Annie sleeps in fitful spurts dreaming of an altered world populated by drone-like slaves and gangly masters. Her dreams leave her panicked and ragged as if she hadn’t slept at all. Is there a barely audible voice buzzing in the background hum? Or is the sleep deprivation driving her to delusions? When a computer virus spreads across email, social networking, and phone texts, people begin exhibiting the drone-like behavior from her dream. Who can she trust? Can she learn to distinguish what is real from the background noise, or will she become just another drone?
Author
Ian Welke writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His short stories have appeared in KZine, spacewesterns.com, Arcane II, Zombie Jesus and Other True Stories, and the American Nightmare anthology among others. His first novel, The Whisperer in Dissonance, was published by Omnium Gatherum in 2014. End Times at Ridgemont High is his second novel and has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. Before writing full time, Ian worked in the computer games industry. He was lucky enough to work at Blizzard Entertainment and at Runic Games. These days, when he’s not at his desk writing, Ian enjoys a variety of games. His favorites tend to be elaborate board games with many pieces and rules to confuse, though he’s happiest going mad with his characters in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Ian lived in Seattle for six years, enjoying the rain, but has returned home to Long Beach, California, where he schemes to find shelving to house all of the books he reads.
