The Flux (34 page)

“
I
now present an act
,” says Daffy Duck, stepping out onto the stage, “that no other performer has ever dared to execute!” And Daffy then proceeds to drink a gallon of gasoline, a bottle of nitroglycerin, a bullhorn of gunpowder, and a goodly swig of uranium-238.

He lights a match:
boom
. And for the first time in his entire life, Daffy transcends his audience, gets the applause he so desperately needs, even has Bugs Bunny cheering: “That’s terrific, Daffy! They want more!”

But Daffy is dead, an angel floating up to heaven. “I know, I know,” he says. “But I can only do it once!”

And
that’s
how I felt about writing the sequel to
Flex
.

In case you’re new here,
Flex
was the end result of twenty-five years of effort and seven failed novels. It took all I had just to get it published. So when they told me, “See that? Well, do it again,” well, I will admit to needing some emergency laundry services amidst my smallclothes.

Because
Flex
was, as I noted in the acknowledgments then, my “gimme” book in that my hardcore fans were guaranteed to buy it. Many of you lovely folks followed me over from my blog and my Twitter account and my FetLife account to purchase Ferrett’s Debut Novel – but as any good bibliophile knows, there’s a very wide gap sitting between “purchased” and “got around to reading,” and an even wider one between “read” and “loved.” It could well have been that I got The Shrug, as people flicked through some pages and wandered off.

And yet as the initial reviews came in, it turned out many of you loved the book on its own merits, and
did
want a sequel to
Flex
. I became a Real Boy! (Or, at least, a Real Author, as opposed to the Popular-Blogger-Slumming-As-Fictioneer that I’d been playing at for so many years.)

And so to ensure I didn’t disappoint, I enlisted an army of beta readers to help me:

I gave Dr Natasha Lewis Harrington, who works clinically with children, a write up on Aliyah’s psychological condition, and had her translate it into the formal language of an assessment report. She wrote a lot more; I edited down. Sorry! It was good stuff!

Heather Ratcliff, aka “MortuaryReport,” provided consulting on funerals. As a reward, she makes a cameo appearance in this book as the funeral director. Unlike John Lennon, she can legitimately say that she buried Paul.

Daniel Starr, aka “The reason Europe is now a wasteland,” convinced me I needed to have better reasons why the Institute was hunting ’mancers. I made some up.

Miranda Suri gave me some excellent advice on how to amplify Paul’s borderline PTSD with the buzzsects more believable.

John Dale Beety’s breathless “holy shit” live-critiques of the action sequences helped me remember what not to cut – which, in many ways, is more important than knowing what
to
cut.

Josh Morrey reminded me to keep the pressure on when the book transitioned from “Paul is being hunted” to “Paul is being courted.”

Elise Tobler stayed brilliantly on my case to justify why Paul and Valentine were at odds with each other.

Meg Taylor reminded me to explain why Paul had to die, which is a chronic failure of mine in beta drafts: I have reasons why characters do things, very good reasons, and then forget to tell you about them.

Bill Ferris hadn’t read the first book, and so helpfully highlighted all the places where I’d forgotten to properly explain bits to new readers.

Raven Black had problems with Paul’s oft-contradictory philosophy on killing. Which I took as evidence that I was doing it right. Real people contain multitudes.

Richard Adler was a man I met back when I worked for Borders, and I know he has immaculate tastes when it comes to science fiction, and so when he
liked The Flux
, that gave me strength to churn through some tougher edits.

Carolyn VanEseltine reminded me to explain better why Paul had gained strength and confidence at the end, thus bolstering the story arc.

Christina C. Russell found Paul to be a sad-sack parent, and was grievously annoyed by my gratuitous Stephen King-style usage of name brands. I fixed one, refuse to fix the other. OfficeMax and Dunkin’ Donuts
all the way
.

Yet a confession: while I felt the pressure of satisfying you all, I also didn’t want to let down Rebecca.

Rebecca Alison Meyer, for those of you who don’t know, was the inspiration for Aliyah – my surly little spitfire, the only kid I know who completely got the concept of sarcasm at the age of three. When I looked at a blank page and said, “Why would Paul love his daughter enough that he would die for her?”, I thought of Rebecca – then four, but even then possessed of the snarkiness of a fifty year-old comedian.

I sold
Flex
on the day Rebecca’s brain cancer was diagnosed as terminal.

I wrote the sequel while sitting Shiva with her parents.

Our Little Spark is gone – but in Paul’s journey here, I tried to capture the love I felt for her. I don’t know if I succeeded. But if you feel moved to find out more about Rebecca, you can go to Rebecca’s Gift at
rebeccasgift.org
– and if you wanted to donate a few dollars to the charity they’ve set up in her name while you were there, well, I wouldn’t mind at all.

OK, just a few more people to thank, and I promise I’ll shuffle off. I’ll be back in a year for
Fix
, book three of The ’Mancer Chronicles, which I vow
will
finally reveal what’s happening in Europe. Evidently, if you casually decimate a whole continent off-screen, people want more details! Who knew?

Thanks, again, to my Mom and Dad and my Uncle Tommy, who raised me as a glorious triumvirate. (For the record, Tommy was Valentine.) Thanks to Carolyn Meyer, whose oft-rebellious but good-natured showdowns with her parents inspired some of the conflictual scenes in this book – and thanks to Kat and Eric, her parents, for supporting and loving me. Thanks to Angie Rush, my, er, best friend.

Thanks to everyone I thanked in the first book, and if you haven’t read the first book, thanks for going back and reading that as soon as you finished this one,
as I’m sure you’re doing
.

Thanks to the Angry Roboteers: Mike Underwood was Fan #1 of
Flex
and has ably supported it enough to encourage me to write this sequel, Penny Reeve and Caroline Lambe promoted it, Marc Gascoigne and Phil Jourdan edited the crap out of it, Steven M-R wrapped it all up in a Valentine bow. Look at it! It’s here in your hands right now because of them! Wow!

And above all, thanks to everyone who bought
Flex
, and everyone who talked about it. Your reviews, tweets, and face-to-face recommendations are why this is here today. I hope,
hope
, this sequel is reward enough.

Yet as always, there is one person who I couldn’t have done this without. When I ran out of ideas, she would get off the couch whenever I said, “Mind going for a plot-walk with me?” When I despaired, she fed me strength. When I wrote badly, she bashed me with loving excoriations. She is the light I steer by, the beauty that pries me out of bed when depression smashes me down, the even-keeled sensibility that anchors me when I’d float off on tides of stupidity.

I love you, Gini.

Arf.

F
errett Steinmetz is
a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise, and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, for which he remains stoked. He has a moderately popular blog, The Watchtower of Destruction, wherein he talks about bad puns, relationships, politics, videogames, and more bad puns. He’s written four computer books, including the still-popular-after-two-years
Wicked Cool PHP.
He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, who he couldn’t imagine living without.

A
NGRY ROBOT

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You are not your fluxing khakis

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n Angry Robot
paperback original 2015

Copyright © Ferrett Steinmetz 2015

F
errets Steinmetz asserts
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catalogue record
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U
K ISBN 978
0 85766 462 4

US ISBN 978 0 85766 463 1

EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 464 8

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his novel is entirely
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