Jesse’s Reviews > Terminal Boredom: Stories > Status Update

“Terminal Boredom”

A microcosm of a dystopia where young adults are horrifically depressed and disassociated from everyday life as a coping mechanism. The government is pushing an operation that turns TV into a drug delivery system. The protagonist’s boyfriend is a sociopath looking for some kind of catharsis, and together the two of them are bounding toward a grotesque memory.

“Forgotten”

An interplanetary death of a romance. Emma is in a relationship with Sol, an alien from Meele. Meelians remember everything and have a sort of psychic super-conscious that serves as a racial memory. Meelians could live forever, but outside of isolated incidents they typically kill themselves out of total despair or total satisfaction.

“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”

A woman is addicted to pills that destabilize her sense of time… because they destabilize her PLACE in time. The paired plot is her reconnecting awkwardly with her paramour, who generally fakes or plays up emotions in social situations to appear normal. I’m not sure what is going on with the direct parallel to Hitler and Eva Braun, the title of the song.

“That Old Seaside Club”

The MC is on some vacation planet and is hanging out with a friend who she’s met and is also drawn to a young man who feels strangely familiar. Things get psychedelically weird when the chair in her hotel room starts talking and walking around. The point of the story is lodged somewhere in the transience of youth and the weight of regret.

“Night Picnic”

There are a lot of bizarre oddities about this lone, seemingly post-apocalyptic family, all of whom are more conscious of PLAYING the roles of son, daughter, father, and mother than understanding them. Several details - like the “sister” originally being a “brother”, but for the mother’s desire to have a daughter - hit one way and then another when the (obvious?) twist hits.

“Women and Women”

A dystopian future examining gender and sex, where women are free and men are both restricted and rare, but planet has been largely raided of its natural resources. The story’s catalyst is, of course, a boy that the MC becomes a secret acquaintance of.