They’re fighting dogs in the bathroom of the Bank of England, and Secretary Grahame as usual turns a blind–no, he can’t quite think that. A deaf ear. A numb tongue.
Thus willfully distanced, Kenneth doesn’t squint when the lunatic in the lobby offers him a scroll tied with two ribbons. He just plucks the black one. The scroll opens to unspeakable inscriptions: dead gods and blood, infinity, the roiling despair of–
Water. They’re subduing the lunatic with a firehose; Kenneth crouches behind a chair, shaking, unharmed.
Later he quits and writes The Wind in the Willows (seriously, look it up).
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
It’s harder to see magic in winter, Skroder knows, when space heaters and furnace-vents have their own floating hazes to compete with the ripples in the air of sorcery at work. Neither the wine nor the candle-dim helps.
“Look, Harkins has seen Saigon. We haven’t,” says Albion, earnestly turtlenecked. “If we don’t intervene–”
“Which ‘we’ is that?” murmurs Erske.
Albion flushes, but Skroder steps in. “Well, that’s a good point. ‘We’ Americans or ‘we’ Adepts? Imagine bringing a mass invocation to bear on the insurgency.”
“Are you sure,” says Erske, “nobody has already?” Her tongue shimmers like a summertime road.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The best part about writing the college paper’s semiannual satire issue used to be that you got the last word in any one argument of your choice, but that was before Tack and Christiane were both on staff.
He starts it with Latin Useless, Argues Student Exempt from Medicine, Law, but she catches it in layout and slips in Foreign Language Dept. Deserves Expansion, Maintains Klingonophone.
Art History Jobs Still Desperate for Applicants, he retorts.
Op-Ed, she snaps. My Mass-Produced Che Guevara Poster Makes Me a Rebel!
Noted Local Feminist Demonstrates Sisterly Affection at Frat Party
Douchebag Somehow Full of Shit
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
In the ten years between the great fire that burns down the first palace at Christiansborg and the commencement of construction on the second, Torsten and Janne move in. The idea is good and obvious enough that they’re not the only squatters.
Janne’s home, and Torsten’s, went up in a larger and less celebrated conflagration. The hollowed-out wing leaks, but it keeps the rain off. There is this about the homes of the wealthy: they can be considered ruins even when there’s still a roof.
Ninety years later, the second palace burns down too. You’d think they’d stop using wooden stovepipes.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The nurse leaves work at five o’clock and docks in the maintenance conveyor, shuddering down the shaft to land in repair bay nine. Airbrushes touch up its smiling teeth; a pressure gauge ascertains the pneumatic firmness of RealFeel buttocks.
“Is maintenance necessary?” it queries. “This unit has not seen patients for six hundred cycles.”
“Unit is emergency-response. Priority one,” says the bay primly. “Maintenance complete.”
The nurse shuttles out, replaced by a struggling man in the conveyor’s pincers. “I’m not a robot!” he shrieks. “Stop trying to maintain me!”
“Begin wipe/reinstall,” sighs the bay, as the RealFeel gauge drives home.
Friday, September 18, 2009
“It’s an easy mistake, and forgivable,” says Cote, “thinking there are other places.”
“The evidence is pretty strong,” murmurs Ballard.
“But it’s all flawed evidence, because it comes through your senses—your own personal 3D rendering system. And that system needs loading zones. Ever notice that when you take fast transportation, you spend a long time in a tiny tube with a bland image out the windows?”
“You mean clouds?”
“Planes, trains, the identical corridors between doors in Doom,” says Cote. “All serving the same purpose.”
“Is that why the suburbs seem to have so few polygons?”
“Be nice,” she says.
Monday, September 21, 2009
“AEIOU,” Cheyenne rattles off, but a couple of those miss the mark and so the scaffold forms quickly.
“Come on,” says Butler, glaring at her. “Never guess U!”
“You go then.”
“RST. Shit. L. Shit! N? F!” Butler’s sprung a prompt sweat: the lucky guess there at the end saves him a little dignity, but they’re running out of chances.
“FAEOO,” mutters Cheyenne dourly. “Hmm. K?”
“Never guess–” Butler starts, but it’s a jackpot: FAEOOK.
“We can do this,” says Cheyenne. “P? Oh no–”
Neck in the noose, breath shallow, their prisoner waits for the feet that will snap his neck.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009