Read the stories
Infrastructure and platform leader in Toronto. Former army signaller and trained historian, who writes short fiction and has built a drill simulator.
The CAF Drill Routine Simulator is for drill-team coaches and judges: build a Platoon or Colour Party, sequence movements from the CAF Manual of Drill and Ceremonial, and play the routine back on a parade square measured in real paces.
Thirteen pieces of short fiction, chained in the bay. Each slate is as wide as its story is long; wake one to read its opening.
MS. Dodd 01 · 646 words · 3 min · access granted
“I remember seven months ago. I remember the laughter, the joy, the hell. Since then, I have learned what it has meant to have no sun,” I began. I…
MS. Dodd 02 · 2,608 words · 11 min · access granted
Seagulls. I hated the sound of seagulls cawing. This time, though, was very different. I had heard nothing but the creaking of the hull against its…
MS. Dodd 03 · 1,357 words · 6 min · access granted
You push on the old wooden door but guess that it is much, much heavier than it appears. The door swings open too quickly, and it is obvious that the…
MS. Dodd 04 · 3,960 words · 17 min · access granted
It was a cold and rainy morning. The darkness of the pre-dawn seemed to be clutching at the corners of the world and desperately attempting to hold on…
MS. Dodd 05 · 2,319 words · 10 min · access granted
I was walking along the beach, just on that crappy wooden path that you know the city hasn’t spent a dime on in at least a decade and probably won’t…
MS. Dodd 06 · 2,199 words · 10 min · access granted
Cold. The only feeling he could find to latch onto was the feeling of intense, extreme cold. He knew he wasn’t thinking straight and that knowledge…
MS. Dodd 07 · 3,850 words · 17 min · access granted
Her alarm sounded at exactly 7am. Why they kept to the twenty-four-hour system still, no one had bothered to explain. It was probably just easier to…
MS. Dodd 08 · 3,075 words · 13 min · access granted
He opened his eyes. Being careful not to move, he listened to the sounds around him. The horrifying screech of metal grinding on metal that had never…
MS. Dodd 09 · 1,645 words · 7 min · access granted
Mustering as much patience as I could, I slowly exhaled. This was not something I could rush. I had been preparing for so many months that being too…
MS. Dodd 10 · 1,856 words · 8 min · access granted
With a loud sigh, Odin pushed his palm into his forehead and squeezed his one good eye tightly shut, as if willing away the crossed paths of two of…
MS. Dodd 11 · 2,379 words · 10 min · access granted
The news had spread like wildfire. How could it not have? Anyone working out in the fields, no matter the job, had seen the riders coming and going at…
MS. Dodd 12 · 1,484 words · 6 min · access granted
The bed felt nice. It was warm, with a cool breeze slowly wafting into the room. The smell of the autumn air carrying with it reminders of the best…
MS. Dodd 13 · 1,181 words · 5 min · access granted
The van trundled along down the road. Well, perhaps 'trundled' wasn't quite the correct term. It advanced at an urgent pace. Yes, that sounded more…
For over a decade my main focus has been keeping critical data safe and secure systems running: first in the army, then as a database administrator, now leading infrastructure teams.
Medavie
Medavie
Sun Life
Sun Life
RPM Technologies
Government of Canada
Government of Canada
BDMK Consultants
Government of Canada
Canadian Forces
Carleton University
Carleton University
I started in 2010 as a SigOp, not really knowing what that meant except that computers were used. For me, that really meant keeping communications systems running for the people who depended on them. Keeping things running even when they don't seem to want to is still my biggest skill.
Since then I have looked after Oracle and PostgreSQL estates for the federal government and for Sun Life, managed virtualization across private industries, and developed a couple of small tools at home and online that I think are neat. Today I lead enterprise infrastructure and platforms at Medavie: compute, virtualization, Kubernetes, storage and backup, in an environment where reliability is not optional.
My degrees are in history: a B.A., then an M.A. in Digital Humanities at Carleton University, where I wrote The Empire of the Old Bailey Online: Why Zero Matters.
I also write fiction, about topics that I think interest me or where a short idea has popped into my head. None of my short stories are designed to be entire stories from start to finish, rather they are written kind of like chapters from a book where the rest of the pages are all missing. Most of them come from my own experiences or things I observed in the real world that seem to come from another time and place. Thirteen of the stories are in the bay above. I also built and maintain drillteamroutine.com, a simulator for Canadian Armed Forces drill routines.
Matthew Dodd
Toronto, Ontario
For work, writing or a story you enjoyed, the Contact Me page or LinkedIn reaches me fastest.