• A: ...and it was his sled's name all along.
  • B: What?! You totally just spoiled the movie for me!
  • A: It's a 70-year-old movie, man, come on.
  • B: Not to me! I've only had 20 years to catch up on all of cinema history while keeping up with what's coming out now. It's not like I've been putting it off for 70 years. Practically everything has been around longer than me.

What is ReWired Tales?

Lots of you still don’t know about the ReWired Tales project, so here’s the quick rundown:

ReWired Tales is a hobby project in which I produce monthly fiction inspired by the pages of Wired magazine. Some stories are shorter than others.

ReWired Tales is not affiliated with Wired magazine. I merely read the magazine, get story ideas, then devise a tale each month as a means of earning writerly experience points. Each story comes in various ebook formats available via various online retailers.

Follow the ReWired Tales tumblr to be notified when and where new stories exist.

  • A: That movie sucks, don't you think?
  • B: I don't know yet.
  • A: But we decided. It's awful. I like other movies better. It's awful and we like other movies better.
  • B: I can't make up my mind, I'm trying to consider the—
  • A: No, we already decided. It's awful and there's nothing to do but mock it with the same jokes for a decade, I think. If you want to be one of us, you'll hate it. Loud. You'll hate it loud and won't think about it any more than that. We decided already.
  • B: I don't know what I think yet because all I can hear is you hating it.

“I blocked that dude,” the person might as well have said, “because he thinks differently than I do. Can’t be bothered to hear from people who don’t already know what I know and think like I think.” Then the person took a sip and said, without looking at any of us, “Probably block you next.”

As he went, treading along the ground, along the earth, there came with him, opposite him, walking upside down within the earth, on the ground as if it were a ceiling, a damnable beast with no obligation to sense or space or natural order. He was a human, thin and ragged and striding with greasy grace. It was a wolf, thin-legged and bristling with spiky fur, picking its way through the dirt and darkness below, two steps for his every one, clinging to the roof below. They came about together, joined at the shadows, hunting in their fashion, smiling in their fashion, their breath clouding in the cold.
Written by me, just now, after seeing this image by Becky Cloonan for Dracula.
Even the most modern designed infovirus is likely to trigger a bad cold in the vast majority of patients. The old joke is that information is a germ triggering the body’s immune response systems, of course, but the real joke is that the info encapsulated in most over-the-counter virals or meme pills is only loosely fact-checked and often swallowed down like so much kool-aid. The best we can hope for, when taking neovirals, is cognitive dissonance—that we believe what we’ve read in addition to whatever capsule we’ve been prescribed. So be aware that anyone with the sniffles may be walking around with the equivalent of a propaganda pill in their bellies.
E.B. Watson, “The Infoviral Quandary: How Medicine and Ideology Get Prescribed”
  • A: I'm not like you.
  • B: Not like me? What does that mean?
  • A: I'm not from here, either, but by coming here I've learned that I can do things. I have power I didn't know I had.
  • B: Like Superman?
  • A: Not like Superman. Superman's like you. I'm not like you.
  • B: So what do you—
  • A: I hear things you don't hear. I can say things no one else can say. And yet no one seems to realize, until I talk, that I'm not one of you.