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Yeah ok.
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Jan 30, 2024 00:05
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:14 |
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Prompt Two/QUIET | MARIRE/Flash Frontier Lungs 249 words There's a broken scream at the edge of the ocean. An indentation like a lower jaw stretched down beyond the limit of flesh, bone and sinew. It cuts into the coast and shapes the waves until they roar into a deep throat in the red sandstone. The eroded roar swallows everything; the ocean and the rush of the ocean and the shape of the ocean and the idea that this bight can be anything other than a moment of peace shaded by cliffs on the rough coast. The water looks quiet, still. You stand upon the cliff and know that beneath that placid lie, there is a desperate inhalation, a hidden current that will take you into the dark red throat and deeper to some strange subterranean realm beneath the headlands. But the water on the surface laps softly against the cliff face and asks "Do you know something I don't? Do you see something others fail to notice? Why are you looking at me like that?". - "Like what?" "Like I can do something. Like I can tell you whatever you want to hear." He meets your eyes for a second and then looks away, down the driveway where the setting sun lights the thousand golden leaves like sky lanterns. Wētā murmur your smoldering grief into the pitch black between the trees. A few miles away along the coast, a scream drags memories down to the deep places of the earth, and you are there to welcome them.
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Feb 3, 2024 02:35
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pennies and pounds and all that poo poo I guess
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Feb 9, 2024 17:05
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Shark dive 1294 words In the fields outside Marfanda we used to play a game. Some of the children would hide in the long grass, close to harvest, and we would circle the crop and sprint in to catch them. The sunwi in the south is thick with leaves, but light and pliable, so you could move through a field like you were cutting through water. If you came through to the other side without bumbling into someone, you'd try again until you did. We called it the shark dive. - Beneath the burning, splintering wood of the interceptor, the sea was boiling. Bright blue and pink outgassing turning the churn to abstract. The bow bladders barely kept the craft afloat, the stern port bladder was leaking and the stern starboard corner of Departing Under Moon Mountain Clouded was a jagged, smouldering mess dripping ash and molten metal. The explosion had torn Hoda and Midan to wet and blackened gristle. I tipped Clouded into a shallow dive, through the thick mist rising from the boiling sea, and my killers followed. They came on sleek craft, arcoform wings close to the hull as they dove. I could hear the sea, even through the roar of the air, the engines and the disintegrating craft behind me. I thew back the pitch lever and the back of Clouded sent a fine arcing spray into the mist as it struggled to stay in the air, the hunters spread their wings to brake, just as close to the surface and engaged their engines. We kept going for a while in that dulled roar, heat prickling and reddening my skin, before I flipped my craft sideways and turned. I knew the ocean like the streets of Marfanda, and even in the fog, I knew that the tall spires of Umjo Island was ahead, just minutes away. On the floor, next to the pilot's seat, Raheda stirred. - One afternoon, as the harvesters worked through the sunwi, my mother sat me down on a hill overlooking the vast fields and we shared tea. She told me about her time in the auxilliaries and the engineer's corps. Some stories she had told me before, and some she had saved. That is the harvest; you pace yourself and you share wisdom at a measured pace. The sower tells the field what the field has told the harvester and it cannot all happen at once. She did not want to tell a child about the forests of limbs or what the deep mountain oil did to human skin, but I was leaving soon and I was no longer a child. "I met a soldier after the campaign in Namhim who had his eyes taken from him," she said, "And for hours after it had happened he would just run towards the sounds of battle to find an end. Any kind of end. He did not swing his sword, did not cast his spear, for he feared to strike his comrades, but he would not lie down." She sipped her tea and closed her eyes, the sun glinting on the golden studs embedded in her cheekbones. Gold on black in the red afternoon. "Hours. For hours he did that in a battle more ferocious than any I've seen, but he did not fall, and we won the day." "Did he ever find an end?" I asked. She turned and smiled at me. "He was a baker when I met him. Could hear when the dough had too much salt by the sound it made by his kneading, or whether a loaf was done by the change of air flowing through the oven. He found his end, but that didn't mean it was over." - We'd left the boiling sea behind and the water below us rippled with our passing. Raheda sat up and spat blood. She clambered up to the seat besides me and stared at the mirrorcast images of our pursuers on the helm. "We can't keep this up," she said. "I know." She adjusted the port mirror with a small lever. "More diving in, at least four or five." "It's fine." She was angry then, furious. "We are bleeding blood, oil and sailcloth, the Clouded is gasping its last. It's fine?" A section of the hull ripped from the starboard side of the Clouded and the roar redoubled in its ferocity and madness. In the silence of the overwhelming cacophony I looked at her, smiled and moved my hand up to my head. Like a shark fin. - I could hear the grass brush against Hoda as he ran through the field. I stood still among the high grass, leaves tickling my ears, the comfortable pinpricks of earth and dried vegetation on my bare feet. I was still, and the sharks moved besides me. The sun burned my shaved head and the taste of my sweat was on my tongue. When Raheda caught me, she hit me hard, but that was the game. We switched places, and I ran out of the crop. For a minute or so, I circled, tried to listen for the small sounds you make when you try to be as quiet as you can. The fidgeting and the giggling and the excited breaths. I picked a direction, inhaled, and ran. I was always a little disappointed when I caught someone. The other children would hoot and holler in victory, but I would smile and look forward to getting caught, so that I could run again. For a long, exhilarating moment, I would be like a blind warrior, storming through a mist of sensation, hearing the pounding of my footsteps and feeling the sunwi snap me in the face. Like a thrown spear, my entire world the straight path. - When we reached the spires of Umjo, we had eight pursuers spread out behind us in the thick mist. The sandstone pillars emerged like a fist and I squeezed through a gap that was just a meter wider than Clouded was. The branches and vines of hana trees clinging to the sides of the spires whipcracked at the craft. Three of the eight pursuers persihed immediately, detonations thumping with a low bass through the fog. Four turned and climbed, and a single one followed us in. Raheda had crawled into the maintenance shaft behind the bridge and she would occasionally yell something about her efforts to make sure the engines didn't explode, but everything was lost in the roar. The tall face of Goheyo Tavan, a granite mountain in the middle of the spires of Umjo, whizzed past on our port side, and our pursuer clipped it with a wing, careened to the right and clipped a pillar there with the other wing before they twisted around and hit the jungle below in a dull fireball. A minute more and we were out the other side, over open sea. The remaining four killers were above us in a lose formation, barely visible in the thinner fog over the sea. Raheda crawled back out of the maintenance shaft. "They're still on us," she said. "But we're still alive." She looked at me, and her gaze turned to horror as I banked the craft around and back towards Umjo. "And I'm not done playing." - My mother had gone inside and the stars had come out. I sat on the hill with a forgotten, half full cup of tea beside me. The sunwi turned purple in the moonlight and the broken seed casings glittered like waves. A few hunderd meters away, a girl stood by a crop that was yet to be harvested, alone. For a minute or so she just stood there, breathing steadily, and then she sprinted into the tall grass and disappeared.
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Feb 11, 2024 19:43
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well I can't stop now can I
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Feb 13, 2024 20:42
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Dark room 787 words I have torn you from your perch and tossed you like a rag doll into a river that runs red with your memories. That foams up with those tiny parts of you that yearn to break free and rise to the surface, every quantum of lost knowledge a speck of hope that fades into air. Look at you, look at you, look at your right sleeve, frayed as your pen has worked itself across the page in a sewing machine staccato. Your fingers stained with chemicals and reagents. The wrinkles around your eyes not from late evenings filled with comfortable joy, but concentration and consternation. Oh, do you even know what you do not know? I crawl into your veins and through the deserted enfilade of your corpus, your thin skin the drape covered windows letting in the dulled light you squint at. I let the tendrils of my presence drag me upwards until I reach your eyes. There is a garishness to your world that I cannot stand, a shock of putrid electromagnetic energy saturating every corner of your universe, but I can take your eyes and I can make it bearable. A passenger to your desperate attempts at comprehension. Your mind is still locked to me, and so I wonder if there is a blissful moment of darkness for you as I look around me, around you. Us. A moment where the regime of photons do not bombard you with their arrogance. You do not understand how privileged you are, but you will, for one perfect moment. A room. On the left the door is open to a darker room illuminated only by a faint red light, on the right, a thin, beige curtain blows in an evening wind. You stand in the exact center of the room, a table in front of you. On the table there is a film canister and next to the film canister there is an uncorked bottle and when your gaze lowers to look at it you freeze. I flee your vision, and you start moving backwards, quick stumbling steps until your back bangs into the half open door behind you and you fall, your head slamming into the floor. - Did you feel that blissful darkness of not being? I do not think you did, I do not think you see how blessed you are. Those few seconds before you came to I drilled my tendrils deeper into both mind and spirit. You are still so ignorant, but you have come far. You rise to your feet, unsteady and shaking. Yes, yes you remember that you were in the middle of something, something to do with the film canister and the bottle. Back into the room where the curtain is growing damp with light rain. You pull at the film and hold it up. That's what you're supposed to do, right? You hold it and you gaze at it for some reason. This ritual has significance, but you find that it is only ritual, only a position in a dance. The little squares are black and black and black and black and spots of darkness are creeping at the edges of your vision. The room with the red light is next, the next step in this rehearsal. You pick up the bottle, for that matters as well. I can feel myself slosh around in it, those last parts of me. You turn and walk into the room with the red light and you close the door behind you and you reach for the small chain that will seal our pact. You pause. I expect this, I'm not surprised. I have passed the dying light in your veins, I have fought its soldiers in the chambers of your heart. I have seen that you are not yet free from its taint. We stand there together under the red light of the last sun you will ever know, and I let you know, finally, that you are safe. This darkness is not the end of you. Light is entropy, an inevitable end, but together we will enter the stasis of the unchanging black night. Do you even know what you do not know? This river runs red with your memories but it flows into itself and through itself, the mouth of the river is the source of the river and the surface is the seabed and this is where we will stay, in the stagnant splendor of eternity. I embrace you, and you embrace me, and your hand pulls the cord. You raise the bottle and pour the rest of me into your eyes, and the darkness is complete. You are complete. For one perfect moment that will never end.
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Feb 18, 2024 22:12
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Fine, but I have a busy week and if I get overwhelmed you're getting a poem.
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Feb 22, 2024 19:44
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17738 1248 words Doctor Egil Heerst, personal notes, 05.11.16 It's the fifth of November, 2016. I'm not entirely sure where to start. Anton. That's as good as anything I guess. He was a wonderful man from the start, if I'm honest. Intake was January this year, transfer from Lenheister Municipal Prison. He had a sort of gleam in his eye, you know? Most of the people I meet here are not in a good way. The consensus these days is obviously on rehabilitation, but practice does not follow theory in real life. I believe that human beings are in some ways hard-coded to believe that punishment is an effective deterrent even when a millennium of data proves otherwise. It's a vice we have to overcome for civilization to prosper, like so much that plagues our society these days. This is about the fire though. Anton is relevant because I believe Anton was the difference between disaster and catastrophe that day. If it wasn't for his attempts to first warn and then assist both other inmates and guards, I'm not even entirely sure I would be alive today. I was at work that night, and I'd just gone to sleep on the sofa in my office when I heard the hammering on my door. At that point the fire had already spread across two wards, all without a single pip from an alarm. There's two conclusions I'm left with: Firstly, the entire prison administration should be tossed in with the inmates. I don't know what sort of monumental dereliction of any sort of duty or responsibility would lead to a complete failure of fire alert systems across an entire prison, but they should be held responsible. Secondly, Anton should be commended, officially. His crimes were horrific, there is no doubt about that, but there's no one out there who would not concede that there is something truly human and heroic in his spirit. In any question of early release, I trust you will know my feelings on the matter. Johann Sauer, Leipzig Fire Department, 25.10.16 Origins of fire is at this point still unknown. Three cars, five trucks at location at aprox. 55 minutes after presumed start of event, CCTV shows flames springing up at several points in Ward C around 23:35. Current theories regard sewage pipes, foreign material in ventilation or other central infrastructure that could explain sudden spread. Corruption of CCTV footage is, as noted in earlier reports, significant. Curious detail: Cell C0416 is the only cell in a row not affected by the initial conflagration. Inmates in adjoining cells deceased. Name of inmate unknown, prison admin claims they are unable to provide such information. Doctor Egil Heerst, personal notes, 28.08.16 Anton continues to exceed my expectations. He's struck up a friendship with one of our maintenance workers, which is obviously against regulations in most cases, but warden Henkel has decided to let it go. A more holistic approach or something of that nature, I can't quite recall. I'm having trouble in general recalling certain aspects of my work these days, but it has been far too long since I've had a vacation. I believe the alps would be a splendid time, and in perfect condition during the next few months. Anton is both a quick wit and a patient listener. I believe at this point that he has the character and self-reflection to grow beyond the unfortunate state he was in back in 2013. I find, however, that I'm struck with the strange feeling that our correspondence is somehow shorter than it ought to be. It seems an absurd thing to write, and yet it's like a day that only lasts a single afternoon, a meter that's a foot long. We've only had a handful of conversations, haven't we? Anne Krause, Leipzig Prison maintenance department, 16.08.16 Work completed on ward C, and D main plumbing, work completed on fire suppressants and alarms before annual schedule. Controlled and double checked. Tronte if you're reading this, Anton was right about the fuse in 258. Told you. You're buying this Saturday. You're singing too, I get to pick the track. Doctor Egil Heerst, personal notes, 02.05.16 Warden Henkel claims that there is no record of a conversation from the third week of March, and while I'm immensely frustrated I realize I have to take a step back and reflect on whether my work is getting to me. I talked to Anton about March as well, and he seemed confused and told me that our session that week was canceled because I was ill. I do not like how he looks at me, I do not like how tired I feel after our sessions. We need to keep an eye on him. Klaus Henkel, warden, personal notes, 17.04.16 It is rare that I find myself lost for words. I have worked with Peter Beyer for two decades now, he was—up until yesterday—one of my most trusted captains. I went to his wedding. Prisoner 17738 Anton Kraus is currently in the infirmary, suffering from a broken rib and severe bruising. He was lucky. It was only thanks to the discipline and quick thinking of guard Hertz and Odel that Anton isn't in a coma right now, or worse. I will commend them for acting in some degree of opposition to Beyer, but privately. I will save Beyer more embarrassment. It is obvious that he is no longer suited to the job, but for the sake of our friendship I help him with the transition to something more fitting. I can't make sense of it, he kept yelling that Anton had "changed it". I do not have the faintest idea what "it" refers to. Doctor Egil Heerst, personal notes, 18.03.16 I read back on our previous sessions and I do not know myself. I am unrecognizable, Kraus is unrecognizable, the things we talk about are banal and trivial and have no bearing on Kraus' rehabilitation. I know that I have told him in no uncertain terms that I consider his progress to be stagnant and prospects dark. Honesty is critical to progress, but my notes are dishonest to myself and my profession. I believe, without a doubt as I write this, that Anton Kraus is a very dangerous man, and warden Henkel's patience and tolerance is both naive and irresponsible. I do not understand what he is doing to me, but it has to stop. Doctor Egil Heerst, personal notes, 10.02.16 Anton told me what he would do if he ever got out today. There is something heartbreaking in that, "if he ever got out". I would be derelict in my duty if I did not ensure that Anton reached a state where he was once again ready to face society and its numerous challenges. I believe it's a hard road, but we will walk this road together. I see in him, in many ways, a great work, the culmination of my career, the very definition of a diamond in the rough. Klaus Henkel, warden, personal notes, 09.01.16 Doctor Heerst was very clear that he did not see himself as the right person for the job in the rehabilitation of prisoner 17738, I told him that this is not a place of leisure and his timidity was unbecoming. We do not shy away from our duty because someone "seems wrong". It's an absurd statement from a grown man, but I believe he will come around eventually. I believe there is something special about Anton Kraus.
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Feb 26, 2024 01:14
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ugh fine gently caress me up fam (3)
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Feb 27, 2024 21:42
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Myriad 2250 words The paired black holes of Myriad stand end on end, one above and one below the plane of the ecliptic, caught in a near-impossible orbital configuration. The figure eight loop of illuminated stellar matter weaving back and forth between those beasts dominate the sunless system, but vast forces churn forth a blinding light. An undulating blanket that almost reminds you of being underwater, or in a vast cathedral lit by a billion soft candles. - First, they come through the air-ducts. Modular multi-limbs configure themselves on the fly, clattering in and out of the central body to grip that wall or suction to that ceiling, generating nozzles in areas without gravity or drills and saws where grates block the way. They sound like a drawer of cutlery being dropped down a stairwell, but with the disconcerting notion that every knife and fork follows a predetermined and purposeful path. In the large open-plan office where you've huddled they crash through the ceiling and go bipedal, coilguns pivoting over the shoulders from cavities on the back and painting targets to the tune of a rising electric whine. You've already opened fire. In a few seconds, a thousand rounds of caseless printmunitions have perforated desks, monitor, meta-rigs, plaspaper, staplers, coffee cups, cudyuvu cups and ergonomic chairs, and a score of termination consultants. In the blizzard of a thousand different particulates, metal deforms and the soft flesh of central bodies cave in. Blood manufactured to facilitate long-term zero-g travel, enhanced by combat stimulants, puff out in dirty red-orange clouds and ignite in quick, blinding flashes. A cutlery drawer being crushed in a hydraulic press. The consultants fire back at a measured pace, two dead, then four, then six, then eight, then the last two. When the last of you die you've taken out four consultants for every one of you and it doesn't matter. - In the rotunda that joins the Copyright and Human Rights wings of Alabaster Interstellar Myriad Station, you're ambushed by a team of free-lance consultants. They run down the back half of your party, piston-spears punching sections of spine free and crushing skulls like eggs. The hooves of their gyrosteeds splinter the faux-marble mosaic of the floor, sending slivers flying. You push into the Human Rights wing, firing submachine guns and pistols behind you as you run. Gravity gives out as you cross the threshold and you desperately flail for handholds as you push yourselves along. One of you is caught in the middle of the corridor, floating there in sudden resignation, and one of the free-lances leaps like a moray eel and leaves behind an expanding nebula of blood and torn flesh. You enter one of the workshops where half finished forgeries drift through the noise of supercomputers analyzing law, code and stipulations from a thousand different star systems. The stink of various treatment agents is heavy in the air. You flee through the long stacks of case files and try to cram yourselves into nooks and crannies, hands clasped over mouths and eyes closed tight, but the free-lances crash through metal and plastic, scratched and worn flanks of gyrosteed armor crushing bodies into pulp. You've barely hurt a single one of them as the last of you die. - AIMS turns the night-that-is-not-night of Myriad. It rotates slowly at a tilt as its orbit decays over the burning continents of Myriad VII. The planetside holdings have already been extricated, the non-essential staff terminated. The armies clashing on the surface will not get their hands on Alabaster Interstellar's property, whether it's flesh, material or data. In the cities that once hosted Earth presidents in grand parades and held interstellar olympic games, skyscrapers melt like wax. - You kill a scion in the park that covers the roof of the habitation wing. Tanner Letharmé was by all accounts a timid man. The Letharmés led Alabaster Interstellar franchises in more than a dozen systems, and the two hundred year old patrician of the family, Orgus Letharmé favored the bravado and machismo of the Letharmé sons. Tanner tried to be like his brothers, cousins and uncles, but it never really stuck. It never felt right. He devoted himself to studying business strategy, hoping that he could compensate for his failings with a clever mind, and from there he developed an interest in combat strategy and tactics. He never learned that his grandfather, Orgus, respected him immensely and that he had pulled strings to ensure that Tanner would end up leading the HR Combat Division of Alabaster Letharmé. Tanner believed it was a punishment, and Orgus was too proud to admit it wasn't. Tanner dies when the glass roof covering the park gives out. You've been fighting in the park for an hour, and thousands of impacts from hundreds of weapons have stressed the automatic recovery systems of the roof. Ablative and absorbent gels cover cracks, chips and holes like great cobwebs, and the reservoirs set at intervals along the roof have run dry. Those fighting without suits or helmets have felt their ears pop again and again as air leaks and is refilled. A single bullet from a TG-1055 Orbital vacuum-proof revolver pierces the last remaining piece of glass in an archipelago of recovery gel and the stress failure cascades out in an instant. Tanner does not die when the air is ripped from the length of the park in a roar that turns into screaming silence. He wears a combat plated EVA suit stained with the blood of a dozen ex-employees (he is a timid man, but he is a professional), and he quickly crouches down and grabs hold of a drinking fountain when the cascade failure begins (he is a professional, and he is prepared for many eventualities). What kills every soul in the park is the faulty triggering of the top floor gravity systems when the conditions of escaping air, tonnes of debris and a massive amount of wide spectrum electromagnetic radiation from an hour of combat causes a subsystem AI to increase gravitic force tenfold. Tanner realizes he can't rise from his crouch as the mass of glass and other matter is pulled to the ground in a soundless crash, and as gravity cuts out and the mix of earth, vegetation, glass and human bodies rise in a vast, morbid ballet, the subsystem AI detects the same conditions and repeats the process. It continues until power gives out and an indescribable amalgamation of carnage floats away from the habitation wing. - In the head office, you wait for a shuttle that will never arrive. You've paced the carpeted floor for hours, you've tried to call the sector executive officer and you've sent out targeted distress calls on open channels as a last resort. You yell for your secretary, but there's no answer. Your staff has either joined the fight against the termination squads or hid somewhere, hoping they can remain undetected until it's safe. It won't be safe. The light of the un-suns stream through the panoramic windows of your office. You should have triggered the armor shutters, you've seen the flashes of ship weapons out there, but they're supposed to protect you, you're supposed to get out of here. With shaking hands, you pour yourself another finger of tenminuk and down it in a gulp. Then you stand there, glass held limply in one hand, as your eyes unfocus and the bolt of dread hits you. For ten or twenty seconds you just stand there, your mind working through the idea you don't want to think about. You walk over to the luxurious earth-oak desk, set the glass down and grab a tablet. You switch to your work messages, scroll past a hundred messages from panicked employees and find your termination contract. You scroll to the bottom, pinch zoom in and read the fine print. The bottle of tenminuk is empty and the station has rotated Myriad VII into view. You hold your glass up to see the ember light from the surface refract in the dark brown of the liquid. An Alabaster Gāo-Zhèng operative opens your office door, walks up to your desk, raises a small caliber pistol and shoots you in the head. He waits until you've finished your drink. - There is a thousand fates and a thousand battles and a thousand thousand deaths and an endless descent into the fires that rise from a billion skirmishes on a planet that does not notice and does not care about Alabaster Interstellar Myriad. In the streets of cities filled with fighting machines that grind bone to dust, the offices with the proud AIM logo is nothing but cover, crushed and pulverized in running encounters where mantis mechs leap across the skyline chasing armies clad in gas-hoods firing globs of corrosive artillery from spider-limbed rotary cannons. The station above is a growing pinprick they do not notice and do not care about. Bodies tumble from airlocks and ignite in the atmosphere, just as bodies tumble from windows raked by ten thousand rounds a minute of turbogatling fire, to hit the burning streets below. As above. - A single shuttle escape AIMS. It burns from subhangar 9TF45, turns with puffs from attitude thruster when it's ten clicks out and beelines for the Rumination Holiday. The point defense systems on the flagship of the Alabaster Interstellar fleet pulverizes the shuttle and the forty escapees/rogue staff aboard in less than a second. You were mostly custodial staff, some trainees and two administrators. You'd spent an hour preparing weapons and explosives, and administrator Mariata Kanos had prepared a robust set of combat code to get past the point defense systems. Administrator Adosana Chan provides the Rumination Holiday with running updates from a secure line, and he believes up until the moment the shuttle is obliterated that he had read every detail of his provisional contract, provided to him by encrypted blindbeam. Galactic Executive Officer Penubella de Beers-Löwenthal is not on board the Rumination Holiday, but Corporate Baron Ishani "Gravlance" Bera convinced her that the sight of the flagship would lead to a more efficient dissolution of the Myriad office. On the station, no one cares or notices, on the planet, no one cares or notices. Ishani is in a call with a representative from the Letharmé head office when what remains of the shuttle patters against the armor of the flagship and she does not care or notice. - You stumble into the open-plan office where bodies litter the floor under the spray of sprinklers, some still smoldering with chemical fire as liquid suppressant pools in the craters of bullet impacts. The stink of blood and poo poo is a suffocating blanket. You've lost a lot of blood, haven't you? You can keep going for a while, just a short while longer. There is a window on the far wall, regulation 10x10 centimeters. The glow of booster rockets heading towards the corporate flotilla. You don't have to worry about being caught now, they're gone. The mosaic on the floor of the rotunda is an abstract painted by mechanical hooves. A heavy armored door has slammed shut on the entrance to the Copyright Wing, but you can hear the roar of flames and detonations beyond. In the Human Rights wing, a revised page from the New Universal Declaration of 2080 is stuck to the wall with dried blood. A little bit on the nose, you think, and you giggle. Are you getting delirious? The edges of the station are scorched black. As it enters the upper atmosphere of Myriad VII, it's turned so that the roof begins to absorb the friction heat. What was once the rooftop park of the habitation wing glows like coal. The window of the head office implodes and the room is scoured by fire. The tools and supplies and shelves and corpses of subhangar 9TF45 is dragged out of the hangar door into the atmosphere and burst in a trail of fireworks. You do not see the Rumination Holiday depart the system. The flash of the FTL drive is just another unnoticed gunshot. Gravity is fluctuating across the station and you've strapped yourself into a crash couch in an empty room that once served a function. You're not sure why you've bothered. The station rips in two. A titanic shearing of millions of tons of metal and metamaterials, an event composed of so many tiny actions that it could kill a mind to imagine it. Half your world is suddenly gone, and for a split second, for just a moment, you see into open space clouded by burning atmosphere. You see the hourglass of Myriad, a figure eight of illuminated stellar matter, time running out. - The two halves of AIMS divert. One affects a tumble and breaks apart even more, covering a quarter of the continent with impact fragments. Some fragments burn into dust, some are large enough to flatten towns. The other half of the station hits the ocean in a blinding detonation, and the resulting tsunami quenches the war-fires of a dozen coastal cities. - A helmet orbits Myriad VII, crushed and pitted and with some organic matter stuck in the cracks. An embossed nameplate above the right temple reads "Tanner". The one remaining lens looks towards a pair of black eyes that will stare at the universe for eons, until the planets and asteroids that orbit them have been subsumed and all around is still, dead space. They do not care or notice.
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Mar 3, 2024 21:10
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yea blind me
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Mar 4, 2024 23:57
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Remembrance 1291 words I'm treading water, face turned towards the sky, eyes open. Above me, eagles flit past with their riders sending arrows towards the shore. The sun burns fiercely, turning the sea around me to a rush of dirty glass. My feet brush against sand and rock My head is ringing. I take a deep breath, let it out and turn my body to swim towards the shore. There's ash floating on the water, films of something that smells like fire and death. Hano is sitting cross legged on a ruined pier, basalt heat-cracked and black like obsidian. He's watching me, and behind him, the manor of Regional Magister Etanakos is burning. "You have to keep up," says Hano as he rises and walks towards the manor. Arquebus shot thunders from high windows and kicks up plumes of sand around him. One shot find the neck of an eagle and it tumbles mid-dive and throws the rider. She's silent for the few seconds she falls, before she hits the sand with a surprisingly soft but clearly terminal crunch. Hano raises his open hand, closes it, and the windows explode inwards. - I've always struggled with landings. When we reached the shore where Etanakos' manor stands, low, with wings beating the air so that the sea turned white beneath our bodies, our troupe of eagles in our wake, Hano let out a burst of fire that obliterated the south wing of the manor, stalled sharply and folded in on himself to land amongst the house guard holding the beach. I sent a stream of fire along the piers, where beautiful, decorated party barges had hosted banquets the night before. Bottles of expensive liquor detonated, screams were cut short by melting skin and flesh. Overshooting my approach, I banked sharply to avoid the massed fragment fire from the manor roof, dove, and turned just before I hit the surface of the water like a sack of flour. - I don't say anything to Hano as I walk onto the shore and dry my clothes with a burst of heat. I start running, arquebus shot turning to red spatters of metal before they can find purchase on either me or Hano. The defenders are getting desperate, and our eagles are circling the manor now, all resistance on the shore taken care of. Hano leaps, clears the first floor and crashes through a second floor wall, I go through the front door, wood splintering and turning to embers. Banners hang from the foyer walls and I don't even notice that my fury burns them. - I knew we could flatten the manor and neither Etanakos nor my child would be harmed, because I could sense where Nava was and I knew Etanakos would be with them. When we briefed our eagles, when I sat with Hano for quiet minutes, eyes closed, letting him know I was grateful he would help, when I saw the first flash of gunfire in the distance as we approached, Nava was there like the sensation of someone watching you. That sensation had been with me for over a decade, but like seeing the shape of a camouflaged predator suddenly revealed in the woods, I'd seen the shape of Nava in the world. I'd never met Magister Etanakos before, but I knew that actions I had taken had harmed him and his liege lord. Such a petty thing, such a stupid thing; to force my hand like that. Such a fortunate thing. I don't know how he'd gotten his hands on Nava, but then again I never learned who took her in the first place. - I make my way to the kitchen, hallways and corpses burning behind me. I can hear Hano's rampage above me, feel the heat of his joyful, deadly art. In the middle of the kitchen, pots and pans reflecting the fire in the hallway I came from, the scent of heated spices gradually rising, I bring my fist down on the tiled floor again ad again until the tiles are dust and the stone below is fracturing. With a crash, the floor collapses, and I jump into the cellar, expelling a blast of heat as I land to clear away the dust around me. Ahead of me is a thick metal door. I reach out my hand, and the metal slowly turns to a shade of red. - Of course I was afraid what would happen when I met Nava again. I hadn't seen them since they were a babe, just learning to fly. Fear had cooled and turned to bitterness after the first couple of years, but when hope sparked, so did the fear. Hano never judged me for that. He knew that even if I could turn cities to ash and shift the fate of empires, that fear was something older than empires. I had lost my child, but would they still be lost when I found them? - The edges of the door give out and it sloughs in on itself in a scorching pile of slag. In the safe room, Etanakos cowers against the wall, sweating from the heat pushing down from the burning manor, right hand pointing a wheellock pistol at me, left hand holding a knife against the throat of a child. "Nava," I say. - "There is one thing I could do, if they've forgotten," I said. "I don't want it to come to that," said Hano. His pipe had gone out, fireflies floated lazily through the air. The grass was soft and cold with dew. "Neither do I, but you know just as well as me that it's hard to come back from the sleep of man." He looked at me. "Do you really want to bring them back just so they can lose you?" "I want to bring them back so that they can be what they are. Nothing is more important than that. Nothing matters more." - They are terrified. I can see the horror and confusion of someone who believes they could never fly, from someone who believes they've never flown. The memory of their first flight has taken the form of a recurring dream in their mind, the feeling that they could shift the fate of empires nothing but a childish notion. In the wheellock pistol, a starstone shard rests inside a bullet. Etanakos is prepared. That's good. That's for the best. "Nava," I say again. But there's no spark of recognition. I smile and feel grief and acceptance wash over me. There will be something left for you, I think, as I turn my shape into one of terror and fire. Just enough to make Etanakos thighten his finger on the trigger. - Nava feels something tug in their mind as the monster falls. Like a dam breaking, a new Nava storms into the shadows that has occupied their mind for a decade. New shapes, modes of thinking and vast mythologies embedded in their memory march through the fickle facade of a human and turn that trespasser to fiery dust. Nava turns their head towards Etanakos and screams. Hano sits cross legged on the pier, the manor a blackened ruin patterned with ember red behind them. Nava walks past the eagles picking at the corpses in the hopes of finding something that still lives. "It's important to me that you don't forget her," Hano says without turning around, "It's the only thing you owe me." "Will you leave?" says Nava. "We are not like men, we don't do that. I will always come back to you." Nava is grateful but they do not know what they say, so they start running until the pounding of feet turn to the beating of wings, and Hano follows.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:52
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Gotta keep that neutral streak going until I either win or lose hey
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Mar 12, 2024 16:00
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:14 |
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Assembly 1400 words The sun does not reach us here. Beneath the carpet of pine needles whipped around in a storm that buzzes over our heads like a swarm of insects, beneath the branches that intertwine like lovers and strangle each other like bitter rivals, beneath the logs laid out in geometric patterns, hovering like sentinels, oppressive grid-shadowed overlords a hundred feet above, beneath the dirt, the thick veil of dirt, the atmospheric layer of earth and pebbles and sand, the sun does not reach. The land has been ripped from the ground and stratified, each discrete element of the forest laid bare. We walk beneath a canopy that is everything, picking our way across bare rock. In places, cracks and chasms that would have been filled in with packed dirt lead to depths our flashlights can't reach; entrances to cave systems unseen for hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years. The forest above makes a noise like roaring water, shades of dirty twilight glinting in and out on rare occasions. It's mostly night though, but not any night you'd know. Hamdan has to stop, sit down and close his eyes. I let him, I've done the same in my mind, a constant repeated mantra of centering myself in the absurd, finding my sanity in the churn. We've walked for hours since we broke camp at this point, and while we've passed over hills and through valleys, we feel as if we're walking across a vast, flat expanse, like the curvature of the terrain is an optical illusion. We've come across lakebeds, as dry and clean as the rest of the bedrock, and felt the soft drizzle of moisture on our faces. We've stood on hilltops and seen the earthen twilight grow marginally brighter. We've seen no life. No birds, no bones in the storm above. "I thought I had our bearing at one point," says Hamdan, "Thought I'd found Moose river. The bedrock had the right shape." He opens his eyes, stands up. "Then it just ended in a cliff wall. It should've gone to the lake and it just stopped." I unscrew my canteen and take a drink. Just a small mouthful, enough to alleviate the parched bitterness. "Landmarks are a dead end," I say, "We just have to keep going. If this continues past the forest, we'll see it. The..." I'm lost for words in a way I've never been before, and I have to swallow a wave of nausea before I continue. "The... landscape above will look different. I'm sure it will." "Sure, you say that," says Hamdan, "But where are the animals?" - We think that night has fallen above us. It's pitch black now, not even a hint of dirty twilight. I look at my phone again, but it's still a mess of pixels and lines moving in staccato. My watch has just stopped. My compass needle is bending upwards, scratching the plastic face like a seismometer. We have extra batteries, but we only use a single flashlight at a time, clipped to each other with a line like polar explorers. It's been two days, we think. Both me and Hamdan have been on actual expeditions, he spent five months in the shrinking rainforests on Borneo, I spent a year traveling in and out of the Alaskan wilderness studying the behavior of muskox. We know when we get thirsty, how long it takes for our bodies to respond to stimuli such as hunger and exhaustion. I think it's been two days, but I can't really say if it feels like two days or if I'm just telling myself that, like finding an anchor for my sanity. Two days, maybe, since we exited our tent to find the forest was no longer a forest, but a dissected exhibit of half-dead nature. - On what might be the third day, Hamdan is coughing blood. He's grown pale and quiet, and he can't keep food down. The bitterness in my mouth is like the tang of batteries now, like a current of something venomous. I boil some coffee and we sit watching the unchanging landscape for a while. The mass of the forest feels like it's pushing down more and more, grinding us until we're like the rock beneath our feet. We see the logging camp as we round a sharp crag. Machines and equipment dotting the landscape, everything set up so that you could slot in a forest and get straight to work. A tall man stands by an earth-mover, he looks up and his eyes grow wide. For a while, we just watch each other, then he gives us a hesitant wave. His hand is trembling. "Are there more of you?" he says as we approach. "Only us", I say, "Are you the only one here?" Hamdan lets out a small sound and I realize he's spotted a row of forms covered by sections of tarp. Tarp stained red. The man clears his throat, tries to light a cigarette with his shaking hands, gives up and drops it. "I..." he begins, "I'm the only one left" "What happened to them?" says Hamdan. His voice is rasping and weak. "I think it just became too much. Too much of all of this. Whatever it is." The words are tumbling out of the man like a waterfall, his eyes moving back and forth. It seems his eyes pause in his wandering for just a fraction of a second. I turn around and see the axe. Bloody and covered in sticky tufts of hair. "It became too much," says the man, moving towards Hamdan at an accelerating pace, eyes growing wilder, hands reaching up, "And if this is something in between, if this is limbo then I don't want them to stay. I didn't want them to stay. I'm sorry." Hamdan is backing up as the man reaches for him, he springs forward but I do likewise and the bear mace is just inches from those wild, wide eyes as I press the button. He screams, and he keeps screaming as we run, and he keeps saying he's sorry. Roaring it. The screaming follows us for what might be hours. The man hasn't followed us, but the sound joins the orchestra of the forest above. - Hamdan doesn't get up on what could be the fourth day. His breathing is shallow, his eyes distant and rimed with pus. I get him to drink some water and then I drag him out of the tent. I know the outside terrifies him, but if he's going to die, I don't want it to be in a dank cocoon. For hours we sit and watch the movement of the forest above, the eddies in the pine needles, how currents of leaves move through them, the slow movement of the logs. They change their geometric patterns in great synchronous movements, a machinery stretching to fit the heavens. Hamdan turns his head to say something when the forest falls. Or, it doesn't exactly fall. It rushes down and swirls up and all the small pieces of the puzzle loop around in snaking figures. The sound is tremendous, unbearable. I feel the leaves and needles and branches brush against me, flit past my eyes, forming patterns just like the logs above. Then the logs descend, and the earth follows. I get up and drag Hamdan with me, turn around to drag him into the tent, but the tent is torn away by a massive oak branch that sweeps up into the descending dirt like a falcon. Everything can hurt us, nothing does. We stand in the cyclone as a forest is reassembled around us, logs becoming trunks, leaves zipping back onto branches. I look up, and through the clearing air I see water, a great plane of it like a palatial glass floor. Through it I see a deer trotting along, birds whirling through the air, the sun. The earth falls to fill the spaces between the trees and everything goes black. - Birdsong fills the air. I open my eyes and see green leaves waving in the wind, the sunlight turning some of them gold. Hamdan sits beside me eating a granola bar, his breathing steadier. "That should be Syracuse," he says and points. But there's just the forest, stretching endlessly into the distance under a blue sky. There's just us and the forest now.
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Mar 17, 2024 18:58
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