Brigham Plaza - An Ode To Friends

Brigham Plaza was so much fun to write because not only did it bring together so many fun storylines, I got to draw on my memories of FETCH BBS, which is what we Gen X'ers had before the Internet. My friends Tanzy, Cleo, Whisper, Strider, and I would stay up all night talking about nothing in Teleconference and updating our profile questions with Bush lyrics.

I often write about immortality, which in the Vinestead Universe means either transferring your consciousness into a synthetic human or moving your brain into a synthetic body, a la Krang from Ninja Turtles. But what is immortality really? Is it weaving my memories into fiction so that decades from now, people will have a glimpse of what life was like as a military brat in Japan in the 90s, even if they're not aware of it?

I can't stop listening to that "Hi Ren" song, and I really like the lyric, "And when I am gone, I will rise, in the music that I left behind." It's entirely reasonable that in thirty short years, I might be gone. The thought of that has made me want to write even more, to fill books with more dramatized moments from my life, every success and failure, every joy and heartbreak, all the famous actresses I dated, all the networks I hacked, that time I was a secret agent infiltrating an 8th-grade drama club... and so on.

Ultimately, Brigham Plaza is an ode to my friends, who I still see as elite hackers who stick together in an unfair world. Hurt one of us, and the others will not stop until justice or vengeance is served.