Instead, I tried to achieve a kind of Tom-Dischian sardonic romanticism, and think I succeeded pretty nicely. Damien Broderick was kind enough to purchase the story for the newish Aussie zine Cosmos, where he serves as fiction editor. I liked the fact that it was the sole piece of fiction in that issue, amidst a host of well-done pop-science articles. I never got to appear in Omni, in a similar setting, so this felt like a second chance to reach an audience attracted more by technology than dreams. DAYDREAM NATION Alone again, damn it. Cirri Beausoleil carried a twist-tied plastic bag filled with random, trivial possessions Ken had left behind down the corridor to the fifth-floor garbage chute. A pair of smelly gym socks; several Chinese take-out cartons filled with remnants of that noxious sweet-and-sour chicken he adored; a key-fob USB device big as a dime containing terabytes of possibly-important-but-screw-him files. And assorted other grimly quotidian reminders of another affair that had ended before it had really even begun.
