tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190356172024-03-07T10:26:14.972-08:00I Hid My Eyes Behind Your Sofa<center>If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing,
<br>then the desire is not to write.
<br> - Hugh Prather</center>alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.comBlogger1794125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-64123610461995707032020-11-15T12:24:00.001-08:002020-11-15T12:24:25.738-08:00Poem To a A Sleeping Cat<p> You sleep here or there, on the couch or bed,</p><p>Wherever you wish to, lord of your home.</p><p>There is a strange peace in your quiet sleep</p><p>That comforts me and makes me want to smile,</p><p>Perhaps since you aren’t digging into me</p><p>With your claws, demanding my attention.</p><p><br /></p><p>Though your meow will get my attention</p><p>Just as quickly when I am on the bed</p><p>And you jump up there, just to startle me</p><p>I sometimes think, but of course its your home.</p><p>You don’t pay any bills, mind you, just sleep</p><p>Like a cat does, with your secretive smile.</p><p><br /></p><p>I know its there even when you do sleep;</p><p>That smug look: you can get my attention</p><p>And you know that you can cause me to smile</p><p>Just by the odd ways you sleep in my bed.</p><p>Even your greeting me into your home</p><p>-You know its yours - brings a smile out of me.</p><p><br /></p><p>It’s not yours, even though you can make me</p><p>End up barely on the bed when I sleep</p><p>Or stalk the guests as if it was your home</p><p>And demand they give you their attention,</p><p>Or lie sleeping so I can’t make the bed</p><p>But sigh and awaken you with a smile.</p><p><br /></p><p>Even when I’m sure you’re hiding a smile</p><p>Behind that cat arrogance you show me</p><p>I’m not going to shove you off the bed,</p><p>Just in case your claws decide to make my sleep</p><p>More interesting and your attention</p><p>Causes me to want to leave my own home.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, that just proves to you it’s your home.</p><p>And you sleeping where you wish brings a smile</p><p>To my face. You can get our attention</p><p>-You have claws and teeth to prove that to me -</p><p>And, of course, since it’s where you like to sleep</p><p>Most often, you’re sure the bed is your bed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Since it is your bed, this must me your home.</p><p>It’s the place you sleep, so its yours. I smile</p><p>When, sleeping on me, you want attention.</p>alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-84693454728235041432019-01-05T22:16:00.000-08:002019-01-05T22:18:24.629-08:00The Mysterious Text: A Not A Novel Publication<div>
“Franklin.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Four years of marriage lead to skills Sarah always calls our ‘marriage-sense’. The tingling of a bridge close to being burn, of a line close to being crossed. Every relationship a tightrope, at least some of the time. I look up from the text message. “I –.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She reaches over, pushing our laptop away from the table. “It’s been three days.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I know. I’m just so fu–.” I bite back words.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Deana is sleeping,” she says. “And if you wake her, you’ll have more to worry about than me.” But my wife smiles as she says it, the smile fading as she runs her fingers over my chin. “You haven’t shaved in two days.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I know, I just –.” I set my phone on our small office table that’s only called that because of the bills drawer. “I know something is wrong, Sarah. I’ve known Aiden since we were six years old: he is – was – is my best friend. I was the first person he came out to.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“He was the best man at our wedding,” she says. “And convinced me to stick with you after that one party at Clover Point.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“He did?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Phone calls afterwards, three of them. About how long he’d known you, that the drinks must have been spiked. That he turned out to be right helped.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Everyone else calls me Frank. Everyone at work, even my parents.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“We don’t.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I nod, gesture to the phone. “He used ‘Frank’ in his last text to me. He never did that. Refused to abbreviate anything unless he was in a hurry, and if he was there would be a period so I’d know it was Franklin. So I’d know it was my name. He had a new boyfriend, and he’s always – well, he’d have called Steven before the flight, after it landed. He would anyway, but he was – is – always does with regularity at the start of any relationship.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“He would have sent us a picture of some street in Vancounver during the first day.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“And he didn’t. He flew halfway across the country, and we know he left the airport and then – nothing. The police have enough to look into it: they’ll try, but it won’t be hard enough. I could almost hear the interest change when they decided it had to be an affair. I wanted to ask if they wanted another Pickton to escape them, but that wouldn’t have helped anything at all.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sarah laughs, as much in shock as surprise. “No, it wouldn’t.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“And Deana is two, I can’t get time off work. Even if we could afford the flight.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I looked into our credit cards,” she says, stepping behind me to run fingers over my neck. “We can’t afford it. If we borrowed, it would have to be a friend willing to wait two years at least to be paid back, love.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I know. I know. He could be dying. Be dead. Be in some – and there is nothing we can do.” I don’t delete the message on my phone. I can do that much. I can read Vancouver news from so far away. I can hope. We can afford hope, if nothing else.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I force myself to stand, heading to the kitchen for a night cap and then bed. There is nothing we can afford to sell, nothing I can think to do in a world that doesn’t work like a mystery novel. I don’t know anything about solving crimes, nothing about finding murdered friends. All I know is that it all costs money, and that’s one thing we don’t have.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-7212725969489190662019-01-01T11:00:00.001-08:002019-01-01T11:01:04.438-08:00Status Updates: end of 2018! (Oct-Dec)<b>Oct 2018</b><br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Look, Dr. Jekyll. We have to talk. Your patented formula to turn
into Mr Hyde seems to mostly involve a lot of vodka.”
</div>
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<br /></div>
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“You could have done something different.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I saved you.”</div>
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“From what?”</div>
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“…”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Exactly.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Monsters aren’t scary, not really. You want scary, you should
meet their mothers. And then explain why their child is a monster.
<i>That</i> will show you a real one.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I had a dream that one day everyone would be lollipops and ride
on zebra giraffes to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy while the sky is
devoured by cotton candy, but does anyone want to hear about that
dream? No, sir, they do not. Not even if the truth behind that dream
would shake them to their core!”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’m not your biological father, but I am your geological one.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To stop feeling human, the recipe is sickness</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am afraid of nothing,” I whispered, and no one understood how
terrible that could be.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No one has magic anymore, not like they did in the old days. You
could change kingdoms with a song, break an emperor with a poem.
People feared poets then in a way no one does now. They could do
more, you understand? They were more because they had less to work
with. Words mean more when there is less of them. Now there are so
many words and too many mean the same thing or nothing at all. We
have so many that we lose them.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And with every loss, some of their power went away. And now hey
have only words. And we have only words. And we drown in a buffet
that means nothing at all.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every vow to last forever stands in the knowledge that time turns all
mountains into hills.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every poem remembers</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The silence of the poet</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Nothing is as important as the people, my king. And nothing as
important to the wellbeing of the people as trade deals. Every
monster you slay might win you praise, but this – being a proper
king – that wins renown.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No one has ever eaten grapefruit by choice. The bitter taste and the
grapefruit spoon exist only to
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
symbolically dig the sadness from your own heart.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They kept saying the grass was greener</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Even if our side contained watered lawns</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Their side stretched into empty desert –
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Perhaps some shade of green we never knew</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
sometimes change isn’t change at all</div>
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you remain who you’ve always been</div>
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not needing to find anyone at all just</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
finally fitting into your own skin
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
learning how to call yourself home</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Waiting in line to vote and had someone come out in tears.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Because she didn’t get a sticker. Her mom explained that she had to
wait fifteen more years to be able to vote, but she wasn’t having
it.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Watching telephone poles shed their leaves for autumn.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
*eyes news*</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"the shooter surrendered to the police"</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
aka: they were white</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Nov 2018</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
*begins excavating a novel from inside my head*</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From this morning's writing output:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Today isn’t a bad day, but I can feel a bad one creeping up on me.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From this morning's output:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t think a town that small would have a casino. I imagine
the building you saw was a megachurch, if there is really any
difference between a megachurch and a casino.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The fun moment when you pause a novel to learn about the politics of
Ukraine because one character invaded the Ukraine to take it over
when they couldn't claim it in Risk.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But the story of my childhood can’t be autobiographical before
I’m seventeen. That is when I bought my first car.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From WIP:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The town of Wendover turns out to be quite large and bustling. The
usual scatters of suburbs still desperately trying to raise children
to be normal, the town itself a scattering of major streets, old
industrial plants looming against the hills and enough modern
buildings and layouts to make me wonder how much of the original town
even remains. At a guess, it’s been revitalized so often that they
will soon be levelling homes just to revitalize them again, which is
a weird impression of town.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From WIP:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I doubt even those he worked with saw the old man as a monster. A
middle man can wash their hands of so many things, and sometimes the
most evil people are the ones who tell everyone that what they do is
simply business and nothing else at all.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Me: Aha! This makes sense. Kate figuring out she was wrong and going
back fits the character and progression.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Also me: Wait. This could screw up the timeline badly....</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Ah, the joys of novel writing :)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Things always move toward getting better.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Emmett turns to Jay. “Even in the darkness?” he demands.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh, especially then!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What?” Emmett says, to the joy in the words as much as the reply
I think.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Darkness isn’t absence of light; the darkness remembers the
light and knows the light will always be waiting for when the
darkness ends.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And if there are always been darkness?” Emmett presses.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Then there’s always been light too of course,” Jay says
happily. “Probably hiding inside the darkness and making lots of
silly faces.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From WIP:</div>
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“Every old person thinks the world is coming to an end, because
their own world has at least twice in their lives.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The ghost wavers visibly. “It takes everything I am to remain here,
magician, as no one would wish me to remain.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And you want my help to make people see you?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“A man should not ask for help, should not need from others like
cowards do,” the ghost snaps, almost without thinking.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It is possible for ghosts to haunt each other as well. Or at leas
their voices; you do not have to be that person,” I offer.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am dead. It is far too late for the dead to change.” The ghost
lets out a small, bitter laugh.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Then what do you want from me?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I need – I need my granddaughter to see me.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’ll need more than that.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The last thing I told her was that she was just like every other
kid, following trends in wanting to be a boy.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Trends.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I died that night, in my sleep. From nothing else than age. It has
been six weeks since I died, and no one can see me. I cannot affect
them. I cannot –.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You cannot what?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Apologize,” the ghost says finally.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And you think appearing as a spirit of yourself will do that? That
your granddaughter – or anyone – would want to see you again?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The ghost pulls himself together, drawing thin scraps of power around
himself.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You insulted me when you met me, and I am the only person who can
help you. Think about that, Bob.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The scraps of power vanish like forgotten dreams, the ghost looking
old and frail even for a ghost. “…can you do this?” he asks.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I could.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I – please. I do not want her – his – last memories of me to
be hate. Tell Dev – I do not know what. Say I am proud to have a
grandson too? I am sorry, but it is too late for words that mean
nothing.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If it meant nothing, you would not be trying this,” I say
quietly.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From WIP:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every ghost wants something; they’re unlike the living in that
regard.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
... the fun moment when you have to apologize to someone for messages
a fictional character sent them.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That moment when you check your novel plot file to figure out where
everything is, and realize after adding 30K words of various needed
scenes, you are still on page 4 of 11... heh. Though I have
technically moved down one line on the page.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Forgiveness is a weapon</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We so seldom unsheathe</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
sometimes it feels like we would be lucky to be as blessed as
sisyphus.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From WIP:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Most people don’t see things as simply as you do, magician.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hardly simple; I just don’t have it in me to care about
unimportant matters that others deem important; your appearance is
one of those.” His smile is bookended by a chuckle.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
*that moment when your brain begins surfacing from a novel draft only
to remind you that you need to write three short stories over a
weekend in which you don't have time to*</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Dec 2018</b></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Nothing is ever cheap; the price is always what the market can
afford.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“My soul is just worth two pennies?!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That is what the ferryman accepts,” the demon replied.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I offered the only immortality I knew of, writing you into the book
even if I changed your name at the last moment to protect nothing
that mattered in the end.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We somehow fell in step though never once we danced.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If the point is to be clever rather than share information, then
it is never about being clever at all. Nor should it ever be.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“How can you love a system that has damaged you so deeply?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can because I know it has damaged others far more than it has
ever damaged me.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Writing 900+ words on phone is fun. Deciphering what autocorrect did,
also fun :p</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The streets below spire X10 wasn’t vague in itself</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When you’re seven feet tall and almost as board</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I swore softly but followed him without another wolf.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I did; I am too heavy to climb that robe.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But I can’t die. It’s in the contract that I’m playing
Detective Orland for two more seasons!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Death paused. “I am afraid the contract for the character you play
in a TV show does not extend to real life.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yeah? Read the fine print, buster.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The fun of working on a post-cyberpunk universe definitely includes
the equivalent of people whose implants run on Mac, or who use floppy
disks for their cybernetics or don't have the equivalent of a modern
internet connection. The future is not compatible with you, as one
character is quite boastful about.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That moment when a fictional character you made sells a copy of an
anthology you are in on Twitter...</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Warrior About Whom There Was No Prophecy strode into the city,
seeking the Villain Who Must Be Named (because, otherwise, it was
hard to find him). They had been childhood friends, but death and
blood had come between them and the Warrior knew he was under a
terrible curse, but not its nature.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In time he found a woman, who was searching for her heart’s desire,
but his quest went deeper than his heart, and the Warrior did not see
his own True Love, but only information.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am looking for Sex. I have been my whole life,” he explained.
“Sex was my childhood friend, but because of Sex my sister and my
parents died in my arms and I … who are you looking at me funny?
You’re calling the guard?! YOU’RE IN LEAGUE WITH SEX!“</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And the Warrior drew his very ordinary and unnamed sword and slew
her, screaming about Sex, and had to flee the guard, who seemed to be
in league with the terrible villain as well, never once wondering
upon the nature of his curse.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Somewhere, a magician named Bob was amused.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">"The
history of a country is the history of genocide. What do you think
your ancestors came here to do? How do you not know this? Is not your
history also the history of your crimes? How can you not understand
the damage done to others if you never learn how deeply your people
hurt them? I weep for an education system that has failed you so
deeply."</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">"You
misunderstand. It hasn't failed us: it has worked exactly as it was
intended to work."</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Grey aliens turned out not to have any conspiracy theories about
humans. There was no need.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-weight: normal;">I
do love you. But that’s not enough, not by itself. It never is. You
know that, don’t you?”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">...
given that people are willing to pay into a gofundme for a wall they
were a) told they'd never pay for and b) won't be effective (unless
one measures effective by 'how well does this scare a certain segment
of white people' ...)</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Can
we start one up to begin restoring/replacing the rings of Saturn? It
might make more sense, and by the time it's a true problem we might
have the funds in the account to deal with it :)</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">"I
know this isn't our normal Christmas tradition, but unless we use
this Ouija board we're never finding out Uncle Ralph's wifi
password."</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-weight: normal;">You
claim to write poetry but I see no evidence that you are a poet.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“…<span style="font-weight: normal;">being
published doesn’t count?”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-weight: normal;">Not
these days. Anyone can get published now.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">That
moment when you submit two stories to an anthology. (one regular one,
and another that is the same story from the perspective of another
character (....because Jay). And you get 2 contributor copies, one of
which is for Jay.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">And
that copy includes comments and notes for the character spanning the
story they are in and some other pages as well.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">...
that is when you know your story is in the right anthology</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">1
star Yelp review:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Inn
had no room. Manager insisted the stables were viable for my PREGNANT
WIFE!! WTH?!?! WOULD GIVE ZERO STARS IF I COULD BUT WE SAW ONE
OVERHEAD,</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">DO
NOT RECOMMEND.</span></div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-58534592572102470282018-09-30T14:53:00.000-07:002018-09-30T14:53:10.864-07:00Status Updates Aug. And Sept. 2018 <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>August 2018 </b>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Of course
you’re going to get an Oscar. This is the role you were born to
play, darling!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“...The Only
Conservative In The Village? That’s the real title?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Working title,
dear. But they’ll have to give you an award. If they don’t,
everyone will know why.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Because it’s
not a good movie?”<br />“This is the Oscars. That is hardly a
factor.”
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is no such
thing as artificial food colouring. Everyone knows this, even if no
one will admit it.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They called it a
glitch when everyone got a notification that Facebook was in a
relationship with them.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I wasn’t
scared of you.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know.” The
monster chuckled. “No one is anymore.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Are you going
to drink my blood?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can’t drink
as much from you as the politicians have with their taxes.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“...what?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That was a
joke.” And that was when the monster stopped smiling and drank deep
of human blood.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Please,” the
human begged. “Not like you. Don’t make me like you. I never want
to live forever.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No one does any
more,” the vampire said softly, and broke the neck as a kindness.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She smiled sadly.
"Too often, evil is pretending what your allies do is normal
solely because you are afraid of losing an identity you’ve clung to
for so long."</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Blood?” The
vampire sneered; she had a good sneer, one honed by long practise.
“Do you even know what is in your blood? No vampire has drunk human
blood in over two hundred years.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What do you
take from us?” I whispered, half-against my will. Damnable, my
curiousity.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Unkindness.
Anger. Hate. We drink it all, and wait for you to change.” She
smiled, almost. “We live in the same world as you; we have no
desire for you to destroy it.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But it’s not
fair! All those ‘oh, here are excerpts from an honest vampire
novel’ silliness isn’t fair!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Pardon?”<br />“That’s
werewolf erasure. We’re <i>right here</i><span style="font-style: normal;">!”
</span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes, but excerpts from an honest werewolf novel would just involve
fleas, the pound, and being killed by hunters.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There is more to us than that.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The PETA endorsement?”<br />“...we don’t talk about that.
Ever.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Of course I’m
not afraid of you,” the child explained. “I’ve seen dragons on
TV with dens that were huge studios and they aren’t scary at all!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time,
a dragon discovered too late that insurance would have protected
against the predations of adventurers, but spending money on
insurance was antithetical to any creature with a hoard.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But if we give
up the valley to the enemy, we will lose the war,” the minister for
agriculture screamed.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The general
laughed. Even the king paused at that laugh. “It is a war, you old
fool. All you can do <i>is</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> lose
a war. This way, we can lose in a way that causes the least amount of
deaths. Which some people might be in favour of.” </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">Well,
well you’ll be out of work!”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That is what every soldier desires.” And the general turned and
left.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time there was a monster who found out the easiest way to
not be a monster was to buy the loyalty of humans with coin. It
proved so easy that the monster almost forgot what they were really
were in time as well.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And what is a king without a crown but a shadow with nothing to
cast it?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“My liege. You do not need your crown to lead, to be moral –.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Perhaps not to lead, but morality?” The king chuckled. “A king
has no morality, save that of the people. The kingdom is the
conscience and guide both, unless one wishes to be ploughed into the
fields like the kings of old as a reminder of hubris. To be a king is
to be ruled far more than it is to rule.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Poem</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You said pain was the only truth you understood, and never grasped
why I could not stay.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This homicide I
am investigating makes no sense, Commissioner,” the Detective said.
“It has been four days and no one else has been killed, the case is
not connected to a cold case,l or a recent unsolved murder haunting
me, and no one has tried to kill me yet. I am starting to wonder if
it was really a homicide at all.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You said that
every time God closed a door, He opened a window. I just wish it
hadn’t been while we were on the plane.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
'frozen stars are
falling in your adjectival eyes'</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Why, yes, I do
write poetry.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is very
strange? We always thought aliens would come as invaders?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The alien
chuckled. “Of course we wouldn’t. Now, where are we building the
next theme park?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
History only
happens when we aren’t paying attention. That’s why there is so
much of it.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Look, Dave,
there is no way you’re beating Simon Warwick in a fight.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What do you
mean by that?”<br />“He has a last name. You don’t. He’s going
to win because that makes him more important to this story.”
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I never hated
you, not even during the two years in the psych ward when no one
believed what you’d done, what you were. Not even in the years
before, when you killed every friend I made because there could be
only you.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why not?” the
monster whispered in a voice like rusted bicycle chains scraping over
small animals.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You helped make
me who I am; if I hate you for that, I would have to hate myself as
well.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Envy has more
forms than anything else I know, even silence. I envy him the simple
‘Hey’ he gives me every morning, the way he call pull out small
talk from nowhere as though it wasn’t small at all. That he found
this space between popular and not, and slipped into it without any
effort I’ve ever seen. He can hide better than anyone I know,
because he’s never hiding at all. His face hides nothing, even if
he thinks otherwise. And I envy him that too.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why? The poison
in my…” He coughed. “I’m dying. Why?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Because you are
a monster. The dead are as much a part of the world as the living. To
be an exorcist is to execute the dead for crimes they have not
committed. You hold the dead to the standards of the living, and
there is nothing more monstrous than your arrogance.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Sept 2018</b></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I wonder how much
of current US/Canada relations might be caused by Trump thinking
poutine is Putin?</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I understand
that only fools seek vengeance. But sometimes, just sometimes, I can
be quite foolish indeed.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Wait. You can
bring the dead back to life. And you… you’re… what are you
doing?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What else is
resurrection for, if not to ensure you get the best information from
a suspect?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“…”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Huxley’s father
chuckles softly. “Knowing who you are is important, Bodhi. But in
my experience it’s not knowing yourself that is important as much
as learning to love what you find.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time,
there was an evil wizard who wished for peace on earth and was left
alone in a world where nothing else existed at all.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh, this? It’s
my dinner. I just tell people I’m on a diet and no one asks any
questions about maldernourishment.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh, hell. Boss,
you can’t –”
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Cannot? I have
spent over six centuries sealing monsters. I believe I have some idea
of what I can and cannot accomplish.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No, because
this is a meme. You can’t contain it. No one can. The only thing we
can do is try and defang it.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And that will
work?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Only
sometimes.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You can’t
expect the world to dance for you just because you figured out a
single tune.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You don’t eat
people, do you?” Boy asked.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What a peculiar
place you are from to think we do,” the witch said.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That’s not a
yes or a no.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah,” the
witch breathed, half a laugh. “I would be way, Boy, of questions
that can be answered so easily.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Boy raised his
chin. “What about people who won’t answer them at all?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am no
politician,” the witch replied with gentle calm. “And bluntness
is a crude instrument that never covers fear. Nor does it hide the
thoughts under your thoughts.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Boy said nothing.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Tell me, what
<i>do</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> you make of Reynard Fox?”
the witch asked in the way of witches, which is to ask a leading
question.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why ask questions you know the answer to?” Boy almost snapped.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised,” the witch replied and Boy
flushed slightly.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Amusements of a new job: a truly ridiculous amount of paper clips in
a filing cabinet drawer.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You could try being a good person. Just to see what it is
like?”<br />“No, no I think not. Good too often tends to be
addicting. Evil at least one can trust. Evil simply wishes to be left
along to be evil; good always seeks to impose upon others.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’re a superhero.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes,” Wonder Star admitted.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And you don’t fly, or use fire?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It’s been over sixty years, okay?! Every good name is taken or
in copyright!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I imagine there is a great deal about your world that is
admirable, but very little that is real,” Bess said to the fox.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Reynard Fox only smiled. “Every world is less admirable the more
real it is.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It turned out that witches had no reflection as well, but that was
solely because mirrors were scared of them.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I bet this could be</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A very boring haiku</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If it wanted to</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The war ended by by the simply expediency never happening at all.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The important thing, in the end, was the friendships we made along
the way.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No. No, I think it was more the bodies we buried.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Well, we did that together too.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If it bleeds, we can kill it!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sir, that – that’s not blood.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I beg your pardon?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“According to my scanner, those are tears.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If it cries, we can kill -.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Tears of happiness, sir. I believe it thinks we’re playing a
game.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We shot it with two impact rifles on full power. You could disable
a civilian aircraft with that!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes, sir.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“… perhaps we find something for it to fetch?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“A wise decision, sir.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And you’re certain that isn’t a monster?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Well, most monsters don’t have Twitter - wait, never mind,
probably a monster.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know they want our money, but I really doubt the Girl Guides use
the proceeds from their cookies to fund terrorism.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t know why you’re scared; they’ve never met anyone
like us before.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes, well, we’ve never met anyone like them either.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh. Good point.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I never meant to hurt you.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Would it be different if you had?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You are the poem I should have written</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Had I the words with which to write</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
2018: watching scared old white men lie for other scared old white
men.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-10840014888226680732018-09-30T14:50:00.003-07:002018-09-30T14:51:12.906-07:00Status Updates June & July 2018<b>June 2018</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They replaced
poetry</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With an app one
day</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And we only
noticed</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
– I kid, we
never did
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every photo of you
has you hugging a stranger in it, only you’ve never met them
before. But you keep seeing their pictures in the paper the next day,
and they’re all missing.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You find all the
memories you’ve lost in a scrapbook in a used-book shop. The owner
only asks to keep the first 20 pages. And smiles at you.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The pride of lions
joined the parade.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time
there was a ruler who refused to recycle, believing that any populace
that valued recycling items would sooner rather than later apply the
same philosophy to their sovereign.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We live in a world
where even the politicians no longer want to be politicians, but that
is only because they wish to become lobbyists.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The real estate
development listed the second phase as almost done though no one was
able to find half the buildings.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You trust your
books more than you do me.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“They’ve never
lied to me,” he said.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She laughed, short
and sharp. “What else do you think words do? Why else chain them
between bindings?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And to that he had
only a furious silence. <br />
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is a gift
for Father’s Day,” she said, even though it was early.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Even though I am
not a father.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Even though I have
no children.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the end, it was
easy to let go of everything save for hate. And they wondered why
ghosts exist.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The only thing
important about the story was everything that never ended up on the
page.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Proof that cats
are better than dogs: you’ve never heard of a dog scan.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You said it was a
gift, but you made certain I knew the price.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hatred doesn’t
help.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Most things
don’t, I’ve found.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know one
thing that helps me.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hatred Lite?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“...”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Van Helsing,
Van Helsing, Van Helsing. Really? Your family is still coming after
<i>me</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> after all these
centuries?” Dracula let out a sigh, a feat for </span><span style="font-style: normal;">one
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">so very undead. “I have
killed yes, to sustain myself, as you do. And I admit I am a monster,
but I do not think I am your monster, not anymore.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Your lies will not avail you, prince of dark –.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Come now. I am centuries-old, yes, but I would have to work for a
very long time to accomplish the same evils your politicians do in
mere decades. I understand your desire to see the other as inhuman.
It is a very real desire. But I suspect the monsters you should be
hunting are abroad in daylight as well as darkness, and wear suits
far better than my own.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You said dreams
could become real, but the cost to the real is always too much. No
one talks about the price others pay for their dreams to come true,
and sometimes I think it’s the only conversation worth having.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I said I had no
secrets from you.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I still don’t
know why that made you weep.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The secret agent
was so secret that she didn’t know she was an agent.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And after it all
fell apart, I carried each piece despite the lessons everyone thought
I should have learned.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Considering
keeping this phone-made typo in:</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’re not a
bear?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is a pause.
“Not right now?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I gesture
wirelessly to the cavern.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
... wirelessly,
wordlessly. Same thing, right?!</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Apparently there
is a surveillance car costing $5 million that can hack iphones. I
suppose that's one way to get around the pervasiveness of cell phone
use in modern stories...
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"What do you
mean, EVERY gang in the city has one?!"</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Use your power
for good.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have no
power.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The magician
smiles. “Then you can be really good.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why do aliens
keep crashing on our world in spaceships that can travel light
years?”<br />
“Heh. What makes you believe any of them really
crash?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"The problem
with power is that you are responsible for your power every moment of
every day. What you do, what you fail to to, what you incite and
support. Everything power does has consequences, and only a coward
tries to pretend otherwise. You must always guard against yourself,
unless you are a fool. In which case everyone else must guard against
you.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Or you are
cruel without kindness, and other powers must destroy you,” I say
slowly.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And after the lion
in the wardrobe savaged all the children, there were harsh words with
the local zoo.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>July 2018</b></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Starting a
deliberately bad fantasy novel is an interesting experience.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The silent forge
the blade that only the speaking may sing to life, but every blade
cuts two ways.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
- from the
Proverbs of Mount Asl.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A cold wind
whipped through the southern stepped of Westrin, the mountains
holding the winter despite the Juvery air. Farmers huddled with their
dhari against the wind, careful not to touch the fur that would burn
with a fierce itching. Lonely towns lay scattered across the scrub
fields, kin to fingernails of some long forgotten monstrosity that
did not wear the skin of civilization. From a distance the steppes
seemed almost steps, as though they had been carved in another age to
reach a plateau that no longer existed. The past lurked about with
promises, unremembered and unknown.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Threads of music
played from the taverns of the town of Molsk, the famous Molsk
brewery now only a distant memory to locals if they knew of it at
all. The threads formed skeins into the lonely night as though they
could lighten a sky that would be gunmetal if guns existed but
settled for a dull grey instead. The impression of Westrin to others
from the Three Kingdoms is that many things just settle, but what is
settled to one can upend the cart of another.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The third compline
in the waning of Juvery bore witness to the changing of the gods, the
wind promising rain and cold in the coming months of Nanomber, Mapil
and Arch. The huddled farmers eyed their flocks and began considering
what ones to shear, the fabled dhari fur able to insulate as only
glass wool could despite the ways it irritated the eyes, the skin,
and the respiratory system. The moon waned in the sky unclaimed by
any god of the Westrin pantheon, pale light offering some protection
against the shadows cast by the mountains.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The taverns and
inns of Molsk all claimed connection the ancient brewery that had
given the town its name for generations, the name remaining even
though the breweries were long time. Becoming a placeholder between
the present and the past, as though then world were a book one could
mark and definitively draw lines between one age and another. The inn
was alike as any other, shutters rattling as the shinoo wind of the
southern mountains played a gentle beat that seemed almost in time
with the last of the songs from the tavern below.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Above the sky, the
stars spread out across the night ways. Too many to be eyes even of
the gods, despite how many gods lay in Eastphalia to the east. The
eye of Akashic formed from a dozen stars looked down, those born
under its ascendancy often said to call the attention of the gods. In
time the eye would be gone, the stars shifting into different
patterns and promises. Proof that even the distant hand of fate
changed with time, that even the stars could touch destiny only with
a fleeing grip like the pale of the false dawn seeping through the
window.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am having too
much fun writing this story...</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The nature of a
god is to know knowledge as a burden rather than a blessing.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You expect me
to do a quest I do not understand?” Protagonist asked.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The god of the
hearth smiled within the confines of gentle flame. “It would be a
poor quest if you understood the ending before it had begun.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am mortal. I
already know how my story ends.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Well. With an
attitude like that, perhaps you do!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am not a god,
the narrator said, even though it spoke without a voice.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Part of the fun of
writing Protagonist: a novel is the headers. Such as:</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sometimes we drown
not because we cannot swim but because we forget we are in water.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
- from the
collected wisedoms of the wizards of Eastphalia</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I admit to
finding that a little puzzling. Why are they called the mysterious
caverns when there are many such caverns throughout Westrin alone?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was questions
like that which betrayed Page’s ignorance. Mysterious caverns was a
modern translation of mysterious’caverns in old Westrin, which has
a very localized meaning in the southern steppes.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The words are
mysterious’caverns – with an apostrophe between them – in old
Westrin,” Protagonist said after a short pause. “I imagine that
makes all the difference.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You would kill
me?” Antagonist asked.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You ask it like
that, without fear. Why?” Protagonist pressed.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We all die,
even wizards. The least we owe this world is our bodies. I would
rather live and pay back more than was given.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The supervillain’s
power to destroy poetry scared almost no one.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Not until they
turned their attention on love.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Not that
Protagonist had any use for ghosts: one of the older monks at the
library, Name Later, had told him that if the dead could haunt the
world, we would all be drowning in regrets. The idea had stuck with
Protagonist for some time, though he had no idea why Name Later had
been so insistent on that truth.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
...Name Later
will, of course, be very important to the plot. Later.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Molsk was a small
town situated well away from any major trade routes, the cluster of
wood and stone buildings organized around the central well and market
that typified small towns in the country. Not that travellers from
outside Westrin ever went to many podunk one-syllable places, none of
which had combined with other towns to attain a second syllable. The
comparison faltered against reality when one recalled that the towns
of Po and Dunk had merged to become Podunk over a century ago, an
alliance formed from both geography and trade routes more similar to
the arranged marriages of Eastphalia than anything else. As little
happened here, the destruction of the old fort on Guffin Hill had
drawn people from their homes, even though an old stone fortress
being reduced to little more than dust and shadow-scars of what it
had been would do that most anywhere.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Protagonist slowed
his horse. “What was that?” he asked, though no one responded.
“You are responding. Whatever god this is, I do sometimes hear your
voice. I am just trying to find out why you insist on telling me
things I already know?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The news is, after
all, everything that is not normal. If it was normal, it would not be
newsworthy.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But sometimes it's
hard to remember that.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Everyone has a
power they should never use. I knew a woman once who could destroy
any faith with logic and leave nothing behind; she never spoke in all
the years I knew her. A man in Bangladesh who always got bargains.
Even, his family claimed, from death. But the worst is when someone
doesn’t know they have a power. When they unite the world for all
the right reasons, in all the wrong ways.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You mean the
pres –.”<br />
“I mean that meme you started two weeks ago.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sometimes I
think you’ll forget me. That I’ll turn around one day and you’ll
be gone and everyone I meet will be a stranger who looks like you but
doesn’t know me at all.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’d never
forget you. I’d have to know your name first.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We’re going
to die, aren’t we?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Protagonist did
not pause a beat. “Of course we are. What else is being alive for?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I meant,”
Page said from between clenched teeth, “right now.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh. In that
case, I rather hope not.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Proposed solution
to the climate catastrophe:</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Move to the
underside of the flat earth, where a new world awaits us.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sometimes,”
he said, “to save a thing you must destroy it.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I backed away
because no one sane said anything like that.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Me: "Oh,
right, I need to do that prompt about things overheard when
eavesdropping."</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
... proceeds to
write a short story about someone wanting to use an interstellar
mining vessel to help with apartment renovations.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And all your
kindness becomes undone</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
By the monsters
who work above you</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To see only good
is to be complicit
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In evil that seeps
through every crack</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Protagonist and
Page rode their horses for hours without rest, stopping briefly for
the night to continue onward the next morning. By the second draft,
they would be stopping and switching out horses every hour since
horses are hardly cars. By the third, the author will be grappling
with the fact that a horse doesn’t actually equal one horsepower.
By the fourth draft, at least one horses will be called Hoof Hearted
and the author will be wondering why anyone would take long journeys
on a prey animal prone to spring from imagined danger with all the
grace of the springs in a broken mattress.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is not an easy
thing to get book fairies into your home. A library is not enough –
some of the greatest libraries in the world have never seen one –
but sometimes it does happen. Firstly, one must not have a library.
By which I mean: books one has never read. A library full of unread
books is a deep sadness and not a true library at all. You will know
one by the volumes with bent spines that have never been read.
Secondly: one must have an infestation of book worms in your home.
Thirdly: one must be kind. To books, to people, even to the book
worms.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If you wish them
removed but cannot bear to harm them – for they, like all things,
must eat to survive – the book fairies may arrive. Unfortunately,
the book worms are often drawn to the books one loves best. But if
this happens, and the fairies come, you will never have dusty books
again and book worms that will only eat books one no longer needs.
(It is hard to think of such a book, but it must be done.) The book
fairies are fed by leaving fine ink in inkwells overnight and not
minding if they take some books to read for themselves. And that is
all that one must do, as easy as all difficult things can be.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The problem we
have is that I cannot do it. I cannot imagine a world in which you
don’t exist, for I fear if I do that I will not be able to live in
a world in which you do.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
you asked me to
write a poem</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
and this is</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
almost</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
that poem</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
First Contact
turned out to be a nightmare when it turned out that the alien name
for themselves, translated into English, was ‘Hashtag’ and they
were very, very baffled at the things humans said about them. #woke
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The results are
in from our experiment, sir. It turns out that it’s easier to make
people believe the Earth is flat than make them believe that
politicians will act in ways that benefit the public.”</div>
<b></b>alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-22194243665364876862018-08-10T23:40:00.002-07:002018-08-10T23:40:30.339-07:00Guarding The Zones<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It takes almost thirty seconds for
anyone at HQ to realize what the alarm is even for. It used to be the
Closed Zones, the Dead Zones, then the Ruined Zones before people
kept trying to enter them. A void is space where everything that
could go wrong with war went even worse. No one knows what the wars
were about. Who fought, who died, who lost: all of it has been buried
in ruin and twisted space. No hyperlanes work, not even wormholes
pass through the Zones. We don’t know how big they are. Just that a
war happened, and the scars have never healed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It has been five year since anyone even
approached them. The last one was a tour of certain problematics.
Generals. Rulers. The kind of people all too eager to fire weapons
but never be in wars. Seeing reality bleed into space changed them. A
few killed themselves, so the tour never happened again. Before then
was the same as now: scavengers. Idiots thinking they can find
something famous or amazing.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I slip into the shiftsuit and take off,
data trilling through my senses. No one is certain how long the new
model will survive. I have an hour, at last count. Get in, try to
save fools, get out. If they past the first zone, extraction isn’t
even possible to attempt. The suit projects images to approximate
what is around me as I dive in; actually trying to perceive the ruins
of space and time isn’t something anyone survives. Which means the
craft is flying in blind, attempting to extract <span style="font-style: normal;">anything
and bring it out.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That no one has
succeeded never stops the attempts. And people wonder why the Zones
ever happened.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The
shiftsuit bucks and twists forms around me. Holding steady against
what feels like the remains of a black hole. Also a white one,
gravitational and chronal distortions making anything else impossible
to even guess at. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">I make it
through that. The shiftsuit can make it through the first layer
intact. No idea who bankrolls the Zone Watch, but it cost more than I
ever want to know to even make the suits. The suit twists; I move
with it. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t know many
other species that could even survive being inside this model; I make
a note to let HQ know, then pause as the shiftsuits datafeeds blink
out. Flick back on. The onboard AI is as primitive as it can be,
since normal AI would have their minds destroyed by this place as
well. The shiftsuit has gone white about me, when I didn’t even
know they changed colour. I move slowly, trying to find the source of
disturbance, and – air. Actual air. Gravity within accepted norms.
A pocket of reality, which shouldn’t be remotely possible.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I fall into it, and
there is a young man. Human, 14, just standing in the air and looking
out at the zones.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This is so far past
bad. I order the suit to disengage five times before it agrees and
lets me breathe the air. Breathable air, a field of real in the
middle of – this. And the human who registers entirely as human.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I say my name in my
native tongue, which I haven’t spoken in several centuries.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The human smiles
and responds in the name. Then offers his name. “You are not
surprised?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You are Jay, who
is Jayseltosche. No one – nothing else could be in here, the way
you are. You didn’t trigger the alarm.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">No.
It will be triggered shortly. Even Time is broken here,” he says
softly. “The Powers that govern the universe have no sway in this
place. Neither can anything from Outside enter. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">It
will take thousands of years to heal, if it ever does at all.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It has improved.
The first zone –.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“My bindings hold
there to an extent. In the rest –.” He sighs. “There have been
wars here.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know. We
Hingari began many of them,” I admit.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And others. A
galaxy was carved in half once. I was in a hurry, it was in my way.
Several attempts to kill me formed part of the Zones. I thought
containing it in one place would be safer. Instead it led to a
different kind of war.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Wars have been
fought against you; you have power unlike anything else. That is
known. That’s not the same as you fighting though,” I say slowly.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“An argument got
out of hand.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">N</span><span style="font-style: normal;">o
boast, no laugh. Just a fact so alien I can barely grasp it. “You
can fix this?”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have begun so.
And finding your HQ as part of that end. Destruction is so much
easier than creation for me right now. But it has not always been
so.” And he holds out a hand.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Jay is standing
there. Shorter, eleven, and looking rather exited. “You wanted help
with an adventure?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I do. I require
energy to fix – things.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oooh.” And the
younger Jay turns and looks about. A slight frown touches his
forehead like something alien. “Wow. That’s a really hugey oops
you know!</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I do.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And some of it
wasn’t even an oops. But I can always do helpings!” And Jay
grins. Jaysel – no, Jay, at eleven, grins.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The shiftsuit
actually whimpers.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Joy. Kindness.
Innocent. Wonder. Power without corruption spills out, and the ruined
zones shake in response.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You need to go
now,” Jayseltosche says.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay turns to him.
“But I’m confusled because that felt like unbindings a Jay would
never do!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And a Jay would
not. But you spent a lot of energy, and you need to return.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Jay waves to me
and vanishes between moments.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jayseltosche
touches energy, and weaves it. Like lace spiralling through the
entire ruined zones. A wrapper that slowly turns a ruin into a
present. “That helps. It will still be centuries, but it helps.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay set the
alarms off?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“He is – not
subtle, so yes. I am no longer what he is, so some of what he can do
was – necessary.” And Jayseltosche’s voice cracks a little.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I turn slowly,
toward a being so far beyond gods that we have no words for it. “You
are crying.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am.” His
smile has an echo of the past. “It is – very hard to...”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">We
have a bar at HQ. And drinks. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">We
could share drinks and food.” </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">I
did not wish you as a witness for that. Hingari can live a long time,
you can take many forms. I’d like the HQ to be run by you, and we
can meet for drinks when it is no longer needed and the Zones
healed.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We can, but you
need a drink now.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jayseltosche
blinks. It takes everything I have not to activate the shiftsuit and
bolt. I almost yelled at him. The laugh he lets out a moment later is
soft and sad. “I imagine I do. Very well.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I return to HQ,
report it as an anomaly – trusting Jay will make sure my shiftsuit
agrees – and join him in one of the bars. He looks tired, and
younger than he is.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have heard it
said that nothing can be forgiven.” He glances over at me without a
word. “And I think there is some truth in that. The living can be
forgiven; the dead merely remain dead. I think there is no
forgiveness, but there can be redemption.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Perhaps.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t ask who
he argued with, or fought against. If it was himself or something
else. We share a drink in silence, each remembering different wars.
There are so many reasons the hingari hide now. I’d like to think I
understand Jayseltosche a little. And perhaps I do. But I think I
understand Jay not at all. </div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-60167735932633789712018-08-10T23:39:00.002-07:002018-08-10T23:39:37.324-07:00One Jaysome Night <b>1.</b><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are battles that cannot be won,
but sometimes that is why they must be fought. I have spent six hours
explaining to Jay that @teacup13 is allowed to like coffee more than
tea, that a tumblr use-name doesn’t define anyone. Not even Jay.
Which he doesn’t believe, because he is Jay and so very randomly.
And trying to explain to Jay that Jay – or even jaysome – don’t
define him... no. There are some places I definitely have no desire
to venture.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I tell him that teacup13 is a label,
and labels are great for clothing but not so much for people. And Jay
pokes at his tumblr, then looks up and grins. The grin is huge and
proud and innocent.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are sirens, tires screaming,
people shouting outside. I rub the bridge of my nose.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Did you know that
@eclectic-like-furniture isn’t actually eclectic?” Jay says.
“Like how @feverfewm isn’t Muffin! I figured it out!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah. Good. Dare I ask how that
involves the traffic?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Uh-huh! There are lots of rules for
traffic, Charlie, and sometimes people ignore turn signals entirely!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stare at Jay. Only innocence stares
back. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if he is trolling me. “So
you’re fixing bindings for cars.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yup! Everyone will stop for
crosswalks that aren’t cross and let people merge into lanes and
everything,” he says proudly.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But there are people who cross the
road while jaywalking. What if a Jay isn’t allowed to cross a
road?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay gapes at that in shock. “I did an
oops and bound myself?!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You might have. It might be safer to
undo it all?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh, okay.” There are even more
sirens and screeching tires for a moment. Then Jay says that, since
he fixed the oops, he probably should get a second dessert.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I tell him to bring back ice cream, and
watch him vanish. I think I gained at least a dozen more grey hairs
in the past five minutes, not that Jay would ever notice. What’s
scary is never the power Jay has over bindings, nor even that he’s
eleven and so innocent in it, but the way he just accepts things
literally until told otherwise. Some days I have trouble remembering
all the facts I’m hiding from him.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I got ice cream, and it’s the good
kind,” Jay says as he reappears with three tubs.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The good kind?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I asked Honcho, and he said it’s
the kind that never has calories!”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah. Of course.” I accept a tub as
Jay flicks the TV on and begins scrolling through channels.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I eat food, relax, and keep an eye on
Jay.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
...only I should have kept both eyes on
him. And never fallen asleep.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>2.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I wake up to a loud thump. I’ve
fallen asleep on the couch, and Jay has turned the TV down. Which
would be rather considerate except I can barely see the TV as the
small common room in our motel suite is full of boxes. Kitchen
gadgets. Knives. Appliances. And Jay is shoving a mattress into my
room. Where it barely fits.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay. What are you doing?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hi!” Jay turns and grins. There is
no fear, no hint he did an oops or an accident. “Did you know that
sometimes the TV wants you to buy things?!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stare at Jay, sit up slowly and look
at the Home Shopping Network. “You’ve been buying things.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The man and woman on the TV were
doing bindings and kinda desperate cuz no one was buying things, and
this Jay has a very jaysome credit card you know!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I do.” I look about the room
slowly. There is at least an hours worth of... items, all neatly
stacked. “What do you plan to do <i>with</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
twenty food processors?” </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I haven’t
decided yet, but I bet they’d like to process a lot of food!”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And the
mattresses?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“They can give a
better sleeping I bet. And I got a lot of knives that are really
sharp but not tough as a Jay.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I close my eyes.
Count to ten. “You tested the against your skin, didn’t you?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yup!” Jay
being from Outside the universe is sometimes never as worrying as him
just being eleven.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And what do you
plan to do with them?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I got a book on
juggling, so I’m going to learn to juggle,” he offers proudly.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t point out
that juggling fifteen sets of knives might be difficult, since to Jay
it would just be bindings he’d move. The blue couch that is around
when we need it replaces the couch I’m sitting on. Or was there the
whole time in disguise. It is a lot larger on the inside than the
outside, so I convince Jay to store everything in it and then go to
bed.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">And
call the fae to explain what he has done with their credit card. This
time. I don’t entirely know how the card works, but I know there
are consequences for spending too much money with it. The fae on the
other end of the help line that exists solely for Jay’s credit card
isn’t fazed at all. Compared to other things Jay has bought with
it, this barely warrants a note. Which the fae makes a point of
reminding me of, as if I’d forget the time Jay decided to buy
Venus. What was worrying wasn’t that the card had that much
currency so much as Jay found a seller. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I make sure
everything else is cleared away by the time the wandering magician
returns from his trip. He looks about the too-clean hotel room, then
at me, and raises a single eyebrow.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I fell asleep.
Jay discovered the Home Shopping Channel. The results are in the
couch.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He opens the side
of the couch, lets out a low whistle. “What does Jay plan to do
with all of this?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Juggle, so far.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Of course he
does.” The magician chuckles and takes his coat off. “At least it
wasn’t that bad, Charlie.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Not that bad? He
bought several thousand dollars of.... that! I don’t even know how
he got it here after buying it, or what kind of shipping arrangement
he had.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah. We’ll need
to look into that. But this isn’t bad.” He pauses. “Jay could
have watched infomercials.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh,” I say,
very slowly. “He would have – probably bought an entire TV
network to fix worried bindings, wouldn’t he?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“At least one.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I make a note to
talk to the fae about some upper limit on what Jay can spend at once.
Again. And we head to sleep, certain that if anything breaks in any
hotel we visit in the next two years we’ll be able to replace it
without a problem. Because Jay.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-59621712849852606112018-08-10T23:38:00.002-07:002018-08-10T23:38:45.383-07:00Rite of Passage<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’d like to say I don’t hide, but
that has always been a lie. Learning to hide is important: sometimes
I think it is the only lesson that matters. If you are seen, learn to
be unseen. If you can’t hide, find ways to disguise yourself. It is
always easier for some than others. There is a skill to hiding, a
knack some master. You could walk past the most powerful magician in
the world and never know it. That one wanders far: you have probably
met him at least once.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I find some places to live. Places
holding unhappy memories or tempered ghosts. The kind of place that
are rented rarely simply because no one stays in them. I do what I
can for them, and sometimes it is enough and I move on. Oh, I do
other things: being the magician of a place means there is much one
must do. I am not forced into it. Nothing like that. But I am part of
the city, and the city is part of me.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are problems magic can never
solve. Every magician knows that, or they do not last long at all.
The magic is a gift more than a talent, a thank-you from the
universe. To be bound to a place is closer to a marriage, though not
at all like it. Magic is about the places where need and desire meet,
you understand? Being bound to a place is not like that at all. There
are obligations without duties. Times when one fixes things simply
because there is no one else to do it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’m heading out to buy dinner:
something cheap for the small microwave in the apartment I’m in, so
it doesn’t feel lonely. I’m debating time, because I always use
the number 9 on my microwave since it is the loneliest number. This
is how magicians are, at least some of us. It’s why I don’t
notice him until he is almost on top of me.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tall, thin, eyes bright with
desperation, a jacket reeking of stale cigarette smoke two sizes too
large. One sleeve hangs empty. The other hand finds my chest, pushes
me into the wall.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have wards. Protections. Power I
could draw upon from the city. A thousand vehicles hurling by outside
would force him away. But need and desire work both ways.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Can I help you?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Magician,” he hisses. There is no
hesitancy in his words. His body shakes with the force of the truth.
“You work magic.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am a magician, yes,” I offer.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Fix me,” he demands.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sometimes, the ones who find me just
want to know. To be certain there is more to the world than they
know. To be able to carry that truth with them like a flower the
world cannot blow away. Sometimes they want help, too, but too many
have eyes riddled with expectations.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I slip away from his grip easily. I
feel his anger, certain I would not if he had two arms. Unaware it
would not make a difference. I enter my apartment again.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The man follows like something cages.
Pauses. The apartment is small and dingy. I’ve done what I can with
paint, and spoken to the sadness in this place, but it has not all
gone. There is a small laptop, because there is more to the world
than the city. The table with the microwave. A sink. A futon I
salvaged from a dumpster. Some clothing neatly folded beside the bed.
The clothing just shows up every few days, no matter where I’ve
been. There are always those who insist on paying you back, even if
they never need to.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I need my arm. I need it back. You
can do <i>magic</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,” he says, his
anger rallying him. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I sigh. “I am a
magician, yes.” I could tell him what it is really for: that there
are holes in the world, and a magician patches them. But he would not
understand. He has seen small things I have done, come across repairs
to walls, or changed graffiti, or the lost I’ve reunited. Enough to
drive him onward. Enough to make him seek me past reason. Hope is
always there past reason, burning in his eyes.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am afraid you
misunderstand, Raoul.” He starts. It always surprises them, when a
magician knows their name. “This,” and I hold out a hand, and
starlight spills onto the ceiling.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He makes a noise,
and there is hunger in it more than wonder.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is magic.
It is a river, you understand? There are magicians who never
understand this, but it is true. Magic is a poem more than prose, and
it answers need and meets desire. But what we desire is not the same
as what magic does. Not the same as what the world does. I have never
met a fish that did not wish to be a bird, and that is the nature of
the world.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t
understand; I want my arm back,” he snarls, but there is less
anger. He doesn’t notice some of the stars are brighter, as the
anger had to be released somewhere.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“All magic is
change, friend. For a wall to become a window. For a duck to become a
man. That is what magic can do, what magic is. Oh, one can fix some
things, restore other things. But that is not what things desire. All
things desire to change, and change looks onto to the future. Magic
cannot restore what was lost anymore than I could feed the poor with
it, or bring the dead back to life.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">Change
is not movement that goes backwards, not for magic,” I finish
softly. It is a lesson that took me years to learn, and one I will
never master. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But –. I need
–.” He flatters.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know.” I
head to my futon, reach under it. Return with money. “You could get
a prosthetic.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Raoul stares at the
money wordlessly.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It is from a
bank; there is an arrangement with magicians. I do not spurn the
arrangement, though I give away far more than I use.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He takes it slowly.
“Magician –.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Everything has a
cost,” I say, and let him feel how this small apartment is the
better for what has happened here. I set the key to it on the
counter, get my laptop, and leave.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Raoul doesn’t
move. He tries to speak, but nothing emerges.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I offer a faint
smile as I leave, enough to let him know I heard.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">We
only meet once again, that he knows of. I make certain to nod to him
as he enters work, and he turns back to stare in shock, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">leaving
bread to scatter and birds to dive as he runs across the road. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That’s one way
to lose other limbs,” I say dryly.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You – I – I
work here now,” and he waves his hand to the soup kitchen.
“Government grant, and I – I gave the money away. I found someone
who needed legs.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There was never
an obligation,” I say as gently as I know how.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know.” And I
think he does, better than some do. He steps back. “I’m still in
that apartment.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. “Good. It
needed someone who understood.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And someone calls
for him across the road, an annoyed demand. He turns, and I slip away
from his gaze. Not hidden.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Never hidden.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Merely waiting to
be found.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-64580700329314266132018-08-10T23:37:00.003-07:002018-08-10T23:37:57.746-07:00Sun Shades<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The last reporter has left the
building. Everyone else has gone home, even the janitor. I slump back
in my deck, eyes blurred. Too many screens, too many questions; too
much of anything at all. My hands won’t stop shaking even as I pull
my glasses off and rub the bridge of my nose. There are only so many
ways you can say ‘this isn’t possible’, only so many ways to
spin the truth into acceptable sound bytes that won’t terrify
everyone.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every since I looked out the window
earlier, everything has been insane. But somehow I survived it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think I understand a little how the
Flat-Earthers can lie to themselves. You have to believe the story a
bit to sell it. But it’s all lies. The sun isn’t <i>working</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
and that makes no sense. I’ve had a dozen conspiracy sites email
me, and for all I know it could be an alien craft between the earth
and the sun. Every satellite claims there is a cloud that doesn’t
exist. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t keep
anything to properly drink in the office. I’m considering starting
or just bursting into tears when the door opens.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A woman I don’t
recognize enters, pulling a boy behind her. He is eleven, and looks
rather indignant at being dragged into an office. I open my mouth to
inform them that the building is closed. But that’s when the boy
spots me. And grins.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">Hi,”
he says happily. “I’m –.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Doctor Cheu
doesn’t need to know who you are,” the woman snaps.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Really?” The
boy twists free of the woman’s grip and stares at her in shock.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Very really,
yes.” The woman turns to me. “What happened to the sun was an
accident. It is being fixed right now.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What?” I say.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Well,” the boy
says, “I found out that @torrentialmonsoon wears sunglasses you
know, and big sunglasses hide you from the sun and that makes the sun
sad you know! But!,” and the flings the word out excitedly, “the
sun hurts eyes too, only I fixed it so it couldn’t and then I got
in trouble.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He lets out a huge,
put-upon sigh.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stare at the
woman. “A storm wore sunglasses?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">It’s
complicated. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">A cloud was put
in front of the sun so sunlight wouldn’t necessitate sunglasses.”
The woman pauses. “This was noticed,” she says dryly. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I want to ask how,
but the grin on the boy’s face somehow got rid of worry and my want
to drink as well. No one has ever smiled at me like that. I don’t
think anyone will again. “And it’s been fixed?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She nods. “The
–.” She catches herself. “We thought someone should tell you,
so you can explain it as something other than aliens.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It could be
aliens,” the boy says. “I bet I could find the best aliens ever!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes. You could.
But you’re not going to,” the woman says. Her gaze flicks back to
me. “There are going to be some abnormal weather patterns over the
next few days you can use to explain this.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Going to be,”
I repeat slowly. “What are you?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">We’re
friends,” the boy says, utterly certain of that statement. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman gestures,
and the boy heads to the door. They walk through, but end up
somewhere than the hallway. The door closes on the boy protesting
that he didn’t do an oops at all.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
An oops.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Changing how the
sun works as some kind of – of accident.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I shut down my
computer, turn to the office window and open it. The half-moon hangs
in the sky, as bright as it always is. I let out a sigh of relief,
close the window, close up my office.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’m halfway home
before it begins to hail.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Abnormal weather
patterns, the woman said. I make a mental note to put snow tires on
my car first thing tomorrow morning. And then try, as hard as I can,
to forget that entire encounter.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-52931072236350995522018-08-10T23:37:00.001-07:002018-08-10T23:37:25.741-07:00(The) Always of Adventuring<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The air cracks with broken thunder. I
pause outside the door to the hotel suite, drawing up wards made from
the annoyance of guests and the simmering bitterness underneath some
of the staff as I push the door open to find Jay sitting cross-legged
in a chair, his eyes crossed as well. I watch as he twists his arm,
his elbow impacting with his face.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I watch as his elbow and arm twist
about and he pokes his nose with a frown. “Kidlet?” I say slowly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay grins with the joy only a jaysome
eleven year old who is from far Outside the universe can. “Hi,
Honcho!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hi. Is there any particular reason
you are trying to break your elbow today?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’m trying to break my nose,” he
says proudly. “And @argumentsfromwithin says that elbows break
noses really good!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah. And this would be an adventure?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yup!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The danger in Jay isn’t so much his
power over bindings so much as an innocence devoid of limits. And
part of being the wandering magician – and more being Honcho to Jay
– is knowing how fragile that is and how much of it remains.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay. Breaking bones isn’t an
adventure you want. You are tough like a Jay, but that means that
when you do get hurt –.” I pause. “May I?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay nods, nothing but trust in him. He
is bound to me on levels so deep I can’t sense all of them. His
trust perhaps runs deeper still. I reach out. Find the nearest
hospital. Find a troll trying to heal an ancient broken hand. Find a
crack in the earth that never ceased to hurt. And I bind them into
Jay.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A moment, and I release it. There is
always pain, and then there is never pain.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay doesn’t move. For half a moment,
there are shadows in his face that make it too near my own. “Honcho?”
He rubs his arm slowly, waits.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That kind of pain isn’t an
adventure. Not all adventures need be sought, not even by a Jay. Some
can only offer hurt.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay blinks, once. There is a question
in his eyes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t seek them out. But a
magician answers need.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can do that too!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Jay vanishes a moment later. I feel
the binding against pain he puts on the hospital, and then he’s
visiting the troll to help them as well.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The troll tries to eat him, and while
Jay is occupied with that adventure I gently undo most of the binding
he put on the hospital. Because pain is important even if Jay doesn’t
understand why in human terms. Some day he will, but not until I’ve
done everything I can to stop that.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Unless my everything causes it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Magician?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I turn. Charlie has come into the hotel
room. The god within her hasn’t stirred, which is good. But Charlie
knows me better than almost any other person in our five years of
friendship.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You okay?” she asks.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Is Jay okay?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can eat what you’re feeling,”
she offers, god-eater to magician.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You can’t.” The words slip out.
I have a talent to speak truth that cannot he ignored.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Charlie winces. “His innocent is...
important, magcian. We both know that.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. We’ve met Jay when he is
older. Keeping him eleven as long as possible is important.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It’s always important, even if it
never changes what will be.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That was almost a question,”
Charlie says softly. “Are you sure you –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Jay returns between moments, to
tell us all about his adventures and boast about how not breaking his
nose is an adventure and how he’s totally ready for an adventure
having suppers now.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The moment passes between us, but I
don’t think it will be wholly gone. And I don’t know what to
think about that.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-11634658636842853292018-08-10T23:36:00.003-07:002018-08-10T23:36:48.047-07:00Seeing Auras<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The aura – I have no words. I’ve
been inventing new colours for hours, but this – this is like the
dark side of the sun. Like cold fire, like the ending of dreams. The
shape is human. That terrifies me even more. Aura upon aura,
repetition without end. Nothing should look like this. They walk down
the street.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You don’t walk, with an aura like
this. You don’t do – human things. But they are. The other auras
fade, even my own, as though only this aura was real.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Apologies,” The man standing
before me is maybe thirty, and ordinary, and the aura is gone. Folded
away. Moved somewhere where I cannot see it. “Most people who can
See learn how to control it quickly. There are not many magicians,
but we are – parts of places, as much as other things. It
confuses.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What?” Mylie moves forward, fists
balled. “I don’t know what you’re going on about, but -.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am sorry, but I was not speaking
to you.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mylie made nurses in the hospital back
off; she pulls back instead. Seeing no auras, but the magician’s
voice is a deep well of truth.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Grandma isn’t -. She can’t -.”
Mylie flatters. “There was a stroke.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah. That, a magician would not dare
touch.” The magician smiles, slow and sad, at my expression. “You
saw auras for a time, Emiline. There is a power to that, but not the
kind some might envision. To be a magician is to understand the
helplessness of power better than most.” he says, and I don’t
think Mylie hears these words.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“A gift one cannot control is not a
gift at all.” His sigh is low and tired. “I can bind you so that
you no longer see auras. It would be safest, because there is a boy
named Jay in this town as well and I do not think you would survive
his aura. Not that he ever intends harm, but to see complete auras
without control would break you perhaps even beyond what Jay can
easily repair.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>There is nothing for me.</i> I don’t
speak. I can’t, not words anyone can understand.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The magician hears. I am not surprised,
given that aura. “You will be missed. That is hardly nothing.
Listen: Jay is eleven, and from far Outside this universe. If your
seeing his aura destroyed you, he would try to make it right and
never understand the harm he would cause in the process. That is
something as well. You have choices still.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think about an aura bigger than the
magician’s. I think about what it would do, how I would die. Here,
in front of Mylie. Broken.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>Help me.</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The magician touches my forehead. One
finger, and I can no longer seen the gentle aura about my
granddaughter. It changes nothing between us.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She grabs the magician’s hand,
yanking it away, about to make demands.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’ve never done a poking game,
Honcho!” The boy who is beside the magician is eleven, and his grin
– his grin defuses everything. It is pure and innocent and
wonderful and the magician gently turns my chair away. I think it is
him, though he does not touch it, and the force of the grin
diminishes a little.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Games do get interesting when you
plan them, Jay. I was helping here, and am done. You might want to
see is Charlie is ready for lunch?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Okay! Bye, new friends!” The boy
waves to Mylie. She waves back, looking dazed. Every puzzlement she
had, every question she was going to ask the magician: it has all
been driven from her mind by the sheer exuberance of Jay.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The aura behind that smile that would
have destroyed me. I have no doubt about it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But I think it would have almost been
worth it. Almost.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-71990666947204379522018-08-10T23:35:00.004-07:002018-08-10T23:35:52.358-07:00To Answer Need<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The house is a small, single-storey
affair so drab it almost vanishes into the homes around it. The
picket fence is black rather than white, the lawn immaculate in its
plainness. Nothing about it jumps out as strange, but even so I’m
not surprised when the wandering magician opens the front gate and
walks in. I follow carefully. I’m no magician, but we’ve
travelled together off and on for almost five years. I feel the wards
he pulls up around us, my own power responding to the energy.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Being a god eater doesn’t mean many
things, not these days. But it does mean I can eat other energy; I’ve
never been foolish enough to test my power against his magic. There
are limits, no matter who or what you are. Even he has limits, though
sometimes it’s hard to realize that. We’re both human, for all
we’ve been and done. He’s bound to a creature from far Outside
the universe; there is a god inside me that stirs even now. I feel
fur about, claws nothing human can see. A threat, somewhere.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman who comes out of the front
door of the home is almost as wide as she is tall. She comes up to my
shoulder and a long black dress both hugs her and flows about her.
Her eyes are dark pits, hollows of rage and despair and the promise
of death in her clenched fists. Her teeth are sharp and distressingly
white as she bares her teeth. She moves down the stairs with the
certainty of an avalanche, her voice inhumanly cold and controlled.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You are the wandering magician.”
The magician nods. “And the god eater; I have heard of you.” Her
gaze flicks over me, and back to the magician. “I enter the
universe under the auspices of the Cone and the Grave. I am a
graduate of the Deep School, part of this world and universe for all
that I am from Outside it.” Her voice is low and rolling, waves
mingled with thunder.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is no storm above us. I can’t
shake the feeling that there should be one.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You are bound against acting in the
universe,” the magician says softly. “Yet you wish to: your need
called me here.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That was a day ago.” There is
death in those words, naked fury in her eyes. She holds her human
form with obvious effort. Her right hand jerks up, and she gestures.
Short, sharp. There is energy here, and power, but it is too alien
for me to try and eat – even if I was fool enough to try. An image.
A human girl. Short, also. Large, but not as large as her mother.
Pale, and then – other things, as well. Wounds. Holes. The image
vanishes, snaps out of existence.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“My daughter is dead, magician. I
demand a response. This is not a matter for human justice.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There are other justices. You know
who I am. And what?” the magician asks gently.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have heard stories.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Some are true. This truth I offer to
your grief: I am bound to Jayseltosche, who is also from Outside the
universe. Jay is, at present, visiting those responsible for the
death of your daughter. They will never hurt anyone else again, not
in word or deed.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That is not enough. They must
<i>suffer</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,” the woman says,
and I swear the world buckles around us at the word. For a moment her
will imposes some place Other. Some alien wildness that I feel rather
than see, know rather than sense as my brain goes blank rather than
try to explain it. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">Jay
is eleven, for all that he is also from Outside.” The magician lets
out a sigh. “There are many things he does not understand. They are
trying to explain why they broke so many bindings to him. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">He
is explaining that they were not jaysome at all.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman pauses.
Some of the fury settles within her. “That term I know.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay does get
around,” the magician says dryly.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman’s laugh
surprises her. “You think that will be enough?” she asks. No
demand, no bluster to cover for the laugh. She knows herself, and
hides nothing.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What do you know
of Jay?” I ask.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman turns her
gaze back to me. Part of me wishes she wouldn’t, that she’d
forget I was here. I hold her gaze despite that, holding the god
inside me as tightly. Power always wants to test power; this isn’t
the time for that. If there ever is one, this isn’t it at all.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have heard of
him. That he makes friends with anyone. That he is a force of nature
without knowing he is one. That he can bind anything, but would never
dream of abusing that. That no power in the universe is as deep as he
is, though he is unaware of this. I know you are his friends, and I
do not envy you the burden of that. But it changes nothing.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay won’t make
friends with them. For what they did, to your daughter and the
others. That will –.” I pause, trying to find words. “There are
places Outside the universe that are as real as the universe, as
solid as it. You know of them?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You should not
know of the Far Reaches,” the woman says. There is a fear in her
voice at even mentioning them.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’ve seen
them?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Once.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Which says more
than enough about how scary she is. “Imagine being on them. Part of
them. Knowing you could be part of them, and then being denied it.
Losing friendship with Jay, losing all chances of being jaysome: that
is worse than that by far.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman holds my
gaze for a moment, then turns back to the wandering magician. “You
impress me with your choice of friends.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Charlie has her
talents. Sometimes,” he adds, after a pause I’ll make him pay for
later. “But she does speak truth.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“They will kill
themselves.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">They
won’t. Because then Jay would be very sad. They are going to spend
their entire lives trying to be jaysome, to become friends with him,
to explain and make amends. And they never will, but I doubt Jay is
aware of that. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">He will hold
out a promise they can never have, not understanding he is hurting
them. You cannot make them suffer more than this, not by killing them
or by keeping them alive.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Magician.”
There is grudging respect in the word.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am sorry I
could not be earlier. And Jay – wanted to help, not understand he
couldn’t at all. This is not the first time I have done this,”
the magician adds, softer still, not hiding what it costs him.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Another burden,”
the woman says, as softly.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Not as great as
your own.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman nods. “I
will abide. By rules and law, I hold to my pact.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I had hoped you
would.” And the wandering magician smiles, his own smile a flash of
ice. “You will have another child, and the rules and laws will not
apply when you protect them.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman goes
still. The dress – not a dress at all – as frozen as her
expression. “... who are you, to promise that? What are you, to
change my arrangement?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Someone who can
borrow power to change bindings,” the magician says mildly.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Not only that.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Only that for
now,” he says. He doesn’t move, but there are depths here I am
not certain I understand at all. Not a secret, nothing so small as
that.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman nods to
the both of us, her movements slow and stiff. “I thank you for your
aid.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am sorry for
your loss,” the magician says.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We turn, and are at
the gate when Jay comes bounding up to us, stepping through the world
from some other place. No one notices, because he is jaysome.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Honcho honcho
honcho!”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes?” the
wandering magician says.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">I
tried making friends with the people who broke bindings but! it
didn’t work and everything went weirdy,” Jay flings out. “</span><span style="font-style: normal;">I
think maybe I didn’t want to, even if being jaysome is important
for everyone so I was figuring you could fix it!”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah. I can try,
at least.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Okay. Hi,” Jay
adds, waving to the woman.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She waves back, her
expression dazed under the force of a jaysome grin of innocent pride
and unbridled joy.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The
magician asks Jay to take him to the people so he can talk with them,
and they vanish between moments. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman walks
over toward me. Slow, but beside the gate before I move. She opens
them for me.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jaysome.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. “He is
that.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“To lose that –
it will be enough, I think,” she says, finally understanding. “I
am in the debt of the wandering magician.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No. There are no
debts, not against grief.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman stares
into me for a long moment. And nods. She says nothing else.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I walk away. Jay
texts me before I’ve gone half a block, saying Honcho is confusled
too and they probably need KFC. I have a feeling this is going to be
a very long night, but not as long as it could have been.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-64715439396441235982018-08-10T23:35:00.000-07:002018-08-10T23:35:06.793-07:00A First Tattoo<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Axis heading 4:201:78. Confirm?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Conformation given. Begin descent.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I take a deep breath, diving through
the ruins of an atmosphere. Ship records data faster than I could
try, tossing relevant information across my spectrum. There were wars
here long ago, but there have been wars everywhere.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>This was a bad one</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
Ship whispers in my head. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can report an
invasive breaching.” I pause, adjust my grip. Increase immersion. I
am on the control deck. I am also the craft diving through unknown
energy signatures, trying to find patterns Ship can match. Data
scrolls across my left eye, status reports from the Overmind on my
last twelve assignments. I am in danger of losing my own craft.
Ship’s strange form of an apology.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What happened
here?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<i>Unknown.
Energy signatures are off all accepted scales. </i>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“Craft integrity?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<i>Holding. </i>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
I pull up slowly, shift into neutral. Burning precious time and
resources. Turn. Stare out with my eyes as much as those of Ship. A
moon, once orbiting a gas giant. The entire surface cracked and
somehow patched back together, the gas giant both a sun and not one.
“Life reading. Someone turned this planet into a sun because there
is life on the moon.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<i>As a proxy,
it would seem. The energy signature we were sent to recover for the
Overmind is in the middle of the moon. </i>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“Can we recover it without damaging the life?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Ship
pauses. I’ve never head one of the AI actually pause before. </span><i>We
can, but it will be noted on your file.</i></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
I take a deep breath. “Authorization granted. Slow extraction, no
harm. We leave no mark behind us: my call.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
It takes almost two hours in real time; the energy source turns out
to be a box, contents unknown. Neither Ship nor I can even scan it at
all. It is here, but somehow doesn’t exist as well despite fitting
into the hold of our craft. I authorize an emergency jump back; in
for one infraction, I might as well add more.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">We
land in hanger 46-94/2 before I am shunted out of the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">link.
I haven’t lost my link before.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">There
is no craft, here. There is Ship. I can feel Ship inside me. I don’t
move. I can’t, not in the containment field. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“You have exceeded your allocated resources by 684%,” a voice
snaps. My connection to the craft – our connection – replaced by
an avatar of the Overmind. “You will explain, agent.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I
open my hand, close it. </span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-style: normal;">I
don’t even have skin left in the nutribath. I don’t even have a
brain; Ship is that. Turn someone into an AI, as close as can be
done. When did I agree to be sublimated? Did I ever?</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<i>We are 26
weeks old,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Ship whispers in my
head. Quiet. Neither of us knew we were one. Both reporting on each
other, so the Overmind would know. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“There is impossible damage to that solar system. It was linked to
the item we recovered. It seemed unwise to anger the cause of either
the damage or the remair to that system.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“That is not your call to make,” the avatar states.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“I am sorry,” I say softly, to Ship.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
Every warning inside us goes off. I don’t – there is not much
that is me left, in the tank. But the tank has alarms, and Ship as
well, but they end as quickly as they began.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
A human is standing outside our tank. Male. 14. Breathing despite
there being no life support outside the tanks. That is how Ship and I
would die: turned off, and left in darkness.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
The human is holding the box gently in one hand. Something moves
inside the box, restless. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “But
if you got out now, you would – harm a lot of people connected into
the Overmind, and that wouldn’t be right.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“Who – what –?” I ask.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
The human smiles with gentle sadness. “Someone who had a tattoo
once, and left it in a box. I decided it might be wise to get it back
before your Overmind was hurt. Not that I would care, but it has –
many like you under its care.” Something not-human moves under
those eyes. There is judgement in them.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="text-decoration: none;">We
do good work</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">,
Ship says.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“You do.” I’m not surprised the human can hear Ship. “But the
Overmind needs to ask – and explain more – to those who join it.
We are discussing that now. You harmed no one on the moon, which is –
why the Overmind is around for a discussion. You will be promoted, I
imagine.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“You made the moon? The gas giant?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“It was only fair; I broke the solar system as well. Well.” He
taps the box. “This did. Sometimes tattoos get rather out of hand,
and I had to lock it back up and repair what I could.” He grins,
and the grin shuts us down for a moment. Even Ship. There are known
energies more terrifying and baffling than known ones: I did not
understand that until this moment.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
“The Overmind and I came to an agreement. Thank you,” he says,
and the not-human – the entity – vanishes from every sense Ship
and I have.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
The Overmind has a voice that is all of ours, and its own. It would
be scary, but it isn’t scary after the human. It tries to make
suggestions; I counter with demands. We do important work here. We
are important, in salvage and in understanding. But no one should be
in the dark, and least of all those of us doing the work.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-39085510382248512252018-06-02T05:13:00.003-07:002018-06-02T05:13:31.210-07:00Making Safe Havens<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You never find salvation where you want
it, and certainly not when. We live in a mutable world; we change, we
are changed. Salvation is a river we dip into from time to time, if
it is anything at all. Nothing stays saved, nothing remained damned.
Crude terms for complex interactions. That’s often ow it is. These
aren’t safe thoughts, but sometimes safety is as far from safe as
one can be. I get myself a beer, sitting at the bar. I don’t come
into bars often. I don’t find anything of salvation in them, but
places can be a kind of salvation too. The rush of voices is a ward,
laughter an easy magic for a magician to draw upon.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Jay is not here. I gulp back beer,
letting it settle into me. Using it to ease into a kind of
relaxation. If we have chakras, the point is never to wake them up.
They are always awake. The point is to deaden them. To make a river.
To let things flow. The anger is tight between my shoulder blades. I
drink, let some go. Drink some more.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There had been a creature. Winged, made
of shadow more than substance, something so old human magic could
barely touch it at all. And I am human, for all else I might be, for
every story about the wandering magician that verges into fancy. I am
also a little buzzed to be using the word verges even in the silence
of my own head. The entity had woke, was hurling across the face of
the moon, mad with alien hungers, woken in a world too alien for it
to know.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I yelled for Jay to bind it. Because
Jay is from far Outside the universe, for all that he is eleven.
Because his power dwarfs anything I can do, though he refuses to
believe that. Instead he watched it move past, and happily told me
he’d just had a misadventure, because missing an adventure is an
adventure too. I told him he’d miss two suppers as an adventure
instead, and to bind that creature.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And it was bound, in a snow globe in my
hand, between moments. Handed over, and then Jay vanished in a sulk.
I haven’t seen him for hours, which even for Jay is an impressive
sulk. There are bindings between us so deep that even Jay might not
understand all of them. He knows how angry I was, for all my calm
command. How close I came to saying words I know better than to say
at all.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I finish the beer slowly, considering
another drink when there is a coaster on the bar in front of me that
wasn’t there a moment ago. Knitted, I think.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I look up from my drink even more
slowly. Jay is behind the bar, radiating pride. He’s wearing a
white shirt, tie, formal pants.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Do you want another drink?” he
asks excitedly. “I have drinks!”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay. Eleven year olds don’t tend
bars.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But I asked really jaysomely, and
the bartender said it was okay!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
At the other end of the bar, the
bartender is pouring drinks, looking taken aback at the results and
trying to understand why he said yes at all.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Saying no to Jay is dangerous; people
understand that instinctively.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And the drinks?” I ask.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh, it’s all really nummy water.
With flavours. And and and I have hot chocolate,” he says proudly,
pouring me one and handing it over.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Water and hot chocolate aren’t
normal bar drinks.” I pause. “Please tell me you didn’t make
snacks.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Nope! I had a whole list of things
to do, and I did them but forgot that only I’m giving out hugs,
which is like a snack but it’s also a hug!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“A list of things.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I got black shoes and everything.
Oooh! And a towel!”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The towel he holds up has teeth, and is
trying to eat his hand. Jay doesn’t even notice.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The hot chocolate is excellent. Jay
moves in a blur down the bar, chatting to people who are more than a
little confused about the state of their beverages. They’re left
dazed and confused at the onslaught of his irrepressible joy. One
person at the back of the room demands a proper drink, and is quiet
as a coaster zips through the air and impacts into the wall beside
him.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Drink coasters don’t normally
double as throwing stars,” I remark.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“He was getting all rude-face and
about to do meany bindings,” Jay says firmly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah.” I finish my drink quickly.
“You’ll have to throw a lot more soon as people are going to get
cross.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Really?” Jay bounces from foot to
foot. “I’d be like a Jayninja!”<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes, but the point of ninja was to
be unseen. And unnoticed,” I add as Jay vanishes from sight. “I
doubt jaysome can avoid being noticed.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh.” Jay reappears. “Wow! I
doubt jaysome could do that at all.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I doubt it could either.” I head
toward the door. “Perhaps you can end your shift early?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The bartender looks so grateful when
Jay asks that some patrons almost start laughing. The wise ones stop
the others from doing so. Jay thanks everyone for being jaysome and
then follows me out of the bar. No one breaks the silence we leave
behind us.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I glance over at Jay. “Is there a
reason you decided to tend a bar?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Cuz I’m not allowed in them since
I’m eleven, but I am if I’m working and! I sulked for over two
hours and thought you might be worried!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am often worried where you are
concerned,” I say dryly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay beams proudly; the sarcasm, as
ever, misses him entirely, but sometimes I can’t stop it from
emerging.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I assume you’ve learned a lesson
from all this?”<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay thinks that over. “Uhm! I’m not
sure, because lessons are kinda hard to learn? But I’m definitely
not missing an adventure again!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod and ruffle his hair gently. As
long as he doesn’t decide to become a ninja, this has turned out
better than I’d have hoped it would.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-78470326321662787812018-06-02T05:12:00.003-07:002018-06-02T05:12:42.026-07:00The Advertising Desk<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hi!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I almost jump out of my desk as I spin
around. The boy standing in the middle of the office is eleven.
Everyone else has gone home, and I know the janitors would never
bring their kids to with work.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Uh –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A stranger walks through the main
doors. For a moment I think the hallway behind him shows a street
instead. The man looks ordinary. “Jay,” he says.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is <i>important</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span>
Honcho,” the boy says firmly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The man lets out a resigned sigh.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Can I help you?” I say weakly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You totally do the advertisements
for AshleyHomeStore, right?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah – yes?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You have a hugey typo in your ad for
jaysom bunk beds!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Pardon?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It should say jaysome!” And the
boy grins. There is a terrible pride in his tone, but his grin – no
one has ever smiled like that. Not me, not anyone I know. It hits
with a force of innocent joy that takes my breath away.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Somehow, that doesn’t trigger my
asthma.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jaysome,” I repeat. I can hear the
e in his voice, and my own. The word is a possibility, a promise, a
trust without end. It is too pure to be sacred, too – too jaysome
to be terrifying.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If I put that in ads, I could sell
–.” I flatter. We could sell anything. I would get any promotion
I wanted.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’d fix the typo really good,”
the boy says firmly. I think his smile widens. I lose a few minutes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The boy has left. The man remains.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It’s all right,” he says.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I burst into tears. I don’t know the
last time I cried.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He waits until I’m done. “Jay
wouldn’t understand your tears. Nor what could be done with
jaysome.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He says the word differently. I hear
the promise. And the power.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You could bring down nations with
that.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The man nods. “Jay only has by
accident.” His smile is gently rueful.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What do I do?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’m not sure yet.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are footsteps behind us. One of
the janitors. Klaus, I think. Only he walks with a coldness in his
eyes I’ve never seen. There is something feline about him,
something wild and primal and severely pissed off.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Wandering magician.” His accent is
no longer one I know. There is a fury in his tone.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I thought a fae might provide
information.” The man turns. Whatever his smile holds, Klaus
blanches at it. “This place sells jaysom bunk beds. Jay noticed the
typo, and wishes them to fix it.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Klaus goes still. Somehow, he pales
even further. I can see <i>through</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
him. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This,” the man
called Honcho says, “might be a problem?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can’t – we
can’t be certain a glamour would stop everyone from seeing the
word. Jay – jaysome – is too big, too real –.” Klaus falls
silent. All the threat is gone. He looks small and miserable.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“A glamour so
that Jay sees jaysom as jaysome could work. I will try and explain
the details to him.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Try.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is Jay.
Even I can but try.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Klaus nods. And
steps – sideways, somehow, vanishing.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The wandering
magician turns and looks at me. His gaze is steady. “Jay. A fae.
Myself. This is a large step into a wider world than you knew.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. “It’s
too big.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sometimes. I can
help you forget, though you’ll never quite forget Jay.” The man
chuckles softly. “I don’t think even Jay could make himself
forgotten like that.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I take a deep
breath. I nod.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<i>Forget</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,”
he says, with a kindness that unmakes so much.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I almost speak, but
it is too late to change my mind.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Until
I wake, with the memory of even the </span><i>forget</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
in my head. And nothing forgotten. The magician knew. I don’t know
how he knew I’d change my mind, but he knew. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I could return to
work. Klaus might not be there. Or look like someone else. I check my
bank account, finding over fifty thousand in savings. And an email,
sender unknown.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
‘For adventures,’
it says, and nothing else.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I resolve to share
as much of those adventures as I can with everyone I meet. I am not
Jay. But I think anyone can learn jaysome. I am to try.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-59009789174697537502018-06-02T05:11:00.003-07:002018-06-02T05:11:37.364-07:00One Evening, Not Jaysome<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What have you done?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Power drives me to my knees. I’ve
seen the wandering magician pissed off before. But I’ve never had
the whole weight of his power against me. Not like this. There is a
killing look in his eyes, his will a mountain without end. Magicians
are human. I know this. But right now he feels like nothing so much
as a force of nature, implacable and ferociously controlled.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Nathen –,” I try.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
His name does not pause him at all. I
swear reality itself quakes about us. Afraid. I remember the time he
was kin to fae for a second. Somehow this feels beyond that. As
though he were real, and everything about us nothing but illusion.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stand, holding his gaze. The god
inside me is the fear in shadows, the darkness in closets, the
monster under the bed. Claws and teeth and anger that barely match my
own. I don’t try and eat his magic; right now I doubt I’d
survive. But I eat my own fear, fan my own anger. Find strength and
keep on my feet.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Magician.” I don’t recognize my
own voice for a moment. “Do you have <i>any</i> idea what Jay did?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Explain.” My anger doesn’t flow
around him so much as crash back into me. There is no give to his
expression.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay took it upon himself to make
sure I never lost a single calorie despite every diet I have
attempted in four fucking years!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Because the calories would be sad if
they left you,” the magician says, and almost there is a hint of
humour, of humanity in the reply.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I. Don’t. Care. Why.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You don’t have a choice, Charlie.
You left Jay scared of you. So he ran away.” The magician smiles. I
thought I’d seen his coldest smile a few times, the one he tried to
hide from Jay and me. This smile is a dark fury I’ve never seen
before, remote and alien like a flicker of light in a bottomless
hole.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Nath –.Magician –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<i>Where can Jay run that he
believes you cannot follow?”</i> he demands, and the truth of those
words forces itself upon me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh. Oh shit,” I whisper. “He ran
back Outside the universe.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Almost. I pulled him back in,” and
his tone is so bleak I stumble back from it more than the terrible
power that hasn’t let up.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“How?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He blinks, and the pressure is gone.
All that power, all the rage, and he pulls it back inside without
even a hint it cost him anything to do. “I may tell you. Some day.
Jay is hiding in a couch. You will find him, and you will apologize.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He doesn’t make demands, not like
this. Magicians don’t. He turns and walks away.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I open my mouth. He is Honcho. He is
Nathen. he is the wandering magician. But none of those names seem to
fit him right now. It will be gone. He’ll be the person I know
soon. His name will the name I know. But I can’t shake the
certainty that he is no longer the person I know, and paid a price to
save Jay that neither Jay nor I will ever understand.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I try to say I’m sorry, but the words
aren’t enough. Not for anything that matters at all.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-21494254567009910492018-06-02T05:09:00.003-07:002018-06-02T05:09:56.920-07:00Status Updates May 2018<br />
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There is
something terrible inside you,” the witch whispered to Boy.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I think, Boy
said after he thought it over, "you mean my conscience? Bess
says that not everyone has one and Mr. Fox would probably call it a
burden. Do you mean that?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh, child. If
only it was that simple. The world holds many evil people who would
be quite less evil were they entirely devoid of goodness.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time
there was a king who wasn’t assassinated solely because no one else
wanted the thankless task of trying to run the poorest kingdom in the
world. The generational plan to make the royal family immune to
assassins and coups had succeeded, but even the king sometimes
privately wondered if it had been worth the cost.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He says every scar
is a battle he lost, with a laugh that breaks to hear. He says burn
marks aren’t victory laps, showing the places on his thigh where
his uncle stopped smoking. Hre knows enough to know that to survive
is not the same as to live, but he knows the lesson too well. There
is something almost cruel in how he turns away from love as though it
were another form of pain.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The head of the
agricultural division of the company did not take kindly to learning
their position had them listed as the CIEIEIO in the executive
hierarchy</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Partial contents
of a cover letter:</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But you don’t
[redacted]. Or swear.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It might be a
failing. Point is that I can’t just get a job. Every place wants
resumes, interviews, sometimes even cover letters that don’t feel
as dull as ditch water. Which isn’t dull at all.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You could have
said as dull as tap water, but we all know about fluoride.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“...this was a
really bad idea, wasn’t it?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have no idea.
YOU are Josh. I don’t even know who I am meant to be in this
narrative. You’d think an English major would know that. Instead
I’m just a voice in the ether. I can’t even be a muse since those
don’t exist. Where were you? Right: applying for a job. You have
been using Word and its variants for about twenty five years, and
typing far too much fiction in that time. Use that. For once.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And reading.
Being an English major means reading a lot. Sometimes too much.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The apartment
is full of books, yes. I have no idea what you expect me to segue
into from this. Especially when you don’t own a Segway.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If gravity were
real we would still be together.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“If we continue
down this path, one of us will die,” Protagonist said.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We could not
kill each other.” Antagonist paused. “Or have you not considered
that option?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am the
protagonist. You are the antagonist. We know how this story ends.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’d argue
that we don’t. I am an antagonist, yes. There could be others you
can kill instead of me?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That’s not
how this works!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What kind of
protagonist are you if you can’t change the story?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You don’t
understand. I’m the protagonist because I can’t.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You are dying.
It’s not blood: you need some Vitamin D.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“D? I do not
know that one.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Pardon me?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“When I was a
child, vitamins only went up to B,” the vampire explained.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No.”
Protagonist pulled his hand free from his sword as the city guard
moved toward him. “If I fight them, they are only going to lose.”
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The city guard
captain stared. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This isn’t
important to you. Consider the Narrator a kind of god.” Protagonist
looked about, snapped his blade out and sliced a pattern through the
air before sheathing it. “I don’t have many skills, but I am very
good with a blade. Better than four guards, and my ignorance of the
law about keeping my blade peace-bound in the evening is not reason
enough to attack me. You might not have heard of me, but you
recognize that skill.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Are you talking
to us now?” the captain asked.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes. Fine. Call
it a misunderstanding. I go my way, you go yours.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And if we say
no?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Then I
humiliate all of you and you’re forced to declare some foolish
revenge I don’t want to deal with.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That doesn’t
have to happen, the Narrator protested, but the guard sheathed their
blades, offered a warning and let Protagonist depart. Grudgingly.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time
there was a hero who never noticed their call to adventure because
they were busy beating a game on their phone.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I ran away. They
say there are things no one can run from. But you never know until
you try.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I said I was
drowning under the weight of your expectations. You just laughed and
said I had no idea what drowning was.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And you were
right.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The stories about
the seariders focus on the fact that the builders are a small subset
of them who made mines for reasons that were logical and involved
making use of their short stature. The weavers in the woods never
used bows and arrows at all.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Protagonist paused
mid-stride. “I am on my way to the market for some fruit. Is there
any particular reason I thought that?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is
dramatic emphasis. Making sure you know they are not dwarves and
elves,” the Narrator snapped.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“...but I have
no idea what a dwarf or elf is?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Good. Keep it
that way. Also, Westrin is not set in Europe in the middle ages! That
trope is done to death!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Protagonist
stopped. “I don’t even know what any of that means.” And
surprised himself by adding: “Are you feeling all right?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’m fine,”
the Narrator said in a tone normally used to declare war.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Protagonist wisely
continued to the market in the small hope that these were varieties
of foreign food he would avoid eating.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I asked if you
loved me.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But you said if I
had to ask, then I already knew the answer was no.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I haven’t
followed politics in weeks. I just... I can’t keep doing this.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That’s how
they win.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“How is it that
we burn out, but they never do?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’m scared.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No, you’re
not.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“… what?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Everyone does a
typo about that, autocorrects in their own head.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t
understand?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It’s sacred.
Not scared.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This isn’t the
time for jokes!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I’m sorry,
Commissioner. But as long as the Joker escapes from Arkham it’s
always time for jokes.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Open up! This
is the police!”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I haven’t
opened up to anyone in years.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have never
written a poem about you, not even the ones that mention you by name.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For Sale:
Conscience. Free to a bad home.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
By age 35, you too
should be a meme.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There are two
paths before you. Down one lies riches, down the other -.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I walk between
them.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am updating my
Privacy Policy because so many other places are. Please check your
emails accordingly.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I wonder about
jobs where you help animals act better in movies.
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Imagine the fun of
being able to say you'd given acting lessons to a goldfish.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“How do you stop
being afraid, when it feels like that is all there is room for you to
be?”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There are other
things, even if the fear waits under them. Even our shadows cast
shadows. There can be a slim hope in that.”</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The most important
thing about writing a short story is deciding the name of a smog
inside a bathtub is Sidney.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think there must
be a sherlock Holmes pastiche somewhere that goes like this:</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"Good day,
ma'am. Are you well?"</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"I am
afraid."</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"Nonsense!
There is nothing be afraid of. You got up around six because you
always got up that early at the farm you lived on as a child for a
brief formative time, had a small breakfast with only two eggs, put
on your second-best dress, took two trains to get here, stopped at
the Piccadilly line, read only the Times on the train and got lost at
Clement Street on your way here and you're paranoid everyone is
watching you. Oh dear."</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’re not
like other boys I’ve dated,” she said.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know – I –.
You can’t trust me,” he said.</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You think
that’s why?” she asked almost gently.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-22477667901897184682018-05-03T11:23:00.001-07:002018-05-03T11:23:21.744-07:00Morality: A Tale<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It’s not even ten in the morning and
I’ve had a drink. Not coffee or tea, but something definitely
stronger. Jay has left the hotel in search of another breakfast –
because when you’re eleven and from far Outside the universe,
breakfast is very important. As is everything else. The wandering
magician is somewhere in this town working quiet magics. It is what
he loves best, but sometimes I think it’s also his retreat from
other things. Not that I’d dare say it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The drink goes down with a smooth burn
and I feel a little better. Jay telling people this morning that he’d
been spayed had been an adventure in itself. To say nothing of the
attempt to reserve-microwave a pop tart for reasons I still don’t
understand. I assume someone on tumblr convinced him it was a good
idea. Probably without ever wanting to. The space where the microwave
was makes my skin itch when I look at it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That was one reason for the drink. Jay
making a dimension just for stray dogs was maybe not another, but it
is Jay. It’s not one thing: it’s a hundred little things, all
piling up on each other. I could go away again. Take a break. But
each time hurts Jay, and he’ll never understand why.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Go away,” I say when the door to
the hotel room opens without anyone bothering to use the lock.
Sometimes the magician just forgets to: when you’re a wandering
magician, every door is open to you.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But it’s not the magician, or Jay.
What enters looks to be a man, but he both wears and carries an
impossible beauty. He tried to use it on me once; it’s as much
history as we have. I’ve learned more from Jay, because it never
occurred to him not to tell me when I asked.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The magician isn’t here. If you’re
looking for him.” I don’t move. I can do some pretty impressive
things if I have to, but I’d rather not test myself against someone
who is the equivalence of a magician for Outside the universe. Even
with more drinks in me I’d never consider it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I was.” His voice is silk and
honey, butter and chocolate all rolled into smooth perfection. “But
I felt other problems and thought perhaps I could help with them,
Charlie?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He says my name like no one has. I
shake the effect off. “Are you trying to toy with me, Moshe?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No. I am a Walker of the Far
Reaches. We are what we are.” He pauses, eyes paler than they were
a moment ago. “I admit I didn’t expect to be resisted so easily.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You say my name in an –
interesting way. It definitely doesn’t top Jay saying it.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ah! But he is why you seem...
unbalanced?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jay. He just – the things he
does...” I trail off. “The wandering magician is able to cope
with more than I am.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“He is what he is as well. But I am
also from the Outside, and there are things you simply have not
considered. Jay is not human, at all, for all that he can hide so
well even you forget what he is. You and the magician are his anchors
in this world, but that means more than you think it does. He learns
what is allowed from you. He has, in human terms, outsourced his
morality to you and the magician. Because it is not a natural thing
to him, not part of what he is.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And every time he pushes the
impossible at us, the possible bends a little more.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It is not something he intends, but
yes. Children test limits. Jay is no different, though I doubt he
understands what he does at times, or even why. But he is testing
himself as well as you. Learnings things that are not bindings, and
thus far outside of both his experience and his power. I would not
call it easy, what you have been called to do. But I would suggest it
may be the most important thing that will ever be done.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“By me?” I ask slowly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No.” For a moment I think he is
going to leave it at that, but Moshe is no more human than Jay: “By
anyone.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stare at Moshe.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Even I have limits,” Moshe says.
“Jay, I think, does not.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I try not to think too hard about
that. Ever.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It is wise not to. It may be safe to
explain that he is pushing you, and to ask him to stop it. He cannot
operate on instinct alone.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And we have to teach him to think
before he acts.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“All the time, yes. I think that is
the lesson, among others. I could be wrong. Jay does not wish to hurt
you. You <i>know</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> this.” </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. “Because
of jaysome, yes.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But he must he
told when he does. You cannot hide things from him; attempting to do
so will only confuse him further. It is nothing I envy you.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“When why were
you here?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sometimes I help
the magician – escape, when he needs to. I could offer you the same
service.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Moshe’s eyes
narrow slightly. “These lessons for Jay can be applied to you as
well. To learn to think before you act. To not speak wholly on
instinct.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Maybe. Still
no.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He nods once, and
vanishes.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I turn on the TV.
Sit down on the bed, and find cartoons and watch them until Jay
returns. The magician and I are human, for all that we know and can
do. And I think Jay doesn’t scare me, not half as much as what
might happen to him and because of me when me and Nathen are gone.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hug Jay tight
when he returns, and he returns it with a jaysome grin, not
understanding it is more than just a hug. I’m not sure he can. I
think some day he will. And I don’t know what to think of that at
all.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-59079695526889796992018-05-03T11:22:00.003-07:002018-05-03T11:22:20.284-07:00Following Trails<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A car is like a gun: a machine that can
kill people. That is one of the first things Aram told me when giving
me lessons. Never forget how dangerous a car is. Never forget that
you are fallible. I’m not Kelly: they drive as easily as breathing.
But I think fear helps me. A little bit.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That, and my talent. I can push things
and pull them; the car hugs the road on tight gravel turns. Anya is
sitting in the passenger seat, focused on something only she can
sense. She does with pain what I do with movement.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Left. We’re getting closer,” she
says, voice as pale as her face.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I take a left down another narrow road.
Everything around us is evergreens, small homes buried in the forest
whose existence is only guessed at by mail boxes. All I know is there
is some pain here; pain we might be able to stop. Wilbur isn’t with
us, busy trying to learn magic from Mr Pickles. Not helped by the
fact that Wilbur is possibly the first magician who deals mostly with
ghosts, or that Mr Pickles is a cat. I don’t know if Wilbur even
wants to be what he is, and that’s nothing that can be taught.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I pull over to let a battered truck
pass us, and Anya puts her left hand on mine before I pull out onto
the road.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Something is trying to hide.
Everything has gone foggy.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh.” I reach, and pull the fog out
of her head. Neither of us like me doing it: we have no idea what it
might be harming. But sometimes there are no simple choices. Anya
might not have lupus anymore, but no one is certain <i>what</i> is
inside her. Or what she is becoming.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Anya shakes her head a little. “Better.
The next right, a left. That should take us closer.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I drive slowly. The road gets narrower,
winding as though designed to cause accidents. We don’t pass any
other vehicles, which is mostly a relief. I get tired of double-
takes and stares. I’d get it for having too many freckles alone, to
say nothing of acne and scars. The acne is better than it was least
year, but I’m never going to not attract stares. It doesn’t help
me like it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Left,” Anya says slowly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I turn left, slowing the car down a
crawl down a driveway whose trees scrape both sides of the car before
coming to a clearing. There is a shall house that is falling apart
built into the side of mossy hill. No vehicles, no garbage. Even so,
I hesitate getting out of the car. Something feels wrong, though it’s
nothing I can see. I reach out a little with my talent. Not using it;
just trying to see if anything is pushing or pulling at the world.
Nothing. The feeling remains.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Anya gets out slowly, walking over
beside me. “Anything?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No. Still feels wrong. I could just
be projecting?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No idea. There is a strange pain
here. Under the hill, in the earth, straining against the sky. Rivers
move toward the ocean. If it was the other way, it would be this. A
bleeding out. A tributary.” She lets out a breath. “Sorry. I
can’t tell you what it is. Or even where. I can’t even tell you
if they are dying. It’s probably something like a miracle that I
sensed the pain at all.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod and walk beside her toward the
house. Our feet begin sinking into the earth as though it was mud
after seven steps. Anya would make fun of me for counting that, but
Aram always says that information is vital. I reach over, right hand
in Anya’s left, and use my talent to lift us into the air. The
ground looks solid after our feet leave it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I think it’s inside the hill. The
pain, and what is causing this?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Not the house?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The house isn’t there. Huh. I have
no idea why I said that?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I reach out with my left hand. A board
snaps off the house and lands in my palm. Anya turns her talent on
it: the board cracks and rots away. I let go of the remains.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Still not here?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No idea.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I keep up in the air, hold out my left
hand in a fist. I open my hand slowly, the house shattering apart in
a spray of wood. Walls, some furniture. A basement. I reach out with
my talent. Nothing.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There is a basement. It doesn’t
want to budge, not rooted in this world. I think it’s a door into
the hill?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The wreckage of the house comes into
clearer view as we get closer. I’ve never destroyed a house before,
but it looks extremely real.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is no door down to the basement.
One slab of concrete greets us. I land on it, finding it solid Anya
hisses softly. “A lot of pain. Under us.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I gesture. She moves back off it, not
sinking too deeply. I centre myself, touch the concrete. Pull.
Something resists even as the concrete begins to crack. It feels like
trying to lift up a mountain.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So I twist, aiming to tear the top off
like a bottle cap. The world goes still, quiet layered upon quiet. I
tune that out. Let my talent out. Shape it. Be it. My vision darkens
at the edges, the world blurring. I am a space I find.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Pull.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hear the world break. A thousand
sounds I’ve never heard. It’s too late to stop. Too deep to be
pulled back. I hear a scream of pain that burns through more than
flesh. Somehow I push that away from me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I open my eyes. My head throbs. My face
aches. “I don’t think hair is meant to ache. Or fingernails.”
My voice is a thin rasp. I have to use my talent just to sit up. The
world spins a little.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’m sitting on moss. I ache inside
and out. Anya is sitting beside me, tense and trying to hide it.
Across from us is an old man. Human. Except his left arm is like the
earth we walked in. It bends, twists in the air, melts before our
eyes.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I thought the wandering magician
would find me.” The voice is cool and calm, entirely at odds with
the fact that his body isn’t moving at all beyond what used to be a
left arm spasming energies into the world. “Instead I am found by
children.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We did find you,” Anya says
flatly.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am wounded. We are not impossible
to find when wounded. Your friend, though.” His gaze focuses on me.
I know he’s not human, because there’s no shock. There’s no
sympathy either. “You forced your way into my home. And can still
do things after that.” <br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I shrug, but say nothing.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Can we help you?” Anya asks. “You
said you’d answser once my friend woke up. He’s up. We <i>can</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
hurt you; that’s not the same thing at all.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">It
can be. But no. Your friend broke the door to my home; it will be
noticed. Other fae will arrive, and notice I am wounded. I will be
healed, perhaps, or at least taken home. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">You
have done the only thing you could have done for me, and by accident
at that. Sometimes the universe works that way for fae.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Fae. Which is
–?” Anya asks.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We protect the
borders of the universe. And deal with certain creatures in our
employ. One of which decided to rebel, and wounded me in dying. It is
hard to wound us, and the injury was deep enough that I dared not
contact one of our castles.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’d bleed
out more. Like radiation poisoning?” I ask.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Consider it more
poisoning reality. Fae glamours are more real than reality; our
injuries spill out glamour. That much I tell you, and this too: go.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">W</span><span style="font-style: normal;">e’ve
met magicians. The fae’s voice isn’t power. It’s a fact. One
moment we’re under the hill, the next we’re in the car on a
different road. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Okay,” Anya
says slowly. “That was more than a little scary.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. “More than
a lot.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She laughs, almost.
“Point. You up for driving?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I shake my head. I
don’t trust myself to do anything right now. Even shaking my head
makes the world spin in sickening colours, the headache having
migrated to my whole body. I crawl into the back seat, trying not to
whimper, and Anya says nothing, turns on music and drives back toward
Rivercomb. I drift in and out of pain that is somehow not as bad as
it feels. That thought helps me shake myself off.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I
hurt. Not as much as the fae was making me feel, but I hurt. I don’t
know why the fae wanted me to feel more pain than I do. I don’t
know what the fae even </span><i>is</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
But I’m hoping Anya knows, or Mr Pickles. Or anyone at all. Because
I pushed my talent harder than I have before, and I think the fae was
shocked I managed anything at all.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think the fae is
very old, and very arrogant with it. And impressing something like
that isn’t a good idea at all. Not an Aram-lesson. Just a
Noah-lesson from a life too full of weirdness lately. Anya is singing
along to the radio; that helps me find a proper sleep, and welcome
relief from the pain as much as her singing voice.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t think she
puts her talent into her singing. Not consciously.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And then I think
nothing else, and let the deep darkness claim me for a few hours.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-2936133526321519292018-04-29T10:10:00.002-07:002018-04-29T10:10:34.406-07:002018: Mar. and Apr. Status Updates<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Mar. 2018</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Writing drafts of stories on a phone
is, well, this:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh.” I reach, and pull the dog out
of her head.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The knight came down the hill slowly.
He was alone, limping painfully. His horse had long since been lost,
his armour was singed by fire, his ancestor’s spear broken in his
shaking grip.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Was there a princess?” his
faithful retainer asked, visions of reward dancing through his young
mind.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“How many carts do we need to bring
the hoard back to -.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The dragon had no hoard. For tax
reasons.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t understand?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The hoard was flown overseas to some
other kingdom years ago. Every other noble knight, every warrior of
the crown who joined me. All the battles, all those deaths, the
rewards we had envisioned: it was for naught.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But you killed the dragon,” the
retainer said timidly.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It was old, and laughed at us the
entire time. Laughed,” the knight repeated, in the tone of a broken
man.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I had the most brilliant idea
yesterday. So now I’m spending today trying to work out whose idea
it really was.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I told you I wasn’t afraid but even
that truth was born out of fear.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No war shaped human history quite as
much as the Calorie Wars.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You never show up in pictures of us.
Everyone think you’re a vampire when I know you’re just shy.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You told me that your life was an open
book. Only I realize too late that you meant ebook - and one with a
proprietary format.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I erased you from my life but the
smudges remained on the paper of my heart.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The monsters never lied to us; it was
how we discovered what they were.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Breakfast in bed turns out to be hot
coffee on my head and eggs in a place that sent me shrieking to the
emergency room.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am starting to wonder if things might
not be going well between us.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You wonder why I am a climate change
denier? You poor fool: I deny nothing. I merely wish to see the
climate destroyed. October 15th, 1982. My heart was broken and the
sky refused to rain despite how I felt. I decided then that the whole
world would suffer with weather that shattered as easily as the human
heart.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I gave you a secret without wanting
anything in turn.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Knowing it would torment you more than
anything else I could do.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They said the robots would take over
the world, but the robots were built to be reliant on the old
technologies. Within five years their armies were out of oil,
gasoline, vital minerals and metals that would have kept them
fighting. We welcomed our robot overlords for freeing us from those
shackles, and the information age was replaced finally by the solar
age.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Write,” the muse demanded, hurling
ideas, plots, stories.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I need to apply for jobs. I need
work. I need work,” the writer replied.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“…. do you want me to leave you?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No. But I can’t write if I have no
place to live. I would tell the stories only in my head, shared with
no one.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“… I will improve your resume,”
the muse declared.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But you must help us! You defeated
the Rockhearth Dragon, walked through the Six Sundered Castles! You
-.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I have a good publicity team, yes. I
pay a dozen bards to sing songs about me.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But you were the hero of Bythok
Bay!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Only in songs, child. Only in
songs.” And she smiled, who some called the Untempered Queen. “What
you do becomes far less important than what people think you can do.
If you play your cards right.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But people are dying!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I am sorry. But that is what people
do, even more than cry out for heroes.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I told you I could save you, but I
meant only from myself.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hah! If you were psychic, you’d
have known I was going to spill my drink on you!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“That isn’t the sort of thing I
predict.” And the psychic smiled, and told me the day that I would
die, and their smile never wavered at all.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I lost the key, but it turned out you
were never a door at all.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Look, Charlie. Charles. When you
married me, you had to understand that marriage was a triple-A game,
full-price point and the honeymoon as a loot box? Our whole
engagement was a beta test.”<br />“You prepared for this.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You bet your ass I did. The EULA
between us was never talked about, love. Having kids is, at the
least, a season pass on top of everything else. And don’t even get
me started on the microtransactions involved later on.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>April 2017</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once upon a time there was a monster
who tried to be kind, until they realized they weren’t the real
monster at all.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every window wishes it were a door, and
there is no door that does not desire to be only a wall rather than a
wound in the sameness of a barrier. Everything we build contains
portions of our failings: how else could it have beauty?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are rules that govern the world,
but to understand them means you know they do not rule over you at
all.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When the boss said he liked to
micromanage, no one realized he meant it literally. Not until the
critique of their blood samples landed in their inboxes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Being a hero is always easy. You see
danger, you run toward it. It takes a lot more to prevent the danger
in the first place.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If you hold a door open long enough, at
what point is it no longer a door?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Nothing is true. Nothing is permitted.
Those who believe otherwise have swallowed the lies that run the
world.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
"I have never met a fish that did
not wish to be a bird, and that is the nature of the world."</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Have you fed your Google today?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He snorts. “Near as I can tell, the
point of your religion is that if everyone goes well, your god did
it. And if things go wrong, it’s never the fault of your god. Must
be a nice gig if you can get it.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The prince realized that the asphalt
jungle was more dangerous that he had believed when he returned from
one quest to find someone has stolen the horn of his unicorn.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It would be interesting to call a
company and get their recorded message that someone will be with you,
but it does NOT claim they are getting an unusually high volume of
calls.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-60197952599581413572018-04-21T09:56:00.002-07:002018-04-21T09:56:46.361-07:00The Spy Who Came in from the Warmth<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The office was small, crammed between a
dentist and a lawyer in a strip mall. According to Langley, they
wanted to make sure my cover wasn’t blown. ‘We’re protecting
everyone in the field,’ is just government-speak to explain budget
cuts. As far as anyone else in the building knew, I did tele-sales
and some salesmen from the company visited me every so often.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The lawyer’s office was a front for
the KGB, of course, under whatever names they were using this year.
People act like the Cold War ended, when really it just paused for a
time as both sides repositioned their pawns. We only won because we
had more money. It’s never about ideolgy, only about pockets and
what’s in them.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I’m thinking about that when Schmidt
comes into my office. The heater hasn’t worked in three weeks. He’s
nursing a tan and looks like he should be sipping margaritas on a
beach. Which is what he was doing last week. I keep tabs on everyone
out in the field as much as I can.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Hollis. Buddy. Pal.” Schmidt
offers a full-watt smile to hide his confusion. “Word from above is
that I was called in?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There are issues in Russia,” I
say. Which is never a lie: there are always issues everywhere.
“Siberia.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I beg your pardon?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Your next posting. You’ll need to
brush up on your Russian, of course.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The smile wavers. “I’ve been in
deep cover for fifteen years in Costa –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We are aware. This is your next
assignment.”<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t understand?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It is Siberia or you work in this
office. You understand that, yes?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He looks about the tiny office, unable
to hide a shudder. “Replace you, here? I know four languages –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Six. But not Russian,” I say
flatly. “You’ll need to sell your clothing and buy winter gear.
Langley will send you details about the assignment and cover
shortly.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why? Why me, why this?” Schmidt
demands. “I came in from –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I smile. “No one cares about the
spies who come in from the warmth. Your extended vacation from real
work is over.”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He blinks. I hear teeth grind together.
“I see.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I doubt he does. But he will in time.
They all do.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t explain that his office will
be colder than mine. He’ll learn. He might even understand.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-80978597257219680242018-04-19T22:45:00.001-07:002018-04-19T22:45:21.441-07:00Perils of Questions<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Help me.” I said those words, or
something like them. I don’t remember.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
One moment there was a jungle. The next
another place, and another. I think I spoke like I did to Jia, on a
world I crashed on. Spoke in a way that couldn’t be ignored.
Survived a crash I shouldn’t have, survived her weapon firing
point-blank at me.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I think my parents lied to me. Their
sixteenth child. The one they took to Home, away from all galactic
technology, the one they said had one minor talent for knowing when I
was being lied to. I think they lied to everyone. They made me into a
weapon. But I don’t understand what kind.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Four steps. Four steps, and I stumble
through climates. Fall to my feet in tundra. I have no idea where I
am. There is ice, a sky devoid of visible stars, my breath turning
into crystals in the air. I should be freezing to death, perhaps
already dead, but there is warmth about me. Brought from another
place? Drawn from this one? I don’t know.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t know how to know.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I should be dead. This should not be
possible.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You don’t leave worlds by wishing
about it. Only that’s how I left home. Because the boy who was
sixteen and not from Home helped me save Home from desruction, said
he could offer a way out if I had to go. I said yes, in the end.
Ended up standing in a space station without ID, escaped a prison,
stole a spacecraft, crashed it. It happened. It makes no sense. But
it happened.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">What
is happening to me?” I scream. I must have screamed before, perhaps
when I was a child. If so, I don’t remember doing it. I say the
words again, with more force. And on the third time, my voice isn’t
quite my own: “</span><i>What is happening to me?</i><span style="font-style: normal;">”
booms out of me, not a request, not a cry but a demand. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I drop to my knees,
feeling as though I’d run between two villages from Home at a full
sprint. There is silence. I am slumped on frozen ice, and the wind
has fallen silent about me. Even the stars have gone silent. The
thought comes to me, but makes no sense. The sky here has no visible
stars. For one thing.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">Oh.”
There is a voice behind me. Soft. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I
stand, spin. The nameless boy I met at Home is standing behind me,
one hand raised up toward me in a warding gesture. He’s the one I
</span><i>knew</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was sixteen. The
first knowing what led to – to this? </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sixteen.”
There is no question in his naming of me. There is a sadness in his
eyes I have no words for.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<i>What have you done</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
to me?” My voice begins like it did, but the power – the force –
falls apart against him. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">I
didn’t mean to do anything.” His voice is very soft. His eyes are
too old for sixteen, but somehow for a moment his face is too young.
“I </span><span style="font-style: normal;">think –.” He walks
closer, circles me. “It has been a very long time, Sixteen, but I
think this was an accident.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“My name is Jay.
Jayseltosche, to some.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t move.
There are stories. About something so old and wonderful and terrible
that my parents thought such word the name of a weapon in some
forgotten war. That there exists nothing that could, for example, cut
a galaxy in half in a hurry to get to places. Destroy entire
hyperlane systems. Prevent the Verkonis war. There were too many
stories, and no one believed any of them. Not really. But we didn’t
disbelieve either, I think.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are holes in
the historical records where all the galactic datanets and
intergalactic weaves record one word: jaysome. That, and nothing
else.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">I
don’t understand.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">He
smiles. The smile is so gentle it almost makes me doubt every story.
“I am old, Sixteen. I do not age as humans do, and it has been a
very long time since I could let myself cause an accident, let alone
an oops. To not be in control, no matter how terrible or angry I was,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">was not a luxury I could
offer myself.” He lets out a breath. “But I think I did. It has
been a long time since the universe has needed magicians. And now you
are here.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The word magician
stops the silence. The world becomes just the world again about us.
But I fee cenered, somehow. More myself. “What does that mean?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It used to mean
many things. Now, I am not certain?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What does it
mean for you?”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jay laughs softly.
There is no cold at all; and I think that is more his laugh than
anything else now. “I think it means I needed a friend.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have no idea what
I am. Less idea what he did. But there is a yearning in him deeper
than anything I have known.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Oh.”<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know,” he
says, softer. “I’m sorry.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">For
needing a friend?”</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">I
have put this burden on you.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And words come.
There is a part of me that goes deeper than I understand. “Is
friendship a burden to you?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He steps back.
There is shock on his face. “No,” he says finally.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Good.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I don’t have
any other words, not against his grin. I don’t know what will come
of this, but I think it will be a peril unlike anything I can
understand.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I find myself
looking forward to it, without understanding why at all.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-65030203445957908792018-04-19T22:44:00.004-07:002018-04-19T22:44:43.853-07:00Perils of Travel<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They say that any crash you walk away
from is a good one. I have no idea who the ‘they’ in this are. I
have no idea what it means when the crash you walk away from was
impossible. Is impossible.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stagger free of wreckage.
Unscratched. Unscarred. In less than four days I have escaped Home,
possibly because of some weird entity I barely understand, escaped
prison at Osalax Station, stolen a semi-experimental spacecraft
capable of short-term space jumps from inside a station hangar
without damaging local space, survived piloting the ship while being
unable to properly access the controls and then surviving the sudden
inexplicable planetfall on...
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I had no idea where I was. A jungle, of
vast translucent blue leaves, yellow trunks and yellow-green moss at
the ground covering. Slightly spongey underfoot, the air smelling of
citrus. Ship had crashed here; I had no idea why. I had less idea how
I’d survived, unless some facet of ship had involved a shield
solely for the occupants.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Not being able to know that terrified
me. I’d spent most of my life with my parents at Home. One of the
least civilized worlds in several galaxies, by choice. There were
some medbots. Nothing else of modern technology able to enter or
leave the star system: everyone living there doing penance or hiding.
I knew enough about my parents to know they’d been doing both. I
was Sixteen: their last child, whose genetic gifts were intended for
other things than war. I know when people are lying to me. That’s
it, as far as I know.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And somehow Home stripped away the
ability to interface with technology. The entire galactic Net, the
deeper intergalatic Weave: the wealth of information and knowledge
and I had no way to interface with it. No one had ever left home
until me. All I know is that Home didn’t want to be forgotten. And
the alien on Home who helped me solve a murder promised a way off
home. And delivered.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Those were facts. What was also a fact
was that I should be dead. Sneaking off of Osalax Station could just
have been the universe owing me luck. Surviving the crash of Ship was
far beyond that, to say nothing of landing on a world with a
breathable atmosphere and nothing having tried to kill me yet. I walk
slowly through the jungle, and I can’t shake the feeling that the
trees are parting for me. That I’m being watched.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And something is pulling at me. A
feeling that isn’t a feeling as much as a need. Somethng is calling
me through alien jungle. I walk slowly. I should be dead. I am not
dead. I have no idea what is going on. Did my parents change me more
than they admitted? Did Home change me? The creature that let me
leave? I set each aside slowly as I walk, the forest giving way to
rolling green-brown hills and finally a small outpost. Human
settlement, at least in part, and a star port fit only for small
craft.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have basic clothing, nothing like a
weapon, no way to get information about the settlement. I take a deep
breath and walk slowly toward it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A girl emerges from a small house at
the edge of the settlement, spotting me. She has at least one weapon
and impact armour despite an age I’d estimate at ten. Barring
rejuvenation treatments of a more unusual nature. She walks toward me
as I stop, waving one hand in the air. Slows. Keeps walking, a small
energy pistol visible in one hand.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The scan isn’t working on you.
Why?” she snaps.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I shrug. “I have no idea. I could be
dead, but I rather think being dead would be more interesting.”<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She considers that, aiming the pistol
at my torso. “You have a name?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sixteen.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You’re not sixteen, are you?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I was my parents sixteenth child;
I’m seventeen, if you must know.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You seem older. I’m Jia.” The
girl puts her weapon away. “You from the crashed ship?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She looks me over, eyes narrowing. “And
alive without injury?” she mutters.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I can’t explain it either.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jia jumps. “You know Xiong?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I pause. She’s speaking her local
dialect; I definitely had no business knowing it, but I’m hearing
it as though it was galactic Standard. “... so it would seem.
Something very strange is going on.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I noticed.” And she draws her
weapon again, aims and fires at my chest.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I dive to the side at her movement; I’m
quick. My parents built that into me too, but the weapon still fires
and
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
something</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
the energy beam strikes my right
shoulder</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
only it does not
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
there is a deep smell of citrus, of
leaves, of forest about me</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
and the energy dissipates.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What was –.” Jia aims again.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<i>Stop</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.”
And she stops dead at the edge to my voice. I stand, slowly. Jia
doesn’t move, her eyes wide. I told her to stop, and she did. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I – move. Be
free?” I don’t think it’s the words as much as the intent, but
wind blows around us as though the world let out a breath.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Jia staggers back,
spins, and runs. Not firing at me again. Just running as fast as she
can toward her home.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I
don’t follow. I have no idea what is going on. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Forests
don’t protect random people. And I’d have wagered good credits
that Jia didn’t have anywhere near enough tech in her for someone
to take over her body like that. I don’t know what I did. I walk
back toward the forest. This isn’t safe. Whatever is happening is
real, but can’t be real. Shouldn’t be real. I spoke, and it
wasn’t Jia. It was as though the world was listening to me. As
though it is, all around me. Waiting. Observing.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Needing.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Wanting.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But I have no idea
what it wants. And no clue how to help it.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How do you help
anyone when you have no idea what is happening to you?</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-64705626484420095832018-04-19T22:43:00.003-07:002018-04-19T22:43:58.453-07:00Perils of Freedom<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Prisoner 8246937-003519. State your
name, species, place of origin, egress and destination.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sixteen. Human. Unknown. Home.
Unknown.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is silence after that. The cell
is small, ten by twelve paces, a bed with a toilet and sink
underneath. Everything is sterile and empty. This is the first time
that I have been a prisoner, or in a prison at all. I pace the cell,
trying hard not to think about how long the number had been.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Osalax Station began life as a rogue
planet converted into the largest space station I knew of. I am at
least two galaxies away from Home. I try not to think about that
either. I told my parents I was leaving, but they didn’t believe
me. No one leaves Home. No one left Home, they will have to say now.
Or just presume me dead.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The room flickers a pale white.
“Medical scan inconclusive; subject inconclusive,” the
Intelligence says.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I blink. I have no idea what that
means.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
More time passes. An entity enters my
cell. Some form of liquid synth they scans the room before departing.
A human arrives some time later: male, military body, into a fourth
or fifth rejuvenation treatment. He looks to be about sixty but is at
least four times that age. No weapons; a single thought would be
enough to cause the cell to deal with me.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Interesting,” he says in a tone
that speaks mostly of annoyance. “Home. Designated an aggressively
low-tech world. No spacecraft can enter that solar system, transit to
the world is via a relay junction on the moon and is only one-way. It
is the last refuge of those who flee the wider universe for one
reason or another. It is not possible to leave.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I did.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“How?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I don’t know.” I don’t know
the stranger’s name, what he put inside me. How it removed me from
Home. I just know I’m here, far away from the world I knew. Without
aid, without currency, with only basic clothing and a knife made of
terraformed rock. I have genetic tricks, thanks to my parents.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Very well. Come with me.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Am I free?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes,” he lies. One of those tricks
is knowing when I’m being lied to. Another is being naturally
gifted in survival.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Which is why I follow him into the
hallway and he’s on the ground and unconscious moments later. It
helps that he didn’t expect it. And that the cameras don’t seem
able to find me. I run down a hallway, cells beyond the wall locked
and hidden, find an open door, another, and step onto a concourse. A
hundred species mingle and rush about, voices shouting commands –
mostly in galactic Standard – and the rush freezes me for a moment.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I don’t think I’ve seen this many
people in my life. I shake the thought away, reach. I don’t have
any implants in me: no one can, and be part of Home. Nothing happens.
I move into the crowd, one body among many. the cell I was in was
definitely low security to be this close to any thoroughfare. I was
very young when my parents took me to Home, but it doesn’t take
long to find working kiosk and enter it. Not all species can or will
use implants, so a kiosk is a free means of contacting the galactic
Network.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I try for times. Unrecognized user.
Other errors. Like the Intelligence in the cell. Home did something
to me. Or the stranger who let me travel here instead? I have no
idea. I try to picture surviving in any galaxy without access to a
Network and shiver, force myself to exit the pale blue kiosk.
Breathe.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This is the first time that I have been
free. And somehow that extends to being free from the Network. From
that data. From all that information. I take a deep breath. Another.
Begin to walk. Somehow walking helps. I move toward the nearest
hangar bay, judging it based on traffic and presumed pilots. I need
to leave Osalax Station. I know that much, and somehow it’s as if
my own need is directly me. Another gift from my parents, proof they
knew what Home would do us? I don’t know. I just walk, and find a
small shuttle craft. Golden trim, black body, small wings, a
surprisingly large engine. The kind of craft designed to jump only a
few systems, but the engines look too advanced for basic jumps.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It’s even turned on and empty. The
kind of luck one only finds in stories.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The craft opens a door. I step inside.
No strange stranger. Certainly not my parents. The craft sits one
pilot, one navigator, space for two crew to sleep and talk.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Prep a jump two sectors away,” I
say.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Welcome, captain. Please identify
yourself.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Sixteen.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Identity noted. Jump prepped. Do you
wish us to engage?”<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I blink. “We need to clear a course
with Osalax Station, move away from it –.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The ship rocks a little under my feet.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Jump complete,” the ship’s calm
voice says.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stare out of the screens that appear
before me. A spaceship that can jump from <i>within</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
a space station and not kill everyone inside. It explains the engines
a little bit. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Ship. Why am I
the pilot?”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You asked to be
let on board. And you seemed nice.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">That
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">not</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
how anything happens. Can you see me?”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Only if you wish
me to? It is quite confusing.”
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I sit
in the pilots chair, my forehead starting to ache no matter how hard
I rub my temples. I begin thinking of every way I know to find out if
this is a simulation and break out of it. No one just escapes a
prison by being invisible to the warden, finds a turned on
experimental spaceship, becomes the pilot of it and simply escapes
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Osalax Station. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">T</span><span style="font-style: normal;">hat
doesn’t happen.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Except it did.
Every attempt to prove this is simulation breaks, leaving me only
with truth that makes no sense at all.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I ask
ship to land on the nearest inhabited world. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">The
headache begins to fade. Making choices helps. I can’t connect to
the Networks at all, but even so I can’t shake the feeling there is
something wrong with this world.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hated Home. I
hate being a stranger to myself even more.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If this is a
simulation, I’m terrified of how good it is.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19035617.post-19719879783623951762018-04-19T22:42:00.001-07:002018-04-19T22:42:57.369-07:00Perils of Home<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hate it here. I understand why we’re
here: the Noise Plague, the Collider Wars. People’s implants
driving them insane, the biotech nightmares that melted organics into
each other. I’ve lost relatives I’ve never met, saw vids of what
happened. I’m the last of sixteen siblings. My parents saw whole
worlds melt into darkness.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But I still hate Home. No other name,
no other designations. No space port. An automated satellite on the
second moon transits people down to the world. And that’s it. No
implants. No modern tech. No premodern tech. No data feeds.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The only modern tech in Home is the
tech that keeps tech from working, the medbots for major injuries and
drugs. There is a transit system outside the solar system. It, to the
moon, to Home. No space craft can exit subspace near Home, let alone
fly through the solar system. No way in, and no way out.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Home has been billed as an experiment
in primitive culture. Probably because that sounds better than Hell.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Everyone else is old and war-worn. Some
were relieved to lose their implants. I can’t understand that, even
if I believe them. There are galaxies of data flowing through the
universe. But here we are deaf and blind to all of it. Out there is
everything. Everything.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are farms here. Nothing as good
at the vat grown food on Ios 4. Hours of work just to eat. I’ve
been told that people starved in the early days of Home centuries
ago. As if that should surprise me. The day is cold and I’m walking
home through the brush from helping clear fields. We don’t even
have machines for that. For medicine, but only just.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My father comes out of the house.
Shouting my name, in Home and galactic Standard. It’s not a rule
that no one uses Standard here, but it is. I don’t need an implant
to know he’s scared. I shout his name – in Home – and he spins
to see me. He orders me inside.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I follow. Mom is sitting at our table,
the glowlight ceiling making her face a ghost.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The –.” Mom gathers herself.
“The medbots were destroyed today. The ones in Riverest. And every
other town in comm range over the last week. No one knows who. Or
why. Or how.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“But we are dead. Without them.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Others died defending them, we
think. We worried –.” Dad adds nothing else. I visit the medbots
more the I need to; they remind me of better times. Better worlds.
Our old life.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Toram asked for you. To examine
them. If you will?” Mom asks wen Dad remains silent.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I blink. I know of Toram, who is old
and travels the towns rather than staying in any single one. We’ve
barely met. “Me?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Do you remember when you beat up the
Cof boy?”
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“He lied about stealing a pie. He
blamed me.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes. And you were certain he had
lied. It is a – generic gift you have. Nothing implanted. Nothing
intended for war. But you see more than others do. Your other
siblings had... other talents; you were the first with ones not
suited to war. There is an urgency to this; we will explain later?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I nod. I have a knife I carved from
terraformed bedrock in my room. A magnifying glass I won in a bet. I
take some rope and string as well heading out after at an easy run.
The villages have an old communication system for emergencies, but
even it is often broken. As a result, running is common enough that
the paths are plenty and even. I break into a faster run. Not just to
reach the medbots, but to escape questions.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Ten steps, twenty, by the time I can no
longer see our house I fall into the rhythm and slip out of it as I
reach our town. It has two medbots, as most towns do. They repair
each other, broken bones, damaged organs, offer advice. You can die
if you don’t reach them quickly, and they can do nothing against
age or some diseases. Some have been damaged because they couldn’t
heal or fix things, but destruction on this level – aimed at all
medbots – I do not have words for it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hate it here. But not that much. Not
enough to kill everyone else. Never that; there are limits even to
hatred.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I pass empty fields and shuttered
homes, the village of Riverest being quieter than I have ever known.
The medbots had their own small building on the south end of the
town, a dome of pale stone to distinguish it. All medbots have such
buildings in every town, so everyone can find healing if they seek
it. No one ever thought that would be a danger, because even in the
spats and battles that can occur no on wishes to remove such vital
aid from the world. Until now.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is no sign of Toram. No one has
been left on guard at the medbots building, I think, until I hear
movement inside. I draw my knife, push open the door.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The man standing inside the room is not
Toram. He is sixteen, crouched down beside some of the remains of
medbot 1. He has no weapons, but I don’t put my knife away. It
isn’t much, my knife, but holding it is a small comfort as I take
in the ruins of the room. The room has four tables for patients, of
differing sizes. Cupboards along walls with supplies, a couple of
storage shelves for spare parts so the medbots can repair each other
if something breaks down. The tables are fine. Even the cupboards are
mostly fine. But the two medbots have been torn apart, sliced through
and scattered into hundreds of pieces.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Thoughts?” The young man doesn’t
stand, sifting carefully through the remains of a chassis with bare
hands.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I put my knife away, fingers shaking.
“A blade. I have a terraform knife. It might pierce one, but never
slash like that. It would take decades to make a working sword of
terraformed bedrock that would work and cut through a medbot. To do
it fast enough to avoid alarms: that I do not understand.” He does
not respond. “Who are you?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“From another town. Not the killer.”
The stranger chuckles. I believe him. He doesn’t lie. Not that he
can’t, but he doesn’t.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why don’t you lie?” The words
slip out before I can stop them. “Everyone else does.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Because I gain nothing from lies.
And I am strong enough to bear the truth.” His smile is a flash of
gentle humour, gone as his gaze flicks back to the medbots. “There
are fifty villages on this continent. Over thirty have lost their
medbots now. What does that mean?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“More deaths from injury. But many
die from injury even with the medbots. More will die without drugs to
help them.” My parents sometimes take those to sleep. Other people
take different ones. Home is the last place one goes to, for many
different reasons.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There were store houses that
contained seeds of those drugs in case they needed to be planted;
they have all been destroyed.” The stranger stands.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“We never planted such things?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“They can have uses other than
healing, as I understand it.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“… and that is reason to deny them?
To destroy them?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I would think not but often
destruction only seeks to destroy. Nothing grater, for all its
proponents claim.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Who is doing this?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The stranger doesn’t reply but I
catch a glimpse of movement behind me. I spin, knife in hand, find
myself facing Tomar. He is the oldest person in the surrounding
towns. All white hair, bone and sinew with eyes like a frozen lake. I
know of him more that know him – he travels, belonging nowhere, and
I find myself lowering my knife without sheathing it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You I know of –.” His gaze
flicks to the stranger. “You, I do not.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why did you ask for me? I do not
know you,” I press.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You do not know me?” He looks –
no, he is genuinely offended.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I know you are old and travel
through the towns?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Children.” He sighs. “Who do you
think allowed you access to the medbots when you did not need to be
healed? Do you think this kind of access is given lightly?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“What?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“You <i>see</i> things, boy. I
expected you to see how useless – how dangerous – that medbots
are to Home. How they corrupt what Home was meant to be. You have a
knife that could cut a medbot: you were expected to join me!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That’s when I realize why I haven’t
put my blade away. Why I’ve been facing him tensely this entire
time. “I saw. I am new at this. I saw, but did not perceive.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tomar has murdered medbots. People are
something else. That’s what I think as I move, but the old man
steps aside. I’m young and fast. Age and experience best that every
time. He has a sword seemingly pulled from thin air, making one
movement for every four I do.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am not like the rest of my siblings
were, I think, but I was still bred for survival. Every movement is
as natural as breathing; but Tomar is simply better.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I slip on a piece of medbot. Luck beats
genetics I have time to think my parents would be ashamed of me, and
then the blade stops.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Somehow, I had almost forgot about the
stranger.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tomar’s blade is sharper than my
knife. But the stranger has caught it between his fingers. And yanks
it out of Tomar’s grip, throwing it across the room with a grace
that puts the entire fight we had to shame.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Who? What are you?” Tomar demands.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Just another person who was seeking
peace at Home.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Impossible! I was one of the first
settlers! I have access to the records of everyone!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And you should not. You came here
with DNA that has kept you alive for centuries. And all you have done
with what was given to you is abuse it. You drown in nostalgia for a
past that never was and you call yourself just? You destroy lives and
think it justified? You think power makes you justice. But it never
does. There is perhaps some justice to be found with power, but never
any kindness.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I alone know what Home was meant to
me,” Tomar snarls. “I cannot count on one hand the number of
hopes I have lost, nor name how many dreams I have seen wither and
rot. I swore Home would not be like them. Home will be free if I must
unmake everything to ensure that comes to pass!”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Everything means more than you think
it does. It has always been so. And everything changes to mean what
you did not intend.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tomar yells a word, and the sword moves
through the air toward his hand. And then then it isn’t, gone
between moments.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“I imagine many trusted you, that no
one blamed you for this.” The stranger stares at Tomar without any
expression I can discern.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tomar’s eyes widen. “You are
sixteen,” he breathes, staring at the stranger. There is a truth
bubbling from him, words seeking expulsion into truth.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Yes.” And Tomar vanishes. Here one
moment, gone the next.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I turn to the stranger slowly, hands
far from my own fallen knife. “... You did that. To him, to the
sword. How?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“There are technologies older than
those that protect Home.” That is true, but not the whole truth.
The stranger lets out a tired sigh. “His body will be found in a
field. A casualty of the lack of medbots. People have a right to
mourn even monsters, after all.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Tomar wanted me dead.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Or joining him. He knew you’d be
asked to look into it, and you’d eventually find him out. He didn’t
expect me to be here. I liked being here. Home is – quiet.” The
stranger gestures, and the air in front of him becomes a hole leading
somewhere else.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I make a sound.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He looks at me. There is a weight
inside me that wasn’t there before. “When you need to leave,
concentrate only on that and I will come back for you. I dare not fix
the medbots. I cannot help Home without destroying it.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Why me?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Because your name is Sixteen,” he
says softly. “And because I recognize the look in your eyes. There
must be a way to escape even paradise, or it is never that at all.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And the stranger steps through the
whole he made and is gone.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I am left alone, to try and explain
some version of the truth. I walk back outside slowly, begin walking
toward home. Decide on the story I am going to tell.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I hate it here. But I won’t be here
forever now. And that helps so much more than I have words for at
all.</div>
alcarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14929849073911012353noreply@blogger.com0