Here it is:
https://medium.com/@iiandyiiii/entropy-9a919512bfdb
It’s called Entropy. Medium calls it a 21 minute read. A bit sci-fi-ish, with a touch of horror. Nothing worse than PG-13, I think (meaning some violence, a bit of bad language, but nothing worse than the average blockbuster action movie).
Congrats! Looking forward to reading it.
I’m resisting making a “short medium at large” joke regarding your short story on Medium.
Thanks!
One of the coolest things about Medium is that you can track the “referrer” sites to see which source gets the most readers. So far I’ve linked to my story here and Facebook, and FB has a slight lead in referrals.
I’ll have to finish it later, but I love your descriptions:
I can picture this guy in detail. I look forward to reading more!
Thanks so much! I hope you enjoy the rest!
Yay! It’s jumped to the numero uno spot on my reading list!
Great! I hope you enjoy it!
Not bad.
One typo though, in this paragraph: ““Guess you weren’t lying,” he said, counting four crisp twenty dollar bills. “You have until five o’clock today.” He threw the walled down and walked back towards his office”
Thanks! Typo is fixed.
Enjoyable, but I find it leaves more questions than it answers.
At the end I was left unfulfilled, as I was left with one nagging question that will not be answered.
So, did he get the promotion?
Glad you enjoyed it. I meant for there to be a lot of questions – hopefully not too much. Sorry you weren’t fulfilled!
For what it’s worth, about half of the violent incidents that the main character observed or took part in are at least partially based on real events that I either witnessed or took part in (plus one for my father). The idea of the story came from the very odd rush of elation that I experienced in one particular violent incident. Fighting for my life and emerging victorious (an attempted mugging – no one was seriously hurt that I know of) was an incredible feeling, even if it’s kind of ugly for me to admit that.
I haven’t been in a fight in well over a decade, but I did get into quite a few dust-ups in my youth. I understand entirely what you mean. There is something exhilarating about the adrenaline rush and the violence. Even if you end up on the losing end of the fight, it still leaves you pumped up. (Which is why I suspect many of the protesters/counter protesters keep finding ways of meeting up and beating eachother up, they like it.)
It is also why we have violence in our police departments, in our offices, in most of our daily lives. We try to pretend that we are an enlightened social animal, but really, deep down, we want little more than to sink our fangs into the enemy until they submit to our will. We measure our “civility” by how many steps of non-violent coercion there are to bend someone to society’s will before violence is invoked. Some find not only convenience, but also pleasure in skipping those steps and going straight for the violent response to a disagreement.
And to be quite honest, were I going for social commentary, I would have ended with “This is normal. The civilization that we enjoyed for the last little bit was the abnormality, we return you to your normally scheduled savagery.”
I didn’t intend for it to be quite so pessimistic, but I do like that final line!
I liked it. Reminded me of a Stephen King short story, the name of which escapes me, about adding something to the water to reduce violence. Yours is like the mirror image of that. Although in the SK story a bit of time is spent explaining the cause of the trouble, in this case I think your story benefits from not explaining.
Thanks so much!
That’s where I find it interesting, in that it seems left as an exercise to the reader as to whether these effects are being caused by a hostile or even outside force, or if it is just humanity and social structures breaking down to the point where a critical mass of people have said “Screw it”, and stopped doing their part of maintaining the social structure.
As the title of the story is “Entropy”, I am inclined to feel that it is the natural decay of social order, as it requires energy input into a complex system like civilization to keep it in order, with the vagaries of chaos and disorder perpetually threatening to pull it apart. Without enough input, without enough work on the part of those trying to maintain civil society, entropy tends towards a maximum.
I think I would actually be slightly disappointed if it turned out that the cause of the events in the story were from an outside source, though more hopeful for the characters.
The cause, or if there is a single cause, is left deliberately mysterious. But I’m very pleased that the story inspired this kind of thinking.