"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.)"