It Grows on You

Objectification 11/8/2010

2010-11-11T23:03:00.000-08:00

What is it with me and associating myself with objects? Is it poetry? Is it cruelty? Both? The words ring true with me, my soul, but while others seem to enjoy them they do not seem to understand. But for me it is not a matter of mere words. It is myself expressed on paper without the poet's presenc e. Most poets say "I," yet I find myself using "it." Am I it? Am I the objectified unhuman? Do I not deserve the feelings that accompany humanity?

What a torture the act of contemplation is, questioning, confusing, causing chaos in the turmoil of heart and brain. Humans require one another to thrive but objects find difficulty in association. Doomed to solitude, and no ability to call it tragedy. An object may be forgotten -- missed perhaps, but ultimately forgotten in principle. A human grasps the minds and souls of others, steals away a part of them, leaving a void that can never be totally refilled. I feel replaceable, unacceptable, false, plastic. A living breathing mannequin, positioned always by others with no mouth to speak and no ears to listen.

But then, what have I to say?

Concavity 11/6/2010

2010-11-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

Today, I went to Mom's house for the first time since she moved. It was mostly empty except for a some odds and ends. A TV here. A chair there. Everything looked so much larger than I recalled. It seemed as if it had been abandoned long ago, like hollowness was its natural state. As I wandered I tried to evoke memories of the home I had inhabited for so long, but could not. I felt just as empty as the house itself, a sort of bizarre bonding of likes in their concavity. A poetic blankness weighed my thoughts, searching for words to describe a feeling I did not possess.

Why can I not feel as others do? These false affections are like poison, contamination my head and heart in equal parts. Reality evokes only emptiness. Only fiction evokes the true power of sentiment. It is a torture to know in the end I cannot be happy without the mystery of the unattainable. The struggle for happiness will inevitably lead to unhappiness. Perhaps I was meant to be immune to the real. Perhaps hollowness is my natural state as well. Then the question is: do I accept this or do I change it myself? To remain hollow or to become false? Either way, I am lost.

Willpower (7/7/2010)

2010-11-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

I changed the structure a tiny bit, a couple lines breaks here and there. This and the one below were posted to FB when first written so these won't be new to several people. This is my current personal favorite. Comments still appreciated. :)
____________________________

There is a kind of
menace
in the daylymonthlyyearly revolutions
of a numbing tumbling space.
The dim and shaded Moon can only see
as far as its spectacles will allow.
While Lady Sun basks in the glow
of her own star stuff,
shining to her billion billion sisters,
accompanied and entertained by the endless dance
of her infant planets,
Moon —
stony and sleek in its spot of sky,
all shady lines and callous curves
with a face ribbed with the wrinkles
of a hundred thousand weary craters –
has only pretty Earth.
Ever facing,
ever twirling,
set on a path
upon which childish Earth
has come to rely.
She does not see a happiness in Sun.
She sees no vindication
in the permanent desolation
of her sibling rotary stones.
Of all the beings Moon as known,
she has envied none so much
as the comets that blast through black,
leaving trails that slowly burn and fade
like mist against the Sunglare.
All it takes is a single push.
The gentle tug and pull
of will
against all math and reason,
the selfish need for something more
to ease the wantingneedinglonging.
Blue and yellow sequin spills,
amber umber oil paints,
red and violent velveteen
tracing patterns in the ageless brick
of a dying universe.
And while the Lady Moon pursues
a thousand sights of beauty and decay,
wheeling in its glory and simplicity,
forgotten is the diamond Earth,
that subtle pearl,
aching in its loneliness,
and feeding on
itself in search of
love.

Suiting Scars (6/1/2010)

2010-11-11T15:18:00.000-08:00

This loving mars
these suiting scars
that build a bridge of memory
over ever-weaving skin.
Interrupt the construct
of ugly over ventricles,
of agony in arteries.
The blood is water underneath.
It seethes and churns
like boiled oil in the lungs,
painting course cambric in the eyes,
a veil of dampened requiem.
No. I won't go back to it.
That sullen reply,
that feeble grounding,
that sleeping lie,
that misty reverie
that calls awake the nervous system.
That system which is nervous.

Existent

2010-04-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

Equilibrium fading out at the speed of sound
Winding down
Into something wicked,
Something twisted,
Blacklisted,
Mixed up in all the lights
And sounds
Of a city slowly dying,
Lying in its waste,
Lying through its walls
Of gravel and bone.
And me,
Stuck in the middle
Of it all
With no one,
A moth clinging to the steel
Of a maniac driver's grill,
Invisible to the world,
Nothing but stardust
And velvet
Threading
Like blood
In the wind.

Fair-Eyed Captress

2010-04-25T16:46:00.000-07:00

Love fear me not.
I see you chase away behind the door,
See your pretty eyes within the lock.
You block my only hint of light in this prison,
But your eyes glint coolly
Like the clouds beyond the stars.
This light is warmth—
Is life—
And without it I should die.
But your gaze is wanted here
On this poor forsaken wretch
And without it too I shall die,
Another stone to these poor prison walls.

Neon Eclipse - I'm gettin' it back

2010-02-13T00:51:00.000-08:00

Methinks I've gotten my poetry muse back after a long absence. I am quite happy :D
____________________________

Neon Eclipse

I gaze into a starless sky
As neon lights go sailing by.
Neon billboards, neon signs,
Neon PETROL, neon Christ.
Neon Hollywoods and Sunsets—
Boulevards where dreams are made.
Smoke from late night cigarettes,
Fuming red hot Jags and mags
Draw a blanket through the streets
Of smoke and fog
And concrete.
The stench of the night
Is thick, and rancid—
It excites.
Music bumps the hazy air,
The heart of the city
Residing on painted curbs.
Saxes singing, feet tapping,
Hands clapping,
Lashes batting.
It bounces off the crystal roofs,
Imprisoned there,
Absorbed and drowned
In the ear of a businessman
Fixing his last highball
Of the night.
These towers here are shady and bright,
All sweet illumination,
Gritty shadow,
Hallowed promise.
The stars are dim and distant,
But the neon lights are high
And pretty enough
To be the stars
Themselves.

New Poetry! - Abstruse

2010-01-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

After a very long absence of creativity, I've finally written a new poem :D Hopefully the first of several (but don't count on that. As always, enjoy, and leave comments!!
________________________________________

Abstruse

Streetlights dancing in the rain.
They are but lifeless candles,
Forms we give functions,
For our lives demand it so.
They shudder and shake
Like breath on the wind,
See without eyes,
Uncare without thought.
We pass them by and ignore them--
Like silent gods,
Like totems,
Casting our shadows
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way and that,
This way--
And then nothing.
A black void.
We look into it,
Hands stuffed in pockets,
Thumbs picking idly at nails,
Feet on a track that will not stop
Or slow,
That just keeps going
And going
And going
And going
And going
And going
And--
We reappear,
Our former selves,
(our reflective selves)
And forget about the umbra of the rain.

We are home.

Pure Articulation

2010-01-12T18:10:00.000-08:00

So...I haven't been very emotionally stable the past few days, so I made myself hand-write everything that came to mind and this is what I got. It let me sleep. Good enough for me.
__________________________________________________________
I am cursed with the art of purely articulated emotion.

When my heart is glad, it is not merely so. It is joyous. Enraptured. Enlightened. Halcyonic. Contented. Happy. A whole dictionary of words all wrapped around each other like children rolled in blankets. They dance and sing and laugh about my head, pull at the dimples in my cheeks, bubble against my throat, spill bright paints into my thoughts until only the edges burn in gray and black.

In this way I am blessed...

In this way I am cursed, for when my heart is not glad or contented or enlightened it is instead weighted. Caged. Tortured. Ugly. Numb. Lifeless. It is a prisoner beating and struggling against its bindings, pulling and screaming and begging for the mercy it knows will not come, for its captor does not even recall its existence.

And yet, in all things, amidst all words and circumstances, one among them remains constant.

Love.

It is a precious word, at once black and brittle and perfect and beautiful. It is the poet's vice, for she cannot live without it, and yet to live with it she must die for it. She knows it is a privilege to be entitled Guardian of such a pretty fickle creature—but what torturous and cruel a thing it is, when all other poets she might share in love lie dead and unburied in its wake.

Must I walk this warpath alone, without companion but for love itself?

Must I sustain such loneliness? For naught?

Chapter I

2009-11-05T01:30:00.000-08:00

Here we go, boring Chapter 1. But whatever. It had to be done, and now hopefully I'll be getting to the spacey psycho stuff that I know you all are awaiting with bated breath :o But! Enjoy all the same. As usual, constructive criticism and comments much appreciated.

Word Count = 1759
Total = 2996

____________________________________________________

CHAPTER I

“That thing is going to get all of us killed!”

“Sir--”

“No! Nothing is going to replace this General, not now, not ever. Especially a hunk of... of... shuttle scrap metal!”

General Joseph Crowell scoffed ferociously like a raging bull about to go charge, and yet the sound was almost comical as if it had come from a little old woman had made it. The short stout gargoyle of a man was truthfully not so far off from the title, waddling his way out of the briefing room with his tight muscled sausages of hands clenched, pristine fingernails digging red semicircles into his pudgy palms. He was a balding man of nearly sixty shrink-wrapped in what was possibly the absolute tightest uniform available for man his size. The bronze buttons strained with each anger-labored breath and shone dully from off a perfectly untainted forest green coat, upon which a set of metals and pins perched precariously atop his chest where his heart beat against it.

A thin and well toned man, much younger and much more the stereotype of military perfection followed the gargoyle dutifully out. Clad similarly, yet not so pretentiously, he too donned graying wisps of hair that seemed to serve as sideburns of a sort and accented the rest of his otherwise rustic crown. Ice cube-thick glasses stayed firm on the hard chiseled line of his nose even as he hurried after his superior.

“General Crowell, he's not replacing you at all. He's merely a... project, for right now. And he's never been wrong yet.”

The General scowled and turned abruptly, nearly forcing the younger of the two to collide into him. His boots squealed against the polished floors of the hall in protest. Through a jungle of low gray eyebrows that bulged obscenely outwards from his face and a net of wrinkles permanently scrunched below, his beady dark eyes glared.

“I don't believe this--how dare you call it 'him,' Stevens,” he growled under his breath with a flustered and trembling point in the direction of the room they had just recently. A few onlookers had gathered there, unwilling to cross the invisible barrier beyond the door frame. Stevens grimaced, hearing their low words. “That's no man in there. Not even the shadow of one. How can we leave such decisions to something that's not even alive?”

“As you always say, Sir,” Stevens replied evenly, “humans are inherently flawed by their own mentalities. We have here an extremely valuable asset—a computer that can physically communicate with us as well as make calculations that any supercomputer could, but on our level, and able to explain itself and make amendments based on our own orders and suggestions. Not to mention he's being given to us as a gift by the government. We can't refuse such a thing.”

“The hell we can't!” Crowell shouted, a little stunned by his own echoing boom of a voice along the freshly painted walls. Stevens peered at him warily in turn. Lower this time, secretive, he continued, “It's not natural, Stevens. I'm telling you, that thing cannot make a proper well-informed decision while having our best interests in mind. It cannot.”

“And yet 'it' has proven itself a hefty number of times, and with better results than ever. Not only are missions being carried out successfully, but also in the most efficient way possible.”

“Nothing a proper high command wouldn't be able to do.”

Stevens sighed in frustration, beginning to lose his patience with the man. He pulled the glasses off his nose with a soft clinking sound and stroked the bridge of his nose. They had been what one could almost call friends for years now, always side by side in the ranks of military astronautics. A strange pair, he knew, but a pair nonetheless it would seem. Some destiny this is, to be stuck with this guy into eternity, Stevens thought, but not entirely with bitterness. This was just another interesting little hump in their bizarre roller coaster of a friendship made for the service.

Crowell's features somehow managed to pull together even further between his brows and around his eyes, framing them once more. His lips quivered as if they were straining to stay firm while being physically forced in to motion by unseen forces.

“Alright,” he acquiesced at last. “Let's see how this... thing works out. It does have one hell of a track record, eh?” The smirk jostled his jowls just so, and Stevens couldn't help returning it. “But if it looks like it can't handle the job at hand, I want it out. Permanently.” He nodded, awaiting Stevens' acceptance to back him up on it, which of course, as always, was not refused.

“Okay. Let's see what it can do.”

They returned to a parting sea of fellow men, who sat silently back in place, but not without a few sideways glances. The General was not one to be questioned or judged too frequently or too extensively.

The android stood patiently and silently like any soldier would before his superiors, and equally as any prisoner before his jury and judge. His face was expressionless but eerily human; they said it was meant for them to look less threatening in everyday life and to put people's minds at rest. Some even went so far as to give them unmistakably human characteristics and aesthetics that were otherwise totally useless to the mechanism. The military, however, seemed to prefer this make— a cousin to man, a friend, but not a man in itself. Cool clear blue silicone masqueraded as the simple face of an average man, nothing distinguishing about him from any other android of his type except for a metal plate that bore his identification.

General Crowell eyed him warily, an opponent's stance resting firmly in his visage. Sync continued to look unfazed, detached, even bored with the proceedings as Crowell approached.

“So, you really believe we should stand down our defenses, huh?”

His voice rang clear and brazen from his chest, and his lips moved smoother than should have been possible. “Yes.”

“And how are we supposed to solve their energy crisis and keep them from firing on innocent civilians with a move like that, hm? Are we just going to let them die there and not lift a finger about it?”

“It's simple logic, actually,” Sync explained. His hands came into motion now from where they had hung at his sides. “We cannot merely pull back from the line itself. They will see it as a temporary retreat, and with good reason. From a such a stance we could easily make room for reinforcements while we wait idly at bay. We would make for easy targets. Instead, by withdrawing altogether, we leave them to deal with their own crises through total detachment. It must no longer be under the supervision of the United States or the United Nations—or any other entity.”

General Crowell's mouth twitched at the corners, unsure whether to be amused or furious with an answer so base. “They'll kill their own. Thousands of their own. Do you understand that? Hm?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then how will this be favorable for either side? For anyone's side? They'll be out of food, out of power, and out of protection.”

Sync looked a little surprised at the comment. The mild slope of his brow folded upwards above his optical lenses, which shrunk briefly. “Eventually, the upper states too will run out of resources. There are not enough on this planet alone for there to be a monopoly on any one, especially on one of such high cost. Though they may withhold such things from the lower classes, eventually they will be forced to find alternatives, which must either be created on their own grounds or bought from ours. By then I expect our own sources of energy will have far advanced and they will have no reasonable choice but to ask for assistance or else dissolve into history as a dead nation-state.”

“That will take years, don't you realize?” Crowell shouted. Stevens, standing close by, motioned for the two men that had stood abruptly in protest to remain sitting. “Years! The entire population of the lower classes combined might be massacred by then.”

Sync simply shook his head. “My calculations and research have concluded that if this action is taken it will be no more than one year and seven months before their resources run out.”

Crowell blinked, thin eyelashes beating in the silence. “That so? Based on what?”

“Based on their recent actions and military history, standard decay of natural oil and water, weather patterns—”

“And you're certain?”

“Yes.”

The General's beady dark eyes regarded him steadily and Sync stared back in his own hollow way, optic lenses gleaming like cameras under the florescent lighting with what looked very close to determination. With a heavy sigh polluted with the slight catch of a lifelong smoker he turned away and, removing the green cap that had been sitting squarely on his head, ran a hand over his near-bald scalp. He quirked his head to the side, a motion for Stevens to approach, and leaned his hands over the oval table. Sync could still hear them clearly from across the room.

“What do you think?” Stevens asked, more curious than tentative.

“It... hmph.” Crowell shook his head at himself, thinking.

“It doesn't sound... too illogical...” He looked up at the circle of expectant faces—some hopeful, some worried.

Another sigh.

“Fine. Give it a test run. Something simple. Something fixable,” he stressed, and Stevens nodded curtly in total understanding. “Good. Now get him—it out of here.” And, with a final glance the android's way, General Crowell left, a trail of clones at his back.

Stevens was smiling, arms crossed over his chest as he stood alone with the first military approved robot in history.

“He did not seemed pleased,” Sync commented.

“Don't worry about him. He'll see the bright side of things soon enough.” Stevens grinned as if talking to a child, perhaps his son. “You know, you really are a miracle. You're going to do great things for this country. For the world, even.”

He thought he could almost see a twitch of a smirk on those ghostly blue lips.

“I plan to.”

NaNoWriMo 2009 - Chapter 1/Prologue

2009-11-02T00:57:00.000-08:00

Well, for what it's worth, here is Chapter 1, which I think is actually the prologue. Depends on what I decide to write next. Honestly, I like the first paragraph and not much else, but just go with it for now. It'll get better. I got a good middle, just no good beginning as of yet. Comments always welcome! :3

Also, I'm thinking about making "The Dark Side of the Sun" the working title until I figure something more suiting. Whatcha think of it? Let me know :D

Word Count = 1237

Total Word Count = 1237

____________________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I/PROLOGUE?

He had never seen the sun so bright as it was now, bursting out of a pure black sky through five inches of the clearest glass in the world. From here all other stars fell away at its touch and disappeared into swarming specks at his back, like scattered paint on ink-dense canvas. For what seemed like hours, but what registered as mere minutes to his internal clock, he stood and watched the galaxy creep imperceptibly by, taking in the unique sight like any human would.

“Fascinating, isn't it?”

He turned to the source of the interruption, not flinching at the intrusion, holding no embarrassment or malice. The voice was not unlike his own—in fact, the body too was not so different, both metallic and ever artificial, but varying just slightly. He was made a man, she a woman. Their makers wished it so.

He turned back to the picture window of the world, the wiring of his positronics humming pleasantly under the fine silver-blue finish of his flesh.

“It is,” he toned, appreciative. “It's been some time since I last joined a crew on such a mission as this one. I recall the view well, but I find it interesting nonetheless to remind myself of it from time to time.” He turned on the titanium base of his heel to face her. “Has Base transmitted yet, PAXL?”

“No, we aren't receiving any more information from them yet. I don't suppose we will for a few hours yet,” PAXL answered dutifully. She came closer, bathing herself in the thin orange glow of the sunlight. They stood in silence for while yet again.

“You should call me Pax, as the humans do, Captain.”

His eyes whirred right briefly before shifting back into position. He didn't seem to deem the comment worthy of an answer. Monotonously, she tried again.

“The name is easier to say, I've found, just as Sync is for you. It would save us the trivial mannerisms.”

Something like a chuckle bubbled in Sync's chest like a tennis ball thudding against a chain-link fence. It didn't suit his appearance at all, this daunting figure of an android made by and in the likeness of man in his purest form. Pale blue silicone flesh took the place of skin and muscle, which rippled with ease over hollow titanium framework. Wire and cable twined within him, visibly looping through his flesh back and forth, humming just loud enough to be heard over the dim and distant roar of engines. Human-like responses were programmed into nearly all androids their age—how to speak to Generals, when to interrupt, how to seem angered--but most had been carefully extracted for the sake of official duty and service. This was nothing but a remnant intuition, an ancestral trait of sorts that had yet to be totally weeded out.

“That would be more than a little unconventional,” he said

“Yet PAXL is already shorter than my given designation. Hardly a stretch. And you yourself go by Sync rather than CINQ-1701 to our superiors.”

“Our superiors are humans, of course. Their need to shorten their speech tends to precede any other, unlike ourselves.”

“Then why not utilized the same mechanisms by which they operate?” Pax was looking at him now, the lenses of her optic eyes widening just so as she turned from the sun. “We were made as they were, weren't we? And for the same reasons?”

“Your postulating an opinion.”

“Not an opinion. A fact, proven and admitted.”

“Perhaps...” Sync paused, his brain chewing at the thought, processing it. “Perhaps you're right. There is no need for useless formalities here with the human population so far away. And the others?”

“Trill, and Zent. They tend to agree. They asked that I pass the suggestion to you.”

Sync nodded in understanding. Pax acted as second in command here regardless of her relatively humble standing on Earth, and though none of the androids were to be intimidated or inhibited by each other, the passage of command stayed true. Protocol still dictated most of their actions, even as they circled the planet miles above the surface. Such a question to the Captain by another would have been ill-advised, he knew. Sync admittedly despised the restrictions, and in fact tended to ignore them altogether on a regular basis to the uproar of many. His calculations never failed, however, and he had earned his place aboard the Arian near-countless times. The United States military would never give up on such a reliable asset to them, an artificial being that could not guess, but predict the outcome of nearly any situation. Sync was a military genius, constructed and taught for just such a purpose and none other.

“Do you think we'll make it?” Pax interrupted the silence again.

“You have just as much knowledge as I do.”

“But none of the wisdom.”

“Yes, I think we will. We were trained for it, and we'll manage one way or another. For their sakes.”

“You sound fond of them. I didn't take you for a lover of the biological.”

Sync almost seemed surprised except that his face made no movement of expression. Only the faint whirring within him led on to anything that could be labeled emotion.

“Not fond, no,” he corrected, making a slow about-face away from the window, as if not wanting it to leave his sight for too long for fear it might misbehave. “But friendly, perhaps. They seem to approve of my decisions on the whole and enjoy my presence.” He started an easy pace that Pax followed closely, just a step behind him through the narrow passageways of the ship. As they exited the Viewing Room, Pax could watch the few struggling stars that had managed to shine through the sun's oppression before the solar screen drifted smoothly across the glass and shrouded them in black again. The room went dark, but the connecting hallways were well lit and quiet.

Sync seemed to be in the mood for conversation, a rarity. “Were you 'fond', as you say, of your patients, Pax?”

“No.”

“Then you were merely friendly.”

“I suppose they would call it such, yes. I tended to them well. Though they were not my patients, Captain. I was hardly more than a scientist giving aid when needed.”

“I understand that they think you're the best. Are you?”

“Captain?” Pax's voice toned upwards, inquisitive though she felt nothing.

“You must be to be here,” Sync said simply. “You should remember it. There's no shame left here when we are alone. Not anymore.”

A soft sound thrummed around them, felt more in their heads than through their senses. They both stopped and stood fast, as if suddenly paralyzed.

“Attention: All personnel required on deck. Incoming transmission from UN Delta Base 5. Repeat--all personnel required on deck. Incoming transmission from UN Delta Base 5.”

The message rang smoothly around them from the intercom system, floating off the padded walls of the passage like running water and vapor. Without speaking, the two androids hurried through the corridors in stride with one another, feet padding to the beat of a preordained rhythm. Their orders awaited them and they would not keep them waiting.

More on NaNo

2009-10-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

So I think my "androids in space" idea is becoming more solid in my head, but not in its entirety yet. I believe I've thought of names for them that may or may not change just slightly during the writing process. Currently there are four main characters; in a way they are recombinations of the original crew from the last novel, embodying most of the characteristics that made each unique (in other words, each android id still in part based on some of you, the Circle :D).

~CINQ-1701 : captain/commander of the ship. He is moderately trained in all aspects of the running of the ship as well as in his duties as a commander of others, and knows well how much responsibility he has for them. He is the most well-rounded of the crew in both mental and physical aspects.

~ZNTE-5223 : engineer expert. He is extremely well acquainted with the operation of the ship itself and can also function as the repairman for it. He is therefore more sturdily-built than the average android and can handle more intense temperatures and impacts.

~TRLL-0158 : zenogeology/astronomy expert. Her focus is mainly on the physical aspects of the planets and celestial bodies themselves and can detect and interpret readings based on chemical and biological information gleaned from them.

*~PAXL-0064 : zenobiology/psychology (neuroscience) expert and main character. Her focus is in the creatures that inhabit the universe. She is specifically trained in abstract concepts as well as subjectgs such as physiology and anatomy in both Earth and potential alien species. Although she is the youngest and newest of the crew, she is also of one of the highest class of androids with the ability to not only store and learn new information, but make assumptions based on that data and store it as new information with prompting if the ocassion deems it necessary. As such, she is a somewhat experimental "breed," though entirely capable of performing her duties.

So what does ya'll think of the cast? I know there's not a whole lot of info up right now, but some opinions would be nice :D Also, does anyone have an idea for a title? Doesn't matter too much right now, but I'd love suggestions!

Love and peace for all :3

Paradise? Just a thought

2009-07-30T00:24:00.000-07:00

"Paradise is not an oasis in a desert. It is a world where deserts do not exist...or is it a universe in which we are content with deserts?"

That's a quote from a friend of mine named Eric aka [another brick in the wall] on Elftown.

Why are we as humans constantly looking and begging and hoping for more from life instead of making the most of the deserts we're stuck with? We can synthesize our own happiness, I've learned, make ourselves believe we are happy or sad, content or lacking, but in the end it doesn't really matter. There comes a point when one realizes that it doesn't matter if there are deserts or oases, because they are part of the same structure, the same concept on two different sides. They blend into each other where it's hard to tell which is which anymore and suddenly we're questioning where one starts and the other begins.

Then again, who's to decide which part is the oasis and which is the desert? Is the oasis really a paradise or merely a new desert within the old?

Hmm...must investigate further.

New Poetry! - The Boxer

2009-07-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

First new (good) poem in a while, not really inspired by much. Just thought it was a good line and rand with it :)

____________________________________________________________

The Boxers

What are we
But boxers in a ring,
Dancing around in some obscene ritual,
Twisting, bounding left and right,
Avoiding each others' throws,
Taunting one another into a corner,
Preparing for the knock out.
Hop left for the jab,
Right for the hook,
Low blows that don't count
But pain us just as much.
And in the end we'll see through blood
And glare and think our dirty thoughts,
But somewhere in the middle
We fall against each other,
Clinging for dear sweet life in the midst of it all
Before we both retreat
And start the dance again.

NaNo 2009?

2009-07-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

So...I think I might have a new idea for a novel this year, or rather a sort of reworking of last year's idea. Another hard sci-fi idea, which might not be a good idea, but right now it's just a vague concept.

I want to see androids in space.

We have so many stories about humans and intergalactic travel and such, saving the planet and all that, occasionally with the aid of alien species and robots of sorts. But wouldn't it seem a little more logical if we launched beings with greater intelligence that needed no oxygen or resources of any kind besides some sort of power? Makes sense to me.

I think that this particular idea is original enough to be interesting to people. The main challenge will be in setting up characters, as most of the cast will be mechanized. Anybody have any comments?

Winds of Change: A Practice in Sap

2009-06-12T02:32:00.000-07:00

Ho boy, am I feeling sappy or what? Well, take it or leave it. It's just for you guys :) I will never write something this corny again haha XD That's how much I love you all
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Winds of Change:
An ode to the Circle

Oh Winds of change please blow on by
And come again some year.
Don't sully these last moments
With a sense of end and tears.

I see the clouds you're blowing in--
All grays and tampered shade.
They cover up the day in night,
And night within the day.

You've settled here for long enough,
Moved slowly through our lives,
Changing little parts of us
In ways we can't deny.

Despite the storms you've brought with you,
We reveled in the rains;
And through everything, in thick and thin,
Some things have stayed the same.

But here you are to threaten us
With the promise of a start,
To make us disparate and new,
And to make us grow apart.

But then again...

Let you do your worst, oh Wind,
We've weathered harsher things.
We've waited years, and lived them well,
And repelled your whips and slings.

Perhaps someday we shall look back
Upon these days, our last,
Remembering these times we shared,
The things we have surpassed.

For it is you that's made us so,
And you that made us strong,
And together we'll be made again
As you sweep us each along.

Random Question:

2009-05-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

There's a poetry reading at the school tomorrow (Wednesday) so I'm trying to figure out what to read :) So out of all the things I've posted here, what is y'all's favorite? Can be anything, any part of something, poetry, prose, whatever. Just wondering what people like to read and such, since I always write too depressing stuff to read aloud. Feedback is awesome!

Without Significance

2009-04-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

People don't die anymore the way they used to.

It used to be that people knew what camaraderie was, running into battles with swords and guns and cannons blazing, like all the good stories. It used to be that people died in the arms of others who prayed for them, softly and sincerely, in their final moments. Men holding each other because they had to, because there was no one else, and for an instant there could be unfathomable and unconditional love because there had to be. Then, the fires would roar and they'd be up again, leaving the fallen alone and cold but always within memory, always tingling on the edge of remembrance. Someone would write a song about them later and call it something simple and sweet so others might wonder what it's really all about.

Now there's just needles and white bed sheets and pills and strange little containers and bags with tubes that weren't there the week before. Dying alone with strangers and a strict deadline to keep. Six months. Six weeks. A few hours, maybe. Depends on charity. Depends on the money. Just depends.

The movies like to think the saddest part is letting go. Talking to the dying with some prepared speech that makes an audience weep and they don't even know why. Sometimes there isn't a reason at all, really. Just because it's an opportunity to feel something more than numbness. An opportunity to feel more than what we can muster for the people we know in our lives that needed to see it. Because that's all we are: numb. Numbed to the killing and the dying alone in hospital beds. Hearing another "I always loved you, always will" or "I forgave you a long time ago" while holding hands until one of them goes limp is a refreshing little twist of angst compared to the usual droll gray-white that always seems to end before the punch line.

A man sleeps in an otherwise empty bed. He's just turned eighty-four years old. A long time ago, he used to deliver papers on a bike that wasn't his. The man down the street named Mr. Johnson used to talk to him every day on his routes. He died a long time ago. He never remembered that kid's name, but he thought about it sometimes when he wasn't thinking.

His children call him on his birthday every year. They can never come up because it's always so busy at home. He doesn't mind though. It's understandable, and he loves them anyways because that's what fathers do. He has pictures of his grandchildren and old photos in black and white. He doesn't remember the faces well anymore, but he likes to look at them and try all the same when there's nothing better to do.

His wife died a few years ago. She was the prettiest girl in school when they first kissed, and her eyes were still the same old blue when she died, only they didn't twinkle so much as they had then and her hands were stiffer and colder than they had a right to be. Now there's no one to listen to him play his piano in the other room but walls filled with faces and an old TV he forgets to turn off.

On a warm sunny morning in May, the man wakes to find himself something to eat. As he reaches for a glass in the cupboard above the sink, his heart seizes. The glass falls and chips the edge of the counter. He lays on the linoleum floor of his kitchen, gripping his chest as he stares at a spot of black lint beneath the fridge. As his vision blurs, he tries to think of what Heaven will look like, but the pressure in his chest makes it hard to think, and all he can see is that fuzzy black spot. He can't think of anything else to do but wait, so he does, and dies.

No hands to hold. No sudden final call from loving relatives. No camaraderie. No note on the bedside table. Just the low gasping for breath that has run out. Just another average man's death in just another average town.

Sometimes we try to find reasons and meanings, when everything's over, just because we feel we should, when the reality is there is no reason. Reasons come with things that happen with consequence, and death has no consequence. It simply is. It comes and it goes and the rest of the world moves on because it must move on. Sometimes he's remembered. Most times, he isn't.

It's just the way it goes. I imagine in a hundred years things won't even need a reason anymore. People will just assume there isn't one and leave the guessing and the speeches we didn't get a chance to make to the movies about fake people and real people that didn't have a reason either, until the time comes for us to die too. So we'll slip into that darkness without a thought, without a reason, without a consequence. Without significance.

I guess people just don't die the way they used to anymore.

The Gods of Babel - "Prologue"

2009-04-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

Well, since some people seem to be interested in it, I've decided to put up the first "scene," which takes place at a local bar in northern Canada mid-December and introduces the main character, Diana. Not too bad a start, I think. :)

The plot centers around a small group of unrelated people around the world who are born for the sole purpose of attempting to salvage humanity for the Creator Gods, particularly the Mayan God Alom. They are just unassuming individuals, and all were born on December 21, 2012, when the world was meant to change. One of them is Diana, who plays the Greek Goddess Artemis (and is the only one with an obvious name heh). Anyways, that's what's up in a very simplified way. Enjoy our little endeavor--I won't post more unless you want me/us to and simply can't wait for the comic :D

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INT.LOCAL BAR.NIGHT

The first page opens on a local bar scene late at night. The small bar is strewn with a string of thin white and blue lights, it's only attempt at festive decorations. A few of the usual alcoholic crowd sit hunched at the bar over empty glasses, and a close couple sit quietly in the corner. JACOB the bartender, a burly capable man with the chiseled appearance of an unkempt lumberer, stands cleaning glasses as he chats up a few of the regulars. One customer looks as if he might have once been an average guy, fit and with a neat sort of air, but his face is dotted with stubble and his eyes are bleary and red. He seems to have something important to say, yet avoids saying it and lapses into other things. He stares into a half-empty mug of stale coffee.

Customer

So I guess that's it, then, eh?

JACOB

(turning to him) What's that?

CUSTOMER

I said I guess that's it.

JACOB

What is?

There's a brief pause.

CUSTOMER

I guess there's really nothing else, is there? I mean...now that she's gone n' all. Not much point to it, is there?

JACOB

Hey, now. You quit that talk. Drink your coffee. S'been a long day.

CUSTOMER

Yeah...

He obeys and gulps down the last half with his head tilted back, expressionless. A small gold cross can be seen on a chain around his neck. He turns to Jacob, but doesn't meet his eyes.

CUSTOMER

You believe in God, Jac-Jac?

JACOB

Well...yeah, I suppose. Course I do. Just like most folks....You?

CUSTOMER

Nah...not really. (smirking grimly) Just like most folks.

JACOB

Go home, Bern.

CUSTOMER

Gotta pay still--

JACOB

Don't worry about it.

He stands obligingly, swaying in place as if forgetting where he is for a moment, then pulls on a bulky parka and starts to head out.

JACOB

Go get you some sleep, Bern. You'll feel better in the morning. Promise. Want to see you bright n' early tomorrow at the yard. Alright?

Bern, the customer, smiles lopsidedly, unconvincingly.

CUSTOMER

Yeah, sure.

He leaves, walking out into the dark snow storm outside. Jacob shakes his head with a sigh, beginning to pick up the multiple glasses left behind and wipe down the bar.

DIANA watches him a few feet away, also at the bar, hunched over a single glass and whiskey. She's a fit woman, but not in any especially feminine manner. Her shoulders are broad as a man's and her shoulder-length brown hair is pulled back under a woven gray beanie. She swirls her drink idly and sips.

JACOB

I just don't know about that guy anymore, Di.

DIANA

(disinterested) What did you expect? The guy lost his wife on the highway.

JACOB

So did Adrien. He lost his little girl, too, in the pileup. Still manages to come to service, at the very least.

Diana smirks, sliding down towards him.

DIANA

Don't think it helps much. Didn't do shit for me, I know that much. You can go to all the sermons, but they don't really say anything useful unless you're about to crucify your kid or build a gold cow on a cliff someplace.

JACOB

Damn, what's got into you all lately? All this talk of death, it's all I hear these days.

DIANA

Just life. You know how it is.

JACOB

I sure hope not.

He looks out the window at the blizzard.

JACOB

What d'you think the odds are that he hangs himself tonight, eh?

DIANA

(shrugging) Dunno. 'Pends on if he can find a place to do it. I'd say drowning's more likely.

JACOB

(exasperatedly) Di! Come on, have a heart, why don't you. Just a little faith... You're supposed to say you don't think he'd do that sort of thing. You know, like normal folk would.

DIANA

What? Just speculating. You asked.

Jacob "humphs" and ignores her, knowing she's won, as usual, and Diana knows it too as she sips at her drink and smirks at him through the bottom of the clear glass.

JACOB

So you don't think there's a God either anymore, eh?

DIANA

Who knows? Who cares? Far as I'm concerned, I'll figure it out when it matters, right? Maybe it's one of those things you're not supposed to know. Makes sense.

JACOB

Yeah, I guess. To each their own. I'd like to think there's somethin' waiting up there after everything.

DIANA

Like you said, to each their own. Endless blackness doesn't sound all that bad to me. Better than some loony old guy sitting in a cloud staring me down all day.

She smiles empathically at him, though, and Jacob returns it with some sadness. Diana stands with a yawn and slides a $20 bill from her back pocket onto the counter. She shrugs on a worn gray-orange parka and pulls the hat down further on her head.

DIANA

Be seeing you. Tell your wife merry Christmas.

JACOB

Yeah, I'll do that. Take care, Diana.

She doesn't answer, already heading out the door, but waves a hand in the air in good humor. Her dark bulky figure disappears into the snow and night.

More Poetry--Grave

2009-03-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

Whoo, more poetry. This was basically just to write something. I couldn't get the last three lines out of my head the past few days. Not my best work, but it works :)

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Grave

If I must die and sleep into the darkness,
Dig a shallow grave, that I may taste the sun
Past the stale and dampened earth,
Through the thick wood and canvas.
Allow me the beauty to feel the warmth of light
Upon these withering bones,
Chilled marrow,
Sallow flesh;
To hear the songbirds passing by,
Nesting in the branches of great oaks
That drop their offspring to sprout above my head,
Eternal guardians.

And if I must perish, let me reach death young,
For if I must endure an endless darkness,
Why must I first wallow in the darkness of mankind,
Suffer before suffering,
Blinded before blinded?
His darkness permeates the world
And turns it black,
Makes it indiscernibly churn like molten ink.
What waiting room all earth should be amongst them,
Only to be thrown into another blacker blackness--
How unfair.
How cruel.

Then make me like the earth itself,
Embedded within it,
Flesh within flesh,
Life and death within living and dying,
Breathing.
For if all the earthworms of the world
Have rights to sun and soil alike,
Then what have I?

Poetry?!?

2009-01-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

Yup, after nearly seven months I've finally written a new poem. Crazy madness. For being so out of practice, it's not too bad :) Partially (vaguely) inspired by Watchmen. Read away.
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Specters Black

At midnight in the city,
All the dark and tattered men
Play poker in the corners
And hold close their jars of gin.
They plot dark things in slick black tongues,
They stare like dazed lost sheep,
Pass packages beneath the slab
And watch him take the leap.
A poor man down the street cries out,
He says, “The Specters haunt.”
He doesn’t understand his needs,
But thinks he knows his wants.
He wants to drink and throw his cards,
To play their vicious games;
He wants the world to be his own
And wants to live in shame--
Not this life, this worthless thing,
A new thing, all it’s own,
A living thing in shadowed night
That will not stand alone.
He lies awake each night and day
And watches Specters black,
Longing for a place with them
And the vices that he lacks.

Chapter II - Part 2

2009-01-11T01:11:00.001-08:00

Yup, decided to post it. Thought it had some good bits of prose, if nothing else, and couldn't bear not putting it up :) It's not much, and doesn't add a whole lot as far as important goings-on, but hope you enjoy all the same. I was going to do an entire scene between the two, but really what would be the point? Maybe if a "final copy" (lol) ever manifests itself out of oblivion, I'll elaborate on it. until then, enjoy :)

Also--*does a happy dance*--I self-congratulate myself on finally getting to 10,ooo words :D Yay!

Anyways, happy reading (^,^)

WORD COUNT: 1,763
TOTAL: 10, 470
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It was raining by the time Jacky was making her way out from beneath the shadows of the city that loomed behind like those of angry giants. Thick drops pelted against the rounded glass, forming rivulets and craters that disappeared and reformed with each strike as the droner sped away above the smoothly planned magnetic curves of a silent and invisible road. The trees below swayed and groaned like lost drunks along the narrowing road, rustling with the passing of each scarce vehidrone that cut through the twilit air, unheard and ignored.

Jacky watched the raindrops slide from their craters along the sleek glass and pass by in streaking comets on either side of her. Her arms crossed against her chest, and her dark mossy eyes seemed vague, narrowed in thought. A strange quick beat was playing over the pinpoint speakers, and electronic tones soon accompanied it. It reminded Jacky of a low-budget but interesting performance she’d attended years ago. “Neo-Asiatic,” she remembered. The performance had been surprisingly well-played, but she recalled the music and grimaced briefly. Not quite her taste, she guessed.

A sudden and annoyed sigh flew from her lips like hard wind coming through an open door as she ran a quick hand through her short black hair and fell back limp and tired in her seat, staring at the blackening fields beyond the window.

In fifteen years, she had probably lived more than millions of people (more worthy people) had in their entire lives combined, most of whom she probably met along the way. They were the little guys, the poor and starving chaps, the abused Third World countrywomen, the children with bubbles in their bellies and clear dreams in their heads amidst the nightmares of the day. Luck brought Jacky out of her own little hellish home and luck brought her too to the people that shared a history with her, the people that made her happiest. They shared families and siblings and cousins, shared money and the lack thereof, shared the hard times and the harsh world, shared hopes and dreams (both the full and the broken), and, soon enough, she shared all the words to express all the things. When she saw their smiles--their untreated, unbreakable, undisguised smiles--it was her smile too, and it was just another simple thing they shared. So many others that Jacky now saw every day found their dreams and deserted them, found love in the people or in art or poetry and left those all behind for a high-paying job and a high-flying life without the real highs; Jacky found it in all these things, though, and in all the places it could be found, and for that, if for nothing else, she was eternally thankful.

It had been years since the last of those smiling faces disappeared into the backdrop of mislaid villages and ramshackle huts. Now they were replaced with the harsh and humorless people Jacky had unwillingly and unhappily grown up with--old starch-collared little buggers sitting in offices in big red leather chairs with a pen in one hand and a mandate in the other. No love in their hearts, or at least there wasn’t anymore. It’d been given away somewhere along the line, wasted on some pitiful creature and lost for good in some dark corner, evaporated into bitterness. Over time, that bitterness and wasted love began to consume Jacky too, and put strange lines in places they shouldn‘t be, made her lips thinner and harsher and her sometimes smiles fleeting, while behind the fluid sea-green of her eyes the liquid memories danced in monochrome.

In a world that no longer allowed room for pride in mediocrity, Jacky knew she had to find work high and fast, something that suited her proficient talents that also paid well. For several years the only job available that fit at least one of those descriptions was working as a tourist translator for hire nearly anywhere that would accept her. The pay was low but a cut above average, which was good enough for a while but didn’t amount to being worth the aches and pains and rare happiness it yielded. However, friends in low places do occasionally keep friends in high places, and in the case of her sixth and closest employer, those friends happened to be extremely high up. A government job loomed dead ahead, and although working as a government official sat dead last in Jacky’s list of prospective occupations, the infrequent logic in her mind forced her to take the job all the same, and at least attempt to keep it. For over a year she did more than simply attempt that, taking every translating job she was offered and letting the much-needed and welcomed cash flow into her paychecks. Soon, meager translating spots at long and inconclusive international meetings for dying languages used by dying countries turned to a post at the very head of it all, and that was just fine with Jacky. Traveling was what she was after in the end, and if sticking to tight schedules and dealing with moronic tight-lipped businessmen lead to the places she missed the most, well, that was just fine too.

It was the foreign affairs in her own country that drove her back to the streets she once inhabited to fight the good fight. No amount of duty or responsibility could keep her from speaking out against the very government she, in part, represented. After what seemed a hundred arguments, petitions, and even pleas and threats, Jacky saw no other way but to rally. Maybe they’d listen with a peace army a thousand strong at her back.

Evidently they had. And, evidently, they hadn’t liked it in the least.

Cynics passed along rumors of black bags and memory wiping and remote prisons, and Jacky was admittedly among them at times, but as with any rumor she never fully believed or found proof of such things. They were myth, as far as she could tell. The simple imaginings of cowards, mostly. But Jacky knew from experience that even the most profuse rumors and stories were founded within some unspeakable truth. The fact of the matter was that people created false fears to cover for the simple and ever crueler true ones. And government agents from other countries sending people thousands of miles away on a whim “just to talk” didn’t sound like much of a safe carefree trip to Jacky.

“Operata’.” Jacky leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. A quiet chime sounded from somewhere in the droner’s console as a thin blank holoscreen slowly climbed its way out. “Call Robbie,” she continued, rubbing two fingers at her temple lightly.

“Is this an urgent call?” the faceless monitor asked in its best comforting electronically concerned blonde secretary voice, reading the quick thumping of Jacky’s pulse as urgency.

“No…no, s’not urgent,” Jacky answered after a moment, and suddenly she delt so old and tired and worn as she spoke and kneaded her temples. “Just put me through, eh?”

“Please wait.” All concern gone. Bloody machines. The screen glowed faintly and a old-fashioned ring sounded over the connection. It rang four times before a picture finally came up.

At first, the screen showed nothing but a familiar earthy living room, brown leather couches and green glass lamps in the corners and a messy combination of children’s fairytales, political biographies, and coffee-stained yesterday’s newspapers warring for places on the maple coffee table. A shadow moved off screen and to the side. Someone was speaking, indiscernible, and someone was answering--“Well, alright, fine,”--and a pair of arms picked up a tiny blue-eyed child from the side. Finally, Robbie sat before the screen, wearing a genuine but weary smile as he sat the little blonde on his knee. He wasn’t often a tired or frustrated man, and never felt or looked as old as he was, which was a good sum of years older than Jacky and more than the she could ever boast, but he was indeed a serious profundity in a world of lackluster carbon-copy-Kafkas sitting in shady downtown café’s snapping their fingers to the rhythmic raps of new age music while boasting a steady supply of 1984 and Brave New World and all the rest. Robbie wasn't any of these things, preferring his own plain study and a library full of hard substance to the rather Gothic Bohemian life he could have (and perhaps once had) lived.

“Jacky,” he started, his voice a deep and precise baritone. The smile slipped from his face briefly as he adjusted the girl squirming in his lap, but it flittered up again without fail. “Jacky, it’s a bit late for calls, isn’t it?”

“Ah…sorry, Robbie,” she answered slowly and could tell by the way the auburn haired man peered at her through half-moon glasses that she must have looked must worse off than she’d hoped she would.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well…to be short with it, I do believe I’m in a spot of trouble, mate.”

“Do you need money?” Always the first question. To most, it would seem an insult, but between them it was the best possible trouble Jacky could be in.

Consequently, she shook her head, humorless.

Robbie watched her a long moment. “Lacy, go see your mum,” he whispered to the child, planting a swift dismissing kiss on her golden head before setting her down.

“Something bigger, then?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah…yeah, I think so.” Jacky looked apologetic. Robbie only looked worried, as usual, graying eyebrows converging with the lines in his face and a thin frown replaced the weary smile. “Listen…I don’t know what’s going t’happen yet. Just feelings, mostly. Two agents told me at the gov’ I needed to leave for ‘Merica, quick as ya like. And…I just needed t’talk, I guess. Heavy stuff, mate.”

“Quite,” came the thoughtful reply. “Come as soon as you can make it.”

“Right ‘round the bend.”

A nod. “Be careful, sis.”

A smile. “Always am.”

The screen went blank then and began it‘s descent into the console once more, leaving Jacky staring into the black rain around her. A line of yellow lights flitted like bulging fireflies in the darkness beyond the trees. Her eyes dimmed and blurred behind guilt-laden lids.

“Always am.”

Chapter 2 - Part 1?

2008-12-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

Well...this is really really lame (in my opinion), so sorry for that much, Sara. At least your character came out alright, considering the shitty chapter she had to work with :o

Anyways, this is the first half and possibly end of Chapter 2, simply because I'm tired of trying to think of something to write for this part. Beginnings are oh so dull...

Just in case it isn't very clear, Jacky does in fact work for the government, but is also a fairly well-known political activist. It's not explained in detail here, but there's a war going on in China at the moment, which is why Australia has closed its borders to everyone and is working to deport everyone it can, and this is what Jacky is fighting against at the moment and what they're discussing in this scene. Just to clarify a little :)

I'm going to attempt to finish the whole thing, but don't count on it. Maybe I'll just move on and write a second part later if I think I still need to :) But, onward the reading for you, friends. Hopefully thine eyes shan't burn afterwards :P

WORD COUNT: 2610
TOTAL: 8707
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CHAPTER II
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

He sat in his red leather chair, surrounded by the false and polished paneled wood adorned with at least a dozen matching glass-imprisoned off-white certificates, each aligned perfectly with the rest in their matching chestnut-colored frames. White wisps of ghostly hair lay caring plastered to a pale scalp, which was beginning to sprout miniscule dark spots from the sun and, of course, from age. Upon his nose--which hung with an unsightly favor of the left side of his face--sat a pair of authentic glass spectacles, perfect clear circles embedded in glistening wire that bent the world in strange old ways. The pale eyes that hide behind the lenses gazed down at the file he held in his hands, thick gray brows knitted in focus. Across from him, in an identical red leather seat, sat an infinitely younger woman, thin and sprightly even in her temporary seated prison. Her leg jittered noticeably as she sat, silent and restrained, but only barely, and her vibrant aqua eyes danced around the room at will, leaving nothing untouched by their gaze.

This must be the biggest waste of time I’ve ever had t’spend, she thought bitterly, her irritability manifesting in the involuntary gnawing of her bottom lip. Finally her gaze stopped and held on the man before her. Must be at least a hundred. Slow as a buggy in ‘Cember, for sure.

As if the look could slowly burn, the man looked up from the file and instead peered at her, as a scientist might peer into the lense of a microscope: closely but without much interest. He spoke. “Miss Thomas,” he began, pulling the glasses off his nose and folding them in a slow and practiced motion before setting them carefully on the desk in front of him. “I won’t waste time in telling you exactly why you’re here. I’m certain you already know that much. What concerns me though, and concerns us all, really, is your constant disregard and disrespect for the basic principles of our branch.”

“And what, if I dare ask, might those be?” the woman answered, swinging the leg to the floor that had been jittering impatiently on the other. She leaned her palms on both knees, leering now. “Unquestioning acceptance and deafness to any opinion but daddy-king’s? If that’s what this gov’ment stands for, then with all respect, Sir…I see no reason t’pologize.”

“And we’re not asking you to,” he responded in the reassuring manner that constantly followed in his voice and annoyed Jacky endlessly. “We like to see our people out in the real world, doing good for the rest. It’s simply your manner, Miss Thomas. You can’t be an open and proud contributor of this government while you’re out telling illegals to run us down. It’s…not good for business, so to speak.”

“Selling politics, eh? Thought politics acted to protect the people, not t’shun ‘em.”

“They are not our people,” the old man responded emphatically, rapping his knuckles against the desk. “They don’t belong here, Jacqueline. They haven’t for a very, very long time and it isn’t going to change anytime soon. No one wants that to change. They like the way it is now. If we take the same route America did centuries ago, letting everyone in the floodgates for free, the Aussie Republic will be nothing but a cesspool filled with loons and criminals and God knows.”

“Doesn’t change the fact it’s wrong. Discrimination pure n’ simple, that is. You’re destroying human rights because a few men in some room away from reality thinks the Chinksees aren’t worth a damn and have no use in this country, so I guess that means everyone bail out, eh?.”

“There’s a war, for Chrissakes. The people are worried. We don’t need the bombin’s and hackin’s that the rest of Britain’s seen. Don’t want our enemies crawlin’ in under the sheets with us.” He paused when Jacqueline didn’t seem to respond right away, and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose where the glasses normally sat. “Look. I like you, Jacky, really. I like to think I’m on you’re side. But I’m not the one in charge of this. There are people higher up than I that are talking of getting’ rid of you altogether--no compensation, no standing, nothing. They want to sweep this under the rug and deny that you have anything to do with us. I want to help you. I think you can do some good from the inside. The people are looking for someone young and fresh and vigorous as you to trust. But I need you to cooperate. You can’t do the old ralls and the public speeches anymore. Just…let it go for a tad, hmm?”

“So ya expect me to simply go and ignore ‘em from now on, eh? Just go along with all this shonky bizzo? Act like it’s a perfect thing to strip innocents of their rights?”

“Don’t be dramatic. Sit down. Come.”

Jacky glared, the heat in her veins surging through her, but she obeyed.

The old man leered back through his lightly steepled fingers where they were suspended above the desk. He sighed once more, letting his wrinkled hands fall back onto the folder he had been holding earlier. He didn’t move it, barely touched it even, fingertips just grazing the manila cover. “Jacky…I have a feeling that this will not be last you’ll hear of this little problem, and I can almost guarantee that this will be the last conversation on the matter that will go smoothly for you. So…I have a proposition for you--an offer--before you lose your job and end up on the streets.”

Jacky breathed deeply, staring into him. It was a game, really, seeing how much strain the other could take simply by the connection of a gaze, and it was a game that Jacky often played and often won. This time, though, she simply didn’t have the care to try. She bent her head downwards briefly, as if summing herself up, building herself, then focused once more. “Fine. I’ll hear it.”

A smile, genuine if light. “Good. Very good.” Now his surprisingly deft hands picked up the folder and flipped through several papers and official documents before finding one he apparently needed. “About a week ago, a few men came to see me about hiring an interpreter, someone who knew the languages well and knew many, but also knew their limits. I sent them back, then. You’d been doing so well of late, I didn’t have the heart to simply ship you off someplace.”

“What someplace?” she asked, growing more impatient. So far this offer didn’t sound too promising.

“The men were from the United States. From ISAS, actually, so really the where doesn’t matter entirely.” Here he paused, watching the disinterest in Jacqueline’s features fade into a momentary confusion which gave way to the just slightly raised brows and relaxation that showed the faintest interest.

“ISAS?” Jacky repeated, a disbelieving smirk bending her lips. “As in, the ISAS? The space program? Why in bloody God’s name would they want me? I don’t know a damn thing about astronomy or…physics, or what-all they do. Sure they can find someone better at the Confederate Nations or…something.”

“They were looking for a very good interpreter, a linguistic expert, who could speak a language soon as learn it. They were looking for the best, dear lass, and I think they wanted you in particular.”

“Oh, come off it.” She seemed angry now, livid even as she lunged forward in her chair, much as she tried to conceal it. It dawned on the man that she thought he was lying, bulling his way into getting her leave early, leave less paperwork for him to fill out in the end. “You really think they wanted me? Political activist who has a job as a translator on some forgetful little tourism tinny and just happens t’work for the Auss’gov? What is this, eh? Are you that desperate t’get me off y’back?”

“Sit down!”

She promptly sat.

There was another slow silence, filled with the tension that silences often accompanied. Another slow sigh followed and broke it.

Outside, a black vehidrone pulled to the gray slab curb, its engines drawling lazily amidst the noise of a thousand other speeding droners, cutting the air like sharks in invisible hazy waters. Their shadows moved as cloudy dark bullets on the smooth street, casting a fluid pattern on the solid black titanium of the vehicle below. Two men exited. Their faces held nothing in them, and the full black sunglasses they wore showed nothing but the reflections before them. It seemed a veil shrouded them both as they made their deliberate way into the large federal building, sparing no glances for the rippling Ionian columns that extended far on either side of the entrance. They passed without notice from anyone but the retinal scanner as they entered, and the vehidrone was gone in moments.

An old balding man and a sprightly young woman sat within a sad and heavy silence in a wood paneled office twelve stories above.

“Jacky--”

“Mr. Bronson.”

A level stare.

“Jacky, listen. I don’t know what they want you for, and I don’t pretend to. But you can’t stay here. Either way you choose you can’t stay here. Do you understand?” Something in his voice made her listen, and slowly she began to realize she had just lost a job that many would kill for. Strangely, though, she didn’t regret the decisions that had led to it. So much had happened since she’d left her home in a dying Cairns to find her own way, a way that passed through countries she had scarcely dared to dream of and that had led her all the way to Sydney, fighting for friend and countryman. At the same time, she knew this might have been the best--maybe the only--means of making a real impact. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t the only one.

She barely noticed the holoscreen light up behind her. A blonde woman in a tight blue suit, older than Jacky but only just, bulged from the screen. Her eyes were blue and empty.

“Mr. Bronson, two agents are here to speak with you. Should I send them?”

“Yes, thank you. I’ll see them now.”

“Yes, sir.”

The holoscreen faded out into blank silence and again lay in dormant blackness.

“Is that them?” Jacky asked needlessly. If what Bronson had said was true, of course it was. Agents were only sent on matters of strict business, generally of the federal government sort and often on the darker side of that.

“Its just a short trip to the United States. A day or two at the most. I’ve already arranged everything for you. Transport leaves in a few hours.”

“Just like that? Guess you really do want rid o’ me, eh?” Jacky hoped the sarcasm and wry smirk covered the hurt that clouded her heart then.

Three quick and even knocks rapped gently against the wood panel door that blended seamlessly into the corner of the room.

“Come.”

The door slid open. Two men in identical stiff black suits entered, their identical true-black sunglasses tucked safely into identical breast pockets. They regarded Jacky momentarily, almost simultaneously, then focused on Bronson once more. Both stood with their hands clasped behind their backs, like scientists inspecting a prospective new breakthrough in a long-unrevealing testing trial. Jacky stood tall and strong, but felt suddenly smaller within, as if everything inside was shrinking beneath a solid outer shell.

“We are here regarding the message that was sent forward on the collection of a Miss Jacqueline Loraine Thomas to be traveling to Seattle, Washington by Intercontinental Air Transportation Services later this evening.”

“Won‘t even give me the option t‘think on it?” Again the two agents turned to her, summing her up. Not what they had expected perhaps. Jacky didn’t bother to notice if their young faces twitched with electrical surprise. She never put much stock in the emotions of clockwork vessels. “Sorry, good sahs, but I’ve other plans this aft. Things t’do and the like. Places t‘go.” She grinned at the two agents as she stood and made her way past them. They watched her go in silence, and as soon as she was out the door she headed quickly to the ports at the end of the glass-and-concrete hall, steely resolve concealing the smoldering anger that gnawed and slashed within her.

The two agents started to follow, but the commanding voice of the old man turned them. “Give her time. There’s no rush if the transport shuttle isn’t leavin’ for hours. You’ll find her later…surely so.” He stood slowly, ignoring his creaking joints as he pushed upwards on the arms of his leather chair. “You’re dismissed,” he commanded simply, and with a curt nod the agents left. The door slid closed once more and an old man was left in silence, alone.

Outside, pale gray-violet clouds could barely be seen gathering in the skies far above the speeding transport drones and towering buildings that land-locked each other for miles in every direction. The black droner had returned, idling by the entrance from which a steady stream of workers poured into and out of. Among them, two agents walked with equal strides, side by side. They left without consequence and faded into the rest of the world.

Bronson sighed, stroking the bridge of his nose in slow long lengths. Up, down. Up…

He pressed a ridged palm against the cool thin glass of the pane before him. He could remember the first time Jacqueline approached their huge building, looking up into the windows as if about to enter a monstrous creature, a thing to be truly reckoned with. Unlike many of the others they had sought after, she hadn’t look afraid, peering upwards into the glittering blue glass squares that lined level after level of the massive building. She’d stood before him as resolute as she had mere moments ago, a fighter always. The type of woman they didn’t see so often anymore in the “business,” as it was often so lovingly termed. That conversation hadn’t been much different than this one. If she could, she would fight tooth and nail to get her way, a way that Bronson had often agreed with in actuality. She was radical--that much couldn’t be hidden, not by any means--but it was something that the stuffy old business hadn’t seen in decades. Sadly, he guessed, it wasn’t something they wanted to see more of. Changing too many things, too fast, too radically and with too much spirit: that was for the low-life visionaries tripping on neuroin and rallying the old fashioned way in the streets of downtown, guns blazing in every way that mattered. Jacqueline was different. A new breed of liberal fresh out of the watery metropolis of a collapsing north Cairns. It was exactly the blood that a slowly decaying Sydney needed to revive it from the thinly veiled and half-dug grave it drowsed within. Exactly what it needed, but nowhere near exactly what prime ministers and “daddy-kings,” as she called them, wanted to see sitting in one of their highest and most precarious chairs in the midst of war. A radical and outspoken political activist as head translator in Foreign Communications, no matter her enormous qualifications, wasn‘t quite their intention.

Bronson watched idly as pod after pod and droner after droner sped away into the distance, carrying their precious human cargo. One of them, he knew, was carrying Jacqueline, and the light fluttering in his stomach he had felt when he had first heard of her “necessary departure” now returned as a rampant hawk, beating against him from the inside. Somehow, even in that solitary moment between a quiet morning and a noon cup of tea in good company, Bronson knew he would never see her face again.

NaNo failure, but with hope

2008-12-01T00:12:00.000-08:00

Well, of course everyone knows I didn't get anywhere near finishing 50,000 words in 30 days--I knew I wouldn't be able to right when week two started up. However, although this is technically the end of my commitment to finishing, I have every intention of getting through however many words it takes to reach the end, be it in 50,000 words or 100,000, in one month or in ten. I have a feeling this novel is going to mean a lot more to me (and hopefully to others, especially the Circle) than just a bunch of strangers floating around on a ship. I've got big things planned--not the starship battles and laser phaser guns and photon torpedoes, but something that science fiction used to be and lost along the way. I just can't wait to get there.

I guess that's the biggest problem: getting there. I want so bad to just skip to the middle and get to the point, but I can't make myself do it. I know I'd never go back to the beginning after that, and it would ruin it to skip making the characters really live.

But that was the failure part. Now onto the hope :) Time for some early author notes!

I'm considering writing up a glossary to go with the novel as I add terms. The last chapter didn't have too many, but I'm sure that will change very quickly. The "holoscreen" was easy enough, but later on there might be some confusion. If I did, I would probably include some of the international slang the characters use throughout too (Sara's character, Jacky, is already doing it up :P). Thoughts on the idea?

Also, before I get too far to go back efficiently, which characters do you want to see introduced (as in how I've introduced Aleksei, Ian, and Jacky)? I think it would get a little too monotonous to show every one of them, though I might be able to make that work out if I can't see a good way around it.

\/very minor vague spoiler\/

Chapter 2 will be out hopefully tomorrow, if school doesn't fail. As of right now I think I'll combine Jacky and Susannah (aka Sara and Nikki :P) into one chapter and then the major stuff will come out when Ian is approached in Chapter 3. That's when things will be explained with a little more depth as far as the plot with ISAS and the government(s). Chapter 4 may go back to Alex and/or Sid, but I don't plan that far ahead ;)

Anyways, I'm wasting time I should be using to write. See ya :)

Chapter 1 :D

2008-11-14T22:18:00.000-08:00

Probably quite a few typos, but just ignore them. Its not supposed to be grammatically correct through and through. But not too bad :) And don't mock my future views--it's not as bad as I thought it would turn out haha

Carry on then :)

WORD COUNT: 4207
TOTAL WORD COUNT: 6097
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I
SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT

When his wife died, it was all he could do to keep from dying himself. He could still see her, always, sitting in his chair or sleeping in his bed, always at peace. Always smiling and waiting. He would sit on the edge of the mattress, as if to ensure not to disturb her. Light waves of blonde gold strewn across both pillows with its length, a bare shoulder peeking from beneath the heavy comforter, shrugged inward against its owner as if to shield. The long lashes of her eyes would flutter momentarily and he could see her eyes move beyond the lids, dreaming sweet dreams that he could not possibly imagine himself, but that he hoped she would tell him in the morning. At times, she seemed real enough to touch, real enough to wait dazedly at the kitchen table, staring blankly at two settings, until the emptiness of remembrance came to him.

It had been five years, but still the shadows of that broken self haunted him, tormented him daily. Some days, the darkness and emptiness consumed him into madness, a feeling so blunt and harsh that he could feel nothing but sorrow. Other days it simmered into a mildness of manner and a silence in his nature, a sort of quiet brooding. Very rarely, he could forget, if only for a single moment, that he was alone in truth; that he could smile, truthfully, despite everything, and for a moment the curtain inside him would lift to let in the light. Then a little word, a phrase, the scent of perfume, the glint of the sun through blonde hair, and everything would fall once more into blackness, leaving him more alone than before.

Outside the solitude and the safe void of his home, though, he had always persevered. To those that knew him by name and rank and little more, he was a brilliant man, nearly without flaw. He walked straight and tall, stood strong and stolid, treated every man and woman he met with the same due respect and set those straight that went crooked. The few that knew him better, however--the few who had known him in his light-filled days of early service when life still seemed beautiful and smiles were the least uncommon of his features--could see his perpetual sadness and the way it ate at his heart and began to devour his mind. He visited these old acquaintances sometimes, when the need to be with became greater than the need to be without. There was a mild comfort in their presence, a sort of haze that fell over him when they spoke of memories that were both his and not his. It was as if, in those moments of conversation, his pain was shared, just for an instant. A load could be eschewed from his shoulders and he could rest from the heavy burden of pity and guilt that hung over him always.

“Ian? Hey--” A voice, sweet and familiar, pulled him back into reality. A gentle hand on his shoulder at once comforted and hesitated. “Did you still want to have lunch with us? Been a while since we all went out together. The guys have been missin’ you. It‘d be great if you came along.”

Ian sat his desk in an empty lecture hall, correcting papers absently while his thoughts wandered. Thick stacks of papers lay in uniform piles to his left and right, perfect square towers with perfect red marks in fine deliberate lines trailing down each paper. Stale coffee idled in a plain mug near the hand that had paused in its constant automated corrections. Ian lay the pen down slowly to the side and adjusted the thin square glasses on his nose as he looked up at his visitor.

She was a pretty woman, though somewhat unremarkable, which wasn’t unusual for a person of her stature. Beauty often went out with the job, but nevertheless she had retained some of it in thin pale gold of her face that glowed and beamed kindly and in the smooth sleekness of her full dark hair. Ian smiled up at her instinctively.

“I think I might,” he answered, and was embarrassed though unsurprised of the thickness in his own unused voice. He cleared it and rotated further in his seat. “Guess you must think I’ve been avoiding you lately, hm? I haven’t meant to be so absent lately. It’s just…” His hazel eyes cast briefly downwards, as if the reinforced tile flooring could prompt his answers. “Just been busy lately, I guess. Occupied, you could say. But lunch would be great, Janice. Thanks.”

Janice let out a musical bark of laughter that ended in a smirk as the dark almond pools of her eyes danced in a combination of happiness and relief. “Don’t thank me. You’re probably paying for it. God knows you owe us for all the time you’ve waited to see us again. Adam’s been worried as hell about you. You never call, never say a word when you’re actually around. Been as elusive as a ghost around here lately.”

Ian shrugged, a hint of a smile gracing the corners of his mouth at the familiar sarcasm in her tone. “Well, you’ve got me there. Guess I haven’t much of an excuse for myself, either. Alright--where are we going?”

“There’s a new little Italian place a few blocks east. Thought we might go check it out, see if its worth the visit while it’s on you.”

“You mean the one by the bay?”

“That’s the one.”

“Figures you would pick an expensive one. I’ll be there.”

“You’d better be. Adam and the guys’ll stake you out and hound you if you don’t.”

Ian’s smile broadened. “My word is golden, Jan. No worries. I’ll be there.”

Janice seemed satisfied with this answer and nodded promptly. “Damn straight. We’ll see you at half past thirteen. And put on your best face for us, Ian. It’s far too nice to hide, you know.” Before she turned away, Ian thought he could see (or sense) a hint of hope in her as well as worry. It was in the way she moved--suddenly yet subtly--and in the way she had spoken--not without a touch of force, as if she were speaking to caged pet that hadn’t been released in weeks and might strike or run given the chance. Ian didn’t mind it; it was to be expected. And all in all, there was nothing but kindness in her intentions, and all in all there was nothing wrong in that.

*~*~*

“So the kid raises his hand, ya know, and he asks to go the bathroom. So I tell him, no, you can’t go to the bathroom. Because ya know he’s just tryin’ to get out of the lecture and he’ll be back with twenty minutes to spare, actin’ like it’s normal t’take thirty minutes in the pot. So, ya know what he says?”

“What’d he say Mac?”

“He says, ‘Can I take Andri with me?’ And I’m just like…this kid even listen to what I just said? And what’s with kids and takin’ a whole train of people to the bathroom, anyway? But anyways, so he asks, and he’s practically already outta his seat while he’s talkin’, and I says to him, ‘Well, why’ll you’re at it, why don’t you take me along?’ And he just--he just--” Mac was laughing now, hysterical at the sheer memory of it, while the two men and one woman in his company watched him in amusement over their drinks. “He just gets the funniest look and sits back down. Classic stuff, that was. I mean, really good stuff. You had to be there, man, it was great. Set him straight, that‘s for sure.”

“Sounds like it, Mac.”

“Hey now,” Mac said, still grinning despite the feigned hurt in his voice. “How about you try teachin’ these kids day in and day out. Not all fun and games, I can tell ya that right now. Odds are the half of them are carryin’ some weird new weapon they made in their first period techie class that morning, just waitin’ for your back to turn, and--bam!--that’s it, man. You’re done. Finished.”

“Ah, c’mon, Mac,” said Janice, laughing over her drink at his little melodramatic spurt of a story. “We’ve all been there, done that. It’s old news. Kids are kids, and that’s about all there is to it. You just have to use a firm voice and set ‘em straight.”

“Nah, they aren’t like they used to be,” came Mac’s reply. “Back when we were all kids growin’ up--”

“Hey, what do you mean, we?”

“Shut it, Adam. Anyways, back then, it was easy. Everyone was pretty much on the same keel. Pretty much even for all of us, far as the classes and the teaching and such went. You just came in, sat down, turned in your slabs at the end of each class and went home for dinner. If you didn’t like your teacher, tough, ya know? Nothin’ you could do about it but plain old-fashioned disobedience, and we all know how that would end up. Nowadays, though, kids come in with their phones and lappies, don’t even bother trying to hide them anymore after that ridiculous Technology Liberties legislation. Did you hear about that guy Sanders getting kicked out of Saint Marks?”

“That was for changing some kid’s grades, wasn’t it? Illegally?” Adam said, gaining interest in the conversation now.

“Yeah, but here’s the thing--in his defense he said that one of his students was blackmailing him on the M-Grid and that it was the kid that hacked into the stream and gave herself an A. Said the connection was untraceable and coded to look like a normal update. The courts didn’t buy that, though, and he got sent off for a good year or two. Just so some kid could get into a good college. It‘s crazy.”

“I thought that was only a rumor. The evidence was too strong against Sanders, and there was nothing to suggest it was anyone‘s fault but his. He was just sympathizing with his student,” Ian, who had been quietly listening as he pecked at the meal before him, finally spoke up, absently wiping the edge of his mouth as he finished eating.

Mac gave Ian a skeptical look, tilting his head and playing out a wave of his hand in slow motion. Whatever, it seemed to say. “All I’m saying,” he continued, deciding to quit fighting a losing battle, “is that it’s a crazy world anymore, ya know? Gotta watch out for people, especially these kids. Everybody’s out t’get everybody else. No reason, no sympathy….just crazy.”

There was a lull in the conversation, a resignation to the thoughts that flooded each mind. Ian looked from face to face, sipping sparingly from the half-glass of red wine they had ordered for him. Janice he had seen fairly often now that he was working actively at the Academy, but Adam and Mac, considerably younger than the both of them though no less good company, seemed to have aged in his absence. It was like a father in prison watching his children grow through the periodic picture from a distraught and distrusting wife; sometimes the child captured within the photo would seem relatively the same as in the previous, other times the boy would seem a total stranger. Mac especially seemed broader and fuller in his musculature, his hair had grown darker and shorter, and where once an ever-present line of thin stubble coated his skin from ear to ear only clean flesh permeated. It wasn’t only his personality, either. The way he spoke, though still obviously characteristic, had changed subtly, as if the tone was forced, hanging desperately on the edge of being forgotten entirely, and the cynicism (which had also always been a given part of Mac’s mind) seemed much more real and solid and frighteningly sincere. Adam, too, had changed, though not so obviously. The way he sat in relative silence, offering only the spare comment or jeering but mild remark, was unsettling. Ian knew the expression of pensiveness that tightened their features, and sighed quietly at the thought.

“I’m fine,” he said suddenly, adjusting his glasses with his eyes closed for a moment, although he could feel their inquisitive gazes cast over him. “I haven’t meant to seem avoidant, and I actually was glad you asked me to come along. I’ve just been so busy transferring to the Academy and settling in, I guess it’s taking a pretty bad toll on the nerves, huh?” He smiled at them and could actually feel the relief melt into his three tablemates.

“That obvious?” Adam said with a faint smile. “Can you blame us for worrying? Gotta check up on you. We miss you, man.”

“Exactly. You see?” Janice pitched in. “And that’s why you’re payin’ for us. Let’s get another round of drinks, eh?”

Ian shrugged, a gesture they recognized as his silent appreciation. He relaxed in the white cushioned seat, forcing his mind to depart from whatever demons still fought to plague it, at least for the moment. Blankness encased him in the moment and he let the world move on without consequence.

Janice leaned over slightly to the left, reaching across the rounded corner of the table towards the nearby touch-console. “’Nother bottle of wine’ll do, I think,” she thought out loud, tapping a quick series of buttons into the thin glowing screen. She looked over at the three men. “You guys want anything else, or are we about done?” A shrug, a shake, and a short wave declined the offer. Janice nodded and tapped again.

“YOUR CHECK IS ON ITS WAY,” streamed across the screen before it faded back into the news channel that had been playing absently while they had been eating. Headlines ran across the projected bottom holograph, a bulging red beam with glowing white letters. A man in a blue suit was talking without sound while a photo of two other men shaking hands, one somewhat young and the other considerably older, floated beside him along with a vaguely but noticeably edited picture of what appeared to be a small missile carried by a much larger shuttle-ship. The caption beneath the collage caught Ian’s eye: “STAR WARS: THE REAL DEAL?”

“Hey…turn that up, Jan,” he asked suddenly, shifting in his seat to better view the holoscreen. Janice shot him a quizzical look, but complied when she saw the solemn interest that had overtaken his features. Tapping the side of the screen revealed a sidebar with playback options and other various basic functions, and she pulled the small white bar on the right upwards in one fluid motion, hardly noticing the quiet click of the micro-speakers on either side of the holoscreen.

“--are scheduled to meet this Thursday in Moscow as a follow-up to the past month’s events. Our own Jack Scott is joining them now at the landing site.”

The two men in the photo they had shown just seconds ago now stood together, bodies close and turned just slightly inward toward each other, probably for the sake of filming and projecting, Ian guessed. The younger man, who he had first assumed to be in his twenties, now seemed older. Black hair that fell nearly to his shoulders glinted dully in the sunlight and violet haze of afternoon sky, and black stubble partially covered what was once a well-trimmed stub of a goatee in the center of his square jaw. Gray eyes peered steadily out from under thick brows, but Ian could see a fear and a rawness in them that surprised him. The other man, still obviously older, judging by the graying edges of his short and stunningly otherwise pristine russet hair. Ian could tell straightaway that he was a scientist--the manner in which he stood, deliberate and solid, and the dull hazel depth and boredom that revealed itself in his eyes reminded him instantly of the men he had long ago worked with as a pilot for the United Space Program. Still, there was a tiredness to the man that was not unlike the other. Behind them both, desert expanse played the backdrop to a large and daunting shuttle-ship, only the hull of which could be clearly seen in the shot.

“Professor Borisova,” a reporter off screen was speaking, “how did it feel to be piloting the massive ship of your own creation, carrying such dangerous cargo so far away from home?”

The holoscreen projector cut to the younger of the two, who swayed in place a moment as if the very words could topple him.

“Well, to be fair, I was just the copilot. Both of us were, really,“ he answered, an accent that Ian recognized as what was still called “Russian” to most of the world. He flashed a winning smile to the projector, but Ian didn‘t buy it. “It was a good ride, very successful. There were very few problems, and everything went very smooth. I think we’re all very happy with how it went, and…uh…I hope to hear some positive things at the meeting this week.” He smiled again, fixing it into his features, silver eyes flittering back and forth between reporters nervously, though the in-stream editing through the projector hid the expression well.

“And Doctor Hainsworth, what did you think of the testing?”

The older man cleared his throat, and his very presence commanded an air of authority that the younger man lacked. Definitely a scientist, Ian thought. “Yes, everything went very well,” he started, and a different accent was apparent this time, a touch a bourgeois French, perhaps. “All of our calculations were conclusive and the testing was extremely insightful. I expect very good things from this mission.”

The entire interview might have lasted twenty seconds.

The holoscreen cut back to the desk reporter. “That was Professor Aleksei Borisova and Doctor Sydney Hainsworth live on the coast of western India, just returning from their one-month mission to test a surprising possible new source of energy, dark matter. More on their findings at eight. Back to you, Cheryl.”

“Want me to back it up?” Janice asked without looking away from the screen. A young blonde woman was reading the weather reports now; rain at 4:15 PM until approximately 11:40 PM, the cloudy skies all of tomorrow.

Ian shook his head, shifting back in his seat once more, absently reaching for the straw of his drink as something to distract him. Janice shrugged lightly and tapped the screen off but for the restaurant menu.

“Did you know what they were talking about, Ian?” Adam asked curiously, obviously confused by the short report and by Ian’s sudden interest in it. Mac looked just as curious, but not so much confused.

Ian shook his head. “No…no I didn’t know them personally. They were both wearing ISAS tags, though. Though I might know the names, but I’m not sure.” He paused, thinking on this, then shook his head again. “I don’t know. Something just looked funny about it is all, I guess.”

“Funny?” Mac repeated. “Like…government cover-up conspiracy kinda funny? Or like, this channel is bloody ridiculous kinda funny?”

“Oh, come off it,” Janice broke in. “Not everything on the news is a government conspiracy. If that were true we’d probably all’d been dead years ago. Radiation or biochemicals or some weirdness.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t even say what they were testin’” Mac reasoned. “If everything went so well, why didn’t they just come out n’ say it? Sounds pretty shifty t’me.”

“I don’t know what it was,” Ian repeated, not assuring, but not provoking either. “Maybe nothing. But it looked like it could be something. Just felt…wrong. Maybe I’ll ask around and see what I can get out of the Academy. Robertson still hangs around the physics department. Probably could get something out of him.” Ian thought on this and shrugged again. “I doubt its anything to worry about.”

Adam tried not to look relieved.

There was another silence between the quartet, but this time it was accompanied by an unease. News lately was always bad news--always another war or another country demolished by its own reckoning, or another couple murdered on the “nice side of town.“ It wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to find the news was skewing itself into happiness and bliss. In a way, that was alright. It was tiring watching the same battles on every holoscreen in the city, day after day and night after night; maybe it was about time for a reprieve. Still, it was unsettling to remember, for an instant, that the news was run by the people who were slave to the government because the government was slave to the media. They could show whatever the people of the world wanted to see and not imagine a single second of it to be a lie. Ian thought they might be some of the few people that still watched the news not at face value, but for what lay beneath the façade of world peace. There was a universe of information in the smiles and eyes and tired solemnity of the faces beyond the face, and sometimes that was enough to know how the world was doing.

“Ah--” Mac exclaimed suddenly. “What time is it?” He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and twisted his wrist to see the circular blue lighted disk strapped there. Adam mimicked the action. Whatever the answer to his question, it didn’t seem to be in their favor. He stood abruptly and threw the suit jacket over his shoulders that had been hanging over his seat and quickly picked up the briefcase that had been hiding under the table. Adam stood as well, though apparently hadn‘t brought his suit to lunch with him, judging by the mild panic in his searching gaze. “Sorry, guys. I forgot we have a conference to go to this afternoon. They’ve been layin’ off lately, what with all the fraud and crisis and such, so we can’t miss it.”

“You sure you can pick up the tab?” Adam asked, reaching in his left pocket as if to check for something, and was relieved by the faint jingling of metal on metal the movement produced. “Feel bad just leaving you guys here.”

Ian just smiled. “Yeah, I got it. Thanks for coming today. It was good to see you guys again. Don’t stress yourselves too much.”

Mac grinned. “Hey, now. Same to you, mistah. You better be good to yourself and hang with us more often. Got it?” He pointed at Ian and managed a not-quite-threatening expression that quickly diminished back into his own silliness. Adam was already moving away from the table, casting a quick half-salute half-wave in Ian‘s direction with a smile. “Take care guys. See ya around.” They turned toward the clear sound-proofed glass that had been keeping their conversation isolated despite the hundreds of other customers, but when the glass slid open, unheeded voices drifted in with his exit and the bustle and smell of kitchen employees and waitresses carrying and pushing trays of steaming food wafted in momentarily. Then the door slid closed once more and there was again silence. Almost immediately afterwards, a woman passed by the glass and pushed a thin black card through a slot from the outside. She said nothing and gave them no passing glance, obviously having other things on her mind.

Ian reached for the small black folder, but Janice picked it up first. “Nah, you paid us by coming, so I might as well pay the rest. My idea, anyways,” she said, already pulling forth her wallet and a blue card from inside it. Tapping the holoscreen brought it back to glowing life, and a series of taps and a card-swipe paid for the meal in a matter of seconds. Ian said nothing against it, lost in his own thoughts again.

“Ian.”

Ian looked.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Ian. You can’t keep holding on to the past. You have to move on, live.” Janice was leaning over the table, staring into him intently, as if to refuse what she was saying was to ask for death. Ian was expressionless and silent. “Put yourself back out there and get to livin’, already. Go back to work full time, or just…I don‘t. Do something. We’re all worried about you.”

“I’m fine, Jan, rea--”

“No, you’re not,” she interrupted sternly. Ian promptly shut his mouth. “You’re not alright because you’re always quiet and you never call and you’re not fooling anyone.” She leered at him a moment and sighed heavily. “Look just…just call me sometime this week. Just to talk. Check up on you. ‘Kay?”

“Alright. I will.”

“No, don’t say you will and not say a damn thing.”

Ian smiled, a slight smugness in it. “My word is gold, Jan.”

Janice made a face, but laughed. “Alright. I have to get going too. I’ll talk to you later. Be good to yourself, Ian.” And without looking back, she left him, alone once more in the silent emptiness of his thoughts.

Prologue

2008-11-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

Happy trails.

Word Count: 1890
Total: 1890
____________________________________________________________________

PROLOGUE

At night he watched the stars.

He could see them by the thousands each night at the top of the building, sitting alone in the vast black nothingness, watching the spinning cosmos from his own tiny dot of a world. It made him feel small, as it should, but he knew more than anything he wanted to feel those stars. Not only see them, as he did now, perched with an empty Styrofoam cup in one hand as he gazed from the balcony, but to actually feel their light and heat. An infinity of suns yet to be explored, and yet here only pinpricks. He wondered if somewhere across the universe someone sat in his own balcony, watching and thinking.

By day there was the constant rush of human existence, always a sense of purpose and need and urgency, as if at any given moment the world balanced on the edge of a blade. There were places to, papers to sign, people to meet, and it seemed all at once the most strenuous and the most beautiful feeling in the world. Sometimes it was too much--he would be the first to admit that much--but at the end of the day when the world was quieted and darkened, when the people came home to warmth and comfort to sleep in silence, when the world felt, for a moment, safe…in the end, it was worth it. In the end, it was enough.

He smiled.

“Professor?”

The familiar voice sounded distant and vaguely unimportant to his mind, but nonetheless he turned. The light that poured blaringly from the open door behind him cut through the darkness like a clean knife, eliminating the stars from the sky almost instantly. A meek shadow managed to form in the beam, a dim gray figure framed by black and white. In his haze, he didn’t answer.

“Sir?”

“Yes?” He didn’t bother to correct the formality.

“Everyone’s gone for the night. Should I lock up or should I just leave it to you?”

“I lock up most nights,” he answered, a mild sigh forming in his voice as he stood. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be leaving soon myself.”

“Alright, sir,” came the unfaltering response. There was a short pause, and although he couldn’t see past the blinding white he knew the militaristic expectation that must have painted the man’s face in that moment, that pause to catch the salute that itched at his hand like a never-ending rash.

“Oh--Karl,” he said, stepping into the light, hands dangling loosely in the pockets of his jacket.

“You did well today. Very good work, even by my standards. I think we’re lucky to have you on the team.” He smiled with an uncommon sincerity that he could see reflected in the man’s glinting eyes.

“Thank you, sir. I’m glad to be working here. It’s such a privilege to be working under a man so--”

“Karl?”

“Yes?”

“Its Alex--Aleksei at the least. Skip the formalities. They don’t make much difference in a place like this.” His tone remained even, but his smile never lessened; he always enjoyed tearing down formalities in the men the military sent his way.

“Ah…yes…Alex,” Karl answered slowly, as if attempting to ingrain the name into his memory.

“Thank you, Alex.”

“Go home to your wife and get some sleep. Early to work tomorrow, yes?”

A smirk, forgetting himself in the ease of the moment. “Same to you, my friend. Schast'ya i zdorov'ya!” With a tired grin, Karl let the door swing slowly closed on silent hinges, flooding Alex within the calm darkness once more.

He simply stood, staring fixedly at the single sliver of light that fought through the bottom of the door, as if entrance by its very existence, even as a subconscious smile graced his lips at the familiar phrase.

Sir…everyone thinks they should call me “Sir” now, he thought curiously. As if I might snap at them for being informal. You’d think with all the hours of the day we spend together, they’d understand I’m no different from them…only luckier, I suppose. No, even that wasn’t quite right. Lucky wasn’t the right word for it. He wasn’t so sure he was lucky, but he knew he was happy. He knew he was at peace. This project alone had changed his entire life in so many ways already, in only six months. And it was still only just begun.

Less than a year ago he had been sitting in a tiny room with peeling dulled-pea-green walls, sitting on a dilapidated bed that seemed to be decaying from the inside out, writing off bills he couldn’t pay and college tuition fees that not only seemed impossibly huge now but also represented something that seemed nothing more than a bad idea. A good dream, perhaps, once, but a bad idea in the end. He could have saved the money, became the humble watchmaker/homemaker that his father had always planned for him to be. Instead, he took the money and a one-year scholarship that hardly was worth his efforts to study engineering. Top of his class--but not good enough to pay back, I guess. Enough pride and esteem to last a lifetime, it had seemed, but it hadn’t lasted even a few years out of school. Sitting alone, in a bedroom not big enough to let another fill it with him, not small enough to afford comfortably, Alex was in trouble.

The day the three military officials in stoic masks and tight suits with dully glimmering pins turned up on his crumbling little square of a doorstep, Alex had nearly laughed. “You must mean another Borisova--not an uncommon name, friends. I studied engineering ages ago--” not a total lie, at least it seemed not to be--“and didn’t do so great at it judging by what I got out of it in the end. Unless you’ve come to give me a check of a hefty sum, then good day.”

As if on cue, a secret smile snuck into the features of the young man that stood before him. One of the men behind him (younger, Alex could tell, yet broader, stronger perhaps; more years in service he guessed, judging by the stolidity he maintained and the steadfast blue eyes that peered not at him but rather at a spot just above Alex’s left shoulder) held in his hands a briefcase, which shifted slightly with his weight, as if itching to be opened. No matter how small the movement, Alex caught it from the corner of his vision and cocked his head. “I have a feeling you three wanted to show me something, then?”

“The government is interested in your work on dark matter.” The apparent leader spoke first, and Alex was surprised to notice the lack of familiar accent. “We’ve been doing some practice tests lately with it, and have been looking through every engineer we could find. A professor recommended your work and research--a Professor…” A pause. Certainly not Russian. Alex knew the look of a foreigner struggling with pronunciation. “Professor Abduluv, I believe. He spoke very highly of you. Said that if anyone knew anything about dark matter, it was his Aleksei.”

Alex’s eyes flickered slightly in interested, but he didn’t let his face show it outright. He coughed slightly, if only to break the silence (although the thickness in his throat forced him to remember his cold, especially in light of the cool air wafting up from the stairs outside). “Ah…I haven’t spoken to him in a long time,” he answered slowly, thinking back on the last time they had seen each other. “He was always saying how much better his students were over any other. Last time I talked to him, he told me that if ever I needed a job to come to him.” He smiled then at the thought. “It’s been years, but…I guess this is that job, da?”

The three gentlemen at his door merely watched him expectantly, the third standing just off to the side peering into the doorway with a look that Alex could only have described as purely thankful to the Heavens above and all its gods. It both intrigued and suddenly, strangely, scared him.

Another light cough burst from his chest as he swung the door open wider. “Well…then I suppose you’ll be wanting to come in, da? It’s a little cramped. I haven’t had the time to clean everything up lately. What with the crisis…hard to find a job, let alone get a decent semblance of a salary out of it. But…um…you can sit right over here if you’d like.” He let the three men inside, ignoring the look the briefcase-wielder sent at the dilapidated table by the wall that Alex had indicated. The men sent silent glances amongst themselves, as if asking if this was really the right man to be wasting their time with. Alex could see them without seeing--nearly every visitor he’d ever had in the shit-hole he half-heartedly and mockingly labeled as “home” had gazed with the same disapproval around his tiny room of an apartment. Skepticism abounded in their eyes, at least in four of them. Only one set, Alex could see as he approached the three soldiers, was not filled with disapproval. Finally, after stalling with his own questions, Alex sat on a slightly shorter stool beside Mr. Hopeful.

Reaching the short distance to his left to the makeshift shelf in the corner, Alex pulled forth a tall bottle of Vodka and four glasses, tilting his head to the side as he shook them. All three men turned down the offer, again to Alex’s surprise. Whatever this was all for, it must have been something big. “Suit yourselves,” he answered to their silence, pouring a small glass for himself. He raised it with a mild and half-hearted smile--“To business--” and downed it in one thick swallow. The three men glanced at each other again, and this time dread accompanied their skepticism.

“Look, Mr. Borisova--”

“Alex, please.”

A testy leer from the leader. “Look…the Professor told us you were the very best. Said you’d be ready and willing and raring to go. Now, if that’s not so and you’ve already made up your mind, we can leave you in peace and go on our way. Find someone else to ask.”

“By the looks on your faces, I have a feeling you’re running out of people to ask,” Alex said with a smirk, resting his chin in the palm of his right hand, elbow resting on the table. “I’m not refusing just yet. I haven’t even heard your offer. Now look…” The minor amusement in him was gone suddenly, but nearly returned when he saw the way the three men straightened subtly in their seats. His gaze wandered to each, from Mr. Hopeful on his right, to their leader, to the briefcase-wielder. “I know there must be someone out there, somewhere in the world, that has a far better reputation than I. I have been a construction worker for four years. I haven’t opened a book on anything in ages, let alone in engineering or physics. You want to know about dark matter, go back to Moscow and ask the Prof for his copy of the research, but I know you’re here for something more.”

A silence.

“We need you, Mr. Borisova...to build us a ship.”

NaNoWriMo is going not so well

2008-11-05T16:42:00.000-08:00

A short post. Very short indeed.

Basically, as you can tell by the absent of NaNoWriMo posts, it isn't going as well as I had hoped, prompting me to mention a thing or two about it.

The point of NaNoWriMo is not to write an epic tale that everyone will love, but merely to write a total of 50,000 words in 30 days. They will not be pretty words, and I don't much doubt that most of you will not like it much. I also don't doubt that I won't like it much. So it goes.

Therefore, don't expect much. The beginning is already complete shite. Just go with it. If you can, hold out for a few thousand words. If you can't, just wait until I edit the whole thing and spiff it up.

With that said, let the novel begin.

NaNoWriMo Update - Basics...and Characters?

2008-10-08T00:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple weeks since I first exposed my ideas for NaNoWriMo, however vague and simple. After much thought, I've decided to release what I have as far as "planning" goes. Some of it is a little corny, at least to me (but I'm admittedly hard myself), but it's relevant to the story in a rather significant way.

**(I'll make one thing clear--anything I write here is very likely to change in at least some small way if not completely. Although the "title" of each character has already been written down weeks ago, anything I write about them here is coming straight from my mind right now. At least two of the characters are almost definitely set in stone as to who in the Circle they refer to, but just for the fun of it I won't say who is who ;) You can guess if you like; maybe I'll answer, and maybe I won't haha)**

Anyways, on to the topics!
___________________________________________

First, the title. I've been working with a few different ideas for a title, but I haven't been able to settle on one. The way I see it, the title can be one of two types (as far as sci-fi goes): either it must be vague and complex and somehow slightly relevant, or so simple it nearly hurts. In the first case, the title wouldn't be official until the end. In the second, it could be anything, and since its efficient I think I might go with that until later. So, the most recent I can think of that has a nice ring is "Astraeus Lost." Its simple yet intriguing, so it works :P

That leads to the next thing--the ship. After nearly two hours of brainstorming and Googling and checking the Star Trek database, I finally came up with a couple possibilities for a name of the starship. The first I thought of was the ISAS Utopia, which was technically taken but not significantly like everything else. The second, and the one I picked, is the ISAS Astraeus, named for the greek Titan-god of dusk. ("ISAS," said as simply eye-sus, is a tentative acronym that may very well change, meant to mean International Space Administration Ship)

And now, the tentative cast :o Listed by title/role in no particular order. Most of the titles are a reference to the person's skill, though a couple may have a more underlying-literary-sort of title....whatever :P

Remember that this is "international"--a lot of the characters won't be American.

(also, due to the nature of this mission, several of the main characters have no direct purpose as far as functioning on the ship; in case they can't get back, they'll need to encompase every bit of humanity they can to attempt to carry on the race. Sensible enough, ya?)

The Commander
Name: Ian Ross
Info: Picture for a moment the awesomeness that would be formed if you combined Kirk and Picard and added a little bit of "Top Gun" in the mix. Pretty friggin epic is what you get--the brains, the brawn, the daring, the commraderie, and humanity, all in proportion (so minus Kirk's overacting and Picard's pristine condition and Tom Cruise's Scientology and assholishness).

The Physicist
Name: Sydney "Sid" Hainsworth
Info: Crazy genius and religious skeptic. Also French :P Don't ask me why. Look out for this guy later--I think I have some dasterdly plans for him ;)

The Biologist (and general doctor)
Name: Anabelle "Ana" Hainsworth
Info: Wife of crazy genius, but not so crazy. Very even-tempered and professional. Think French-woman-Spock, but less amusing XD Maybe a combination of Seven-of-Nine and Saavik...?

Lead Engineer and Assistant Physicist (guy that built the ship, perhaps?)
Name: Aleksei "Alex" Borisova
Info: Had to pay tribute to Checkov ;) Picture a Rusky Kraut (yup, I just said that), but not extreme and HUGE. He's not "too" Russian, however--a native, but not a fanatic, if you get my drift. He can speak both English and Russian equally well. He'll probably be the depressing one, considering a friggin black hole just ate half his country :o

Lead Programmer/Assistant Engineer
Name: Toshiro Arashima
Info: Yup, the nerdy Japanese guy plays our main techy--imagine that! :o Haha, nah, he just popped into my head and I figured this would make the most sense for him to be. I'm thinking something like Hiro here :P Maybe he'll be our main source of comic relief.

The Linguist
Name: Jacqueline Thomas
Info: A studier of languages, their development, etc. She is actually one of the most important roles to the mission as a whole because of her ability to analyze language and methods involved in it. She can speak nearly any major language, from French to Korean. All in all, as far as personality goes, she's suprisingly laid back but knows when to mean business (which isn't often).

The Culturist
Name: Benjamin Johnson
Info: Huzzah for the chill black man :P Of course, as a culturist, he's very tolerant and open-minded and acts as a mediator between characters. So I guess he's a little like a black Scotty? Haha, I can see it, which is kinda sad, but awesome.

The Psychologist and Assistant Physician/Surgeon
Name: Susannah Scott
Info: A little like a woman-Bones, I think :P Guess she and Ana don't like each other much...or do they???1! haha XD I'm seeing a little Hawkeye in there too :D So, slightly crazy and silly with a tint of McCoy-sarcasm and Hawkeye-whore, just for more comic relief

The Historian/Professor/"Philosopher"
Name: Julia McCulloch
Info: Ah, the profound one, whose main purpose is to hold all the knowledge of everything no one else can manage. She's rather quiet compared to the others, but of course gives the best advice. As the carrier of the legacy of the human race, she is also very important to the mission should the crew not return.

So far that's it, but based on what I've re-read, I like it a lot :D Sort of like a mismatched Star Trek crew. I'm finally getting more excited about this story finally.

As I was writing them, I found other Circle members in the characters, so lets see if you can spot yourself or someone else :P

Comment comment comment!! What should I change/add/get rid of? Sound like a good idea so far? Gimme feedback! (^,^)

So that took like 2 hours to write, and I'm off to bed. Ta.

Operation NaNoWriMo Plot Organization!

2008-09-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

Yup, its that time of year again, filled with writing and all sorts of madness and stress. NaNoWriMo is drawing near.

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month (but should really be “International“). People around the world have exactly 30 days to complete a 50,000 word novel. A very few of you already know I did this last year, but for the rest who had no clue until this moment, scroll down a ways to Chapter I, and you’ll catch the gist of it :)

Anyways, I think for November I will keep this blog mainly as a log for the novel. If enough people are actual interested, I may even post the chapters themselves here.

A lot of you (as in about three people) have been asking, what’s the plot? Well…like any good science fiction novel, the plot will probably end up being huge, which is good. More to write about=higher word count. The idea was actually inspired by a random thought the week “the end was nigh” and there was supposed to be a black hole, etc.

I’ll try to explain the basics:

Perhaps a hundred years or less from now, we decide to take these little cautious experiments we perform now and get to the real point--make it bigger, figure out what’s really going on in this universe, simply because we can. Of course, as always this is a bad idea, and we end up blowing a sort of hole in the universe (black or “white“, I haven’t decided yet--probably black to make it easier) a little too close to home. We underestimate our own capacities and realize if we don’t get the hell outta Dodge, we’re all fucked. At this point there’ll be a convenient (and not wholly unrealistic) ship capable of traveling at or above the speed of light. Anywhere we can find in this galaxy would have to be only temporary, so we decide to send a ship full of variously talented people through the hole to hopefully find a solution on the other side while the rest of the world tries to figure out what else we can do. What our main characters end up in is a sort of new but extremely rapidly growing universe so different from our own that even the very concept of time is skewed. A planet here similar to Earth only in that its main inhabitants are of near-equal intelligence is possibly their only hope.

Writing this little blurb of information has actually given me a couple new ideas :D Especially for the ending…oooooh, I like it, yisyis, I do.

People very much interested in this project are completely free to give advise or things they think would do well in the story-line. Several of the main characters will be based off of YOU, people of the Circle; some already now who they are/will be, but most will probably have no clue. If you really really really want to be in it, just talk at me anytime and I’ll come up with a place for ya (if I haven’t got one already planned for you :P).

But I’ve written enough, methinks. I’m off to bed.

(Please leave comments on this one--I really need to get some regular feedback on this kind of thing)

Short Fiction 5: Guest Visit

2008-09-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

At last, something new :) The first line (rewritten of course) actually started out as a poem, but I guess I wasn't inspired enough to finish, so it turned into this instead. Not too bad. Almost 900 words in about 20 minutes. Enjoy :)
_________________________________________________

He could see three photos on the mantle, garlanded with fake leaves and autumn branches in vibrant orange, far too extravagantly perfect to be real. They glistened vaguely in the dim light, twinkling like a secret in a person’s eyes, when you know they’re lying but aren’t stupid enough to say you noticed. His eyes settled on each frame first rather than each photo, for each frame was the same: leather-bound, aged without aging, a stale sort of earthy color that nearly matched the autumn plastic things around t, but not quite.

In the first photo, a tiny child sat perched on a man’s shoulders, like a tower holding up a smiling balloon in some distant city., except it was only a lawn. An empty lawn that seemed to go on forever, but he knew better; it only went as far as they money went before it turned into someone else’s property. The child was smiling. The man was grinning. Neither of their eyes glistened as they should have in the brightness of summer. Behind the camera, he could almost see the near-emotionless photographer that held the camera perfectly still and demanded silly words from them to force a smile. So someday they’d look back and grin once more and say, “How happy we were then, yes yes.” So someday they think, How horrid she was. It didn’t interest him much.

The second photo was a little smaller and more in the backdrop, as if it were just an afterthought to fill a space. An unnecessary little thing that didn’t matter much, but the frame’s so nice and matches so well. He couldn’t see much in it for how many people stood within the leather boundaries. At least 15 people filled the photo to the brim with pointless sameness, each man, woman, and child clothed in the same monotonous royal blue. It reminded him of the photo they had been forced to take in the navy, with each man sporting the same new baldness and the same blue and white outfits that they would never wear again. None of them smiled then (and wouldn’t have enough if they could have), and most of the faces in the picture didn’t smile now, either. Not really, anyways, and it was hard to tell. Maybe among the sameness was a secret smile, too far off to really notice, but enough to matter all the same. He thought he could almost see one, but it danced away like a pixie and into the dust. Maybe just his eyes going. Probably. Maybe.

A third matched the second, but not quite in content, only in that the two frames were placed symmetrically to each other, facing one another endlessly. This one was a little different, older (truly), and the leather frame couldn’t entirely hide the tiny peak of frayed edge in the left corner. This time the smiles weren’t present at all, not even false ones, making the wedding scene very strange. A funeral in white and gray, more like. A funeral for freedom and happiness, he guessed. He was the same man in the first photo, only younger and strangely sadder. Darker, even. As if the world of that time had been in a constant shade, a mild tint of blackness everywhere you went. He knew of the woman’s sadness; he’d seen it a thousand times over from a thousand photos taken in a hundred different years and times and eras apart from his. The man’s was stranger. He somehow doubted the little gray man that stood stoically beside his mistress himself knew of his own depression. Consciousness, he knew, came with time and calmness and acceptance.

He stood to gaze more closely at the photos, hands clasped behind him in a doctor’s studying clasp as he leaned forward into the mantle, eyes flitting back and forth from frame to glinting frame, leaf to plastic leaf.

A bare little spot where the dust hadn’t quite settled in yet caught his gaze. A line of slight darkness between colored leaves. A void. A place that needed filling but never was, and so was merely covered up.

“Something else used to be here,” he mentioned casually, as any guest in a stranger’s home would be: prying, curious, yet with mild uncaring that seemed to also mention that the answer wouldn‘t be judged too harshly if it was given quietly. She paused, thought about this, then took the deal.

“Oh, nothing’s missing,” an answer from the kitchen echoed off shining white tile, forced nothingness in its ring. “Well, there used to be another one there, but the frame broke so we took it down. It was a while back.”

Ah. So that was it.

It was a missing person, not a missing photo. A void. And place that needed filling, but couldn’t be, so it was covered up. He frowned at the three tiny panes of glass.

“I hope you fix it soon.” Silence from them both a moment. “It would be a shame to leave something so beautiful so empty.”

In all his observations, he didn’t hear the silent mouth form the words in truth behind his back.

If ever it was beautiful to begin with.

Brother to Brother (filler)

2008-08-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

This is mainly just to post something up since its been so long sine I wrote anything. I wrote this probably about a year ago before started NaNoWriMo. Originally this was meant to be a part of a section in Tier 1 involving a different main character than in the first chapter I posted a while back. The war they refer to was the war that would eventually lead to the society Marie and Eric live in. Anyways, here ya go. Hopefully I'll have something new soon :)
_________________________________________

I can rarely recall any memory with such vividness with which I used to, when I could remember every detail of every dream and every memory that quivered by on even the most evasive and frail of wings. My brother’s face escapes me often when I try to think of home, but I do hark back to one lucid memory.

He had just returned from the war. His hair was slick with oil and rainwater from the storm raging outside, and when he entered it was impossible to miss, not only because of his normal cinematic entry but for the wind attempting to siege our house as the door banged open with its force. Matthew grinned with a concise little chuckle, mocking sheepishness, as he shoved the door close on the desperate wind, and his muscles, fruits of the many years of hard labor and toil and training and pain, strained in perfect unison. The reality stood clear and harsh as he stepped into the light, revealing an unshaven sharp jaw-line and hardened eyes of steely gray: the little Matty that left all ambitious and excited to do some good and have some fun was no more. In his place stood a man, a bold and brusque man with morals and ideals and a want to change the world in any way he could manage and serve his country properly (even when their intentioned were not always the best). Still that familiar smile shone through his rock of a visage and we crowded around him once the image settled in, eager to embrace him with us once more.

He talked of his many travels, through snow and sand and clouds and mud and rain. He talked of our letters to him and apologized for the ones he never answered. He talked of his sergeant and his officer, men as hardened as he was now no doubt, and of his companions of the war. He talked of wounds and scars, even showed us a few, and of how he lost his finger a year ago (an anomaly overlooked by yours truly, but certainly not by our mother, who always did have a rather compulsory attention to detail). Most of all, however, Matthew talked of the blood. Of it covering his hands, covering his gun and clothes. Of it splattered on the walls of the buildings they infiltrated. Of it on the bullets he shot. Of it flooding his dreams on darker, lonelier nights. And the unspoken: of the blood that filled more pleasant dreams and filled is very waking thoughts without ever provoking disgust, without ever causing a flinch of even minimal surprise.

When the lights were dimmed and the family began to head towards their respected habitats for sleep, I followed Matthew to converse alone with him on the things he hadn’t said. I guessed a few of the simpler ones–about women he had seen and more than that, which we laughed at casually, like the good innocent brothers we once were. But when I questioned his true dreams, his true thoughts, he retreated subtly, those gray-ice eyes shifting away towards the hardwood floor beneath his feet. I provoked him, asked again; I wanted an answer. Finally he gave in, not from weakness but from his ties and unspoken allegiances to me that outranked any general’s allegiance to his country .

“Every day I see them. Their blood just...covers everything. It never goes away once you’ve fired that first shot. You’re always thirsty, always needing more of it. It never goes away.”

I nodded solemnly, trying to understand and empathize as I rested my elbows on my knees to save my energy for thinking. As I looked for the words to break the foreboding silence, I absently noticed he hadn’t taken off his boots yet; in fact, he hadn’t take off anything yet. Perhaps he had grown used to the feeling of a load on his back and on his heart. I commented lightly on the battered and muddy state of his footwear, as we once more began small-talk.

Somehow, though, I think I knew that beneath the caked dirt and silence of his tales that stains of even deeper scarlet threatened to reveal themselves. Perhaps he wanted it that way. Perhaps it was best to just forget.

Poetry 2: Dance

2008-07-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

A newer poem, a bit better than the last. Very abstract, as usual. Or if you happen to be a friend, meaning you're a new reader, get used to things like this. They happen often :)

I've noticed that in order to write a poem, I don't think. I never think of the words. Just all of a sudden I feel extremely ill, like if I don't write something right now I"ll be sick. Very strange...but whatever works.

Enjoy

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Dance

Do you know
How the painted starlight dances?
I have seen their eyes,
Glowing in all their brilliance,
Seen the empty houses on the street,
Heard the empty cries
And the painted wings that shield them.
Do you know
How the world will scream?
Do you know the way it dies?
The why it ends?
It ends in starlight,
In the final moments of a being,
Of a forever,
Of a time that never ends,
And never began.
It ends with cries, but not with sobs;
With shouts, but not with words;
With dignity, but not with truth.
Forever, it does end.
And forever the stars keep
Dancing.

Poetry 1: In the Valley

2008-06-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Newest poem, finally, after nearly two months without writing one. Short free verse, by far not my best, but it's good enough as filler.

For older poems, see http://www.elftown.com/_Nite%20Owl%27s%20Poetry
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In the Valley

Hourglass sands
Falling from the pits of sky--
They run with fleeting hearts,
Gripping grains of gold in their hands,
Even as they slip away
To fall and die in the valley.
They mourn the sands,
They ponder their defeat,
They watch their children, mystified,
Uncaring,
Unmoving,
And begin again their unending game of catch
Into madness.

Short Fiction 4

2008-06-11T23:25:00.000-07:00

No idea what the hell this is supposed to be. Some guy getting owned by plants.... sounds like Stephen King to me XD Very very vaguely inspired by "The Fountain" movie.

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I've seen this place before.

It isn't how I remember it. It isn't the way it was supposed to be. Then it was gray and threaded with wide cracks like the calloused palms of a dead god, pale and rotting and worn. Black birds and other more subtle creatures crawled along the barren land with scaly hides to snatch at poor specimens that happened upon the wasteland and were unlucky enough to have lost their minds and wills. There were no mountains, no trees or even skeletons of trees, not a single distinguishable landmark to be saved. Just the everlasting gray light that penetrated the entire body with its ghastly glow.

No, this can't be the same place.

But it has to be. It was right here. I know it was.

This was some trick. Some type of sick joke the same gray glow he recalled so well was playing on him after being away for so long.

This is a green land. Not just green; it shines like a bed of emeralds under a bright and full yellow sun that hangs like a fat yellow seed in the sky drooping from some unseen over-fertile tree far above and beyond human perception. The grass grows naturally, yet as if someone has deliberately planted every seed with the utmost care to ensure its growth. All the same length. A monotonous field of green and scentless miles for as far as the eyes can see.

Ironically its the lack of landmarks that help distinguish this festering but well-disguised wound in the world. I can sense the crusting rot beneath me, and I know this is the place. The place for death and deceit, and of course for peace as well.

Yes, I've been here before.

Long ago, this was my home. Long ago I would have welcomed this apparent blessing, but not now. Too many years have gone by. Too many memories that tell me otherwise, and all I can see is black and smoldering ruins and pits of darkness. It isn't illusion; it's torture beyond anything I've ever witness before this moment.

I feel the ground. Deceivingly hard and unyielding under my fingertips, and I can feel the grass give a almost imperceptible hiss as it pulls toward my touch, clinging to it. That's more like it. Always feeding off itself and whatever lands in its clutches. This field hasn't seen a green quite like this in countless decades, far longer than I can remember or care to. It draws in prey so easily, and I can see the dissolving remains of bone not far from me. Only grass without water. A purgatory oasis filled with temptation and starvation and deception. I can't help but smirk.

Its close. I can feel it, even though it isn't anywhere in sight. Its an entity all its own, separate from this hell-hole, and I created it myself.

Perhaps this green is just one more battlefield and every blade is fighting against its newest enemy buried deep within itself. It can sense me, just as I sense it, and it calls me to it. I walk without thought or feeling, letting the memories guide me blindly as they always have.

I can see the wastelands stretching out all around, can see the cloudless sky blur with it into eternity. This is where the heavens meet the land. This is where the Ladder must be placed. The images from nearly fifty years past play on the backs of my eyelids and I ignore my surroundings and the strange touch of clinging grass on my heels as I pull away, ignoring the impossible sighs of disappointment and futility they make as I pass.

I open my eyes. Its here. I don't expect the single white-linen flower that protrudes so helplessly and innocently from the cruelly challenging earth all around it. The blades of grass soldiers war against its presence still, as they have for decades, revealing an unusual pattern in their ranks before me like a sudden but silent wind pressing the emerald army into the ground in a circle. The ring pulsates very slightly under my bare feet and I can feel the ripples of the soldiers and their bristling anger grasp my flesh with tiny futile hands.

Here is the Ladder. Here is the gateway to the kingdom I have waited for since my very existence began its ticking clock. This is where it all began, where it all ends and begins once more. Here I will become whole.

I take the flower in my hands and tug gently. It doesn't give. I try again. Nothing. The pulse of the living field around me grows faster, more intense. I haven't much time. I try a third time, leaning my weight back onto my heels as I pinch the stem and watch it lengthen briefly, then pull itself back into the earth, like tugging a mule from its cart. Then, fear washed through me, cold as icy rain.

No. This is the Ladder, my key to freedom and to bliss. To a second chance. It is mine to take, and no one else's. Its mine.

The treacherous tiny growth continues to descend until I can scarcely see it. The ground is opening, hissing and piercing through itself in a jumbled mess of writhing emerald blades lunging forward to cling at my hands still wrapped around the gentle lily. Now the blades bite and catch, as they always were meant to, but with a new vigor, a new life and enthusiasm that it hasn't experienced in ages. For a moment I make an attempt to pull away, but its far too late now, and I know it. It was too late the day this demon-seed was planted. The day I planted it as my key to the heavens.

This strange and unholy being has fooled me into death. Even as the blades pull and bury me in sand and glass below the grassy surface, I can't help but let this wry chuckle escape me. Fifty years, and I am beat. I have nothing left. There is no heavenly light for me now, only the eternal darkness and broken glass prison of the cracked desert.

I make no sound as the blades pull my eyes away from the last view of the world. The yellow sun still hangs far away, and I wonder briefly if perhaps the Ladder and the key had always been within my grasp. The land hisses once more and closes in all around me, and all that is left is the black decay of hell that had always been waiting for me.

And I can't help but smirk.

Short Fiction 3

2008-05-31T14:31:00.000-07:00

I kinda like this one :) Sorry its a little longer than usual--just over 1000 words. Inspired vaguely by The Gunsliger.

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A new red sun crested on the horizon as the morning’s breeze brought with it a scent of honeysuckle and lavender and rotting flesh. The combination awakened the murderer from a sound sleep, the putrid mixture filling his nostrils with funeral smells. Only briefly. The light of the crimson glow made him grunt in protest and shield his eyes from its power as he rolled onto his side.

Not a murderer by choice, he thought. Not the murdering stalker who creeps in the night to make the kill and steel away in darkness, like in al the books. A murderer by chance. That’s what he was.

The night had come heavily and suddenly, pulling the blanket of stars above him with hardly a warning from the dying sun to the west, barely shielded by the faintly glowing mountains in the far distance that disappeared into faint black peaks. It was blindness he hadn’t known in years, if the caves from long past were of any comparison to this brutal and scarce lighting. Then he had held the lantern confidently in hand, stepped surely over rock and past the streams, brandishing the hefty knife of his father in the other hand. Now, he was scared, alone, and without weapon; not even his mind could aid him with its increasing insanity. He had traversed the deserts for three weeks without seeing another human being, and scarcely a single animal. Water had run short even before food, and for an entire week he didn’t eat. Heat, exhaustion, starvation…he’d felt it all before, but not like this. Not this evil that accompanied it, not this curse.

He could sense the evil, could even smell it on the wind that scourged his face and arms with burning sand. It was all around him, all around the dying lands through which he had so mistakenly traveled. The occasional drifting scent of flowering plants caught him, but he was unsure now if it was his imagination turning against him now.

He was sure of his mind’s treachery, and it was all he was certain of. It was a strange thought, both comforting and distressing, to be sure and to be unsure of the same thing. His mind was whirling, spinning, and leaping to the stars as he laughed weakly and wildly, blindly stumbling along some unknown invisible pathway. The whole thing was really quite funny, he thought. Very funny, actually. He couldn’t see his hands. He was invisible, and he loved and loathed it, feared it and revered it. An invisible man, like the movies. A secret agent, sent by the agency to take down their enemy. A hero even. That’s what he was here: a hero.

That was when he saw him.

It was dark, of course. Too dark to tell who or what it was, but his mind was not quite so far gone as to let a living being go entirely unnoticed. He had stopped and stared at the man, also stumbling and groping and groaning with loss.

A secret agent. Double agent. The enemy. Take down the enemy.

He grinned. A malicious grin that almost glowed in the nighttime, reflecting the stars and the world and his own insanity within them.

The other man stopped, feeling his presence. “H…Hello?” he ventured. A feeble voice, trying to make him surrender, to pity him. Well, not this time, my friend. No, not this time, he thought.

The cry was more a scream, a banshee’s scream that echoed for miles in the desert and the darkness, that filled the Enemy’s ears like piercing spiked notes. The Enemy cried out feebly, mumbled to himself, and fell back with surrendering sobs that shook him. He didn’t see this though. He knew what he really was. He was the Enemy. They’ll reward me at home, he thought. They’ll march me through the gates of the city and pin medals on my chest and we’ll feast and dance for weeks for my work. The Enemy must die.

“TRICKERY!” he wailed, but the word was indiscernible. A madman’s calling. “INSOLENT BASTARD! STUMBLING GHOST! ENEMY!”

The scuffle was a brutal and bloody one, a one-sided fight between a hungry carnivore and his thin and perishing prey. He clawed the eyes, ripped at limbs, screaming all the while. The Enemy hardly fought back, hardly made a sound. Perhaps he had died long ago and this was only a ghost of that threat. Perhaps he wasn’t there at all. But nonetheless the blood flew and the dull sound and pelting fists in blood-soaked bone and flesh continued for near an hour. The rest was blurred in darkness.

The morning came just as suddenly as the night had, revealing the land and truth and lifting the veil of evil a little above the dead and the living.

He sat in a daze, wondering at the blood. So much of it. It stank, not just the fresh liquid but also the darkness that seemed to still surround it. Slowly, he forced his new eyes to peer at the body, or at least at what was once its face. Not an Enemy, he thought vaguely. A being. A human. A man. Just as I am.

The cheek of the face was flipped open to cover one eye, and the entirety of it lay still and red on the ground, bringing the occasional fly to feast. Even in this heat. The body lay apart from the face mostly, just as battered. He thought he could see the remnants of a rib or two, or perhaps an arm, but it was impossible to tell.

He felt numbness and nothing else. He held the knife in his hand, wondering how he had caused such damage, as if it were the fault of the blade, but the blade was completely clean. He had killed with only his hands, with only coldness and insanity.

The knife turned in his hands and lightly scraped the pulsing flesh of his neck.

A murderer. Not by choice. By chance. Please…

Please forgive me.

He felt nothing as the blade cut through flesh. He fell and slept, watching the sun rise until it fell into blackness.

In the distance, the honeysuckle grew without consequence and the caravans began to move, wondering at the brutal beast they had heard in the night.

Chapter I

2008-05-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

To compensate for my lame previous post, here's the first short chapter of my incomplete novel Tier 1: Just Devourings written last November for NaNoWriMo. Still pretty good, but may have some errors. Enjoy :)

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“Come on, we’re on a deadline in case you’ve all forgotten!”

Her shouts could be heard echoing throughout the entire building it seemed, or if it didn’t the phrase was often repeated down the line to others who didn’t hear her (but more than likely it was the first of the two. Marie’s voice could carry across the very country, everyone knew, not just by its loudness but by its words. If one didn’t know who Marie Annabelle was, even in the midst of a deserted wasteland surrounded by water (but then again, where wasn’t it such?), one had to have been a deaf-mute, and even then the act would be impressive.

It wasn’t necessarily that she was a large female with a booming tone than all could hear and know. In fact, Marie was rather slight compared to most, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she acted and spoke. Most assumed it was her job to be loud, to make herself heard; as the editor of the most popular and most illegal newspaper organization in the country, one had to be dominating and persistent to get something done. Her eyes would shine past her lightly tanned cheeks each time she gleaned some new piece of seemingly crucial evidence to support their claims, or untrue claims about themselves to be heatedly argued.

The female stomped about, rallying troops, it would seem, throughout the building. There were not so many working units was one would expect in an average “News for the Just” station. Most refused to admit they even read the Irrefutable Press, let alone that they wished to have a risky part in it’s creations. Those that did work diligently in secret each day, however, held enough spirit in their hearts to make up for a thousand of those who would take the secret to their grave. Marie would make up a million.

“Marie! Mi-…Miss Marie!” came a shaky response, this one barely heard except by the one being addressed.

“Ya? What’s goin’ on, John? What’s the news?”

“They just said it on the Network. There’s been another protest, this time on the Tenth City Block, by the old church. They say it’s getting pretty bad. They’ve already begun arresting some of them.” His lips trembled a bit when he spoke, but Marie had grown used to the minor distraction. He was always trying to hide it, ashamed of it, afraid of it even, and although Marie had a penchant for humor at others’ expense, she never once commented on the trifle since they day they had met.

“Oh, really, now? Well then why are we still here? That’s the good stuff we’ve been waiting for,” she said with that trademark grin. It sloped upwards toward her left eye a bit more than to the right, as if only the left side was truly responsive, and made her eyes shine like polished green ornaments. “Let’s get ‘em out there and see what’s goin’ on then. We haven’t got much time before they’re all removed. Network never tells all. All right…you there! The new guy here. What’s your name again?”

“Me…?” replied a poorly dressed blonde male standing nearby, attempting to work a primitive printing press and failing rather pitifully, but comically. Marie couldn’t help an amused smirk from creeping to her lopsided lips.

“Ya, well you’re the only one standing there and the only that’s new, aren’t ya?“

“Um…me name’s Eric.“

“Well, come on then, Eric, you’re on field duty today. Me and you are going to be best mates, aren’t we? Right, eh? Let’s go, we’re burning what little daylight Gad has left to us.” She started to walk away then thought better of it and turned to him again, clapping his shoulder with a surprisingly strong work-worn hand. “And it‘s ‘my‘, not ‘me.’ Don‘t want to be caught by the Razz, now do we?” With that she grinned and clapped her hands, shouting out orders that chased each other around the open building to all those working steadfastly where they were. “All right! Steven, Gerard, Will, and Jess, let’s go. Everyone else stay here and get it done. These are the last days we’ve got before legislature cracks down completely. You know the drill--grab your flipbooks and pens and let’s head out, quick as the sun’s going down, ya?”

The small group or reporters had quickly organized themselves into a troop of steady soldiers as the marched through the back way, winding over the watery wreckage just outside. The view from behind was not much of one, truth be told, for even Marie would admit to it. All that could be seen through every window and every eye was water and flotsam that had remained there for a hundred years and would still remain for a hundred more at least. The “coast”, if it could really be called as such, was undefined, always changing and being shaped. Often the station would be flooded on the first floor; most of the most critical pieces of equipment, then, were stored on the top levels, along with the archives of endless collected information from both reporters and civil units.

After making their way around to the sides of the station, the group slit apart a bit, slowly, then finally took completely different routes, as if they had never met each other. None of them spoke, except Marie (who constantly spoke to herself if no one else was present) and Eric, who traveled closely behind her like a trained and obedient pup.

“What’re ya doing? You’re supposed to go off on your own. Didn’t you even bother to read how this whole thing works? You go off with them so we don’t draw the eyes of the Razz over here and blow everything to tiny bits and such,” Marie reasoned with an exasperated sigh.

“Oh…s-…sorry.” Eric paused, looking around helplessly as if to find the cue card pointing to the path he should take. He felt that firm hand on his shoulder once more, pulling him forward against his will.

“No, no, you’re already here, you’d best stay here. Just come with me. Don’t do anything rash--I’d hope that’s obvious enough, ya? Just stay in line like the other units and don’t talk about anything important until we get there. By then the Razz’ll be plenty preoccupied with the protestors to even notice we’ve come until we make it obvious. Keep the odds in our favor.” She silences herself, snuggling down into the bulky overcoat she wore obsessively as they passed by a local watchman on his beat. He watched them pass, eying Eric more suspiciously than he did Marie, until she passed him the little bag of tokens; instantly, the watchman forgot the woman even existed.

The streets were relatively empty here, mostly for the logical reasoning that it was dangerously close to the ocean-front. There was a different set of debris here almost every day and night as the water reached up a merciless hand and grasped all in its path, pulling it into its depths like an insatiable and silent beast in the darkness of the freezing nights and replacing it with a new set that it had to let go in exchange for its meal. The buildings that lined the sidewalks could be hardly told apart from the building Marie and their troop had adopted as their headquarters--all tall, long masses, all ten stories reaching dismally into the ever-gray skies of constant twilight, all with broken windows and flood-lines tattooing their sides with green and black layers and ripping of the little paint that remained upon the walls. As far as the eye could see, nothing but lifeless gray and pools of black and the occasional fast-moving black ghost that wisped otherwise unseen through the deserted alleys.
“We’ve got about twelve blocks, I’d think, before we start meeting up with the others, and then we need to file in with the units. Just keep a good eye out. If you see anyone suspicious, anyone watching, you just tap me on the shoulder and don’t look at them--whatever you do, never look directly at them. That’s how they know. You better at least know that. Know that and you won’t get caught. Listen to me and you won’t get caught.” Eric simply nodded, drawing in a breath as he focused on some obscured point directly ahead of him, making sure his footsteps matched Marie’s beside him as they tapped dully on the softened sidewalks.

Eric knew more about the world than he led to believe. It’s why he was here in the first place. Despite his constant nervousness, his steady silence, his unsure steps, Eric knew very well that to meet the eyes of an officer was an unwritten application for removal from the Just. They would come knocking on doors or beating them down to him find him, “Just to talk,” they’d say, “Just to get things straightened out. No need to struggle.” But they always would struggle. They could take away a human’s rights, but a human’s mind. It was one thing Eric held on to throughout his life, held true to in the years to come when the other concepts fizzled and died like glowing embers dowsed by the ocean’s icy grip. As long as he kept himself low on their standards and didn’t make a sound, he could still do some good in other ways and no one would have to know. The Press was another way, he knew, and perhaps more effective than any words he could say to the civil masses.

The twelve blocks seemed to extend forever into the faded light of the day. They had been traveling on foot for nearly fifteen minutes before they had infiltrated the more unfamiliar territory of First City Blockade. At one point, this area was blocked by guards at all times, brutal men with canes and rusty guns on their hips all standing neatly in a row like folded shirts in a drawer, packed neatly together in an unyielding viscous mass. Now, though, these men had been called in to preside over more important issues and territories, perhaps even at the protest site far off down on the Tenth.

The city itself was nothing more than a massive grid that stretched over a not insubstantial island of rubble. Each Block consisted of four perfect squares separated by narrow streets which in turn each contained eight perfectly square buildings connected in the center by a series of pathways and in their function. Official Blocks, such as the Courts of Block Eighteen, were allotted a larger portion, aligned with other Official Blocks in a long column of like-edifices towering above all others, running for miles across the island-city from water’s edge to water’s edge. If one could see the city from above, it would look very much like the cascade of stadium seating in the Courts--columns of massive concrete shading the minute cubes far below on the very tip of the landmass where it meets the water and soon afterwards disappears into its depths.

Eric’s thoughts had wandered greatly in the long spaces when he was alone and silent, as he felt now. He could picture the protest in his mind--the hands thrusting in unison into the air like a salute against the government, the voices carrying over to some other street, distracting units from their daily walk to work or to the tramway or to their boxed white homes, the disruption of time itself as units ran across the street against the migration of thoughtless (or perhaps just actless) puppets manipulated by the government’s reigns, the black bags that could make a unit disappear without a sound from the face of the dying planet. It was these kinds of protest that Eric was against, in truth--not because of their purpose, but because of their tactics. Would anyone hear a single voice amid the throng of shouting beings crowded about the newly formed blockade and the immobile bodies of the guards that held them back? If one did, would he listen? Would he even understand? Perhaps, when he heard the solemn protest of some deep and long oppressed tone, would Bagger (as many called him in secret) come forth like a black viper, striking in the midst of them all to snatch up one poor soul to be forgotten. Then back to position, keep holding fast, hear another, snatch another, never shoot or even speak to clear a name. Just get rid of the problem, and everything can go back to normal.

“Eric? Hey…! Let’s go, this way,” Marie said, shoving a firm elbow into his side and awakening him from his thoughts. They had already arrived at the Ninth City Block, and now had to be very careful indeed. Every step would be crucial from now on as they squared their shoulders and prepared to file in with the Just on their persistent travels toward nothing, and already he could hear the voices.

Short Fiction 2

2008-05-27T00:40:00.000-07:00

My second piece of short fiction, a little late but here nonetheless. Not like anyone cares but me heh. Again, I started with a single line and just let it roll from there to stop wherever it wanted to :)

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The room had a view, but it really wasn't much of one by his standards. Just the stale wall of some building maybe five hundred feet across an equally stale and uninteresting street far below. There were no windows in the wall. Just bricks, and even those were hard to discern, they were chipped so badly from age and whether. The streets didn't fare much better either; shattered concrete and the occasional floating newspaper that came barreling down the avenue as if it were late for some very important date.

Great, he thought. Now we're getting poetical.

He sniffed at the air and recognized the vague scent of oil and gas and pollution that he hadn't known he knew in the first place, let alone remembered. It was an odd contrast to the flat white and cleanliness of his new surroundings. A white table draped with a white cloth and encircled by three white chairs, overlooked by white walls on four sides (all the same size; he had checked), and upholding a strangely shining white telephone. He watched the telephone for a long few minutes, as if waiting patiently for it to ring and his "people" to call him up and tell him to come down for some supper.

Maybe the food is white too. Bastards just keep it all to themselves, whatever it is...

Maybe he was being just a little selfish, he admitted dryly to himself. I mean, he did have a view of something, even if it wasn't much of a something, and there was a place to sit unlike some of the other rooms he had previously visited. Cautiously he approached the open window that let the pure white drapes drift to and fro only slightly to the sides. He could almost imagine people walking and children playing far below, just bigger than ants in the cracks of concrete he remembered stomping on as a kid with such careless glee. Feeling a little braver, or perhaps a little more curious, he stretched his neck out into the open and twisted to peer on either side of the window, wondering if the building, too, was white. To his surprise, it was not; rather it was a sort of pukish brown, more stale even than the wall it ran parallel to beyond.

"Hmmph," he grumbled. "Least its more interesting than all this other crap."

Staring out into nothingness was somehow enthralling enough as to distract him completely for hours. He thought about the imaginary people on the ground and imaginary windows filled with offices and scurrying workers across from him, ignoring him. He thought about the family he left behind so easily in their two-bedroom apartment on the far west of town--his two little girls and darling wife. He didn't miss them, but it was interesting to think about them from time to time and wonder.

When the phone did ring, he had fallen asleep on the window sill and jumped at the sudden trill of the internal bell in the phone. Straightening himself out and playing it cool for some imaginary guest in the room, he took in a breath and answered.

"Yeah?"

"They're ready for you. Are you?"

"Who's 'they'?"

Faint static. Bad connection maybe, and he shook his head, knowing better.

"Well, I'm ready to meet 'them' or whatever. I haven't eaten."

"You know who they are. You know."

"Hey, hey listen. Listen, a'ight? I need food, 'kay? I don't even know why I'm here. I just need food."

"They will provide your meal."

"Yeah? And how the hell am I supposed to get out of here, man? The door's locked in case you forgot."

"You know--"

"Answer the goddamned question!"

A dial tone.

"Son of a bitch. The hell's he want me to do, jump out the window?" Again, he swore under his breath. He didn't even hear the door open, nor notice the two "men" enter, until he turned around to face them barely a foot before him.

"Mister Johansen."

"The hell do you want now?" He feigns ignorance and carelessness, but watches them with sharp eyes.

"Just a little of your time. Are you ready?"

"Not until I eat."

"Soon. First you must meet them."

"Who? Tell me who! Why am I here?"

The tallest of the men smirks, a smirk that makes his chest clench and his eyes flicker briefly around the room for an escape, but he doesn't know why.

"You know, sir. And you'll know soon enough."

A Realization

2008-05-23T23:17:00.001-07:00

To whoever in the Circle reads this:

I love you guys.

Seriously. I thank whatever being there is that you all exist.

We give each other shit all the time--I do it too, and receive it quite a bit.

And some days I hate some or even all of you, and I know sometimes you do the same.

But I wouldn't give a single thing to get rid of any of you.

I love you guys. You'd better remember it.

Short Fiction 1

2008-05-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

First of many short little story things. Dunno exactly what it's about, but something sinister to be sure. Enjoy :)
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It used to be called a “five-and-dime” when his grandmother was still around, or so she said. Now though it was called Two Bucks Two. He could still recall the first time he had been inside it, when it was first renamed some distant and short-lived title, and his mother had bought him a tiny bag of gummy pink candy he had never seen before. The same building, the same stagnant smell throughout like burning peanuts and rusting metal, but the name seemed to still change it somehow when he walked by it now. Illogical, perhaps, but it made sense to him at the time.

Usually he passed right by it on his way to the large gray building he spent twenty hours a day in, sometimes stopping by to grab a bag of some oddity to carry along with him in its brown paper sack. Often he’d inspect what he’d bought later and wonder at its usage. So much for two dollars, he would think. Today though was different. Today was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays were always different.

It was a sort of unplanned ritual. Every Wednesday he would awaken the same as any other day–0500 hours on the spot, slip on the same blue suit and the same black polished shoes, the same leather gloves and the same gold-plated watch–but every Wednesday he would walk a different route, and not generally of his own will. He ignored the phenomenon entirely, except perhaps in his sleep when the mind wandered and wondered alike; he never questioned why or how, but simply accepted its happening. Logically, today, being a Wednesday, was no different.

Today he started on the same route, taking the first left at 5th, then the short-cut alley over to Figs Street, where the Two Bucks Two stood. His mind was blank, and he walked with little (if anything) on his mind, hands swaying regularly at his sides as he kept a brisk formal pace. It was rare that he actually paid much attention to his footing or where he was going, just trusting the schema built within himself to find the way for him. That is, except on Wednesdays.

It was still a good half hour before he was due at work when he saw the little torn photo and the bold-print type beneath, attached neatly in the center of a lamp post:

LOST CAT
Have you seen me?
My name is Jimmy-boy, and they've been looking for me.
I have a torn ear, and my paw is broken.
I live on Winchester, and a little girl misses me much.
Find me? Call Maslow
234-9696

It was the one thing that could make his feet stop. Although is eyes roved without seeing, for whatever reasons the unknown had they were drawn to such abnormalities. That's how he found the store in the first place--such an oddity could not have gone unnoticed. Pausing, he peered up slightly to reread the words printed there in old browning ink.The rain spots were clear in the clean daylight. This poster's been moved, he concluded. It hasn't rained in over a week. Jimmy-boy, it says....odd name for a cat. With a single quiet sigh, very unlike him, he slipped a cigarette from out of his pocket and squeezed his lips around it, unlit. Again his feet moved and he wiped the poster from memory. Glancing at the Two Bucks Two with a brief and strange longing, he took a sharp right into an alley of back houses. A familiar old face greeted him, but he barely looked or stopped.

"New road today, Jim? Looking to be hot. Better be quick about getting home, yeah?"

"You know how it is," he replied, pulling the cigarette from his mouth and flicking it into the old man's hands. "New Wednesday, new road. Long way's home tonight. Hear they're looking for cats."

The man peered at him with twinkling eyes and a sage's nod.

"Then it's a bad night for us all."

2008-05-11T23:03:00.000-07:00

This is Nikki secretly logging into Michelle's blogspot.

And now I shall rant about how awesome she is.

I LOVE HER!

She is smart and very meticulous about her grammar and I think that makes her special.

She is an amazing poet.

She is amusing to listen to.

I think she is an amazing person.

She won't admit it but she is pretty, look at this:

My Mission

2008-05-11T01:01:00.001-07:00

So I've decided to attempt to creatively-write something at least once a week until this November, in which I will attempt my second novel for NaNoWriMo--see http://www.nanowrimo.org

Odds are, much of it will be here, just because it can be. Odds are also much higher that they would all be found at me homepage on Elftown. Request link if interested.

So that's my mission this year. NaNoWriMo, here I come.

Amazing--a blog.

2008-05-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

OMG.

Owlie is now a blogger.

Look out world, you just ended.

Don't know what I'll put here--anyone got any tips or requests? Otherwise this will be eventually filled with random rants and poetry about the world and its increasing worldsuck.

No takers...?

Very well then. Rants and poetry it is.

Over and out.