From the author: Well, the original plan was to get content together through November. Unfortunately, my world went insane - much more than just an explosion and a minor affliction contract - and this was no longer possible.

You’ll be pleased to hear that new content is returning to Insanowrimo this Saturday evening. Or you might not be pleased to hear; you might shrug your shoulders in a demonstration of near total apathy and wander off to read something else.

Regardless, the Affliction Club will live again. I apologise for the delay and hope you keep reading. Thanks!

Jared followed the line of George’s finger, hoping for a moment that a woman might have deigned to join their organization. Women were, generally, too smart for this line of work; Jared hadn’t seen one in he didn’t know how long, and even then they’d been mothers, toting along two or three tiny people with traces of nutritionally balanced infant formula running a powdered trail up their chins.

His hopes were dashed: it was a guy with a mustache. One of those handlebar affairs that looked like someone had laid out a welcome mat across his top lip and rubbed their boots in it a while.

“Hey,” George said, standing up and sticking out his hand in greeting. “I’m George. Welcome.”

The newcomer tentatively took George’s hand. “Richard,” he said. His voice was quiet; nervous. The newcomers usually were; they knew they shouldn’t be there, at least not in the Friendly Eyes of the SunSmile Corporation, and spent their first couple of meetings wondering if they were going to be busted for turning up.

“Don’t worry,” Jared said, between sips of beer. “We’re all friends here. Kind of. Grab yourself a drink and come and sit down.”

Richard found himself a stool, dragged it to where Jared and George were sitting, and turned his attention to the conveyor’s payload of misleadingly lit beverages. He waited until one of the glasses trundling past him had the words ALCOHOL FREE printed across it in white, uniform letters, and swiped it like a bear catching a salmon.

Alcohol-free soya brew, Jared thought. Yum.

“I’ve taken on a liver contract,” Richard explained apologetically. “I’m dying for a real drink, but not until I’m done with this. It’s a bummer.”

“Crap,” Jared said, a little too loudly. A couple of people from across the bar looked up. “Let me explain. We have a rule here, Richard. No life-threatening afflictions. It pushes down the price; screws the market. If you’re going to hang out here you’ve got to play the game with us.”

Richard smiled weakly. “Hey, none of us want to take on these contracts,” he said. “But it’s the market, you know? The prices are going down no matter what we do. We have to take on something. We’ve got to eat, feed our families, live.”

Jared downed the last of his drink. “You’re screwing it for all of us,” he said, standing up.

“I came here because this club is famous,” Richard said. “People talk about it in hushed tones. You’re having an effect, just not enough to hold down the whole market.”

“If we’re having an effect,” Jared said, “Why are you trying to undo us?” He didn’t wait for an answer. George, now this newcomer; how many other people were taking on other jobs they’d all agreed to stay away from? He didn’t have a choice; eventually he was going to have to take something big on himself, and even through the nausea of his simultaneous hangovers, the thought made him sick to his stomach. He left, slamming the door behind him.

The bar – this one was Failbar, named after one of the most popular shows on the Laugh Out Loud Channel – was in one of the seediest districts of the Lower City, where the wares of the market traders whose canvas tents lined the streets made affliction trading seem glamorous. As he walked through the chemical fog, he passed more people missing limbs than he could count; mostly they’d pawned them to an amputation dealer in exchange for enough credit to pay for food for a couple of days. All had hollow looks, sometimes because they’d sold their real eyes for food.

The vices of the Lower City were interspersed with the market traders. Virtual Booths were everywhere: immersion capsules where you could trade some credit for an adventure in a simulated world. The equipment often played with the user’s perception of time, so twenty minutes in the plastic chamber could feel like years living a different life; one where you lived a wealthy, prosperous existence with a partner, somewhere you could see the sky. It wasn’t uncommon to see people stumble, bleary-eyed, from the booths, fall to their knees and weep. They were like the devil, Jared thought, and he had vowed to never try one, no matter how bad things got.

The calls of the market vendors were loud, and the chirping of the crowds louder still; Jared found himself wincing at the noise, his headache taking issue with the shouting. Occasionally a Traxi would slide down its rails through the swarm and someone would get in or out; Jared knew there would be relative quiet inside, but he needed to save his credit. The market was changing, and he wanted to hold on for as long as he could. He’d walk.

“Excuse me, sir!” A vendor stepped out in front of him, grinning obnoxiously, his tattooed face belying the fact that he was carrying a real, communicable disease and shouldn’t be approached. He placed himself a couple of inches away from Jared, who stepped back. “Interest-free credit, sir. Special offer. Good rates on minor organs, limbs, toes, sir. Need some credit, sir?”

Jared glared and opened his mouth to speak.

Everything went quiet and dark, and he felt particles of something hard raining on him piece by piece. There was no sound, just heat and pressure and sudden, intense fear. And then nothing.

Jared was permanently hung over. It was like his job.

He hadn’t particularly drunk anything, and he obviously hadn’t taken anything – that sort of thing was for losers, people burdened with the kind of loss of perspective that meant a chemical high could be confused with a genuine one – but nonetheless, his head was throbbing with a dull ache that threatened to bore through into his brain. And the door entry system wasn’t doing him any favors.

The incessant beep sounded and felt like a truck reversing into his head. Why he hadn’t had it replaced, he didn’t know, but right now it was in danger of a split-second substitution with a brick and pile of shattered plastic. The agency knew his occupation demanded late nights and activities that resulting in feeling like a train wreck in the morning, and it was they who subsidized his grime-sodden apartment, yet they insisted on providing him with a doorbell that sounded like a car alarm that had just seen something it could never unsee. He told himself he should complain about it every morning, and every morning he told himself he’d do it when he felt up to it. Maybe one day.

The beeping didn’t sound like it was in any imminent danger of ceasing, although it was no longer the sound that bothered Jared as much as the fact that behind it was someone who wanted to talk to him. At this hour, while he was feeling ruthlessly rotten. It was most likely to be one particular person, and the thought didn’t bring him any closer to answering the door. Or it shouldn’t have, except there was the slim chance of a job.

Jared sighed and lurched forwards, momentum pulling him out of bed. Whoever they were – and he thought he knew – they’d better have brought breakfast.

Danny the Stump was so named because his stodgy frame just seemed to go up and down in a squat little cylinder, like a stump. Jared knew it was him from the munching noises that accompanied the strained whirring of the elevator, echoing up the shaft as a kind of machine forewarning of the biological horror that was to follow. The way Danny the Stump ate, Jared wouldn’t want breakfast pretty soon.

The doors pinged open and Danny waddled out, some kind of meat smeared on his face. “How ya doing, Jared?” he bellowed, revealing his breakfast meal to be some kind of a curry.

Jared stood in the hallway, silent. He didn’t need to say hello.

“I got a new client for you,” Danny said, pacing up and down the hall. “Actually, two clients. Middle-aged couple in the west side dying of intestinal cancer. Lawyers. Interested?”

“I don’t do cancer,” Jared said.

“You haven’t seen what these guys want to pay. It’s good money. You wouldn’t have to go all the way with it. You’d only have to have the cancer for a little while.”

Jared paused. “How long?”

Danny stopped and looked Jared square in the eye. “Two or three years. But it’s really good money, Jared. You wouldn’t need to work for four, five years.”

Jared started ushering Danny back into the elevator. “I don’t do cancer,” he reiterated.

Danny sighed theatrically and threw up his hands in exaggerated exasperation. “You know, Jared, what’s the pioint in you even having an agent? You never take any of the work I bring you. You’re killing me here.”

“I do hangovers,” Jared said. “It’s my niche.”

“You’re never going to make really good money doing hangovers. You’re going to make rent and pay for your lunch, but you’re never going to make it. Hangovers are for mollycoddled students and journalists. You want real money, you’ve got to take on the afflictions of the wealthy. That means cancer, that means heart disease. Nobody ever made it to the top by having a sore head.”

“Just bring me something I’m not going to die from,” Jared said. “I’m going back to bed.”

Danny shook his head and walked back into the elevator. “Your problem is, you have no ambition,” he said. The doors clunked shut and Danny’s protestations faded to a dull echo, at one with the continuous, nagging hum of the machinery.

Good riddance, Jared thought. Another morning as a freelancer in the employ of the SunSmile Corporation.

He fell back into bed, exhaled forcefully, and reached for the remote control. “TV on,” he said into it.

The wall nearest to his feet blinked into life, revealing the same news that had been in rotation for months. The authorities expressed fears that terrorists could use dirigibles to attack national monuments (which were particularly heartfelt now that most of them had been turned into overflow housing). The National Internet was going to be offline for maintenance between three and five ‘o’ clock, like it was every Wednesday. A survey had placed happiness 31% higher than it had been this time ten years ago. A heartwarming story about a wealthy woman who was able to continue her valuable academic work thanks to the innovations of the SunSmile Corporation. That damn Michael Jackson robot in the Nevada desert was running amok again and had eaten another tourist.

“Funny,” Jared commanded into the remote. The screen flipped to the Laugh Out Loud Channel, where three kittens were plotting to steal a bucket full of fish from a walrus, with characteristically harebrained aplomb. It was funny; Jared laughed, and as the kittens were thwarted by a giant caterpillar growling obscenities, he gradually fell asleep.

As he dreamt, his bed folded in on itself and a series of arms reached in and prodded him, sampled his vital signs and injected a series of chemicals into his arms, legs and face. In his temperature-controlled cocoon, his lungs were filled with blood and drained, his tissues slowly forced to absorb the toxins and residues from the people who paid him to take on their afflictions. A sensor ensured that the transfer took place successfully and credited his account with the previously agreed amount. Somewhere in the Upper City, the opposite process was taking place; someone would emerge from their SunSmile Slumber Station feeling fresh and alive, happy to have been given the opportunity to approach the day with vigor despite their adventures the previous night. It was all part of their job; all part of their lifestyle. No reason why they should have to suffer out of of circumstance.

Four hours later, the bed opened like a padded metal flower and Jared stumbled out, his head throbbing, his skin gray and pale, with a bubbling in his stomach and the overwhelming desire to puke his guts out.

*

The Freelancers’ Club was an unofficial gathering that took place in a drinking spot – a different one each time – in one of the less pleasant parts of the Lower City. The SunSmile Corporation didn’t provide any networking opportunities for the commercially afflicted, and any attempts to form such an organization were filtered from the National Internet, but the freelancers had developed ways to get round the roadblocks and obstacles. There were software agents that could sniff out and decipher codes and codewords, so the freelancers eschewed them completely; they relied instead on word of mouth, spreading details from one person to another individually so as not to trigger the automatic assembly sensors in the Friendly Eyes installed all over the city, and imbuing their messages with a certain amount of human empathy and intuition.

Danny the Stump was banned as a SunSmile shill, but sometimes came anyway; otherwise the Club was populated by a rotating cast of characters who had taken on a vast array of afflictions in exchange for a Corporation fee. Although the Corporation didn’t know it, they acted as a kind of unofficial union with their own rules and established working practices. The primary rule was that none of them would ever take on a life-threatening condition; not because of any particular safety concerns, but because doing so would drive down the price of the lesser conditions for everyone else. Although the Corporation retained most of the control, petty acts of price-fixing were not beyond the group’s reach.

Jared came in late, his limbs aching from the extra hangover. A couple of people – Sandy, who had an adult strain of the measles, and George, who had indeterminate warts – raised their hands in greeting. Everyone else sipped at their soya beer and chatted amongst themselves.

“Hey, man,” George said as Jared grabbed a nearby stool. “How’s it hanging?”

Jared shrugged. “My head hurts. The usual.”

George smiled. “It’s money. Ticket to the good life.”

“I want what the guys who sell me their burnt out heads have,” Jared said. “That’s money too. Enough of it to pay me to feel like crap all my life so they can go out and party. That sounds like the good life to me.” He frowned. Too much talking. He grabbed a beer from the conveyor belt and took a swig; didn’t make him feel any better, but a couple more swigs and he wouldn’t care. “So what’s new?”

“Bunch more people on the cancer market,” George said. “It’s getting harder and harder to not take the money.”

“You can’t take it. You’ll screw the market.”

“I need the money, man. I’d rather screw the market than screw myself.”

Jared smiled wryly.

“Hey, screw you. It’s all right for you in your rent controlled forty-fifth floor apartment. Some of us got to pay market rate, on top of having a family to feed, man. Do you know what it’s like to be paid to take on an affliction so embarrassing you can’t undress in front of your wife, just so your kids have something to eat?”

Jared looked into his beer. It was flat. Had probably been swinging around on the conveyor for hours.

“No,” George said, “I didn’t think so. So shut it.”

The bar smelled of beer and the kinds of people who came there to drink it. It would have been dark and moody – all rotten wood panels, like a pirate ship – but for the fluorescent shine of the beer conveyor, which had been designed to make each and every drink shine like a golden prize, the miniature bubbles floating gracefully towards the sky like helium diamonds. Remove a glass from its pedestal and your account would be debited before you noticed that it more closely resembled a very well-collected puddle of urine. Tempeh Brew was not delicious, but hops didn’t grow well under the new atmosphere, and wheat was all directed towards feeding the wealthy. They got bread, but the residents of the Lower City? Let them drink soya beer.

Jared grimaced and took another swig.

“Looks like we got a newcomer,” George said, pointing up.