Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Our Dependence on Foreign Keys
    Our Dependence on Foreign Keys
    Our Dependence on Foreign Keys
    Ebook49 pages40 minutes

    Our Dependence on Foreign Keys

    By William Shunn

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When high-tech partycrashers swarm his exclusive soirée high above the floodways of New York City, billionaire inventor Pell Franziskaner can't be sure whether it's a garden-variety annoyance or a prelude to murder. His own.

    Environment, economics, and augmented reality collide in this tale of reputation, revenge, and artificial intelligences so advanced they run directly on the fabric of spacetime.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSinister Regard
    Release dateMay 2, 2017
    ISBN9781941928479
    Our Dependence on Foreign Keys
    Author

    William Shunn

    William Shunn is the author of the acclaimed 2015 memoir The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary. Since his first publication in 1993, his short fiction has appeared in Salon, Storyteller, Bloodstone Review, Newtown Literary, Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, and various anthologies and year's-best collections. His work has been shortlisted for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Association for Mormon Letters Award. His chapbook An Alternate History of the 21st Century appeared from Spilt Milk Press in 2007, and his novella Cast a Cold Eye, written with Derryl Murphy, came out from PS Publishing in 2009. He lives and writes in New York City.

    Read more from William Shunn

    Related to Our Dependence on Foreign Keys

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Return Of The Bores

      Mar 9, 2022

      All bores are boring but not all boring people are bores. There are plenty of innocent folk who like nothing more than to share their anxieties about the village fête with you – and they’ll do it for 20 minutes you’ll never get back. Yet these are ju

      3 min read

    • Article

      (Un)healthy Obsessions

      Apr 9, 2024

      During a ferocious storm one recent Saturday, firefighters knocked on my door and urged my family and me to evacuate. The gale had smashed loose a neighbor’s large propane tank and plunged it into the choppy waters of the fjord we live on. An explosi

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Matter Of Park-life And Death

      Nov 17, 2021

      These many months devoted to exploring the ITV daytime schedule with my mother have, perhaps inevitably, had an effect. Unlimited exposure to the faux bonhomie of Phillip Schofield, the winsome banter of Loose Women, and the practised satisfaction of

      3 min read

    • Article

      They Are All Equal Now

      Dec 27, 2019

      They Are All Equal Now
      8 min read

    • Article

      Nose For A Story

      Feb 22, 2024

      Nose For A Story
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Irishman

      Dec 27, 2019

      The Irishman
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Surreal and Outrageous World: Jessica Anthony in Conversation with Joshua Ferris

      May 8, 2020

      Enter the virus, exit any plans you had for, oh, like, the next six months. Exit intimacy. Exit the toilet paper and watch your lazy, spray-tanned president assure the People that everything is going to be okay... The post A Surreal and Outrageous Wo

      10 min read

    • Article

      'The End Of The End Of The Earth' Is Jonathan Franzen At His Idiosyncratic Best

      Nov 28, 2018

      Franzen ranges far and wide here – from birds to travel to climate change and then back to birds – sometimes leaving skid marks between pieces.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Backrooms

      Mar 7, 2024

      The Backrooms
      9 min read

    • Article

      ‘I’ve Never Forgotten It’: The Very Best (and Very Worst) TV Endings Of All Time

      Feb 7, 2023

      Warning: contains spoilers. Blackadder Goes ForthThe final three minutes of Blackadder is so exquisitely played, so at odds with the extreme silliness of the rest of the series – and so very sad. There they stand – Blackadder, Baldrick, George and po

      11 min read

    • Article

      ‘Don’t Make Frasier Best Friends With Elon Musk!’ Writers And Comics Offer Their Reboot Tips

      Feb 27, 2023

      Two decades after his beloved character signed off the airwaves, Kelsey Grammer is finally serving up second helpings of tossed salad and scrambled eggs. The Frasier revival is now in production, after nearly a decade in development – despite some cr

      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jul 20, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Retiring Gossip Girl

      Jul 28, 2021

      In the first few minutes of GB News, Mr Andrew Neil broadcast something as if it was intimately tailored to his intended audience, all of whose inside-leg measurements he knew already. His channel would not be peddling ‘gossip from inside the Westmin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Echos

      Jan 10, 2019

      Before Corrine’s husband abandoned her in Berlin, he liked to say that her name reminded him of the word “corrupt.” But ending in a twist rather than a split. Her last name was the French word for “swimsuit” but he never mentioned that. This seemed s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Undying Love

      Mar 25, 2020

      Undying Love
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Our Dependence on Foreign Keys

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Our Dependence on Foreign Keys - William Shunn

      'Our Dependence on Foreign Keys' by William Shunn'Our Dependence on Foreign Keys' by William Shunn

      This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this work are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

      This work first appeared online in two parts in Across the Margin, April 30 and May 1, 2015.

      Copyright © 2015, 2017 by William Shunn

      All rights reserved

      eBook Edition

      ISBN-13: 978-1-941-92847-9

      ISBN-10: 1-941-92847-1

      Cover photograph by Tomáš Šereda/Bigstock

      Author photograph by Alison Pitt

      Sinister Regard

      New York

      Table of Contents

      Our Dependence on Foreign Keys

      About the Author

      Also by William Shunn

      Our Dependence on Foreign Keys

      Fran needed a drink. Forty people. That’s all it was supposed to be. Instead there were eighty-seven, and that was just in the living room. One of whom might want to murder him.

      But instead of heading to the autobar, he pinged Hondo again. The situation here’s out of hand, big guy, he subvocalized. Where are you?

      The cursor on the Pet’s secure feed continued to blink. Was Hondo giving him the silent treatment because of the party crashers or was something more sinister up?

      Fran took off his retro, wood-framed spex and rubbed the bridge of his nose. I feel like an interloper in my own apartment, he said. He had to bellow over the noise and music.

      It’s a great party, Franny, Kareem Foster said, sounding amused. The crowd had them both backed up against the wall.

      The nickname made Fran grit his teeth, but he let it slide. His friends didn’t seem to care that he hated it. You’re the planner, Fran said. "You have to say that."

      Kareem had secured the sponsorships, designed the environments, crafted the terms and conditions, and laid in all the supplies. The work was far beneath Kareem’s molecular biology training, but since neither of them could work in that field any longer, Fran liked to help him stay busy.

      You know I’m the harshest critic of my own work, Kareem said. Just relax and enjoy this, Franny. I remember when you would have killed for attention like this.

      Kareem was right. Fran craved fame but it always seemed to elude him, and even had when he’d been involved in the biggest corporate lawsuit in the country.

      Maimed, maybe, he said. "But look at everyone. They don’t even have room to take their life jackets off. Where did they all come from?"

      Water taxis, Kareem said, brushing back his dreads.

      Um, before that.

      Jersey City?

      Fran sagged. Jesus. There go the last tatters of my reputation.

      Kareem patted him on the shoulder. "Don’t worry, man. Most people here don’t know the first thing about you, let alone the name of your big invention. You have no reputation."

      Frowning, Fran surveyed his jam-packed living room. People of all colors and genders holding drinks jostled one another in Brownian motion, bulky with their personal floatation devices on, their voices drowning out the electronic soundtrack. More kept trickling up from the jetty downstairs, accepting the terms and conditions with barely a glance, choosing an environment from the menu, and following the party’s meandering jet stream to the autobar. It was a huge apartment by East Village standards—completely rehabbed from what

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1