Standing by the Record Machine
What happens when memory is sincere, records are internally perfect, and both point to lives that should not exist?
A serialized speculative-fiction novel by Mycal
What happens when memory is sincere, records are internally perfect, and both still describe a world that cannot quite be true?
Standing by the Record Machine begins in Berkeley in 1993, where a young radio builder discovers how confidently people can remember something that never happened the way they remember it. Decades later, a California records analyst finds a different kind of impossibility: people whose official lives begin cleanly in the middle, complete with identities that belonged to children who died years before.
The explanations are ordinary until they aren't.
This page collects the published chapters of Standing by the Record Machine as the story develops.
Read the novel
Chapter One — Berkeley, October 1993
A young radio builder fixes a stereo at a party in the Berkeley hills and finds himself in an argument about mescaline, memory, and the difference between what happened and what people know happened.
Chapter Two — Sacramento, February 2026
Vital Records analyst Delia Sandoval investigates Howard Reece Pittman, a man who died at two, reappeared at thirty-five, and became number 314 in a private file of people who should not exist.
Chapter Three — Vallejo, February 2026
Ray Lombardo has spent thirty-one years measuring things people misunderstand. Then a job arrives with a recording that can't be right—and a question he can't ignore.
Chapter Four — Oakland, December 1995
Ray and the Group of Four burn a web archive onto CD-ROM, a frozen collection of mailing lists, radio lore, crypto, hacking tools, and other risky information.
Chapter Five — Sacramento, February 2026
Delia finds orphan number 315, and this one is still alive. When she asks where the others first appeared, the same name keeps turning up.
More chapters will appear here as they are published.