"Afterwards immediately follows A Party at
Silver Beach.
In a time of global turmoil, it is a "musical comedy" encore to the
cyber-epic Dorothy and Sid
In a series of conversations and parallel thoughts, the narrative weaves
together the relationships of three couples who were at the party: the young
couple Tina and Jerry (first introduced in Dorothy Abrona McCrae) who are
unsure whether to begin a serious relationship; Gunter and Gwen, (first
introduced in l0ve0ne, their story was continued in The Roar of Destiny)
who in their lives have at times between unable to separate reality from
virtual reality; and Dorothy and Sid who took decades to commit to each other
and now are learning how to live together.
Those readers who wish to follow one couple should click on one color
of squares in the interface, (an interface approach I first encountered
in Cathy Marshall's work at Xerox PARC). Those who wish to weave together
all three developing relationships should click on any square in the interface.
The work is multi-sequential in that the beginning is accessed at the top
of the array, and the end of the array offers closure.
The structure of Afterwards is somewhat similar to the narrative data
structure I used in Wasting Time -- which over ten years ago used slowly
appearing text to simulate conversation and connected columns of words to
simulate parallel thought patterns. (and was published in After the Book
(Perforations 3) Summer, 1992.)"