“But think about it,” says Hedy Lamarr. “Torpedoes you can steer, by radio, immune to jamming–”
“Sure, sure,” says Mr. National Inventors Council.
“It hops frequencies based on player piano rolls! How steampunk awesome is that!”
“Listen, sweetheart, if your husband put your name on the patent too then that’s awful nice of him,” says Mr. National Inventors Council. “But howzabout you put that pretty face to work and do War Bond fund-raiser instead?”
“Dick,” says Hedy Lamarr.
Then she goes out and raises seven million dollars in one night, which in 1941 is supervillain money (seriously, look it up).
Only men can join the Guild of Tailors. Only women can be Mechanists, and to trade their secrets is ugly death. When Swan binds her breasts and queues her hair each morning, and when her sister Fei-Li helps with the Automated Seamstress by night, they are playing with knives.
Most people can handle two blades. It’s juggling three that gets you cut.
Lon Lao is sharp and always laughing; Swan keeps him close, as one does with rivals. She worries when she feels his following eyes as they part at dusk.
Fei-Li’s eyes in the window follow him back.
To hack the Nameless you need a Beowulf cluster, a circle in stone, two kilometers of copper wire and a serious disregard for your own safety. That’s just the basic setup, though, and in the last couple years Tach and Ashlock have kitted it out: inscriptions in slippery languages, a hotswap drive rack, staves and amulets and six monitors scrolling green on black.
All of it fails one night on a simple run for Kirrily’s money laundry. Ashlock loses a finger; Tach loses a year of his life. And in return, they get a number that wants to kill them both.
Juno’s family would most likely be cool if they were to unearth her habit; they’re neither pious nor hypocritical, and anyway, they like her. Mom would want assurances of her health and safety. Frewin might recommend a counselor.
But addiction runs sweetest on the engine of shame.
Thus secrecy, careful systems, the constriction of her heart when someone’s been poking around her room. It’s only when she knows the house is asleep or empty that she can bring out her box, her relics and the little black hagiograph.
Veneration is ecstasy. Juno surrenders to glossolalia, pillow bunched hard against her mouth.
Every Thursday, the Inhuman Resources Department shuffles in to remove the hated printer and replace it with one that is, in some unique and specific way, worse. The test page is a ritual of dread.
“It can’t be as bad,” says Pippa, “as the invisible ink cartridge.”
“Or the two-in-one, with the crosscut shredder–”
“It doesn’t print capital letters,” says Railyn, examining the results in slow horror.
“HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO MAKE MEETING TRANSCRIPTS?” frets GLARTH.
“What kind of idiots wouldn’t test that?” Railyn shrieks.
“Idiots? Please,” says Pippa. “Only a genius could only produce such fresh hells.”
This guy Iakob has had a bad day: the girl’s enforcer crippled him and dragged off his boss in a dynamite undershirt, and Hidebound must have followed to torture said boss’s whereabouts from him. This would explain why the Vulpine Phalanger finds him huddled over the toilet, choking and snorting.
“You know why I’m here, right?” she says gently.
He shudders and nods, but something’s wrong: a chink of metal on porcelain. He’s cuffed here. A reflection, in the bowl, of something white and doughy wired into his mouth.
Three steps; the blast hits. The Vulpine Phalanger tastes blood and darkness.
Murdock Vermilion exits adolescence better suited by name to be a wizard’s apprentice than to parking lot attendantship, or indeed any name-tagged position. She refrains from cursing her parents for this only because they are already cursed to a sufficient degree.
Yet more problematic for Murdock is the punishing lack of depth perception afforded via refusal to wear broken glasses. Parking by feel turns out to be rather a faux pas. Thus, one brisk midnight in November, she finds herself in disemploy and a black mood.
Note that Murdock Vermilion does not become a wizard’s apprentice.
Wizards are not real.
SWM should stop trying bars while Cirque du Soleil is in town.
“Yeah, I’m a web developer,” he says, nails buffed mirror-bright. “Mostly sites that work on your iPhone, y’know?”
“Can I see one?” says the only SF who’s shown interest all night.
“Sure! As soon as I get an iPhone–”
“Gut evening,” says Jorma, stepping in as smooth as butterscotch. “I speak three languages. I have traveled to feefty countries. My body is perfect, and I can fly.”
SWM opens his mouth. They’re gone.
“Need anything, sir?” says the kind bartender.
“Another Rogers,” SWM sighs, “heavy on the Roy.”