David Gaffney
$6
published in Ottawa by above/ground pressColonyRow upon row of small people in pods lay perfectly still as if they were asleep. They were small, about the size of ventriloquist dolls, but I was assured that they would grow to become full-sized members of staff. They all looked a little like Melvyn Bragg, even the female ones, with thick ruffled hair and an expression on their faces that suggested they had thought of something droll and would tell you later. Soon the entire company would be run by the creatures they were growing here. Small fans stirred the air about the staff member’s faces to help them get used to adversity, which they may meet in the real world. Lights were low, yet now and again, bursts of colour and fragments of film flashed across the walls and ceiling. Music and podcasts played to ensure that the subjects were equipped with good humour and imagination so they wouldn’t sound robotic like some of the earlier versions. I was told this was top secret. What was even more top secret was which previous members of staff had been computer-powered hybrids of machine and flesh, who had since been decommissioned while we waited for this new batch. Maybe this was something we already knew, but weren’t aware that we knew, like the way the Chuckle Brothers entered our consciousness long before they appeared on our screens. Mahler’s fifth was playing quietly out of the speakers and it reminded me that Mahler’s wife once worked as a lab assistant over-seeing a colony of praying mantis.
December 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover artwork by Gary Fisher
David Gaffney is the author of the novels Never Never (2008), All The Places I’ve Ever Lived (2017) and Out Of The Dark (2021), and the flash fiction and short story collections Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has published two graphic novels with Dan Berry – The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head (2018) and Rivers (2021) – and is working on a third. His short story collection Concrete Fields (Salt Publishing 2023) was long listed for the Edgehill Short Story Prize and his latest collection, Whale, was published by Osmosis in 2024. He is Senior Manager for literature at Arts Council England.
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