The following short story was submitted to a very interesting project. What was originally called 48 hours magazine, but after receiving a cease and desist letter form 48 hours, the TV show, was changed to LongShot Magazine. The concept was to complete a magazine from start to finish in 48 hours. A pretty impressive goal, but they’ve now repeated the process twice. I missed the deadline for the second one, even though I had an intersting idea. On the first one, I’m not sure if I missed it too, but the bottom line is I’ll have to add this to my rejection pile. As an aspiring author, I know that I have to be patient, persistenet, and keep chugging away.
Anyway, each of the issues of LongShot magazine is based on a one word theme. The first theme was hustle, and this was my original short story, entitled “An ode to simpler times:”
At first, when they introduced the Hyper Usability Synaptic Trance Linking Equipment, it was the promise of easing the laborious process of physical communication. For thousands of years, man had struggled with the flawed effects of common speech. But H.U.S.T.L.E was going to finally eliminate the errors wrought from poor habits of speech. No longer would teams fail because of misunderstandings, mumbling, and mistakes.
H.U.S.T.L.E was going to help leaders to hold teams together by broadcasting messages directly into employee’s minds. It would replace the old fashion sweat equity necessary to overcome poor managerial communication.
What we discovered, too late for the early adopters, was that once a company deployed H.U.S.T.L.E, moral begin to drop. Psychosis begin to erupt among the leaders of each of the H.U.S.T.L.E teams.
What the forensic scientists discovered, was that while H.U.S.T.L.E was completely successful in transferring thoughts into each team member installed with H.U.S.T.L.E, there was abnormally high levels of emotional feedback.
For the managers it meant an overload of powerful emotions. For the employees, it drained their lives of any emotion, leaving them empty shells.
In the end, they had to shelf the H.U.S.T.L.E project, yet another attempt of man which came too close to the providence of God.
