This story began as a dream I had in the morning hours of early 2000. I was sitting at the computer in the den when the ceiling fan behind me started moving faster, gradually gaining speed. I heard the roar of its blades and the little brass doohickey on the pull-chain going CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK against the fixtures. The arms of the fan were going so fast it was starting to wobble loose from its base. I was so terrified of that thing, with those four long blades in motion, flying across the room and decapitating me where I sat that I turned off the computer and fled the room.
The dream ended--but my fascination with it did not. I got up at about ten till seven that morning--figuring it made no sense to go back to sleep now when the damn alarm clock would beep off in just ten lousy minutes anyway--and while watching Bob McKimson's "Aqua Duck" playing on the WB, I began to assemble the opening scene of a story from my, to this day, very clear and vivid dream--a person bizarrely decapitated, in a one-in-a-million household accident, by an out-of-control ceiling fan. And then I realized it wasn't just an accident--the fan had been rigged to come free and take that unlucky fartknocker's head off. And, eventually, I realized the possibility of using that great necessary evil of the modern age, the home computer, to do it--to not send just files and pictures and information over the wires, but death.
I wrote this story in the months after Y2K, when the country was just recovering from a sweeping fear that The Great Global Grid would crack up and bring about an apocolypse. The time that seemed ripe for a yarn about home electrical systems being taken over by some social misfit's evil brainchild. I found there was a lot of information about viruses and bugs and such--ready-made research--delivered hot and fresh to my Inbox daily. This, as well as some tips from an old hacker friend from ASU, formed the story's factual foundation.
The emotional component, however, came straight from the unrequited feelings I was still carrying for my ex, Ashleigh Bainks. I must confess that the virus' creator was largely based on myself--although elements of his physical appearance were taken from a cartoonist I used to work with on The Herald. Likewise, the character of the detective, Jason Powell, was based on an actual individual from my days at A-State: a mysterious character around the dorm who always used to wear all black clothes, even on hot days. I called him The Man in Black (with apologies, of course, to both Stephen King and Johnny Cash). My own life has always been the greatest wellspring of fiction...and the versatile Miss Bainks seems to stride upon the stage of my mind quite often. In "Smitten With Her", written the previous year, I cast my darling Ashleigh in the character of Joey Mentero, a fool of fate; here, she adapts a role more suitable for her dubious talents--Elayne Bennis, the mysterious, possibly mentally-unbalanced sexual predator of the college circuit. There are some, I wager, who would say these are the only roles I offer women in my work--villain or victim--to which I invite them wholeheartedly to stick their concerns up their ass. Sideways, even.
Did I do everything right? No, not really. At one point a character recalls hearing the songs "You Learn" by Alanis Morrissette and "Boombastic" by Shaggy at a party during the spring of 1994--but in those days Alanis was an obscure Canadian chanteuse yet-unknown in the States, and Shaggy wouldn't record that particular single until later that summer. I left them in as deliberate goofs (call them "character lapses" or "errors in dialogue", if you must) to remind me that no matter how good a writer you are, or may think you are, you can't fudge on research. There are, of course, no viruses like the one I describe in the story, but there are some frightening ones out there that will shit on your hard drive and frig it seven ways to Sunday...and there are plenty of viragos like Ashleigh Bainks out there waiting as well to do the same to your heart. A fried hard drive can be repaired, and data can be replaced. A broken heart--well that's something else entirely, I'm afraid.