Please Forward

This short story is now available in audiobook form as the first episode of the Unlimited Story Podcast.


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Altiora in Votis

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GILES IS A NAZI MOTHERFUCKER These words were sprayed in two foot high white letters along the redbrick fascia of my school on a major trunk route through North London. I would imagine that tens of thousands of people saw this heartfelt statement, because even though the school authorities did their best to scrub away the obscenity, the letters remained visible as ghosts on the brick beneath the tall Victorian classroom windows for many years afterwards. I often wondered about the motivation for this graffiti. "Giles" was the Headmaster and an inoffensive figurehead whom I always thought of as a bit like a cut-price version of a minor member of the royal family. I didn't consider such an ineffectual individual worthy of such bile. Furthermore the words had been written, so it was whispered, by a boy who had been expelled for some misdemeanour or other. I really didn't understand this. As far as I was concerned being at the school was a nightmare, the claustrophobic
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Double Dreaming

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Do you ever have dreams in which there are two versions of the same person? The strangest thing is that in the dream you don't really notice. It's really quite odd - there's Jack and of course there's Jack as well. Often one of them is a lesser instantiation - they have less talent or inspire less fear. You say I thought Jack was frightening but they're nothing compared to Jack! Sometimes it's something less negative - Jill will show you something and you think That's interesting - I bet Jill would like that, I'll have to remember to tell her about it! This last one sometimes occurs in real life - when Jill shows you something just for a second you think that Jill would be interested and resolve to tell her before remembering that the notion is ridiculous. It must be caused by an error in brain processing. A person is probably represented in the memory space by a complex object with myriad properties and associations. Perhaps sometimes two ver
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Talking shit

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One of the things people say about me is that I'm quiet. Sometimes this is a criticism, other times not. I've already explained that part of the reason for this is because I find small talk difficult . Well, not just difficult, I find it pointless. If there's something worth discussing, I'm quite capable of amputating the hindquarters of a member of Equus africanus asinus with my garrulousness. Some people just can't help themselves though. As Douglas Adams once said " if they don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working ". I usually come across them whilst I'm out and about, on public transport or in shops. You can hardly call it eavesdropping; to avoid overhearing these types you really have to be listening to Napalm Death on your iPod. Its incredible just how much you can overhear without picking up any genuine content. It's all filler, conversational fluff designed to prevent the other person getting a word in edgeways a
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