraping and biting things took a holiday. If anything, they also seemed to seek their vengeance on the human wreckage left behind.

She re-tucks her jeans into the thick socks and Doc Martens, then adjusts the brim of her hat, which also has netting hanging down. She never had any idea in her old life just how practical netting would be later on. She stands, and collects up the rest of the damaged crop, dropping carrots and peppers into her bag.

This is her domain. Dan might be a magician around the campfire,