A Day Of Faces
Authors: Simon K Jones
A note about DRM
In short, there isn’t any. This ebook is provided without DRM - feel free to read it on your Kindle, your iPad, your Android tablet, your computer, your phone or anything else. The main thing is to read it.
Being DRM-free, if you want to give the book to a friend I can’t stop you. It’s still a new reader, which is all good in my book. Of course, if you enjoyed A Day of Faces enough to pass it along, it’d be even better if you could support the book through
buying
your friend their own copy.
But, hey, that’s your call.
Enjoy.
A Day of Faces
Arc 1: Morphology
By Simon K Jones
This is my first published work of fiction. If you’re reading this, then you’ve decided it’s worth some of your time. It therefore stands to reason that it should be dedicated to you, the reader.
Thank you.
Introduction
I started writing A Day of Faces in April 2015. It seemed like a good idea to experiment with online serialisation of a novel. Although I’d been publishing videos professionally online for years, I’d never embraced it for my fiction writing. That seemed like something of a mistake.
It’s no coincidence that I attended SXSW in Austin the month prior. A festival of creativity and innovation, being there for a week inevitably reconfigures your mind into one that needs to
make stuff
.
The handful of short stories I’d put online, first on my blog and then on Wattpad, hadn’t found any kind of readership. That’s to be expected, given I had no notable presence online as a fiction writer. One-off stories were never going to attract much attention. Serialisation was an experiment worth conducting; not just for the potential of building an audience but also as a means of generating my own momentum.
As with most unpublished writers, I’ve got a couple of half-finished novels floating around on my hard drive. The challenge as a writer, I find, is staying firm on a project, especially once the first draft is down and you need to go back and edit. The excitement of the story’s initial birth rapidly dissipates, turning it into more of a job than a joy.
I’ve realised since writing A Day of Faces that this is in large part because
nobody knows the work exists
. Stories are supposed to be read, or watched, or listened to. The longer a story stays in gestation, caged on a lone computer, the more disgruntled it becomes. Serialisation gets the work out there immediately, and starts building an audience from the first day. As the project progresses it gains momentum rather than loses it, as more and more readers become engaged. As a writer, suddenly, you’re not alone.
A Day of Faces publishes weekly on Wattpad. As of right now I’m over halfway through Arc 2 of the story - what you have in this ebook is Arc 1, collected into a convenient format and bundled with a ton of additional material. You’ll find behind-the-scenes notes as well as in-universe lore stuff, if that’s your bag. I’ve tried to pack the ebook with as much extra gubbins as possible, to make it worth that purchase price.
Thank you, by the way.
Finally, I should say thanks to Erin Patel and Kirstie Tostevin. The original spark for the ADoF idea came from a conversation with them one lunchtime while working at FXHOME. Daft conversations can take you to unexpected places.
Another massive benefit of publishing online is the feedback loop. Just because this is an ebook doesn’t change that - so let me know what you think, good or bad, by
finding me on Twitter
. You can also
sign up to the ADoF mailing list
so that you don’t miss out on anything cool, like the publication of Arc 2.
Simon K Jones
04/10/2015
ARC 1: MORPHOLOGY
generation
dʒɛnəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/
noun
all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively.
The straight guy on the opposite side of the lecture hall winked at me. He was so straight it was unbelievable: black hair, green eyes, archly curving nose, slightly tipped and furred ears, tusks protruding out of his mouth and tilted up and
out.
1
Just like the guy next to him, except he'd at least gone to the effort of carving those tusks to points and shaving his head. In fact, he was kinda hot, at least by
1943
2
standards. You could always tell a '43er by the upward-pointing tusks, though it looked like these two morons were February babies, which wasn't really my thing.
I was born in '44 and so had a natural, inevitable and tedious attraction to guys from the same year. Everybody felt that same pull and most people just gave in to it, knowing that they'd at least share the same pop culture references and appendages. Or, in our case, resistances. So boring.
"Consider this," the professor said. Oh, yeah. I forgot I was in class. "If we ever manage to depart Locque, as a species, and venture out into the cosmos, what then? Would the generation clock keep ticking according to the moon's trajectory, and our position around the sun, or would we find ourselves subject to other, as yet unknown, criteria?"
I eyed the clock and scribbled into my notebook, sketching out a scene at my favourite diner, complete with extravagant wheels out the front and a rotating neon sign
above.
3
Then I slid it over the desk to Rachel, who was sat next to to me chewing gum and twirling her fingers through her tentacle dreads. She looked disdainfully at me then picked up her own pen and added to the sketch before sliding it back.
She'd added a huge spaceship floating above the diner, which was firing a laser beam. Scribbles all over the cars I assumed were meant to indicate they were exploding. There wasn't much of my drawing left. I stuck my tongue out, then quickly retracted it when I saw the professor glancing in my direction. He literally had eyes in the back of his head. A lot of 360-sights had become teachers, or police officers. Sports worked well for them.
The afternoon drifted by at a tediously leisurely pace until, finally, the bell rang the end of the day and we all tipped out onto the streets. It was Friday, it was warm and there was no way in hell I was going home. My folks would either not give a shit or give me hassle, so - staying out, it was. I ducked into the restroom before leaving school, switching out my uniform for something a little more enticing and tidying up my face. I emerged looking about five years older.
As I headed out I could see the wings already dotting the sky overhead, flocking together and wheeling about in douchey arcs. Just because they happened to be able to fly they thought they ruled the planet. Of course, the wings basically did rule the planet, but that was still no excuse for being asshats.
The air smelled good, tasted good. My tongue shivered and I let out an involuntary hiss.
It was going to be a good night.
survival of the
fittest
4
phrase of survival
BIOLOGY: the continued existence of organisms which are best adapted to their environment, with the extinction of others
As far as bars went, The Black Jasmine was aces. Relaxed, verging on incompetent, age checks, proper indie music and an anybody-goes attitude. You'd get horns, fire-breathers, camos, stretchers and even wings all mixing up, with their egos and status left at the door. Everyone knew that, so the crowd was about as non-dickish as you could get.
I was talking to a thermal. His vision was tuned primarily to infrared, so he could literally see how hot I was. That alone made me feel like I was about to start sweating. His name was Marv and he was OK. Red eyes (obviously), sharp jaw and nose that looked like they could cut me, kinda tall and wiry, with great tufts of thick hair full of wax rising up above his head like an open torch.
"You going to join the military, then, Kaysaleen Rodata?" He thought I was graduating. Outfit was doing the job. He also kept saying my full name, which was really starting to get old.
I shook my head and nictitated at him coyly. I couldn't see heat signatures but I could tell it had an effect. "I'm not really a fighter kind of girl," I said. "Want to do my own thing, you know?"
"Right, right," he said, shouting above the music. "Don't you get a lot of, like, pressure, though?"
"You mean because of this?" I opened my mouth a little wider and let my tongue fork out, extending it almost all the way and nearly touching his face before pulling it back. "And these?" I grinned, revealing my fangs.
"I was thinking more that you look like you can handle yourself," he said, grinning back.
"I can," I said, nodding appreciatively. "But hey, I can do other stuff, too!"
"No kidding! Like what?"
I leaned in closer and flicked my tongue. "Stick around and maybe I'll show you later," I said, then scampered away into the crowd, sniffing out Rachel and homing in on her scent. She was already high, drifting around the dance floor and spinning gently while others caressed and licked her dreads, all trying to absorb some of the juice she was involuntarily secreting. It was kind of gross but, boy, did it makes you feel good. Sometimes we just stayed home at her place and she smoked weed while I took in as much of her stuff as possible. It was meant to be a poison to be used offensively, but that was a quirk in her generation - her venom didn't kill people, it just gave them a good time. Us squamata were a funny lot.
She was busy and I wasn't really in the mood, so I danced alone in the crowd, losing myself to the guitars and the drums and the singer. The dance floor was a maelstrom of shapes and sizes but I ignored it all and moved, letting the beat work its magic.
All the lights in the place flicked on at the same time, everybody simultaneously flinging their hands up to shield their eyes. A second later the music abruptly cut out and we became aware of something going down over by the entrance. As the boos escalated a squad of police bustled into view, pushing people aside as they scoured the venue.
"We're here for a very specific personage," one of the cops intoned. "If that's not you, then just stay where you are and you'll be fine. Get in our way, you won't be fine. And if you're our guy, it'd be easier for everyone if you just give yourself up right now."
prey
preɪ/
noun
an animal that is hunted and killed by another for food.
Cops busting into somewhere like The Black Jasmine? That was never going to fly. For about five seconds it seemed like everyone was going to be cool, standing there looking nonplussed and glistening with sweat. Then somebody shouted "swivelhead!", a can went flying through the air and it all kicked off.
The cop targeted by the optimistic drink hurler reached out and caught it perfectly without even turning towards it. Like I said, a lot of cops these days had eyes in the back of their heads. Even people with half a brain knew that.