Transitioning From Web Developer to Comic Book Author:

Graffitti Hospital

I’m climbing the rooftops, spray-painting anchor points–rectangular boxes with arrows in them. These points are programmed with Nanos to link to each other over distances of up to 500 meters. After I draw the second of a set, it stretches out a thin line to the first box and creates a barrier. No other artist can paint this wall now. The arrows communicate with a strange, sub-microscopic sentience. I stand back, proud. This rooftop is huge. It has layers of paint, over which the years have layered more and more paint, more and more untamed art. But now it’s mine.
Downstairs is a hospital. I take a peak inside and everyone is bustling. The sun is rising and I must go to work. The office is in there today. We are meeting in the cafeteria.
My boss, who seems to be alternating appearance of gender as frequently as David Bowie, is giving a slideshow demo. He sees me come in and begins pointing his questions toward me.
“Watch as I scroll down the code to the middle here. Everything looks fine until we get to this little blue cloud.”
The page scrolls down and reveals an intensely colored cloud, thinly stretched from the left margin to the right. below it is an arrow, pointing in the same direction.
“Yeah,” I say, “The problem is that the cloud is the end of the page in this instance.” Everyone turns to look at me. “We fill in the whole template, regardless of the situation, but we’ve got all this conditional logic to figure out if we should even show all the stuff we’ve already filled in. We really need a better templating system.”
“Ah, see that’s what we expect.” Bowie triumphantly declares.
“Ah, I see.” I agree.

Down the corridor of the hospital, I see an old woman getting a scowling look from one of her peers. She walks away and soon another nurse drills down on her with visual malice. She ducks into a room with glass walls and a glass door. I can see her sitting there, head slumped. Outside, her co-workers gather. All of them grimacing and shaking their heads. They bare down their brows and scrunch up their jaws pointedly. Nobody is saying anything, just looking very angry. The woman in the room closes her eyes and leans back in her chair. She has had enough. She will not give them whatever satisfaction they seek. She folds up her arms around her torso, leans back, and dies.
It’s only a matter of seconds before everyone realizes she will never come out alive again.