The Jon Lymonday Teaser: Free sample of Flying Ant Day

A great time to read a free sample of Flying Ant Day, as I'm writing a second book set in the same world - look out for Dead Headz, in general, and available in 2026...

Mac’s business was seldom of interest to anyone, even Mac. It operated most efficiently when he had nothing to do with it. He’d invested heavily in automation and AI, so everything from the creation of content – chiefly reports into financial matters that Mac didn’t fully understand - to the payment of the creators who created that content and made it look easy on the eye on screen, happened most smoothly and seamlessly without Mac’s intervention.

It was a business run by AI that had taken the mundane as well as the interesting work Mac used to do off Mac’s desk. Whenever Mac intervened in the running of his business, usually to raise the rate he charged clients for the work he wasn’t doing and the financial information he didn’t understand and wasn’t responsible for curating, the automated system collapsed and he was forced to call in expensive consultants who’d baffle him with science and advise him against future interference in his business.

“What are you doing getting involved in the running of your business?” they’d ask him with pure disdain.

“I’m keeping track of inflation,” Mac would tell them.

“What’s to track? It’s going up isn’t it? Inflation always goes up. Otherwise it’s deflation, right?”

“I track both,” Mac told them.

“So inflation goes up and down?”

“Yes, by degrees.”

“But if inflation goes down, surely it’s no longer inflation. It’s deflation?”

Mac was baffled by the consultants’ challenging line of questioning and urged them to hurry and fix his business so he could go back to successfully not running it.

The consultants secretly hoped inflation would maintain its upward trajectory and tempt Mac to tamper with the running of his business further, as every time Mac tried to run his business he’d come close to ruining his business and would have to call them in. Mac was proving to be a loyal and frequent customer, one they could overcharge with impunity, and blame inflation for their rising prices.

“You’d know better than most why our prices have to keep rising,” the consultants would tell him after mailing him their invoice.

And Mac would have to admit that yes, he did know better than most why their prices had to keep rising every time he used them.

But on occasion, Mac’s business did interest the others. Firstly, his invention of an app that traced the whereabouts of Removals vans.

“It’s genius,” Kent insisted.

“Not really,” Mac insisted back. “All vehicles are fitted with tracking devices. It was just a case of getting computers to hack into the right ones.”

“There’d be a massive market for that app if it were legal,” said Chris.

“Yeah, I thought about selling it on the dark web or open sourcing the code, but I’ve not got round to it yet. It’s just a bedroom side hustle that’ll probably never see the light of day.”

A few weeks later, Mac revealed he was branching out into drone management and customisation. “Drones can and do talk to each other, you know,” he told them.

“How do they do that when they don’t have mouths?” Kent asked.

“They send encrypted code to each other via VPNs.”

“What?”

“Virtual Private Networks. Private internet networks that only they can access. And they use code only they can understand.”

“Wait a minute, so drones created by humans and programmed by humans are now using code not programmed by humans to communicate with each other in a way that humans can’t understand?”

“That’s right.”

“How did that happen?”

“The code we programmed them with taught them to do it.”

“So they were programmed by humans to defy and baffle humans?”

“No. The artificial intelligence us humans gave them decided to create a code us humans can’t decipher.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It is. No human can understand it. Anything using AI can effectively run itself. But I’m working on something,” Mac continued. “I’m using AI to get drones to do what I want them to do.”

Mac adjusted his camera to show the others his drone standing on its head on a window sill.

“Wow,” said Kent, “if The Powers see that, you’re getting Removed, Mac.”

“Listen up,” said Mac, turning the sound up on his laptop. The sound of booing filtered through.

‘You got it booing?” Kent asked.

Mac beamed at the screen. “These bitches are mine,” he said and followed it with an evil laugh that was pretty evil but not funny.