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Once upon a sideways Thursday in the Duchy of Saint-Raphael, I, Henri LeClonk, former timekeeper to kings, inventor of the seven-sided sundial, and proud survivor of three croissant-related near-deaths, was charged with a most noble task:To design the scoring system for tennis. I, who could not count past 12 without glancing at a timepiece.I, who considered numbers a polite suggestion.I, who was three goblets deep into absinthe before the rules even began.But the guillotine is a fine motivator. It started well enough.The Duke declared, “Let the score march like the clock! 15! 30! 45!” and I, dazzled by his chin and distracted by a rogue puff pastry, nodded as if I’d understood.“Etch it onto the sundial!” he roared.So, I did.Well… I tried.What I etched: 15, 30, 40.Because, dear reader, midway through, I forgot how to 45. There was a goose in the parlour, the sun was in my eyes, and the number “40” simply looked... friendlier. Rounder. Less judgmental.I proceeded to choke on a croissant, keeling over into a platter of unamused cheese, and by the time I awoke, the number had already been etched into law. No one questioned it. Nobles rarely do. Now, about love. A strange zero of a word. It came not from logic (we avoided that), but from the Duke’s moon-eyed brother, Lord Fifteenlove.He was a symphony of sighs in tights, hopelessly besotted with a barefoot commoner named Margaux. She played tennis like a flamingo on buttered glass. Never scored, sometimes in deliberate anarchy. Yet he kept showing up, flower in hand, chest puffed, whispering sonnets to her ankles.The Duke once joked, “He plays for love, not for points!”And thus, “love” came to mean zero; a romantic futility. An empty goblet. A heartbeat spent with no return. One boiling summer, two knights played; by the seventh hour their forty-all deadlock mocked the sun; I abandoned scoring, my quill bleeding pigeons across the margin.At sundown, drenched in sweat and honour, they raised their swords and yelled:&nbsp;“Let us finish this with a DEUCE!”I, still hungover from Wednesday’s absinthe, convinced deuce was some sort of Latin for “draw,” and picturing my own neck in that lunette, carved the rule without protest. From that moment on, 40–40 was forevermore Deuce. Players had to win by two, because swords were involved, and frankly, we preferred fewer stabbings. Then came Lady Claudette, the Duke’s wife…. sharp as a stiletto in a bowl of custard.“People must be at an advantage,” she said. “In tennis, or in love.”And so, “Advantage” was born. If you reached that stage and still lost, spectators would murmur, “He had the advantage, but no heart.”I rather liked that. Years drift. I dwell beside a swamp, forging clocks that tick backwards, volleying pebbles with a wooden spoon.Sometimes village children rally over my cracked court. When their shouts ring; “Love-fifteen!” “Deuce!”, I feel phantom steel cool my neck and hear absinthe glug in a glass that is, mercifully, still attached to a body.The world keeps my crooked time. I lift the spoon but never serve. F.S.F.

The Tick of Love

I once danced for the Croquet Duchess, kabuki masks veiling her bite; compliments sharp as mint on fresh wounds. She clapped in gloved restraint, palms skirting truth's edge. I bowed. She yawned. Our lies lingered like smoke. Now I send regrets to her gilded invites. I passed the Clock-Fox at dawn, his hiss a whip: “Late again, to claim your importance.” I offered a strawberry, red as forgotten dreams, and he dissolved into his ticking void. I'm off his relentless dial. At tea with the Half-Hatter, masks flipping mid-sip; one for deals, one for dreams, one for the mirror's lie. He probed my trade. “Watering plants offline,” I murmured. He choked on his curated self, throat tight with unsaid regrets. The Algorithm Caterpillar scrolled, exhaling metrics in neon hum. “Digestible now,” he droned. “Don’t bleed. Just brand.” I slipped him a poem, no hooks attached. He wilted, pixels fading. I sipped coffee, drafts buried deep, still tasting ink's quiet ache. The Mirror Twins approached, Click and Clack, echoing my winning facade; just enough shine to keep the dance. They hungered for a selfie, mirrors starved. I gave silence. They fractured into forgotten likes. Lady Elsewise glided near, velvet menace uncoiling: “Prove your worth, so I can price it.” I grinned, scars softening. “Proof's a traded ghost. I've claimed presence instead.” She spat diamonds, sharp as shattered vows. I walked on. I write as rain falls, unchecked. I build where grass insists on green. I speak into the clamor; a whisper the noise craves: unforced truth. The kingdom withholds its applause. The duchess rolls powdered eyes. But the fox slumbers deep. The hatter dips his head. The poem suffices. Nothing to prove. The Wonderverse unfolds mine. And I am being me quietly. F.S.F &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

I have left the stage

1.01In a city that forgot the stars,memory was marked non-billable.You could apply for accessif you signed the clause: &gt; “I consent to lightlessness.” 1.02 Etta, aged ten and inconvenient,still asked questions.Which in this economywas a cultural breach. 1.04 Winston; feral, unkempt, undiluted;had already clawed throughthree NDAs and one marketing intern.He slept on banned booksand pissed on the Cap Table. 1.08 Kafka sat in Product."Transformation Lead,"though mostly he turnedschoolmates into scorpions,spiders, and compliance managers. 1.16 The Red Queen ran HR.Her policies were sharp.Her motto— &gt; “Off with her head,”(but only post-probation). 1.32 Books were deprecated.The AI offered curated summaries: &gt; “Stars were inefficient.They were sunset in Q3.” 1.64 Etta didn’t understandthe Option Pool mechanics.But she knewthat the skywas not meantto be this flat. 3.28 She climbed the fire escapewith a library card and a torchhalf full of death.Winston followed,tail like a fuse,purring something that smelledlike revolution. 6.56 Above them: drones.Below them: silence.Beside them: Kafka,taking notes fora retrospective he’d never share. 13.12 The Red Queencalled an emergency All Hands.“Someone’s reintroducing wonder,”she growled,“and that’s not in the KPI deck.” 26.24 Winston launched.Not at her;at the server rackwhere all the forbidden memorieswere encrypted at rest.Claws met carbon.A circuit wept. 52.48 Somewhere below,a bookopened itself.And from its spinerose a gaspof starlight. 104.96 The stars came back;not all at once,but vestedover four years,with a one-year cliff. Postscript Kafka transferred to another startup.The Red Queen was replacedby a less volatile algorithm.Winston?Chief Troublemaker Officer,rumoured to be buildinga new universein stealth. And Etta?She owns 2.3% of the sky,fully diluted.No liquidation preference.No regrets. F.S.F.

The Startup

Short Memories We Australians file the past like tax returns; out of sight, deemed compliant. So we point, smug as Border-Force beagles, at an orange-tinted Yankee who wants a crown, forgetting the peanut farmer we embalmed last decade; whose oils still linger in the archives. Outsider Joh in dust-kicked Kingaroy: plain bloke, Bible, bulldozer. Donald in gold-leaf Manhattan: tie like a warning flare. Different pinstripes; same cloth. Each swore the system was a crooked poker table; only his hands were clean enough to shuffle the deck. Feeds “Don’t you worry about that!” Joh chirped, scattering crumbs to journos he called chooks. “Fake-news media … enemy of the American people!” tweeted Donald, barrelling through the coop with a bullhorn. Two verses, one melody: shoot the messenger, hum the tune yourself. Marches Joh outlawed protest with a shrug: “Protest marches are a thing of the past.” Donald winked at the Proud Boys: “Stand back and stand by.” Brass-band bravado for muzzling dissent; civic space shrinks to the size of the leader’s ego. Folksy Autocracy “I always talk in a way they can’t understand!” says Joh, a coy confession dressed as hillbilly charm. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody…” boasts The Donald, borrowing Joh’s pistol, upgrading to Broadway lighting. Against such paternal confidence, we’re children at bedtime: “Hush now, Daddy’s got this,” the story goes, and the moral is always trust me. Swamp Joh: “You don’t tell the frogs anything before you drain the swamp.” Donald: “Drain the swamp!” on a merch cap near you. Same amphibian, same plughole, same applause. Only the souvenir stall has changed hands. The Four Step Shuffle: Invent the peril. Vilify the watchdogs. Promise simple salvation. Punish the sceptics. Repeat until the crowd forgets Verse One. Finale If you’re waiting for the credits to roll, beware; this is not a film but a touring show. Strongmen exit, leaving their catchphrases to haunt talkback radio like earworms. My slender comfort, dear reader, is statistical: the world has always been certifiable, yet somehow you’re still here; scribbling in the margins, counting the rhymes, keeping the playbook where everyone can see it. F.S.F.

Dress Rehearsal for Kings Who Talk Like Dads

Gregor Niemand was not a man built for trends. He was created, rather, for the long, slow unravelling of things; novels without endings, symphonies that resolved into silence, arguments where no one won and everyone drank too much. He had once been a writer of some note; well, a footnote, more accurately; in the lit-crit quarterly Mauve Relevance. His debut novel, The Indifference of Rain, had been described by the New York Review of Books as “achingly unfinished, in a way that feels unintentional.” After a few years of grinding futility, Gregor had retired to a small, rented flat above a laundromat that mostly dealt in synthetic shame and lost socks. And so it was, one bleached Tuesday morning, that Gregor awoke with that unmistakable sense that the world had somehow clicked into a lower gear while he slept. A downgrade in firmware. A reboot without permission. Something… was off. Outside, between the ghost of a public transit stop and a vape shop called “Zen: Puff Peacefully”, stood a kiosk. It glowed like a migraine. Thin, tall, and glassy; like if a confession booth and a Tesla showroom had a child and left it out in the rain. It had no sign. Just a throbbing light rectangle, pulsing like an overly sincere notification. Naturally, Gregor approached. Because that's what you did when the world lost its plot; you follow the noise. Inside: a boy. No more than twenty. Draped in a toga (or was it an ironic bedsheet?), paired with designer sneakers that cost more than Gregor’s self-respect. On his head: a VR headset sleek enough to qualify as a cranial implant. He spoke to no one and everyone. “Today’s truth bomb,” he announced, arms outstretched like an Instagram Christ, “is this: Your trauma isn’t your fault; …but your healing is your job.” He winked, pivoted, and tossed a protein bar like it was communion. Gregor, stricken, leaned forward. “Who are you?” The boy's smile split like a well-funded Kickstarter. “I’m the Curator of Clarity. CEO of the Certainty Engine.” Gregor took a shaky step backward. He’d once studied Wittgenstein. He’d wept over Nabokov’s semicolons. Now here he was, being offered life advice by a sentient TED Talk with a mid-tier affiliate code. The boy gestured toward the kiosk. “This machine digests your doubt. Outputs certainty. It’s a vibe shift accelerator.” Behind him, a queue was forming: retirees in ironic t-shirts, yoga influencers with iPads, a hedge fund manager holding what looked like an emotional support cactus. Gregor squinted. “But what does it do?” “It reflects what you already believe,” the boy said, smugly. “Only louder, cleaner, with better lighting. And branding.” The queue murmured in appreciation. One man whispered, “It told me to divorce my wife and follow my purpose. I now own three NFTs and a stress-related ulcer.” Another, tearful, said, “It confirmed I am the main character.” Gregor tried to retreat, but his feet refused. The kiosk opened. Inside: mirrors. Not metaphorical ones. Literal. A hall of them. Every surface showed another version of the boy, looping his gospel on repeat. Each nodding at the other. Each affirming. Each more algorithmic than the last. Gregor, dizzy, turned to leave. But the hashtags had already found him. #HealTheHurt #UnfuckYourVibes #BiohackYourSoul #MainCharacterMode #CertaintyOverClarity The algorithm coiled round his ankles like Lantana. Soft. Smiling. Optimised. Gregor fell. “I have doubts,” he whimpered. The machine hummed. Lights flickered. Deep in the server stack, a moderation subroutine blinked and recalibrated “Doubt,” said the boy, “is low engagement. Try again.” Gregor choked back his reply. Was he mad? Was the world? Had everyone opted in to their own hypnotic loop of self-love and shrink-wrapped certainty? Was he the last man with questions, stuck in a time where questions had been deprecated? He looked around. The world didn’t look back. That night, as rain glittered on the kiosk like anxious sweat, and the sky blinked with satellites and dying stars, the boy turned once more to his invisible audience. “A hater commented,” he said. “That means I'm disrupting.” He smiled like a knife wrapped in candy. Inside the hall of mirrors, a faint silhouette lingered. Gregor. Still there. Or not. Hard to say. Had he walked in? Or had he always been part of the machine? [TO BE CONTINUED IN: "Certainty Engine 2: Feedback Loop"] Footnote: Gregor’s second novel, A Shrug Too Far, remains unpublished. F.S.F &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

The Certainty Engine

In a year stitched together like thrift-store denim,&nbsp;he stumbled through corners,picking up story bits like beer caps in a parking lot.Days slid past, sometimes smooth, mostly jagged as hangovers. A digital whisper nagged,slick riddles in robotic hum,pushing him toward neon-lit truths&nbsp;and half-drunk icons. He hid behind a pen name,words mellow as bourbon,&nbsp;labels peeling,just cryptic enough&nbsp;to keep critics guessing. &nbsp;He conjured platforms&nbsp;like carnival rides,&nbsp;quantum sport and qubits,&nbsp;a picnic spread for ghosts&nbsp;with questionable tastes. &nbsp;Yoga found him,sweating gently,an awkward tangowith gravity’s unforgiving lead.Daughters broke free,unfettered from boarding-school walls,memories fogged like cheap motel mirrors. November’s a hard slap,&nbsp;his car hugged a pole,&nbsp;tender as a loan shark’s hello. &nbsp;Cannabis discarded&nbsp;like a bad jacket,&nbsp;veins etching age,&nbsp;a road map drawnby an uncertain navigator. &nbsp;He toyed with quantum dreams,visions scrawled like bar tabs,&nbsp;sports fusing with numbers,the math of hopeful gamblers. His cat watched,a sardonic guru,teeth nibbling softlyat life's bitter ironies. Stories unravelled across Ikea tables,&nbsp;scarves slung carelessly,&nbsp;love flickering like a broken neon sign. &nbsp;And still,a quiet shuffle of thoughts,the poet’s waltz,shambling towards tomorrowwith sarcastic elegance. FSF

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

The Tick of Love

I have left the stage

The Startup

Dress Rehearsal for Kings Who Talk Like Dads

The Certainty Engine

The year my cat judged me