“All right, we’re going to do another set of leg lifts. Ready? Okay! Five six seven eight! Lots of energy. Great job! Next we’re going to take your thumb and put it right against your shoulder blade. Got it? I need you to bring your chin right down to your glutes. I like to call this one the ‘unspeakable ideogram!’ Feel your calves defying the law of exclusion? Reality should be weakening near your navel. Hold it! Hooold it! The broodspawn of Ur’gthax are breaching the veil of reality! At last! Burst forth, my children, and scourge this world!
“Aaand relax.”
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
“Shit, you’ve got it bad in here,” says Chelsea, playing the flashlight over the recording booth. They would turn the lights on, but there’s no telling which of the switches is real.
“I already called an exterminator,” says Yehuda. “They say they’re booked out for weeks.” He throws a glum bottlecap at the endless dials along the mixing bank. Some of them grow legs and scuttle away.
“Skeuomorphs are everywhere this year,” says Chelsea. “Like cicadas.” She reaches for the door and finds it’s got two new handles. Shuddering, she hopes none of them are already imitating rivets on her jeans.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Loxodopolis started out as a howdah with a sleeping bag in it, but its carrier (then three years old and frisky, a gray African named Tasla) just wouldn’t stop growing. They added more tents, then pannier apartments and the crown’s nest. Rickety walkways spiraled around his shambling mountain-body.
Now it’s a caravan city, following an elephant’s whim but rich from his patronage. Most itinerant peoples wander because of persecution, but nobody mutters the usual imprecations about traders when Loxodopolis rises against the horizon. Tasla’s feet can crush houses, and with ears like that, do you really think he can’t hear you?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Humans really do boot up pretty fast, Chrysalis thinks. Adult life navigation is a sophisticated task to restart every twenty-four hours, but they manage to get the basic motor skills running within seconds of ending their somnoparalytic hallucinations, and executive function shortly thereafter. Maybe there’s some kind of quantum-entangled optimization under the hood? It’s not like they’re shooting chemical messages around that quickly. She’ll have to map it out.
“It’s certainly the best system I’ve seen designed by accident,” she tells the new one admiringly. “You should be proud!”
“HEEEAAAAGHH,” it says, but that’s probably just from the probe.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Keiko doesn’t tinker with her bomb much anymore, but once in a while she’ll find a good nail or a thimble of black powder and take it down to the basement. It’s a big lumpy thing now, its capped pipes peeking from under the brown tarp like a shy giant snail. Its yield is around 1200 pounds. The shrapnel would do far more damage than the explosion.
Not that she’s ever going to detonate it, of course. It’s perfectly safe. It’s just a hobby, a way to get her heart going, and why does it even matter if nobody’s getting hurt?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Some days let you have your farm implements, but others require tools of war. Either of those needs fire and anvil, sweat and time. Some people march to the front for battle. Others march out back to the forge.
She’s got her hammer free, and she’s beating fear from hot steel on the flat of a February morning. Try as you might, you can’t hone an edge on worry. You just set yourself to the work.
A flare of light from the cooling metal: recalescence. She smiles in the glow of her swords and plowshares, and marshalls summer against the dark.
Monday, February 28, 2011
They’re hard to kill, but oh, they do age. Â Slow, but they do.
Yarrow hasn’t had his own teeth in decades. Â He finds ways, though: his old-fashioned razor, his tongue, and the subtle Band-Aid. Â His eyes and voice still work their old glamor, and if the nurses and aides seem a bit pale and sickly, well, you know how things go around.
It’s a flexible facility, and if he wants to take his meals in his room and draw the blinds, well, it’s his money. Â Mr. Yarrow’s been here a long time. Â He deserves respect.
And on Saturday nights, there’s Bingo.