Posted by dj as Fiction at 12:03 PM UTC []

Enter your password to view comments

Double Latte At The Starbucks Saloon

By DJ Cline

Note: This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people, places or events is entirely coincidental. So get over yourself. Text from DJCline.com

Everybody at Starbucks had a gun.

It was 9:00AM at the Dumbarton coffee shop and Betty Button, PR Hack for Netrosonics was there to meet reporter Nowah Guy. They were the only unarmed customers.

BETTY: Did you have to pick this place?

GUY: Safest place in Dumbarton. It’s like the Old West in here. I ordered a latte with a hair in it. I thought you would feel at home surrounded by Tea Baggers drinking coffee. Ah, the irony. Text from DJCline.com

BETTY: Not all Netrosonics employees are nutcases.

GUY: Not all. You’re here. What do you want to talk to me about?

BETTY: We are moving to the old Cianti Campus. I don’t want to get cancer again.

GUY: So quit.

BETTY: No one will hire me. I have a pre-existing condition.

GUY: If you haven’t noticed, insurance companies can’t do that anymore. That new president your company fought so hard against just signed it into law. Text from DJCline.com

BETTY: I don’t want anyone else to get cancer either.

GUY: Well, that is very civic-minded of you. Your timing is off, but okay.

BETTY: Will you help me?

GUY: There’s a story in it, so sure.

BETTY: Meet me tonight at the Cianti Campus. Bring that chemical sniffer gadget. Come alone.

GUY: I won’t be alone. If you haven’t noticed, I’m never alone these days. It’s like bringing a Starbucks with me wherever I go.

Guy nodded his head at several people Betty hadn’t noticed. They all seemed to be on their phones. Before Guy left one of them went out the front door and another went out the side entrance. Three cars followed Guy’s car out of the parking lot. Who were they? Text from DJCline.com

For Betty it was a glimpse of what her life was going to be like after Netrosonics.

Copyright 2010 DJ Cline All rights reserved.

Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary, Fiction at 4:36 PM UTC []

No Comments »

Swamped At The Office

By DJ Cline

Note: This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people, places or events is entirely coincidental. So get over yourself. Text from DJCline.com

Betty Button was having flashbacks. She was back in the swamp fighting for her life. Text from DJCline.com

She woke up in cold sweat in front of her laptop at 6:00 AM in her pre-foreclosure condo. Nowah Guy had sent an e-mail with the subject line: “Back 2 Swamp?” Text from DJCline.com

Betty Button was a marketing writer, a public relations flack, and a spin-doctor for Netrosonics. Her job was to put a good face on disaster and she was earning every penny. She had fallen asleep in front of her computer trying to write a press release disguised as a personal blog that had to be posted by 9:00 AM. How did she get into this mess? Text from DJCline.com

During the dotcom boom, Netrosonics opened a branch office in San Banos. They bought companies, fired the employees and then sat on their intellectual property until somebody had to pay for it. They spent more money on lawyers than engineers. They paid Betty to make them look like an obscure high tech company and upstanding corporate citizen. In the current post-collapse business climate she could sadly brag that her bosses weren’t convicted of anything…yet. Text from DJCline.com

Her job would have been easy if she just had to sweet talk a few reporters and buy ads in their newspapers or commercial time on a few TV stations. Instead she had to be nice to hundreds of people online she had absolutely no control over. She could refuse them access and they would publish anyway. Text from DJCline.com

She needed her job. She needed the health insurance. She had a pre-existing condition. She was sure she got cancer working in the Swamp. Text from DJCline.com

The Swamp was the nickname for the old Cianti campus in Dumbarton, a small city built on a dump over a marsh in San Francisco Bay. Cianti was a competitor to Netrosonics that lost a huge legal battle resulting in their demise. Betty was chief spin-doctor at Cianti as they went down in flames. When it was over Netrosonics did the Machiavellian thing and hired her, mainly to keep her silence. A few weeks after she started her new job she was diagnosed and fought for her life.

As part of the legal victory Netrosonics got the Cianti headquarters in Dumbarton. They were moving from their offices in San Banos to the Swamp. Betty would lose her corner office overlooking the big box hardware store. She would no longer get to see former Netrosonics employees milling around with other day laborers looking for work.

Instead she would most likely have a cubicle that stank from the toxic garbage rotting under the building and venting fumes into the building. When she worked at Cianti, she would come home and her cat would sniff her clothes and make pawing motions like she was trying to bury something in her litter box. When she started at Netrosonics she had to buy an entirely new wardrobe. Text from DJCline.com

Unless she found another job, she was going back to the Swamp. She was afraid of going through cancer treatment again. She looked at Nowah Guy’s message. Maybe someone she thought was a problem might be her solution. Text from DJCline.com

Copyright 2010 DJ Cline All rights reserved.

Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary, Fiction at 4:38 PM UTC []

No Comments »

Nowah’s Aardvark

By DJ Cline

Note: This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people, places or events is entirely coincidental. So get over yourself.Text  from DJCline.com

Reporter Nowah Guy was having lunch with the security detail for the Fredonian Ambassador when Sharon Stope, the web manager of Happy Octopus called.

SHARON: Somebody doesn’t like your cat.

GUY: Excuse me?

SHARON: There’s a guy that’s been stalking you.

GUY: So? Turn it over to my people.

SHARON: He’s sent an e-mail detailing all the things he doesn’t like about your site. He rants for a couple of pages. Big text, little text, bold text, italic text, all caps. He needs not only a good psychiatrist but a good web designer. It’s a new loony record and  I thought you should know about it. He thinks your site is too personal. Text  from DJCline.com

GUY: Duh! It has my name on it.

SHARON: I didn’t say he was very bright. He also says that you are communicating secret messages to him. Oh, and he wants you to make him invisible.

GUY: Invisible?

SHARON: Yeah. Like I said, super crazy. The message is a little confused, but then so is he.

GUY: He could have contacted me directly. Never miss an opportunity to make a friend. Must be a coward too. Has there been a cyber attack?Text  from DJCline.com

SHARON: The usual. I think he’s just a nut but I wanted to give you a heads up.  His name is Walnut Sphinchter.

GUY: You’re kidding right?

SHARON: Nope, that’s his name.

GUY: Thanks Sharon.

Nowah could not stop laughing at the name. Jack Jones, a former Navy SEAL and head of the security detail, wanted to know what was so funny. Nowah gave him the name.

JACK: Oh yeah, that’s quite a name. We’ve crossed paths before. Let me look on my cell phone. Hmm, his website has his face in shadow. With all this social networking he should stay home if he wants to be invisible. He was at the Ruritanian event last month hanging out with some money launderers. He looks like a middle-aged guy, well-groomed, goes to the gym, confirmed bachelor type. Bob over there saw him back then and thought he was cute, but he said the fellow went home with two other guys. Text  from DJCline.com

BOB: Yeah. He went home with two Ruritanian bankers I had to tail. He lives in a creepy restored Victorian. Here’s a picture of it. Notice anything unusual?

GUY: Is that an actual hearse next to the house? Who does he think he is, Eddie Munster?

JACK: Hey Bob, you better look into this some more. Anybody showing up at a diplomatic event is in our jurisdiction.

GUY: You do what you have to, I’ll do what I want. For something like this I call Aaron Auschmann in Los Angeles.

JACK: Auschmann. Isn’t he dead?

GUY: No, we met last year at some lifetime achievement award. He’s close to a hundred years old now. Born in Germany, escaped before WWII, fought in the Resistance, got caught, escaped again. Went to Hollywood. Got blacklisted. Won awards and tried to retire. Recently Aaron’s wife died and he lost a lot of his money in the crash, so I’m trying to help out.Text  from DJCline.com

JACK: Is he, you know, lucid?

GUY: Oh yeah. Still alive, still funny and still working. Writers come to him with comedy problems. This crackpot is right up his alley. After what Auschmann has been though, he’s big on free speech and loves going after bullies.Text  from DJCline.com

Nowah dialed Aaron on his phone.

GUY: Aaron? This is Nowah Guy. Can you hear me?

AARON: I’m deaf but I’m not dead. Let me turn this thing up. How can I help you today?

GUY: Well, I’ve got a guy named Walnut Sphinchter and I want a fictional name for him.

AARON: Walnut Sphinchter? My god! How can I top that? Let me think. I used to know a camp commandant named Sphinchter; he was a baron and real bastard. How about Baron Von Aardvark?Text  from DJCline.com

GUY: That’s great. I’ll use it. I’ll send you the first draft and you can punch it up for the usual fee. This going to be so much fun!

Copyright 2010 DJ Cline All rights reserved.

Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary, Fiction at 4:36 PM UTC []

No Comments »

One More Soldier

September 11, 2026 3:30 AM

High on a ridge between Pakistan and Afghanistan was one more soldier in one more war. Text from DJCline.com

Captain Don Jin of the Chinese Army was assigned to find and kill the latest villain named Jaca. Many men had been sent to kill him and all had failed. Don’s commanders briefed him in Kabul and gave him a rough direction on where Jaca was last seen. They would keep sending soldiers until Jaca was dead. Text from DJCline.

Don’s approach was very low budget and off the radar. After picking up his regular field gear, he poked around town until he found someone who had the kind of rifle he wanted, sneaked into their compound and stole it. He found a truck, stole it and drove it as far as he could into the mountains. When he ran out of road, he started walking and then climbing. When he arrived at the last known location for Jaca, he started tracking him like an animal. Three weeks later he located what he though was Jaca’s entourage in a remote village. It was not that difficult. In a poor country, the trash of rich people stands out on a trail. Text from DJCline.

He lay flat on his stomach just below the top of the ridge looking through his rifle’s night scope. In the valley below he saw half a dozen mud brick buildings built by local tribesmen. He looked at the largest building glowing from a fire inside. Don had been waiting for Jaca to step outside and use the latrine for a week. It never happened. Instead women would carry slop buckets out every morning. Don was patient. Jaca would make a mistake. Text from DJCline.

He kind of wished Jaca still smoked. Smokers inevitably stepped outside. He had gotten several targets this way. Don looked around the ridge he was standing on and found dozens of cigarette butts from Americans, Russians, British and possibly Turkish soldiers. They had all been here before him. Since arriving he also found batteries, buttons, wrappers, brass casings and even a bronze arrowhead. He wondered if the whole mountain was simply a pile of trash leftover from earlier battles. People had been fighting here for a very long time. With tensions between China and India so high he wondered if the next soldier on this ridge would have a laser pistol or a bow and arrow. Text from DJCline.

There was movement at the bottom of the valley. A woman carrying a baby was walking up the trail. A guard woke up and stopped her. She held her baby close as it started to cry. Don turned on the rifle microphone and tried to hear the conversation. As near as he could understand it, the woman said she was carrying a son Jaca did not know about. The woman begged to see Jaca. The guard alerted another guard who escorted her to the large building. Text from DJCline.

Listening through the microphone Don heard the consternation of Jaca’s voice at being woken up in the middle of the night. It sounded like the baby was given to Jaca to hold. The woman excused herself to use the latrine. She walked quickly to the latrine and then ran past it and up the hill toward Don. Through the microphone he thought he heard someone shout, “It’s not a baby!” Text from DJCline.

Suddenly the large building exploded, temporarily overwhelming the night scope and hitting the overload cutoff on the microphone. Guards ran out of the other buildings shouting and began shooting in the air. By now the woman was halfway up the hill and had taken off her clothes, wig and makeup. The woman was in fact a very thin man wearing a black commando outfit. As he approached Don the man held up his hands and said, “I am Tapas Kalki of the Indian Intelligence Service. Captain Jin, we need to leave this area immediately.”Text from DJCline.

The guards were beginning to fan out into the flame lit darkness. Both of them were now going to have to outrun some very angry men. How did that this guy already know his name? Text from DJCline.

Copyright 2009 DJ Cline All rights reserved.

Posted by dj as Blumbers, Commentary, Fiction at 4:31 PM UTC []

No Comments »