I was driving late at night listening to a Morphine CD in the car, then got home, lay in bed and fell asleep with the song “Cure for Pain” in my head. I had a number of dreams on the theme (what if pain were really eliminated, in some interesting sense? what would life be like? what if it were rediscovered?) and woke up plagued by this story. At first I thought it would take a single page to write down, but it wound up 15 pages, and the punchline doesn’t start to unfold till page 7 or 8. This is the first story I’ve written in a long time that doesn’t involve AI in any serious way. Rather, it uses future tech like uploading-to-superhuman-form and cranial jacks to enlarge upon certain aspects of human relationships, especially romantic ones. It’s probably the closest thing to a maudlin love story I’ll ever write (well, I hope so). Also, I think Suzy is among my best female characters so far —

Warning for tots and tykes: there’s not really any X-rated stuff here (unlike what may be found nested deep in my novels ;-p), but the theme is relentlessly “adult” … most of the story occurs in bed … (ahh, the things that can transpire between a man, a woman, and an illicit cranial jack modification device…!).