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    Touching Distance
    Touching Distance
    Touching Distance
    Ebook26 pages17 minutes

    Touching Distance

    By Vaughan Stanger

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Touching Distance is a tense and disturbing short story about a blind man participating in an innovative virtual reality experiment that aims to equip people like him with a tactile map of their surroundings. As the experiment proceeds, he realises that a harrowing incident from his recent past is being re-enacted on his skin. His attempt to influence the outcome might bring much needed closure, but first he must face his personal demons.

    Touching Distance was originally published in issue 7 of Postscripts, the award-winning magazine/anthology series from PS Publishing. This short story received an Honorable Mention in 'The Year's Best Horror and Fantasy' (2006), an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow et al.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVaughan Stanger
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781311618290
    Touching Distance
    Author

    Vaughan Stanger

    Until recently, Vaughan Stanger worked as a research manager at a British engineering company. From 1997 to 2011, he wrote science fiction and fantasy stories in his spare time, effectively setting himself homework. The results of this head-scratching were published in Nature Futures, Interzone, Postscripts, Daily Science Fiction and Music for Another World, to name but a few. Translations of his stories have appeared in nine languages.In January 2012 Vaughan became a full-time writer. Currently he's busy writing an SF novel. The head-scratching has got worse if anything. There are also some new stories in the works, plus further e-book compilations of his previously published stories to come.

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      Book preview

      Touching Distance - Vaughan Stanger

      Introduction

      Over the years, I've attended hundreds of rock music concerts. Like many of my peers, I have ended up with tinnitus—more commonly known as ringing in the ears—because of long-term exposure to excessive decibels. I'm fortunate that my condition is mild.

      The central concept for Touching Distance came about from wondering whether our other senses, if over-stimulated for a long period, might suffer from similar problems. I then went on to consider how such over-stimulation might be achieved and what effect it might have on the victim.

      There are several autobiographical elements to this story, but I should make it clear that I have never tested anything resembling the virtual reality interface described here.

      My thanks go to Peter Crowther, proprietor of PS Publishing, who originally published this story in Postscripts.

      Touching Distance

      When I was a child I was terrified of the dark. From the moment my mother turned out the light, I would stare wide-eyed at the bedroom curtains while I waited for the black to turn to grey. Several minutes would pass while my eyes adapted to the gloom. Only then could I dismiss the bedroom demons and safely fall asleep.

      Thirty years later, those demons found a way into my dreams. And it was the darkness I awoke to that brought blessed relief.

      ~

      My belly itched so fiercely I felt certain I had developed a rash. Memories of Chicken Pox and Measles prickled in my mind, but I kept those

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