Futures : A hypertext short story

5C2: Caution

As he concentrated, Michael Darnby felt a sneeze coming on. He drew his handkerchief out of its trouser pocket to catch the explosion - and found that the handkerchief was a bit damp and not suitable for a satisfying blow. He took it up to the laundry basket and helped himself to a clean one from the supply in the airing cupboard.
   Going downstairs, he noticed a dark patch on the wall. It was another of the clean-edged slots like the one in his window. He could see right through it into the living room. Alarmed, Darnby turned and looked at the opposite wall. There was another slot in it, about ten feet up from the half-landing.
   When he went up to the front bedroom, he found a slot in the stair wall and yet another slot in the ceiling at the front of the room, where the ceiling followed the slope of the roof.
   Numbly, Darnby went downstairs and sat down in front of his psionic amplifier. In a rush of panic, he swept the £100 from the Comparator Gate. The house would look like a colander if he tried to trawl 200 lost fifty-pees! And the cost of repairing the Swiss-cheese effect already inflicted would be a lot more than the profits so far.
   Darnby turned the psionic amplifier face down and toured the room, looking for slots and trying to work out just how much damage he had cause. If he had hit the hot-water tank or its header-tank, for instance! He was dismayed by his own recklessness.
   His problem was that he needed to use the Treasure Trawler now to pay for the damage to his home; unless he could sue Futures magazine and/or the author of the article. But first, he had to work out a way to use it safely.
   Obviously, he would have to use it away from the house. But he also had the problem of keeping himself out of the line of fire.
   Most short cuts usually take you miles out of your way, he thought bitterly. If he couldn't figure out a way to exploit his Treasure Trawler without killing himself, Futures magazine would have to head the list of economies to pay for repairs to his abused home. And what was he going to tell the people next door about the slots going through their half of the pair of semis?

END of this route through the story.

In Conclusion

I wrote this short story in September of 1980, before the computer technology needed to create a hypertext story was available to the home user.

Fifteen years later, in September of 1995, there were much fancier hypertext programs on the market than the one which I wrote [using QBasic 4.5, for anyone interested in that sort of thing] to display the hypertext version of the story, but what really counts is the content of the story, not how it looks, and the author chosing to make the effort to go all the way with his vision.

The story is featured in the second volume of my collected short stories [first edition 1997] and this HTML version was created in January, 2000.

This is the end.

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Created for Romiley Literary Circle by Henry T. Smith Productions, 10 SK6 4EG, G.B.
sole © Philip Turner, 1980.