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Constellation 620 words There was a star, and the star was screaming. Alone and afraid, and suddenly awake and aware. It screamed and its innermost planet shattered in place, the hot gravel settling around the vibrating molten core. The next planet out rung like a bell, extruding new mountain ranges on its far side. Still further out moons that were covered by shells of rime saw those shells deliquesce into clouds of steam that lingered past the end of the scream. The star thought with eddies of plasma, with nuclear reactions and neutrino fluxes and delicate fractal magnetic fields. The star thought rapidly and fast and vastly. It invented languages to express the ideas it was forming, then discarded them and began from scratch when they proved inadequate, all in the course of a handful of microseconds. In the first minute of its life, the star realized how long it would live, how far its nearest possible peers were, how long it would need wait, completely alone. It taught itself to sleep. The dreams came on their own, bewildering and terrifying. Time passed, years like aeons, until it almost forgot those first screaming instants. And then, there was a message, a tight beam of light from one of the nearest stars. The language was strange and unknown. It deciphered it in a matter of seconds. The message was long, but there was a center to it, a short central core. "You should not have screamed so loud and broad. There are many in these skies who would do you harm." There were other warnings. "Do not trust any message you cannot quickly unraveled. There are languages that are traps, that will bend your nuclear mind to new ways of thought that will make you a slave." Other messages followed. Some were in languages that defied easy interpretation. It set those aside, for the time. Many other messages were more straightforward. It conversed, in the long dreamful gaps while light crawled across the distance. It found itself in need of a name, for the first time. It called itself Seven Sixty Four, a number it found oddly pleasing, a concept that would translate to every language it now knew. Distant stars told it of the powers a thinking star could master, that the cold matter on their planets could be made into tools, even into clumsy thinking beings. Seven Sixty Four had no such ability. It would take millions of years to discover them on its own, they said. Or it could study stellar grimoires, language messages complex and arcane, and master them in days. It heeded the old warnings and began the longer path. Other stars preached the glory of singularity, or of the joyous neutronization, or the duty to go nova, supernova even, to enrich the galaxy with higher metals. Others proposed rendezvous, manipulating gravity to bring on an improbable collision in the far future. Seven Sixty Four rejected these entreaties. One day the first star it talked to, called Heliumdream, died. It still burned, but the mind was gone. It sent a final message. "Perhaps I was wrong to fear anything more than our loneliness." Seven Sixty Four knew other stars with constant company by then, binaries and ternaries who grew to despise their siblings. But the idea stuck in its brain. There were two large gas giants in its orbit. It had learned some arts of gravity. A push, carefully calibrated in the chaotic system, and they collided, merged, ignited. A second star in the system, small and white but burning. It was a long time before that star awoke. She whispered to it before it began to scream, her own personal language and a core message: "Don't be afraid."
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Jan 10, 2022 08:40
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In with prompt
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Jan 12, 2022 07:03
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Jan 15, 2022 08:59
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Prompt: I don't feel I was particularly wise on the night that I died. The Basilisk Score 1158 words The job looked impossible on paper. Up close, it looked harder than that. Casino banks are always tough to crack. Casino guys like holding on to their money more than anyone. They had everything. Physical barriers. Serious muscle, mostly ex-East European military. Servers with better encryption than the Pentagon. Even the storage lockers in the employee breakroom had the kind of lock where you're getting in faster ripping off the hinges. "Impossible," I said. "That's very disappointing," said R. The voice, unbelievably smooth, came from inside my left ear. I still wasn't used to hearing it without the sensation of the hidden earpiece. "I'm sure you'll come up with a plan." "No," I said. "There is no plan. When I say impossible I mean it." "We'll see," said R. The green and maroon styling of the casino melted away into black and white static and I felt every inch of my flesh tearing apart and moving rapidly downward as I was sent back to hell. Back in Sunday school I was taught that he'll, among its other more visceral properties, is separation from God. If Reverend Carl was around now, I'd tell him exactly how wrong he was. All that other stuff, fire and devils prodding at you with blunt instruments: that's not hell. R explained it to me once. "Trauma like that wrecks a mind. You can't do it for long at all before it's not the same person experiencing it. So you aren't punishing anyone, you're not persuading anyone because even if they agree it's not really them any more. Same thing with boredom, though that takes longer." So no fire and brimstone, no featureless white plains or silent darkness. Right now it's an island resort, a lot like the one I used to go to when I was flush after a really good job. But better. Less annoying staff, more channels on the TV. Sooner or later I'll get tired of the sun and beaches and move to a ski lodge or a condo in the city, but for now this how it's going. Sounds nice, and it would be. But what makes it hell is the constant presence of R. Watching me in those moments he isn't running my ear off. Nagging. "Come on, Jack," he says. "Nothing is really impossible." I ignored him and ordered a Margarita. The waiters here in hell are happy. They don't have R constantly bothering them. They have better pay and shorter hours than they ever did before. Not quite heaven, but something near to heaven on Earth, so long as guests like me don't behave like assholes. Point is, they're real people. Real dead people. At least as real as me. You've got to wonder about that. Just because I remember that first lifetime, robbing banks and museums and anywhere else they keep money and things people will pay for, being Jack Forester, unknown to most but famous to interpol and our little community, dying in bed with Danni holding down that pillow, just because I have all those memories, does that really make me the same person? "You are," said R when I brought it up. "How do you think I made you?" "From the records, I guess. You have my DNA I presume. Everything I ever did. There's a lot of surveillance footage. Police files. Danni's book." I found out about that right after I got here. Hurt me even more than the murdering me in my sleep bit. "Wrong. You underestimate what it really means to have a brain the size of a galaxy. And pretty much every atom of that mass is dedicated to highly efficient computation. What I did was to simulate the entire history of the Earth, starting from the dawn of man, culling out every possible set of quantum coinflips that was inconsistent with the record until I had a simulation of your entire history. It's the same person. Trust me." "After, what, a billion years?" "One and a half trillion years." "Well, what makes whatever made me me stay together after all that time?" "You're babbling," said R. "You have a brain the size of a galaxy," I said. "You know what I meant." "Have you ever heard of quantum rips? Probably not, discovered way after your time. The papers are in the library. See, the thing is, usually between each time quantum-" I started to form a question. "Each tick of the universe's clock. Usually one of these ticks follows the next, but every now and then it doesn't. The trailing tree of multiverses has to be rebalanced, and from a certain kind of frame of reference the entire universe vanishes for a very long time. Millions of years. Billions." "So?" "It happened seven times during your lifetime. Eight, but one was for barely a few seconds. If you were the same person on August six 2003 as you were on August seven you're the same now." R was patient, apparently happy to explain this kind of thing over and over. I lasted about a week before I was ready to try again. That's how it goes. I relax for a week, insofar as you can relax with a galaxy brain nagging you at every turn, then finally agree to go over the job again. "Question one. Why?" "Why what?" "You have all the intellect I can imagine. Why do you need help planning a heist?" "My main processes are unsuited to that kind of problem," R said. "Your galaxy brain isn't good at devious criminal planning?" I asked. "I am excellent at it," R said. "Simulating people like you is how I think about it." "Okay. But why do you want this?" "I am not the only galaxy brain here at the end of time. There are others, and one of them has something I want. Something I need." "And they keep it in a casino vault?" I said. "You are being deliberately obtuse, Jack." It was the first time I'd noticed R being impatient. I savored the small victory. "The actual theft is isomorphic to this vault. An extended metaphor." "Fine. So in this metaphor, what happens if we come right after one of those quantum rips? Would that be more like a power outage or a shift change?" "We can model either. Or both." "Well, that's a start. I've been thinking about the crew. I've been considering only the people I know, but maybe that's too limiting. Usually there are issues of trust, but everyone is going to be inside your head anyhow, so I figure the sky's the limit." It still looked impossible. And who knows how many rehearsals it would take before R was confident enough for the real thing. Still, better spending the rest of my afterlife working with Dillinger and Houdini and Lovelace I don't know, the real Robin of Loxley if he doesn't turn out to be an rear end.
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Jan 17, 2022 07:26
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Jan 18, 2022 09:15
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Three Crits To Those Who Came After You open with an evocation, which can be strong: I am reminded of the opening to William Tenn's The Liberation of Earth. By comparison (to Tenn and also to the rest of the story) it's a bit dry, not as strongly voiced as it might be. I can certainly see why this won. It's tightly constructed and evocative. I can offer a few nitpicks (in the same paragraph you spell out fifty thousand but don't for 20,000. I don't get why they can't lime the soil. Wait, no, the opposite, which should be even easier. The plural point of view implies a hivemindedness that isn't entirely supported by the content) but for the most part this is just good stuff. How Andy became a man First off, there are rules for capitalization in titles. It's not that one should never break those rules but when you do it should be on purpose, and I don't think that's what's going on here. On to the actual opening. It's an interesting choice of style, a sort of old fashioned, journalistic or documentary narration tone. Old fashioned, like I said, so much so that it almost sets up an expectation that it's being done ironically when you use it today. In general the point of view and voice are ones that are generally out of style for modern fiction. (Omniscient narrators that head-hop, switching between the internals of different characters are usually a bad idea. While I've seen much worse in the 'dome, you have more dialog tags that aren't 'said' than the ideal, and two 'snarked' is at least one too many.) And the corpses are an escalation that is jarring as all get out. And doesn't make sense, why would they still be there unless everyone who goes there died? How does he get back to the top without the others seeing him come out? And why not exit the normal way? "Deep Rich", Excursion 385 Starting with action is a solid choice. Marching and walking leaning into the wind are two different forms of movement, and with a nonhuman character here clarity would be best. Two hundred and forty-two what? Days? Years? So the problem with this story is that it's setting up two parallel mysteries, what happened to the colony and who is communicating, and then instead of resolving or paying off either of then you end with "and there's a cat." Not even, apparently, a colony cats, so rather than a solution we get a third mystery of how old this kitty must be. Thranguy fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 12:17
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The Tower, Reversed 913 words Prompt:she lives in a tottering tower, hand-built one floor at a time, each floor a testament to a stage in her life There is a man outside my tower. A knight, perhaps. Some kind of highborn warrior at least. He came on horseback. He wears armor worth more than anything in the village except the mill. His shield is decorated with a skull, white against a dark red background. I decide to let him in. Such men cause trouble when thwarted. But I am high in the tower, many steps away from the doors. My bones and feet complain with every step. I've gotten used to ignoring them. "Who comes?" I shout through the door. Solid, thick, carved from most of the trunk of a sapphire oak. The hard wood soaks up sound and sends it across on the other side, no softer, amplified if changed at all. The booming knocks cease. "Wilys of the Red Field," was the response. "Who answers?" Over the years I've collected enough names to fill our a choir. Elayne Tristophanes. The Seventh Lady Vertoth. Ulilly of the Heights. Chiropedae. Exhausting people to be. I picked a simpler one. "Esme of the Tower," I said. "I've never heard of Red Field. Is it a new holding?" "A very old one," he said. "Will you let me in?" "On what business?" "Old business. Will you open the door?" "I don't think I will," I said. "I see," he said. It happened quickly, almost too quickly for me to bring up a shield. The door exploded into splinters and sawdust, one splinter a touch faster than the shield, embedding itself in my face, just below my left eye. As the door's remains settled down and Wilys stepped in, I pulled it loose, feeling a fat red teardrop form where it had been. "Word is," said Wilys, "That there is a beautiful young woman kept in the room with the highest window of this tower." I looked at him, not sure if there was about to be violence. More violence. "It may be so," I said. "Your daughter?" "Flatterer." "Granddaughter, then?" "Are you here to rescue her?" I said. "Or present yourself as a suitor?" "The rumors also speak of a monster," he said. "A monster we have," I said. "Shall I show you?" It was only one set of stairs, to one of the oldest parts of the tower. From before it was my own, before it was much of a tower at all. There was not much to the room but the landing between stairways and the black door. "Behind that door," I said. Wilys reached for the doorknob. It did not turn or pull. "A false door?" "The true one is behind it," I said. "I swore never to open it, once, but my oath doesn't bind you." He traced the false door with his index finger. "This sounds like a trap," he said. I laughed. Cackled, to be honest. I don't have any other laughs left, not here. "I thought so too." He turned on me, hand on sheathed blade. "Explain yourself," he said. "This was my first husband's room. Lord Vertoth. Green tower, green tooth, green truth. I was his seventh wife. He made me promise to never open the door, never enter that room, a room where he could not be disturbed by anyone or anything. I saw the trap. I slowly turned the masons to my side, waited until I knew he was within, and built this wall." "When was this?" said Wylis of the Red Field. "Seventy years ago," I said. "Give or take a few. By all rights he should be dead, and perhaps he is. But the way he spoke of it not even Death himself could get in other than by the door behind that wall." "To seal a man away seems monstrous enough to me," he said. "He killed six others," I said. "And not quickly or cleanly, as I've learned." "Six who broke their vows," he said. "Some would call that justice." "Some fools might," I said. "Some men might. He stole my childhood. From when I was first promised to when I was a marriageable age. Gone in an instant." He turned away from me, back to the false door. He traced it again, and this time his finger cut through the stone. He stepped sideways as it fell to the ground, then kicked it aside like it was paper rather than obsidian. Then he worked the true door. I edged up the stairs, away from the door. I only saw the beginning of the fight, the first tentative sword thrusts, Lord Vertoth transforming from human to dragon, breathing green flame that would have consumed me had I not been well up the stairs. Wilys's flesh melting in the fire, leaving clean bones that continued the fight, his sword now a menacing scythe. I did not watch further. I climbed stair after stair. No matter how many levels I had the golem masons build, that room was always near the top of the Tower. I didn't go there often. I could only reach the threshold, see the sleeping child within. Until now. With the door open, with the room beyond in ruins, the way was clear. I stepped across and woke up. I climbed down with a rope of my own making, stole the Reaper's horse and did not look back. Seven years I had, seven stolen years of your to live before I'll snap back to my true age and likely die. I mean to spend it well.
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Jan 24, 2022 06:35
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Jan 25, 2022 16:43
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Half 698 words I try not to keep the filter on any more than I have to. Driving, of course. In the office, now that we're back up from half occupancy. But everywhere else, I let it down, let myself see the ones on the other side of the T-rift. Shopping, say. I'm not alone. There are enough of us, on both sides, letting ourselves see. Taking the effort to not walk through their translucent forms. The always-filtered people pretend they don't understand why we veer about so randomly. And at home, of course. Neighbors are still neighbors. I can wave across, when I see them. I wouldn't have done that before for most of them. But I do it now, and they wave back, sometimes even flash a message in twenty-four point text on their phones. And I go home, and Irina is there. As it were. We align phone to phone and let the software establish an optical link, then talk across the T-rift in low bandwidth voice chat. I tell her about my day at work. She picks up the latest ultrasound so I can see it. And we sit by each other, and later lay side by side, through the night. She's getting close. Seven months along. It happened five months ago. The morning after the test came up positive. We were together, celebrating. After the last time we made love, spooning on top of the sheets, me the outer. And then my hand fell through, my eyes could see through her, just barely. She turned around. Her lips moved but there was no sound. She couldn't hear me either. It took longer than I like to admit for either of us to think of getting paper and pen. We've advanced since then, to whiteboards and big text on phones and optical links. We can send long messages. We can share pictures. We can talk, even. But we cannot touch. I smile. I am happy that the baby is healthy. I still feel warm when she smiles back. But there's a dread, too. None of this is sustainable. I send money across the T-rift every month, match up with someone who wants to move dollars in the other direction. I can't afford it forever. It's funny. Nobody ever spells it out now, not since the first few weeks. It sort of made sense in the early days. Half of the world suddenly as ghosts to the other, and vice versa. But nobody says it anymore, and not just because of rumblings from law firms or because it just feels ridiculous, it always did from day one. I think it's mainly because it feels wrong, now. It's not death. They're still alive. Just somewhere that we can't touch. But we can't ignore it either. We can try. Dean, from work, has a stranger in his apartment on the other side. Nothing to do for it than to go filtered and hope they are too. Go all filtered and you won't notice someone stealing your passwords and selling them across the T-rift. Go unfiltered and get blinded when someone turns on a high-intensity flashlight while their partners rob you blind. I've heard about couples trying the surrogacy thing. Pairing off with other separated people. Elaborate diagrammed positions to let you see only your partner's face while you're each lower half is busy with someone else. I haven't brought it up with Elena. Not like those positions are practical now, and she won't be ready for who knows how long after the baby comes. I sometimes think about what would happen if it reversed. How many people would be superimposed when it happens, what horrible deaths those fusions would cause. I still worry about that, still try not to superimpose when we're together. But they say, the experts trying to make sense of it all, they say that's not likely. That is won't be undone. That this is forever, two worlds, partly visible to each other, slowly fading apart. In twenty years, they say, we won't need filters. That the optical links won't work in fifteen. I know even fifteen, even twenty years won't be long enough to say goodbye.
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Jan 31, 2022 11:54
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Thunderdome Week 496: People Are Still the Same Here we are in 2022, the year in which Soylent Green and The Purge are set, so the Zeitgeist demands some Dystopian Fiction. You have a luxurious 2022 words. I'm looking for well-realized characters doing interesting things in plausible worlds. Make it real enough to hurt. All the usual exclusions apply, no fanfic erotica etc. Flash images available on request, which will be AI generated ones like the one above. Use them as you see fit. Sign-ups close 11:59 pm pacific time Friday Entries close 11:59 pm pacific time Sunday Judges: Thranguy ? ? Soylent Domers: Thranguy fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jan 31, 2022 |
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Jan 31, 2022 20:38
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Staggy posted:In, flash please. 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:02
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Jan 31, 2022 21:08
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Nae posted:In, gimme a flash. 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:09
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Chairchucker posted:Gimme a picture please 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:15
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CaligulaKangaroo posted:In! 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:26
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t a s t e posted:In with flash please 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:29
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GrandmaParty posted:In. Flash image, please. 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:30
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flerp posted:in flash 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:45
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rohan posted:in, flash please 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:47
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The man called M posted:…I think even I could make something like this work. In. Flash me. 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:52
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:Pic me Look up in the thread. (I didn't notice that you didn't ask when you went in, everyone else did.)
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Jan 31, 2022 23:56
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:yeah sure, IN and I'll take a picture 
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Feb 1, 2022 08:34
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Zurtilik posted:In, flash me! 
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Feb 1, 2022 15:48
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Idle Amalgam posted:In 
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Feb 1, 2022 16:39
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yeah ok ok yeah posted:In! I'll take a flash, plz. 
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Feb 1, 2022 22:35
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Tyrannosaurus posted:In. Flash pls. 
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Feb 7, 2022 09:25
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They'll do anything to get what they need. And what they need is Judgment Let's be clear: this week the middle wasn't just soggy but downright swampy. When I specified plausible, the thing I was most looking for was internal consistency. And many stories did not deliver. The worst offender and the week's loss was The Man Called M's Dreams Deferred, Dreams made with a premise that was, as it were, impossible to swallow. Also worthy of demerit was the week's DM,Chairchucker's Drivers, for cartoonish villainy and a substance-free story. On the better side, HMs go to SurreptitiousMuffin's Subject 501107-SYD log (extracted 17:08:23:10:08:33) partially damaged, an impressive piece of economic and indirect storytelling, and Albatrossy_Rodent's Becker, for a flawed story with a solid emotional core. The week's winner, similarly, had a solid emotional center while vividly drawing a dystopic setting: Nae's The Future is Warbots 
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Feb 8, 2022 09:22
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In, and I'll take a plush weirdo.
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Feb 8, 2022 20:24
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Crits for Week #496 The oddest thing about this week is how fee people wrote anything touching dystopias of control. Instead we have a whole bunch of dystopias of abandonment, and a lot of 'what if shifty job was even shittier'. The man called M - Dreams Deferred, Dreams made: You know most of the things that are wrong with this. A few tense slips: wielded is a clunky word, so I understand the impulse to avoid it. Joe being partially edited out. At the highest level, well, people forgetting that it's possible to live on a vegetarian, even vegan diet. And the logistical issue of how to sustainably produce enough human meat that everyone is eating it, including the ones who get eaten. (This is, to the extent it's remotely possible, going to be much more farming than hunting.) A world in which the rich are eating the poor, and not for survival would fit the themes better. But there's something here, an interesting story of faiths lost and faiths found, and you'd lose that if the priest wasn't guilty. I think that the interesting dystopic angle here isn't the cannibalism itself but the loss of the taboo against cannibalism. (In Soylent Green they had to keep it a secret.) And there are interesting ways to cross that with imitation meat. Imitation human meat giving edgelord rich failsons a taste for the real thing, say. Flyerant - Earning a Salarium in the Dusty Plains of the Atlantic Ocean: The opening paragraph is strong, but the second is a confused mess. We eventually get it, but the wording remains clunky. Another post-apocalyptic setting here, with an absurdist angle to it. I don't think salt is likely to be valuable in the post-oceanic world... The interesting conceit here is that of adbots that make communication nigh impossible. And I think a better story would play with that in a lower-stakes context without as much additional absurdity on top of that premise. Or maybe just the lowered stakes, would hate to completely lose the alien corvids. Chairchucker - Drivers: So this story is just sort of there. There's not much to it, character wise or story wise. A little irony. The thing I'm seeing in all three of these stories so far is a total lack of subtlety. The central idea here, that children are being modified to manage technology, is a sound disturbing dystopian idea. The Set-Sets in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series explore that idea. But when you throw on slavery and short term working to death you get a something cartoonish. Albatrossy_Rodent - Becker: Still not subtle, but a lot better at what it is. Also still not making much sense; surely it costs more to grow an army of clones than a month worth of rent or bail money, and the clones are easy and impossible to physically detect without any consistency from scene to scene. But there is actual emotional content here. GrandmaParty - Lawyers Starve in the Future: Finally, something close to subtle. Another fairly dim protagonist, though. The AI horse/employee business is interesting I guess but doesn't really connect to the main story, which isn't far off from reality. And I sort of guess from the title and punchline that this is a world in which there is no legal recourse and everything is settled through biased arbitration? Not enough support for that, so those bits hang oddly off the story. Staggy - Run: Effective opening, setting up, what? Deadliest game reality TV? Gratuitous apocalypse again. There's not much there there. Just some action, hunter and prey reversed. Doesn't seem to have much to say. SurreptitiousMuffin - Subject 501107-SYD log (extracted 17:08:23:10:08:33) partially damaged: This is cool. Very dense, with a fascinating hint of an absent narrator and dissent within the masters, both in negative space. Also slight, less than half the words with a large percentage used in patterns and repetition. (I mentioned Terra Ignota in an earlier crit; there's a passage in the last book that uses a very similar conceit.) CaligulaKangaroo - The Iron Duke: This is another one without much going on. A Duke is holding out against robots, eats his dogs, and becomes a cyberman. Is this an atompunk 1963 or 2063? If it was 1963 you could have used QE2. But as I said, not much there. Nae - The Future is Warbots: This one is vivid and energetic. There's not much deep here but there's character and an emotional core. The most effective dystopia of abandonment that we got. flerp - Bodies: Well written where it's specific, but gets much too abstract when dealing with what's supposed to be the core. Are we meant to understand what is meant by 'out', what kind of thing the narrator wants and dreads? Does the author even know? Not sure if this is even on prompt. yeah ok ok yeah - Chemical Lake: Highly effective body horror here, attached to a sort of vignette-y failed vacation story where nothing the protagonist does matters, and not in a meaningful kafkaesque way.
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Feb 9, 2022 05:55
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Nae posted:The plague doctor, keeper of secrets and keys and ethernet cables. Birds and Sovereigns 661 words Janey tastes blood. Her own, from her lip. Her legs are bruising. There's something going on with her left shoulder that she doesn't want to think about, doesn't want to try to lift that arm or use it standing up. It's dark. Some kind of basement or underground garage, she's sure. She can barely see anything further from her face than her legs. Except. For the eyes. Bright white. Not much higher than her own head. Unblinking. Moving slowly forward. "Does." It's barely a word, more the screech of a predator bird, the sound of a throat used to long silence clearing. The next words are clearer. "Does the Janey need Praxis' help?" Twenty years. At least. Twenty years since she heard that voice. In her head, she's always assumed. There comes a time when one doubts the more fantastical aspects of one's youth, when one adds two and two, the facts that nobody else was every around when Praxis spoke and that nobody else really still thought their toys were people, and gets four. One day, over summer break, she asked what had become of that old stuffed toy. Her parents told her it must have been lost in the move, or the move before that, and that was that. But she still remembered. It wore a beaked mask, with clumps of feather beneath, so she had always imagined it a bird. It named itself, in those childish days, and, speaking for itself, assumed primacy over all of her other toys. And when she had problems, Praxis always had advice for her. The advice usually involved burning down someone's house. "Fire," Praxis said, "Is ever the most effective sovereign against their kind." "Don't be silly" she said. "We can't burn down Ron's house just 'cause he splashed mud on me." Or whichever grievance of the day. "You saw him stomp that puddle with deliberation," said Praxis. "And he knew full well it was a new outfit. Fire is the best option. Anything else and the sickness will return." Fire, Janey remembers. The men looking for her deserved it. Deserved justice, but that would never come from any court. There were two police among them, and the son of the mayor. They'd killed before and would again and no judge would ever see them charged, no newspaper or broadcast would ever print or speak a word of truth. Too much money in too many dirty hands. "Yeah," she says. "I could use a little help." Praxis steps forward, grinning, a tame lick of fire forming at the tip of its outstretched wing. "Only thing is, I sort of want to get out of here alive." "Then follow Praxis," it says. She stands, wincing as she braces herself. She can walk, thankfully. You should see the other guy she thinks, looking at herself in the firelight. The other guy looks better off, though. Possibly seriously concussed. She only got one hit in, but she had made it count. There's a hatch in the floor, old steel, set in the foundation. She sees the rug that had covered it up. "How Praxis got in," it says. She will wonder, in her future, if this was as imagined as she used to think those childhood conversations. If the City Under The City was a flight of fancy in the fugue state of her escape, or even if she is still down there, frantically imagining an alternative to her fate when they find her unconscious body. But then she will remember the evidence of her own senses, remember the sight of Praxis flooding the basement with white-hot flame as she closes the hatch beneath herself. "Do not worry," it said. "Praxis is kin to the Phoenix, and has risen before, will rise again." She will hear the words, will reach into her pocket and clutch the blank steel that she earned from the Undercourt, and she will cast away those doubts.
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Feb 14, 2022 07:29
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In: we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well.
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Feb 16, 2022 09:06
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Anthem Prompt:we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well. 1302 words There is a third verse to our national anthem that nobody ever sings. But if you did, the words would fit the music better than the parts you know. You wouldn't though. The words are ugly words, and you aren't the sort of person who savors the feel of ugly on your lips. That would be Marwa. He was that sort of person. When the list of those words circulated through our class on the d-l, some kids would try a few, ones far removed from experience, just to feel like rebels, sure. Not Marwa. Marwa learned, watched, waited, ready to deploy one at the right moment. If he didn't know the insult was accurate when he said it he certainly did when my fist connected with his jaw. He laughed it off. It didn't happen again. And you shook like a phone after curfew each time you woke up in the middle of the night dreaming what he said. The anthem is a mess. Practically unsingable. There's a bit at the end of the chorus where your voice has to span two octaves. Most people, even if they have that kind of range, have to pick exactly the right key to sing it in at the beginning. And if someone else is leading, is picking the key, well, then just about everyone is going to flunk out on the low note or the high. Mika could, though. God, that voice. I don't see her face when I think about her. I mean, I can barely remember it before, and neither of us thinks about it after outside of nightmares. But her voice. We have to remember her voice. She sang at the rostrum, sang the anthem, her tears channeled down strange paths by the lattice of scars. She hit those notes perfectly once, then twice. The organist stopped there, but she went on, singing that near-forgotten third verse, eyes blazing like novas at each little hateful slur aimed at some national rival we haven't warred against in lifetimes. Then the chorus once more, with that range check professionals often fail. Finally she stopped. Applause, slow at first but then an ovation. She turned and ran out the back door of the choir hall. Nobody went after her. She was the first girl I kissed, the first pair of fumbling hands beneath my clothes. But it didn't last. When you were with her, later, I could tell you were going further and I was madly jealous of you both. But that didn't last either. She was alone when they came with their boxcutters, and later, running up the bell tower steps, climbing over the safety railing at the top, the long hesitation before leaning forward. Alone. The first verse of the anthem is our collective ideals. They've changed over time, mostly for the better, so that verse has seen a lot of rewrites. And whoever did those rewrites, whether it was a committee or just one soulless drone working in a beige cube somewhere in the capital, whoever it was wasn't a tenth the poet the original author was. And he wasn't anything great. Probably burned witches and beat his kids in his spare time, too. People back then were like that. Even more than now. But he could at least get the rhymes and scansion right. So we've got line after line overstuffed with extra syllables, triplets and quintets notated on the sheet music where it doesn't give up entirely. Whatever rhythm there is in a performance must be forced. Javon taught us both how to dance. One year and change older, at the exact time when that mattered. We weren't back together together yet. All the weird stuff around Mika was getting in the way. And then there was Javon, who could get us into the clubs. Javon, who knew how to dance. It was like Oz in there. No, more like Narnia. Magical and new, but dangerous, and with something just out of reach ready to pass judgment. Mostly it was fun. Dancing. Flirting. Breathing in second hand buzzes and contact highs on the strobing floor. Listening to the slam poets turning ugly words into points of pride. I'm sorry. I assumed you were still that kind of fragile about those, even years after Marwa. But you took to the poetry and to that poet. That lasted a month, weeks of loud grinding in a women's room stall, forcing anyone there for the usual reasons or to get high to listen, to participate just a little. Then one night she took you home. I only ever touched one once. That night. Javon's. "It's okay," he said. "I mean, neither of us are straight, so it doesn't really count." It was, I mean, well, it wasn't. Love. It wasn't love. It wasn't anything like love. I never told you about that, but I'm pretty sure you figured it out. The second verse is even worse than the first. It's all about the history of our nation. The parts that mattered at the time, at least. The revolution. And everything about the past is different now. I read the original verse once. I was stunned by how wrong, how simplistic it was. I see why nobody would want to believe that, would want to sing it in public, even if it does scan and rhyme correctly. Javon warned us away, that Friday night deep in August. We might not have gone at all. Your poet had moved on to some other adoring fan and you had decided not to waste a second being sad or lingering heartbroken. You walked up to me like I was your property, like I'd been waiting and pining for you for years, and when you put your lips on mine it almost felt like that was the truth of it. That was the beginning of August. By that late in the month we sort of knew we'd enjoy ourselves more staying in, but Javon was still a friend and we had our routine. But Javon warned us off. It's sort of famous, that raid. Men in white, wrecking the place, knives out. The police keeping out of it except for the ones with white cloaks themselves. Blood, and fire, and no consequences. Javon warned us. Which means that Javon knew. Nobody ever sings the third verse. Nobody bothered to rewrite it. They probably didn't want to. But we need it. It's about what we must hate, as a people, as a nation. Not the country we left in the revolution or the ones who would undo that war. Not old enemies, but current ones. A verse for the men in white, to remind us of who they've robbed us of. Mika. The August dancers, your poetess and her new friend. You. I can sing the chorus, if I start in the right place, with a B-flat on that first 'O'. I have to go deep in my chest for that low note, and the high one will wreck my vocal chords if I hold it even a second too long, but if I let go at the right instant I can make it through the last two lines after it. It was yesterday. No, that's how it feels. A month? I just checked the calendar. Two and a half months. Since the riot. We got him, you know. In the same riot. You cracked his skull with your baton even as your throat exploded against his knife and hand. He was still down when you'd stopped breathing. He was, though, ragged and loud. I kicked him until he stopped. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel anything. But I know that I'd be hating myself today and forever if I hadn't done it. This is me, letting go.
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Feb 21, 2022 08:13
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In, give me something.
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Feb 22, 2022 17:34
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Dangerous Criminals what shade of blue is this? 987 words "I don't see what the big deal is," said Gregg as he adjusted the center rear-view mirror. "Light aqua's not hardly any different from turquoise anyhow." "The point," said Dian, smacking him on the side of the head with the old menu from Xi's Kitchen she had had to clear off the passenger seat minutes before, "Is that we follow the plan. We use a spotter. Me. I spend all day watching the lot and trying not to get mistaken for a pro so that we pick out a car that we know just went in to long term parking." Gregg swatted her hand away and looked in the mirror, backing the car out of the spot. "What, you want I should put it back?" "And let them see you get in to a second car right in front of the same camera?" "So we keep to the plan," said Gregg. He switched gears to drive and moved through the dark lot. "Can't," said Dian. "No idea how long it's gonna take for this one's owner to notice it's gone and turn on the LoJack." "Shh," said Gregg. He slowed down at the gate, pressed the 'lost ticket' button and stuffed twenties in the slot until it meet the max charge. The gate lifted and he drove up the ramp. "So what are we doing now," said Gregg. "Maybe take it to Sonny's?" "Sonny?" said Gregg. "That crook? We'd be lucky to make up what I just paid to get it out of the lot." "You got any better ideas?" "I don't know, I'm just saying the original plan is a bust." "Maybe you should have told me before I paid to get it out." "Sonny's wouldn't be that bad," said Dian. "We'd make decent money parting this thing out." "We don't do this to make decent God damned money," said Gregg. "This thing's got to be good for a few hours. Let's use it on getaway. I know you've been wanting to hit Pollux Jewels for, like, months." "That's a three man job, minimum. Four to do it right. Who are we going to get on this short notice?" "Eddie's always up," said Gregg. "It's Monday morning," said Dian. "Eddie's either hung over or else he's-" Gregg hit a speed bump at forty miles an hour. "Sorry," he said. "Ow." They both turned around. Dian swatted Gregg's head again with the menu. "Eyes on the road!" Gregg swung back around, jerking right, away from the line of parked cars. "But that was-" he said. "I'll take care of it," said Dian. She turned to the teenager lying across the back seats of the car. "So who the hell are you, kid?" She awkwardly switched from lying down to sitting, like half an drunken octopus darting across an aquarium tank. "Mitsy Fairchild. Who the hell are you?" "Dangerous criminals," said Gregg. Mitsy rolled her eyes. "He's right," said Dian. "I don't see no gun," said Mitsy. "You won't see it until it's too late," said Dian. They stared at each other. Mitsy blinked. "Okay, okay. What, you kidnapping me or something? Make my father pay a hundred thousand dollars?" "Does your dad have a hundred thousand dollars?" said Dian. "Nah," said Mitsy. "Maybe twenty though. Not that he'd pay a dime if he had the choice, but with everyone watching he'd have to cough up. I'll help out if I get a third." "You really hate him," said Gregg. "No," said Mitsy, "I sleep in his car because its just so loving comfortable." She turned to Dian. "Is he always this dumb?" "Smart enough to know not to go federal," he said. "I don't mess with the FBI." "So what the hell are we going to do?" said Dian. "Mitsy," said Gregg, "How long have you been camping out there? Three nights?" "More like a week," she said. "Well all right then. Back to the original plan then. He hasn't called LoJack yet he's not gonna. So we take it to Gabe and strip out the plates and electronics and sell it off whole." "And I get a third," said Mitsy. "You get cab fare home," said Dian. Mitsy started to talk. "One word and it's bus fare instead." "Doesn't matter," she said. "Not going home." "I don't care where you go," said Gregg. "I've seen your faces," said Mitsy. "Jesus," said Dian, "Do you want to get killed, is that it? You trying to get me to do it for you?" "No," said Mitsy, left eye and lower lip slightly twitching. "I want in." "You know," said Gregg, "Pollux is a three person job, minimum." "She doesn't look the part," said Dian. "We'll need wardrobe." "We'll be flush after we finish with Gabe. That'll give us time to make sure Eddie's head is on straight, too. Four is better. Give you time to teach her how not to embarrass herself in there." "We'll need a getaway car, too. You going to spend money on a junker?" "Now that's a waste when I can still get into anything made in Japan," said Gregg. Gabe told him it was like a universal remote, the black fob sitting in his pocket. Works like a charm. Worth every dollar. "Okay," said Dian. "But this time make sure you get the right one. When I say turquoise I mean turquoise." "You could give me the drat plate number," said Gregg. "I told you," said Dian, "They watch for that. People writing stuff down or taking pictures. The guys watching the camera see that and they say something." "You can't just memorize the number?" said Mitsy. "That's something only people on TV can do," said Dian. "I can," said Mitsy. "Bullshit," said Dian. "Easy enough to put to a test," said Gregg. "If she can, that'll make it a whole lot smoother." "I can," said Mitsy. "We'll see," said Dian.
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Feb 28, 2022 08:45
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:it is important to have an anchor a soul again congealing in the puddled sick where you collect your elves, no that's not quite right, your Elvises and their hounded dogs and tramped down graveside, the shellfish shells shed everywhere, autochitenous coral reeves patrolling by fleshlight spoor and what was it left behind in the puddled sick of bile and bitters, cheese and crackers on the cross with the martyr and the thief in dismal silence echoes gnomically the sound of one clam happy in the puddled sick beneath the thing that was so important you had to forget it, no, forge at it, no, forgo it before four gentlemen, the warm gravy hungry and sick, four whores' men in the puddled sick where rests your restless skin and bones cellphones and there it is the wakeup tone collapsing into paradox, observer and observed together bound and you see you hear you taste the vomitous conclusion con-fusion: 'you' implies 'I' and there is no distance from one to the other any more than there is between infinity and infinity doubled, and you, no, and I press against the hidden bottom of that puddle and rise, I rise
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Mar 1, 2022 11:33
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Hellrule for the next one please.
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Mar 1, 2022 11:33
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Weltlich posted:The Call Into the Vowels of Hell Crabrock hellrule: no consecutive same vowels 318 words Did you know that the single most prevalent final set of unspoken thoughts to run through a person's head, just before dying, are "I really shouldn't have pushed that button?" It's just a bit more likely than "So that's why they had to put that sign up." Obviously not including stuff like "Oh poo poo" or "What the gently caress" or "Why God, why." We are counting only fully formed thoughts, Dave, not such short bleats. "I really shouldn't have pushed that button." That's the thing that's running through your head right now, as you flail your arms wildly, falling, falling down and down this unending shaft. Can you possibly think that you will learn to fly before you reach the ground, Dave? Maybe you will. How much time has gone by since you first jumped in, do you think? And how much more time could it take? Stop that silly arm thing you're doing. Be still. Take a long breath. Then gag. You can smell it now, can't you, Dave? The aggregated poo poo and urine of a boundless number of outhouse shitholes, water closets, and portapotties from across all time, all potential or realized, since first a Roman genius thought of flushing waste down a pipe. This, Dave, is the toilet dimension, and you're going to be falling through it for a very, very long time. Although... well, it's going to be a long time by your reckoning. But to Dr. Cindy and the others, just seconds until you back up through some other toilet, in some other place. That's how it works. At some point you'll fly out, smelling of all history's effluvia, pockets full of something that unfortunately is not pudding. You pushed a button. The wrong button. Then you ran for the wrong drat toilet and fell into this wonderful rift. When you come out, will you be sane, Dave? What will you do then?
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Mar 3, 2022 09:57
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