Brett has been writing (tentatively) since the age of ten. Never having found a market in South Africa for the genres he prefers to write in, the discovery of  Something Wicked was a pleasant surprise. &arial is part of a much bigger tale-in-progress that draws a lot from the works of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, as well as many Cyberpunk-themed movies and anime series. Brett’s reading interests range through Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi and Non-Fiction. His favourite authors are Stephen King, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Terry Pratchett and Clive Barker. 

This is Brett's first story for Something Wicked.

extract from &arial

&arial. The metal-studded goddess of the wire, the mesh, the electronic ether. An unreal presence in cyber, part of the mythology. People claimed to know someone who knew someone who felt/saw her out there, performing her dance on the intricate network that spanned the globe. But there never seemed to be a first-hand account of her existence. It seemed that she had never graced the rest of the mortal population with confirmation that she was real. So the legend grew, and changed and got wilder, something to tell the n00bs when they started out. Decking had its own history already and she, &arial, was a huge part of it.

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 “Hey, did you get something useful from that soft I pulled last week?”
  Looking up from his drink, Vlad saw that damned nuisance, Slimy Steve, heading his way, grinning broadly. Oh Lord, he thought to himself, this idiot is gonna have to find out that that soft was a prototype learning prog for kids about to jack in for the first time. School project stuff.
  “Heya Steve.”
  “Well, m’man? Spill. Was it all you hoped for?”
  “Steve… don’t take this the wrong way. But if your sense of direction in freakin’ reality was anything like your ability to navigate in cyber, you would probably drown in the toilet.” He gestured with his drink. “Sit your stupid lame-ass down. We have to talk.”
Slimy Steve’s face dropped for an instant and then he brightened up. That’s the problem with these slightly dense cyber-cowboys, Vlad reflected. The dumber they are the faster and higher they bounce when you try to take them down a peg. And Slimy was in the approximate region of Venus right now. Jesus.
  Vlad leaned against the wall in the back of the café/bar/dump where he hung out. Smoke hung everywhere, giving everything a slightly hazy look. Garish neon lit up face after face briefly, some of them not something you would want to look at in real light. He rooted around the inside pocket of his jacket (black, of course) for a cigarette. His fingers brushed his Deck, custom, built by himself. Smooth finish, coded with his personal encryption algorithm; people would kill for the contents of that little piece of hardware. Or even the hardware itself, some of the Jap companies were still looking for their experimental high-speed neural-chips. Of course, he had tweaked the coding a little, upping response times and nerve relays.
  Vlad extracted a cigarette and lit it with a practiced flick. Surveying the useless lump that was Steve, he prepared to hand out some education. Not that it would do any good with Steve. God knows that he’d been trying for years to pound some sense into him.
  “Steve…. look at me, Steve. Right. Now listen…”
He broke off. Steve’s eyes had just glazed over. Now was not a good time. Wordlessly, Vlad transferred a few hundred credits to Steve’s chip and thanked him for the soft.
  “It came in handy, Steve,” he said, adding to himself: with my little brother’s school project.
  “Keep it up.”
  He got up to leave. Steve grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him level with his mouth.
  “I can get more.”
  “Um, Steve… I’m not really looking for more soft now. Maybe later okay, I’ve got more than enough to deal with now.”
  He moved off, leaving Steve alone, looking like the last kid on the playground. Up to the bar, not really paying attention to where he was going. Everyone in Juno’s knew him. Hey, half the people in Sub City knew him, come to that, in one way or another. He was famous in his own right for his decking ability, though almost no-one knew that he, Vlad, was the decker they call the Blind Guardian. But in Juno’s, he was a regular, almost part of the furnishing. He’d been coming almost as long as the place had been open, when Juno had still been running the place. He had still been a kid then, and Juno had helped him get his first Deck. Vlad never forgot that.
  Catching the barman’s eye, he nodded. A drink appeared in front of him. There was no need to vocalize; even the newest employees knew his preferences. Benefits of being part of the foundation. He picked up the bottle, turned, resting his elbows on the bar top. Lifted the bottle to his lips, scanning the crowd. Heard his name being called above the noise.

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