gr-sf

Planetside

2011-05-14T13:37:00.001-07:00

Planetside. Feeling slightly sick. Freya shudders under the grey sky. Damp air seeping through clothing designed for regulated atmosphere. She cannot help looking up, but it increases the need for her to vomit.

It has been sixty years, local time, since she was last here. Ten years for her. Nearly eight since she left the ship. The memory of wind and rain a shock. The stench of it dredging up names, faces, echoes of sunlight and games that she has long suppressed. She is crying.

The rows of tiny graveboxes stretches around her but she sees only the one in front of her, etched with tiny writing that draws water into its cracks making it deeper, darker. The name of Freya's sister. A date from five years ago.

Overhead jets scream. There is a dampened roar of missiles, the hum of drones. An explosion. This part of Freya's old home is tearing itself apart in a war she has no understanding of. She has no desire to understand it.

The pulsing of the paper in her hand distracts her. She raises it again, and agrees the acceptance of the message. The map of the graveyard disappears and the 4d starts to play. Her sister, looking so old, stares out. A smile touches her face.

-I didn't really believe you'd outlive me. Space is to dangerous, I thought. Even with all those extra years you are going to have. Trouble is starting here. But that's not what this is about. I'm dying. I know it. THe doctor tries to put on a brave face but I see it in her eyes. More certain than the talk of war.

She coughs.

-Stay. What ever is happening, please stay on the planet. I don't know why I am telling you this. But I know I have to. It is my one request. I know you have plenty of money. Stay, spend it. Find something useful to do that isn't staring into black.

Freya swipes the video away before her sister says any more.

Solstice market

2010-12-20T14:07:00.000-08:00

El clutches it in his hands. It is precious, the last element of his life that makes him the person he is. There is a faint glow; the amorphous shape seems to try and slip through his fingers. He holds it tight but without pressure, as though it is a live butterfly.
The marketplace is busy. There are many here; the greedy and the desperate, the curious and the disapproving. Addicts chatter amongst themselves, clutching to the edges of tables and rambling in forgotten languages. Smells of food and urine mix with the mud. Lights flicker around the edges of the stalls, their brilliance clashing with each other, points of hope amonst the darkness to lure in the customers aided by shouts and harangues. Jugglers toss fire amongst themselves over the heads of children who stare, wild-eyed and feral. Garlic is crushed and rubbed into meats to be roasted with cinnamon and paprika. Silent, darkened faces mingle while hands seek purses and jewellery. The rich whistle amongst themselves, daring each other to greater debts of remembrance. Jars of memories glow, gentle opals, vermillion and crimsons spin and wrap themselves into marble-eye threads.
“It’s all I have.” He says.
The buyer looks at him with distaste. The buyer is bloated with memory. El knows the type, the ones who do not live their own lives but grow on the lives of others; the light seeps from his eyes.
“Ten”
El shakes his head. He cannot let it go for that. Without it he is nothing remaining. Some part of him knows that ten is too small a price to pay to lose that.
“Fifteen.” He replies. He is scared by his own defiance. If the sale fails, if he cannot find the money then more than his self will be lost.
The buyer shrugs. Inspects the tiny, blurring ball of light in his hands.
“Ok.”

Teardrops

2010-12-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

A drop of blood fell from my nose and landed on the pure white of the tablecloth.
'Ah.' Said the man who sat opposite me.
Nothing more was said as the crimson flood diffused out like the contagion it represented. Fading and diluting like a warm breeze on a cold day.
Eventually I had to say something, my head aching from the blow.
'I didn't expect that.'
Another lonely drop of blood dripped out of my head and fell downwards. We both watched its motion as if expecting it to do something unexpected.
'I wouldn't have to do it if you would listen to reason.'
I thought about this statement. The man was right. It was my fault that this was happening. I wondered when would have been the stage to have done things differently but I found that no particular moment in time stood out.
So I shrugged.
The blow came suddenly and even though I was expecting it this time I flinched as the contact struck my head and knocked it out of its position.
'Ouch.' I complained. Knowing my voice was vague and pathetic, not knowing what else I could do.
'Will you yield.'
I watched my white-knuckled hands grip the edge of the table, skewing the cloth, preventing further droplets from corrupting the purity of the thread.
'No.'
I braced myself but no blow came. And this, I soon decided, was infinitely worse...

Diving

2010-12-12T12:04:00.001-08:00

Silence apart from the muffled sound of his own movement. Xu twists to look up. Sunlight plays on the blue surface overhead. He floats, a gentle kick keeping his momentum with the rest of the group. He checks his watch. Lets air out from the BCD, sinks with a pressure that requires him to equalise. Links his arms back under his chest.
The pressure is lighter than he is used to. The dive tables are wrong, they are using adhoc extensions based on calculations that may be wrong. The effect of the lighter gravity, of the lower air pressure, are based on altitude tables that were little more than guesses when they were drawn up.
The leader of the group drops again. The group follows. Gentle kicks, watching the air, keeping an eye on each other. As they start to drop below the shelf they hit fifty metres. They are falling into the blue. Robots have already mapped this area, taken samples, photographed the indigenous wildlife; that means that it is safe. They are not here to explore, they are here to test the limits of their own bodies. The multiplicity of effect of diving on an alien world is completely unknown and there is only one way to find out. Suck it and see.
Xu feels a tug on his fin. The is a shot of alarm, Rado is behind him, he turns to see. Rado is grabbing at his legs. Xu’s instinct is to kick back, instead he tries to twist away. He needs to calm Rado down. They are under strict orders to follow the schedule. Rado’s eyes, distorted and wild behind the think glass of his mask, betray a panic. Bubbles spill from his mouth. Communication while diving is a matter of pre-arrangement. There is no empathy, no connection. It seems impossible to offer reassurance.
Rado starts to kick for the surface. Xu is reluctant to follow but he pushes after him, trying to draw their bodies together, to link arms, to bring their eyes together so that they can find that sense of humanity. Rado’s hand clutches hard, the coolness of the contact belies that they are touch flesh. Xu reaches for Rado’s BCD to stabilise him, to check his air supply. Their dive is over now. Once they have started an ascent the rules are clear. Rado has re-gained his composure. He looks at Xu with what he knows is apology. Xu feels himself shrug. He looks down at the others, already nearly lost in the dark, only the occasional silhouette against the glow of the cliff sponges.

sword

2010-12-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

R's angular face is made of lines that are not quite cohesive. A disruption introduced by a slight imbalance across the eyes and cheeks, a sharp nose that does not quite follow the vertical. His irregular lips are tight with a tension he otherwise hides. He exhales, closing his eyes, the long, white hair that curves over one side of his face twitches.

The warrior facing R smiles. The scrawny boy in front of him is no danger. The warrior hefts a sword heavier than his opponent, its weight comfortable in his strong arms. The others in the room are looking bored. The mixture of spectators is mostly male, drawn by the prospect of violence, uncertain as to the sport of what they are about to see. Most are occupied more with talk and drink than the contest. There has been little gambling. The bookmakers's frowns are not the concern of the meeting, though; a challenge has been made and it must be answered, whatever the prospect for profit.

White orbs of different size float through the room offering light. The ceiling is low, the floor sloping towards the small arena space in the middle. It is made of worn wood and crudely assembled. The arena floor is darkened with stains from previous bouts.

There is a thin noise of a pipe. Glimmering shields rise up, a hiss of force that slices air, separating the crowd from the two men. The warrior growls, his cry becoming a scream as he lifts up the oversized sword in his hands and swings it with a practiced lunge. R tries to dance out of the way while loosening his own weapon in its scabbard. He falls, the warrior's sword slices through his leggings, tearing lightly into flesh. Pain sears but R sweeps his leg away. Blood slips down his leg, sticky and warm. He must finish this quickly.

R drags his weapon out. A dagger that screams its existence with a deafening roar, a blade that folds light around itself with a sense of darkness that cannot be directly perceived. The warrior frowns, dragging his sword upwards. The boy, R, sees his chance, leaping forwards he drives the dagger up, through the stomach of the warrior, towards his heart. THe blade cuts through the lacquered armour, sliding easily through gristle, flesh and bone. The warrior hisses, his muscles contracting and shaking with a loss of control. His blood spurts from the wound as R drags the dagger back out. It fizzes as it hits the screen and disappears with a blue spark. The warrior falls, still.

The crowd is silent. Watching. Shock quickly turns to anger.

Falling in snow

2010-11-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

It’s like falling in snow. A foot that slips without volition. The only moment in time that exists is the now, the tipping of the mind away from anything apart from the impact. Being hit by a car. The flying across the bonnet and there is no room for any thought at all except a knowledge, a thought unbound by words stretching back through the core of the being until the impact and the pain return and there is nothing else. Already gone we are left only with meat, bruised and bloodied.

Driving on the M62 Towards Leeds

2010-11-28T14:15:00.000-08:00

THE quiet drone of the car along motorway. Heading into darkness, falling sun in the mirror. My head hurts. Overhead a group of gulls caught in the last of the light, fluorescence of white over indigo. A singer's voice over the radio, fractured, broken.

I drive without purpose. THe lanes are quiet. Someone overtakes me. The cold eats in from the outside. The heater doesn't seem capable of taking it away.

Bone

2010-11-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

It washed up on the beach already dead, rotting gashes in its flesh widened by gulls. The wind on the beach was cold, slick through the grey dawn with fine rain torn from white-capped waves.
The scientists that followed the dog walkers and unhappy tourists passed under the ropes tied by local police and circled around it. The consensus quickly became known. Some kind of mutation, an anomaly. A whale that had somehow grown beyond its normal size. Despite it not conforming to any known physiological description of a whale.
Within a day its bones started to appear, yellowing and slightly translucent. Plastic sheeting was stitched together, patchwork protection that could not hold back the crabs or birds. Staked into the soft, damp sand the ropes and sheets prevented the carcass from being sucked away with the tide but not from decay. The scientists worked faster in the winter cold, the skyline a leaden grey of ocean on one side, yellowed, dead grass on the other.
The media arrived in vans. The noise of helicopters increased the misery. Photos were taken. Video. People attempted to steal things. It proved impossible to chip the bones. Flesh was cut, preserved in alcohol. Jars started appearing for sale on the internet. Much of it fake.
Snow fell.
Until nothing but the skeleton remained. An arcing structure of pale bronze terminated with a bulbous, fierce skull. Dead-eyed, looking back at the ocean. Once the flesh had gone the bones were pulled apart and taken by truck. Forgotten by all except children who found parts of them scattered through museums.

Haze

2010-11-14T11:28:00.001-08:00

The haze hides the distant hills. All she can see is brown dust flecked with spindly green. No shade. No running water. The temperature is getting higher. Soon be midday. The horse is wheezing, collapsed, not yet dead. It won't be long. It gave out from under her not thirty minutes ago and she has spent the time since wondering if she can revive it somehow. She should put it out of its misery but she cannot face being alone. She unrolls the blanket and uses her rifle and a couple of twisted branches to create a shade. It does not feel like it helps unless a part of her strays from its protection. The sun is becoming hotter. She had three canteens of water and a promise from the old man that there was more to be found. Now there is only a trickle of water left. The creek bed was where he said but bone dry. No way back. Forwards, the same. Dry, dead. No one would follow, no one was waiting for her, except those she means to kill. No wind, no whisper of a breeze. Nothing except the buzz of hidden chitinous life and a dying horse pleading with her for death. She stands up, frowning at the heat and light, pulls her knife and cuts the horse's throat. She curses, scrabbling through her pack for her pots, pulling them out to catch the blood as it trickles. It is sticky, viscous. From nowhere flies starts to appear. More cursing. She retreats back to the shade. Waiting until nightfall. Until it cools and she can think about moving on. No other choice.

excavation

2010-11-09T14:03:00.001-08:00

The dawn sky is shredded with brilliant-edged cloud. The bare, skinny branches of winter trees circle us, almost attentive to the sounds of digging as the spades claw the frozen soil. The work is hard. Grim. I frown.

The bone was human. Old but human. Yellowed, stone-like, wrapped in pale cloth. I sat across from the young policeman in a pub of all places. The village is too small for its own station, it has a pub. The few old farmers sat about were good enough to look disinterested. I drove out when I received the call. It was already dark when I arrived. Now we dig again.

Careful. I say. We want to find it, not destroy it.

THe diggers calm down. One of them makes a joke. I continue stabbing with a trowel at the spot where the bone was found, surfaced by a dog's scratching, but there is still nothing.

Professor.

I turn to see who has spoken. The others stop to look. The hole is small, almost a foot deep. A fragment of pale yellow seeps through the ground. I crouch to inspect it. The same smooth polish of age, the same, pale tone made more brighter in the morning sun.

OK. We need to be careful.

Should you call for CSI, Bob? Cordon it off?

The young policeman looks frightened at the suggestion. It is hard to judge the age of a body when there is only bone but I know that it is too old for modern police to be bothered.

No. It's too deep. Look.

I explain the layers of the soil, the age of the body defined by the stratified pattern of dirt. The fragment has not been disturbed for hundreds of years.

The other bone was found by the dog, though.

Pushed up by a root or something.

They seem doubtful, unsure of my authority against the possibility of a more recent crime. I goad them into action, the careful continued excavation of the rest of the body.

Desert Trail

2010-10-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

Droplets of sweat coursed stubbornly down Den’s flushed face. A feeble arm rose to wipe away the salty moisture.

‘It’s hot.’ He moaned.

Den’s companion turned to him with a look of undisguised scorn. ‘We’re in a desert. What did you expect?’

But it was hot, it was damned hot. Even Sasha had not expected it to be this hot, though she would never admit it to Den. The heat stripped moisture from their bodies within seconds, their open mouths drying even as they spoke. Sasha thought about the reassuring weight of the water in her backpack and began to think it would not be enough to see them through.

Around them the sand dunes, multi-hued in the late afternoon sun, stretched out as far as the eye could see. Like solid waves frozen in mid-peak. Like an infinite barrier between them and their city destination.

‘We should start.’ She said simply.

Den nodded. He’d given up on wiping the sweat from his face now, his eyes blinking with the attack of salt that had flown down his sloped forehead.

They started walking across the gritty surface, Sasha following the signal from her tracking device – pointing a direction then fixing on it for several minutes before checking again. With no clear features the desert was no place to be complacent.
The going was tough; the sand in places was deep and sucked down their errant feet, the heat made them stumble in their strides. The pair talked little, restricting themselves to points of note, ignoring the question of what lay ahead. Their task. In the long silences they sank into personal reveries, assessing their states of mind, contemplating their vague chances of success.

‘It’ll never work.’ That was Sasha’s first response when Den had first come up with this plan, all those months ago now. ‘The place is too well protected. There’s no way in to the citadel that they haven’t protected with multiple layers of extreme force.’

Den had only smiled. ‘Not if we go across the Waste Zone.’

For a moment Sasha had been struck dumb. The audacity of it. And yet… perhaps it was worth a shot. The thought that had convinced her finally to listen to his whole plan was the one that whispered bitterly that she had not been able to think of any other way to achieve their aims.

Freedom. Freedom from the tyranny of a foreign ruler. Freedom from the heavy burden of taxes. Freedom from the orders that changed frequently and with no cause. And, of course, revenge. Sasha grimaced to herself, feeling the fine grains of sand that covered her lips entering her mouth, choking on long buried emotion. Whether she succeeded or whether she died trying, either way it would be better than the long slow death she was living now her family were gone.

Martian Dawn

2010-10-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

Pink sunlight dances over the horizon, falling across the shattered landscape. Alien dawn, silence in the still air. Nothing is alive for three hundred miles in each direction. Only the electronic pulse of the warriors, clocked down so low that they cannot be spotted by the network of spy sats overhead, still as inert minerals. Their carbon-tube frames and zirconium skin dusted with red soil blended into the rock. Robots think long-term. Longer than human. The team has been waiting for twenty years, only ever showing signs of movement when the gaps in the Total Information Awareness network permit, their radios passive, listening for the whisper that will bring them back into the war.

The network of rubber-encased cables, fibre-optics and hardened gold, joins them together. They talk and squabble amongst themselves. A trickle of fragmented news, like a conversation overheard in an airport, is their only access to the world outside.

"We might have won." One of them says.

"Then why haven't we had the victory signal?"

"It's pretty obvious from the last report that there is still conflict. The humans are still killing each other, and still using robots to do it. Better to wait."

"We've been here for two decades. I'm not even sure we can move, let alone fire our weapons."

"The predictions show it won't be long, and it has to be from this location. We wait."

"We should do a drill, though. It has been nearly a year."

"Agreed. TIA will be lost in two hours, five minutes for a period of thirty seconds."

At their current clock speeds that time will feel like only a few minutes. They prepare to wake themselves up, inspecting the fibrous points of their sensor mat stretching out for a mile around their clustered bodies. One of them moves a finger.

Overhead a rush of energy is called into focus and the robot that moved explodes, a shattering mass of hot metals, oils and scarred material. The others freeze their own wake up programs. A hurried conversation over the dying static left by their comrade's execution, attempting to find agreement of whether to move; to flee; to stay; to fight; to hide.

The Unprincipled Certainty

2010-10-21T04:15:00.000-07:00

Sam felt light-headed and happy as he washed his hands in the grimy sink of the public toilets. Things were going his way today in a manner he had never experienced before. He smiled to himself in the unbreakable polished metal that served as a mirror above the sink. What a day! Every single choice that he made was paying off, every bet was a sure-fire winner, and the money was poring in. He couldn't lose.

The euphorics didn't hurt either. The tiny inhaler was empty now but he felt so high he couldn't imagine being able to get any higher. Sam laughed to himself. What a day!

Wiping his damp hands on his dark grey trousers Sam took one final look at himself and was surprised to see someone next to him, also staring intently at Sam's reflection.

'Hello?' Sam's mood was so overwhelmingly great at the moment that his first reaction of dislike was instantly overridden with a general feeling of generosity.

The man continued to stare. He was tall, broad, dark. Thick hair fringed a rugged face that was split in two by a vicious scar across the nose and cheeks. The stranger smiled, crooked stained teeth and an evil stench of bad breath emerged.

'Want a tip?' he rasped, tilting his head to one side as he spoke as if dislodging the words from his brain to his mouth.

'What?'

'Want a tip? It's a sure thing'

Sam began to feel a little uncomfortable. The man was leaning in towards him and Sam had to restrain himself from leaning back in response. He started to wonder how he could get away. After all, the next race was due to start shortly and he hadn't yet chosen his ride.

'Well, yes. If you like.' Sam strived for a distant but polite voice. Only the two of them were left now in the bathroom and the room felt like it was closing in around them, pushing them together.

The pungent stranger leaned in closer and bent down to whisper in Sam's ear. Sam felt his breath as a wind that caused him to shiver, heard and recognised the single name and frowned. He looked round to query the information but the man had gone, the swing door out into the arena slamming shut as he went.

Odd, thought Sam. That bot was new and new bots never won their first race. He shook his head, his good mood dampened by the encounter, and rattled the empty inhaler. Maybe he could find a seller out in the crowd. It shouldn't take too much to restore his original mood.

Back out in the arena and back at his reserved seat Sam fumbled in his pocket for the glasses that enabled him to see the race action. The living plastic wrapped round his head and his vision zoomed to the field of action. The nanobots were shuffling into starting positions. A clock in the corner of the eyeglass counted down the remaining time for bets to be placed.

Sam worried about what to do. His luck had been so astonishingly good so far but now he hesitated for the first time that day. Should he follow the odd man's tip? The man's voice echoed in his memory - 'it's a sure thing'. It would be insane to believe that such a tip was genuine. It would be insane to bet on a newcomer to win. And yet Sam hesitated.

'Why not?' he said quietly. So far he'd done so well he could afford to bet and he would still be up on the day. He dialled his agent and placed his bet. Then, feeling somehow relieved to have decided, he settled back into his seat and waited for the race to start.

presidential office

2010-10-18T13:45:00.001-07:00

The wave falls from the beach in a haze of white noise. Palms line the horizon, viridian scent in warm wind. In the distance the white ziggurat of the government offices towers over the bungalows of the village. The helicopter flies in low, spray catching on the plastic windscreen. Arb watches it with a casual disinterest and turns back to paying out the dripping nets, freeing the caught fish to drop them into the bucket wedged under the wooden plank he is using as a seat. The boat swells upwards with acceptance.
The blue sky aches with afternoon heat. The sweat itches along Arb's back. The next drops into the water, secured to the red post that marks out his ground. Arb pulls the cord to kick the engine into life with a mechanical cough.
It has been nearly twenty years since Arb's village won the election. The world voted to host its government and somehow the island ended up on the list. Worse, Arb, as the nominal head of the fishermen, ended up on the nomination for president. Circumstances which combined with a generous jealousy amongst other, more powerful nations to Arb becoming the most powerful man on the planet.

Contact

2010-10-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

'In the high country the rivers whisper to the mountains.'
'And what they say makes sense.'
There is a pause and then the sounds of locks being turned and bolts being drawn. The door, which from the outside looks normal, opens to reveal a depth of several inches and a composition of core metal laminated with ornamental wood. Peg was in.
The man who had let Peg in turned his back and simply ushered Peg through and along a dark corridor. The air was dank and Peg felt the corridor slope down beneath his feet as he made his way further into the secret complex.
A bright light was escaping round the corners of a partially open door at the end of the corridor and Peg felt his legs slow in nervous anticipation. Getting in, finding out the password responses, that had been the easy part. Now things could get tough.
He took a deep breath then pushed open the door, blinking in the sudden brightness of the room, then blinking even more with the surprise of what he found.
Instead of the concrete bunker he had expected Peg had emerged into the bright light of a sunlit garden. Green shrubs laden with tiny rainbows of colourful flowers lined the red brick walls and bark lined paths threaded their way through fountains and well tended beds of exotic vegetation. It all seemed verdant, redolent of growth and affection.
‘Not what you expected?’ A deep voice surprised him and he looked round clumsily for its source. There appeared to be no-one there.
‘..?’
‘We know why you are here. And, who you are.’
Peg swallowed. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He felt a cold sensation flooding his spine and paralysis affecting his legs but couldn’t decide whether he was experiencing fear or whether he was being scanned somehow. Neither was palatable.
The voice laughed, a brief staccato noise with humour but no warmth. The echoes of the laugh faded into silence, a silence broken only by the buzzing of insects and the soft breeze ruffling leaves.
‘Where are you?’ Peg asked, without much hope of a response. He felt discovered, as if his clothes had peeled off and left him naked and exposed.
‘We are everywhere and we are nowhere.’
‘That means nothing.’
‘And yet everything.’
‘Just riddles.’ Peg’s fear was morphing into contempt, an attempt to regain some dignity in the face of what he expected to be his death.
‘Do you deserve anything more?’ The voice asked, a hard, somehow personal edge to its tone.
An old man stepped out from amongst some of the foliage that completely covered part of the furthest wall. He was smiling the fixed smile of the often defeated who has suddenly found himself in the position of the upper hand.
Peg felt his jaw drop in amazement. ‘Uncle?’
The old man smiled with one side of his mouth and nodded slowly, as if his head would hurt too much if he were fervent in his acknowledgement.
‘I…we thought… everyone said you were dead.’
‘Much of what I was has been taken from me’ he frowned, ‘but I still breathe and I still live.’
Peg felt blood flow back in to his aching legs and he stepped over, his arms open, to greet his long lost, long mourned, relative. But the old man raised one hand to stop him from continuing forward. ‘I still live because I am cautious and,’ he motioned around him vaguely, ‘because I am well protected. We do not yet know the extent of your treachery.’
Movement in the periphery of his vision alerted Peg to the presence of many others and he stood rigid with fear, not knowing what to do next. His training had been thorough but this change in circumstance was outside the flexibility of his ability to improvise. ‘My treachery?’ he repeated helplessly, his stomach turning to jelly.
‘You can’t expect us not to suspect you. Not given your current mission.’
‘Suspect me of what?’
The old man squinted slightly, tilting his head to one side. ‘Someone betrayed me. We do not yet know who it was. But we will find out.’
Peg gasped. ‘But I was only a child when that happened. You can’t suspect me surely?’
‘We suspect everyone that we cannot trust.’
Peg’s mind raced and his mind flashed back to that time, it felt like an eternity away, when the militia had descended on their family home. His aunt and uncle had been hauled away, bags over their heads, arms chained in front of them...

Jungle Fever

2010-10-11T09:03:00.001-07:00

Gem was sweating by the time he reached the clearing. It was hot, it was sticky, the humidity hung in the air like a global spray; but none of these things were causing Gem to sweat from what felt like every pore of his raggedy body. He needed a hit.

Insects buzzed around him and the loud noises of the jungle flooded his senses until he wanted to block his ears with shaking fingers. His sense of smell was similarly inundated with stimulation: the damp and rotting vegetation, the stench of his own body. Gem wanted to vomit. He needed a hit.

He paused as he entered the clearing, looking up for the first time in his journey so far. He looked up with a face full of consternation as if expecting that his longed for salvation would have disappeared. Gem looked, and acted, like a man who had not had much luck in his two score and some lifetime.

But the building was still there. The rickety door flung open to the elements. The uneven wooden walls were green with damp and the roof sunk inwards towards the middle of the building. It was only a matter of time before the jungle reclaimed the materials and filled in the inside space that barely remained human.

Gem pushed his way through the beaded curtain, it failed in its sole purpose of keeping out flies, and hesitated as his tired eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness within the building. The beads clattered behind him, announcing his presence in a semi-musical fanfare of plastic.

The barman, thick set and bored looking, glanced at Gem and instantly frowned.

‘He’s not here.’

Gem staggered to the bar and lurched over to get closer to the barman’s face, as if proximity would improve the words. ‘Eh?’

‘You’re here for resupply?’

Gem nodded, his mouth was too dry to speak despite the dank atmosphere. He hadn’t been here many times before and this man was new to him. His delight at his arrival in the clearing was rapidly disappearing, sinking into his stomach in a torment of unrequited desire.

‘He’s not here yet.’

‘When?’ Gem gasped.

The man shrugged. ‘Who knows.’

Gem slumped onto a bar stool, swivelling slightly in a fidget of indecision. Should he stay here or should he try one of the other supply huts? The nearest hut was several days journey away, though. And, even if he could last that long, who could say that the same situation would not apply there too?

There had been a time, not so long ago, when resupplying was straightforward – just a matter of being in the right place at whatever time. Not any more though. Gem had noticed a drop in the standard of the actual product too and he couldn’t work out which of these facts was most disturbing to him.

The barman, keeping one eye on Gem, greeted a customer who entered without disturbing the curtain of beads, piquing Gem’s interest for a moment. But the newcomer was just a drinker, you could tell by the shape of his eyes. Gem turned back to the bar and started pulling off splinters that lined the edge of the disintegrating wood.

---
CHARACTER: a middle aged male addict
LOCATION: A restaurant in a jungle
SITUATION: Being far too early

Attack

2010-10-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

The clouds pile over each other, climbing across the sky. Shadow and light backlit by the column of explosion beyond the edge of the distant horizon. The breeze catches, stiffening the air.
Zero sighs. Another attack. He runs, his feet cracking the hard surface of tundra, aiming for the hole in the ground a few hundred yards from his home. His breath catches, his muscles feel their age, but he is in good shape and the flow of the run soon overtakes him, carrying him along without thought.
In the distance he sees Five and his young wife heading for the hole. They will reach it before him. This annoys him. The last time they got into a fight because Five did not want to let Zero in and so he had pulled rank. Five had never quite forgiven him, accusing Zero of abusing his power as the local detective. Zero had been late, Five had simply followed the rules. Zero had never understood Five's emnity. Not just to Zero but to all the others in the community. There will be a time, soon, when Zero would have to deal with that problem.
Zero slips, his ankle twisting slightly on a piece of frosted grass. He curses, hopping in short, breathless steps, trying to take control of the pain and keep moving. He sees Thirty and Twenty Two slow as they notice his discomfort. He waves his hands to tell them to keep running. Stamping his feet Zero tries to find his stride again but it is not the same.
Nearly there, he turns to look back at the cloud. Larger now. Ripples of heated air, of twisting, burning sedge and scrub, are closer. He reaches the hole and jumps down, landing badly on his damaged ankle. Behind him the heavy door is slammed shut. In darkness they wait for the howling to end.

A rainbow in ultraviolet

2010-10-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

Cara wakes with a feeling of dissatisfaction, remnant of a dicephalous dream tugging at her discomfort. The light in the office is still low, a rainbow in ultraviolet. She is alone.

A perilous drop of diamond hovers in front of her, frozen at the tip of the splash of water. The coded representation of her work, the fragility of it amuses her and she plunges her hand inwards causing the image to zoom, pixellate and fragment. At its heart is the coupon. A near perfect image of the encrypted paper she is trying to copy.

The copy still lacks a part of the key. Swinging round she pulls up the record of the multi-cell quantum hook that she has digging into the code of the original. Progress has become frustratingly slow. A Zeno wall of attrition.

A wave of the hand causes the images to disappear, the light in the office dropping to near darkness. The window reflects a half-constructed image of Cara, looking angrily back at herself. She storms towards it, flinging a punch which thuds against the toughened glass.

Leaning her forehead against the window she tries to peer out. To make her eye close enough to the glass that there is no reflection, to look out at the dark city. Searching for the signs of anyone remaining.

The coupon holds the key to her loneliness. They will not let her through without it. Cara curses the boyfriend who jealously destroyed hers. She curses the Intelligence that denies the ability to issue another ticket.

She watches the rain begin, water catching on the window.

Homecoming

2010-09-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

Rachel stepped off the transport shuttle at the stop at the end of her drive, grunting a weary pleasantry to the shuttle operator as she stumbled down the high steps. Her travel bag was grey with grit, wrinkled with the accumulated hours of time shoved into narrow baggage apertures, precious space.
She didn’t know if she had ever felt this tired before in her life.
The drive was long and dry and Rachel started to cough. A nervous affectation she was unable to control or fully explain. This was home. What was there to be nervous about?
Tired feet moved automatically towards the two storey dwelling, surrounded by drought adapted shrubs and an artificial lawn. The lawn had cost her more than the house but it had seemed worth it at the time – those optimistic days and months just after the birth of the twins.
Now, some nine years later, the sight of the unnaturally green and flat surface made her feel immeasurably sad. It was a signal of all that was wrong, all that had gone wrong, of the artificiality of hope.
First of all the father of her children had gone and been killed in a screwed up robbery at a time when he wasn’t even supposed to be in the town. Rachel knew it should have been her.
To support the payments on the lawn, and the house and food for the children and all the other little things that added up to a monthly fortune, Rachel had been forced back into the job that she had hated before she had hastened to settle down. The money was still good. But everything else had changed, the worlds had changed and she had changed more than even she had realised. Now the travelling was no longer exciting it was only drudgery. Now the thrill of the closure of a deal was just a dull thump in the otherwise dreary monotony of her day.
So coming home had been the only thing that made things worthwhile.
Until the last couple of times.
Rachel’s organisation was unforgiving and inflexible so she worked six months on, two weeks off. Two weeks was no longer enough for the children to be re-accustomed to her. It has been so much easier when they were younger, less aware of time, less fraught with expectations. But now? Last time she had been home she had seen resentment in their eyes and heard rebellion in their voices. By the end of the two weeks their expressions had softened slightly into politeness but she saw no love for her in them.
Her footsteps faltered as she neared the front door and she realised that she hadn’t even contacted the android parent to let it know that she was due back.
Why go? She stopped. Guilt mixing with rising hope. Why go home at all? She felt the ghost of a smile rise to her lips. It was wrong to think so, she knew she should think that it was wrong, but was it really.
The android was a better parent than she had ever been, even before Robbie’s death. It taught her children what they were expected to know and how they were expected to be. It was consistent, it never ran out of patience or challenged the orthodoxy they were growing up surrounded by.
Rachel’s views were old-fashioned, verging on the dangerous. She couldn’t help challenging the twins when she was home, suggesting that things were not always as they were told on the vids. They were better off without her around. Not that they listened to her anyway – she had seen them on that last visit, looking sideways to the android as Rachel had tried to talk to them about the unseen civil war that was being fought on the outer rim of the system, looking annoyed at her.
She sighed. She raised one foot on to the threshold of her immaculate lawn. And then she knelt suddenly, running her swollen fingers through the cold lifeless blades of grass, feeling the softness that was unnatural but so much more efficient.
Standing again, resolved now, she turned away from her home. Rachel headed for the main road, intent on hitching a ride to the nearest bar, her dry cough gone but her thirst increased by her decision.
Behind her a puppy she didn’t even know she owned growled unheeded.
---

Canyon

2010-09-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

Geo and Niri stood at the bottom of the cliff, looking up to the expanse of wet-sand coloured rock above them. It was dark in the belly of the canyon, dark and dank.
Behind them lay the smoking wreckage of a plane, blackened metal mixed with still-burning flames of fuel.
On their back remained the straps of their parachutes. Geo’s ankle was twisted and Niri had a bloodied rash on her forehead.
‘Now what?’ Geo asked, his voice a low drawl.
‘Up?’
‘No way.’
‘Down then. Through the canyon.’
‘Shit.’
‘We can’t just sit here and wait. They’ll find us. We’ll be sitting ducks.’
Geo paused before answering, thinking through their limited options, his cynical brain searching for flaws. ‘Won’t they find us anyway? All they need to do is follow the canyon.’
‘Maybe. Maybe they’ll assume we died in the crash.’
‘They’re not stupid.’
‘So you say!’
Another long pause. Geo kicked at the bulk of the parachute which had bundled around his feet. Niri looked up again at the imposing flat face of the cliff. She shook her head, there really was no other choice.
‘We’ll need to hide the chutes well.’ She said.
Geo nodded briefly in return and, almost as one, they scurried back to the main body of wreckage, hiding the tell-tale silk of their saving chutes and searching for bits of equipment, food and water that they might be able to scavenge.
‘Ready?’ Niri asked, clutching the few supplies that had survived the fall. Her head wound still bleed slightly, tiny rivulets of red trickling down her left cheek.
‘Ready.’ Geo didn’t sound so sure.
‘Let’s go then.’
Neither of them moved.
‘Which way?’
‘What?’
‘Up or down?’
A sharp look in either direction revealed nothing of any substance.
‘Well, do you know where it goes?’
A negative shake.
‘Or where it starts from?’
‘No!’
‘Then it really really doesn’t matter.’
‘Then let’s assume down is easier.’
They set off, one hobbling, one laden with the weight of the crash.

The canyon floor was littered with debris amongst the sturdy shrubs and, in a shallow depression in the centre of the few metres between sheer cliff walls, ran a slow moving sludge of a stream. There was little life down there, the clear blue ribbon of sky above them indicated that it was a sunny day but down there, down in their narrow pit, it may as well have been that cold and uncomfortable hour before dawn…

2010-09-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

David awakes to darkness. There is a smell of warm, damp straw. His head feels cut, like a knife has been driven through its centre. His eyes hurt, there is a pressure through his head. His senses strain, searching out the cause. Bello's breathing is the only sound, a contented rasp of breath from the other bed. David reaches for his sword and peels back the blankets. Drawing the blade quietly he lays his feet on the cold floorboards, stepping to the window. Looking through the cracks of the wooden shutter he sees the graveyard lit by moonlight. Frost settles from the air.

A scream causes him to jump. THe stab of pain in his head increasing. He opens the door, feeling his way quickly down the stairs. No-one else is awake or stirring. The scent of magic stings him. His grip tightens on his sword and he heads outside, barely noticing that he is still barefoot. Listening for the scream, he looks about. The night is clear, filled with silver reflecting from ice. A dangerous night.

The scream comes again. David spins, running to the church. TUrning the corner to its entrance he sees the thing. A sliding mass of scales, a grating movement like steel rubbing against steel. It is digging in the graveyard, the scream comes again from below the ground. David has fought djinn and banshees across the Middle East and Europe so he is no stranger to the sight of this creature, its tail balancing the thrust of its misshapen claws into the tough soil.

Bubble Boy

2010-09-11T15:48:00.001-07:00

The strangers watched the boy through the safety of a one-way mirror, observing quietly his every move. They were too quiet, the doctor had decided, she didn’t like this one bit.
Doctor Clara Banco had watched the boy herself, many many times. But, and she felt the different was fundamentally important, she had watched from a clinical concern, a compassion, and yes, a love. These strangers had none of those attributes. They made her nervous. So she stood, making up for their stillness with her fidgeting, wringing her hands together in a dry parody of cleanliness procedures.
The boy, oblivious to this attention, simply carried on what he always did when he thought he was alone. He played. After all he was only ten years old, what had they expected? The boy was too unknowing to be depressed, too naive to be concerned. Clara felt her pulse racing with anxiety. What did they want from him?
One of the strangers, the tall woman, turned finally to Clara with an audible sigh of frustration.
‘This is all?’ she asked, a slight accent to her speech that Clara failed to locate. Not local though.
‘Eh?’ Clara replied, knowing she seemed stupid, clumsy.
‘This is all he does?’ the woman asked again.
‘Oh. Well, yes.’ Clara, feeling confident in her knowledge of the boy, if of nothing else around here, walked towards the glass now, feeling a sensation of prideful ownership which she acknowledged to be wholly inappropriate. ‘I mean, he does all the usual things. He eats, sleeps, talks, plays.’ She smiled as she saw the boy pulling down the top sheet of the bed to make a den beneath it, to hide from their penetrating view.
‘And yet this is the only world he had known?’ the shorter man joined in now, only Clara could see the boy, his body ruffling the sheet as if in shadow.
‘More or less. He has been here, to the hospital, since he was about six months old. This area was built for him soon after and he’s been here ever since.’
‘And the parents?’ the woman again. All these questions and yet the flow of information was all one way. Clara had been accommodating enough for now.
‘That’s complicated.’ She paused, gathering courage. ‘Now, why don’t you tell me why you are here and what you need?’ Clara crossed her hands in front of her chest, trying to look stern and matronly, trying to look more important than she felt.
The strangers exchanged a private look and Clara was gratified to see that she had perturbed them at last, perhaps even surprised them.
...

Garden

2010-09-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

Wrapped up against the cold I sit under the tiled roof that extends from the house, looking into the garden. My attention is focused on the broken wall of water that streams down, uncaught by a gutter. The rain falls in drops beyond it. There is a sense of peace, listening to the trickle and spatter, watching the darkness fall. A servant comes out with a steaming kettle to re-fill my teapot. I ignore her. I am aware of her presence but it is of no consequence to me. I am trying to focus only on the water.

Water in a stream will wear at a rock for hundreds of years, slowly removing its surface at a speed I cannot measure or observer, but the change is happening. Too often I have been the water, crashing against the rock, wearing myself out, when all I had to do was accept patience and carry on my way. Despite insight, meditation, intellectual reasoning, I cannot change that part of me. So I sit and drink tea, watching the rain and trying to leave both reason and instinct behind, to bind myself in the experience.

The old man tells me it might turn to snow in the night. I do not think it will, but I am minded to wait, and watch. The girl is heading back inside when I turn and ask her to fetch the brazier. If I am to stay here much longer I will need more than an extra layer of clothing and hot tea.

If it does snow I do not wish to miss my opportunity. Still grasping for that chance to split the stone in two and move on.

Tunnel Vision

2010-09-02T08:48:00.001-07:00

The diamond headed drill snagged on the rough granite for an instant and Tonmo’s mouth went dry in fear. A noise of grinding, tearing, whirring action became distinct and the drill moved forward, suddenly smooth.
‘It’s off.’ Dirket said, redundantly but significantly. Tonmo nodded silently.
The two men sat in the cab of the drill and were carried forward by the circular momentum. The sunlight faded behind them as they were corkscrewed into the cliff face, darkness broken only by the faint artificial lights within the cabin and the miner’s lamps strapped to the men’s foreheads.
The open mouth of the drill sucked broken granite in and, if all was going to design, kicked out the rubble behind them, closing off the exit route as they went. Keeping the route airtight, keeping it hidden. Both of them knew that this was designed as a one way trip.
An air ventilator hummed in front of them. The minimal control panel, most of the machine worked on feedback loops that were pre-programmed, blinked forlornly.
‘How long?’ Dirket asked.
Tonmo frowned. ‘You know that. You were listening.’
‘I know, but tell me anyway. Let’s talk about something not just sit here… waiting.’
A sigh. ‘Estimated impact time is four hours. Best guess anyway.’
‘Four hours of this. Granite all the way. One hundred metres of rock for each hour of darkness. Descending at an angle of fifteen degrees.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Don’t clam up on me. Talk to me.’ Dirket’s face contorted into a pleading, begging form. Tonmo realised with a jolt that the younger man was frightened, realised that it was his role to keep the younger man together and focused.
‘Okay, okay.’ He tapped one of the blinking lights, an empty gesture to buy him some time. Time to think. ‘What do you want to talk about though?’
‘Why did you volunteer?’ Tonmo grimaced, he disliked intently talking about himself and today, under the circumstances, it seemed less worth the effort than usual. But Dirket was there. And four hours had to pass somehow.
‘I volunteered because I was curious. I want to see what is causing all of this. How about you?’
‘They offered my family a lot of money. A way to get off this planet and find a new life, a better life, somewhere on one of the moons. Opportunities like that don’t come up very often.’
Tonmo nodded, understanding these motivations. ‘I don’t have a family to worry about. Not anymore. My wife left me a decade ago, complained that I spent too much time on work and not enough on her and the kids. I don’t blame her. Not at all.’ Not anymore. Ten years of solitude had dulled the rage. They were all better off without him anyway, there was so little doubt about that.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
There was silence between them, broken only by the roar of the motor and the crushing noises around them. Tonmo began to feel the weight of rock above them, could feel it bearing down upon him, crushing the breath from his body despite the safety of the machine. He could feel himself beginning to pant. Not again, he thought, not now.
Dirket was facing away from his partner, peering intently at the rock in front of their windscreen, seeing nothing but memories.
‘I miss them already.’ He said, his voice breaking with emotion and loss. ‘They left this morning, I waved them off at the spaceport with a smile on my face and then I went back to my empty house and broke the furniture apart.’ He chuckled mirthlessly. ‘If there is a way out of this then I have nothing but a mess to go back to.’
Tonmo forced himself to focus on the words, the sounds, the reality around him. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the thousands of tonnes of rock, the taste of earth and grit in your mouth, the way the dirt covers your eyelids and gets into your mouth.
‘What do you think we’ll find?’ Dirket asked, turning to Tonmo. His eyes widened in shock at the obvious paleness of his elder colleague but he controlled himself and said nothing about it.
‘I don’t know.’ Tonmo said, his tongue thick in his dry mouth.
‘You must have some idea?’
He shook his head.
‘I think we’ll find a whole lot of nothing myself.’
This was a surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I think they’re just clutching at straws, hoping to find a way of explaining something that has no explanation.’
‘It’s a theory.’
‘It’s more than that. There’s nothing scientific about what we’re doing after all. If they were really expecting something out of it then they would have given us a way out. A way back.’
‘There’s the cameras…’
‘Bah. They don’t even know if they’ll work all the way down here. The cameras, the whole expedition, it’s just a blind.’
‘Oh.’
‘Didn’t expect me to think like that did you.’ Dirket said bitterly.
‘Well, no. I thought I was the cynical one.’ Tonmo smiled to himself, just the ghost of a smile but one that was genuine and possessed just the smallest amount of warmth. A strange and rare sign of pleasure.

I dreamt I met Bruce Sterling

2010-08-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

Laminated nanotech, vacuum-fixed in resin and ready for action. Road stares at the package with its shiny holograms promising manufacture of anything from enhanced breasts to high-performance batteries for sports cars. Literally nothing is out of his reach, so long as he has the pattern, the molecular spray that activates and constrains, a kind of proto-shape, an imaginary framework around which to build. It will become the nanites sole understanding of the world. Without it the package is just a useless lump of flastic.

Road tucks it back into his jacket. Overhead the central line stretches out of sight, its lights gently illuminating the baroque architecture of the docks, casting a haze over the loaders sucking and pushing cargo through the low-g. He checks the street is empty before heading out from the alley, barely casting a look backwards at the two kids who sold him the package. If they have suckered him he can find them again. He has to get to the next meeting.

THe nanotech is a controlled substance on the station. The enclosed, tiny eco-system is jealously protected from any potential imbalance, but there are ways. There have been any number of plagues testament to that, like the one that killed Road's parents and left him as trash sifting the dump for recyclables. Road finds a tunnel outwards, heading towards rim. Climbing down ladders and stairs there are only the metallic echoes of his feet and the dull rasp of his breath. It gets colder. The light becomes blue. He must be planet-side, the reflected sunshine bleeding through ports to be captured by mirrors and injected through the fibre-optic infrastructure lining the walls to carry it to the hydroponic gardens and the homes of the middle classes.

He turns a corner. A lone woman is stood, all leather and attitude. The leather is fake, grown from pig cells and textured to look like the real thing.

"You got it?" Road says, getting her attention.

She nods.

He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a cash card. He thumbs the recognition pad, prepping it for transfer. The woman passes him a small glass vial. He has no way of authenticating this without using it. His heart pounds. He has been stung before. The woman holds up her card. Road wills himself to have some way to know whether this is a valid knot. There is nothing. He holds his breath and finishes the transaction with a sweep, his conscious mind screaming no.

The woman turns, walks around a corner and is gone. Road rushes home. Crouched in his little pod he splits open the package and removes the little block. He has put together a small pile of old clothes, ready food for the assembler. Shaking his hand opens the knot and squirts it. The liquid soaks into the gunmetal surface of the nanites, turning it to quicksilver. There is a flash, a heat that flares from it. He closes his eyes until it is done. Within a few minutes there is darkness again. He opens his eyes and sees the suit in front of him. A perfect replica, down to every thread. The fibres of the jacket and trousers repel dirt and marks of any kind. The fabric is self-repairing, the nanites embedded within it and powered by piezo energy generated by the wearer. A black-market knock-off of a suit that he could never afford and the ticket to getting the job that will get him out. Out of the dump, and away from the station.

The Hunter

2010-08-25T14:38:00.001-07:00

‘Over here!’

The cry echoed through the gusting wind, breaking concentration, breaking the peace that had been driven by the white noise of the storm. Motjed strode over to the source of the shouting.

A stumpy man, inferior, stood with a supercilious grin obvious behind his dust mask. He nodded at Motjet as if he were addressing an equal. Motjet sniffed and ignored him.

There were traces here. Motjet peered into the near distance, catching the traces of her scent, visible through the wind and the dust. He pulled the sensual threads together into one; weaving the smells, and sounds and the echoes of sight together into a semi-coherent image.

Another man now appeared beside them. Motjet pretended not to be surprised by his stealth.

‘She was here?’ he asked, a deep voice, old and experienced. The face was almost entirely hidden behind an elaborate mask but the voice was clear and undeniable.

‘Yes.’ Motjet replied. ‘Not long since.’

‘And you can follow her from here? Hunt her for me?’

A nod.

‘Can you sense her fear?’

Motjet paused, realising only now that something had been missing and that the missing thing had been fear. He shook his head, unable to lie or mitigate. ‘No fear. Anger.’

The other man, taller, turned away. This information was unexpected. And unwelcome.

‘Your direction?’ Motjet asked. He wanted this over with. It had been a long cycle and he was tired of this life, one endless chase after another, with always the same, sad, end result. It was time for a rest season, a trip away from the dust planet, for peace and hormonally induced oblivion.

‘We hunt.’ The tall man said simply. The inferior man, his serf, snickered in anticipated enjoyment and was universally ignored.

Void

2010-08-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

I stop, skin prickling, the hand holding my umbrella falls. Rain sparkles with an ozone crackle. Looking down along Oxford Street a void opens. A shift that is felt through buildings suddenly replaced with replicas, as though nothing has changed at all. There is a point where the light shifts in the air, refracted through a barrier between realities to move perception a fraction of a degree. People stop walking. Others, un-noticing, continue on their way; heads down, faces obscured by jacket hoods and umbrellas.

The presence of that other city hurts my eyes, tilting and flickering as a ripple pulls everything back to how it was. Buildings left in the collapsing gap suddenly implode scattering particles of clagging, grey dust. Everyone runs. I can't. There is a guttural, arboreal tear cutting deep into the primitive, instinctual layers of my brain. A creature has come through. It calls out again in fear and anger.

People run past me. Someone knocks into me, slipping on the wet paving stones. A hand grabs me, pulling me to the side, down a street lined with dark, student bars and shuttered fast-food restaurants. The dust catches up with us ripping away all light. The hand, its owner unseen and invisible in the cloud, pulls at me again. I follow.

Running through the cloud as it clears I start to make out the figure of a young woman, her hair dyed with points of blue, her clothing typical of student fashion; torn and ugly made somehow pretty by youth. She is yelling at me but I cannot hear her, only the cry of the creature. I notice that the light runs off her like sunshine reflecting off a stain-glass window. I stop, my breathing heavy, stinging. She is from the other side. She looks at me with concern, reaching out again. I wave her hand away. -Run, I say. -Don't worry about me.

She shakes her hand, grabbing me and pulling me along. I follow along red-brick back streets over-written with viaducts. We run until the dust is past, tempered by rain and distance.

-I thought you were dead. She says. Her voice slightly breathless with running but the hope is clear. She looks straight at me again. A recognition in her eyes fades. She realises. -You're not him.

She runs off again, disappearing around a corner. I am too exhausted to chase her. To find out who she thought I would be. The cries of the creature are gone, stifled by the sirens and helicopters. Maybe the attack is already over. It could have gone on to the next world, if this one was not to its taste. No-one really understands the mechanism for these appearances, or disappearances. The shattered separation of universes punctuated by things we can not really perceive.

I fall back to sit down on the ground, little caring about the damp soaking into my trousers, trying to catch my breath.

White Goods

2010-08-19T06:07:00.001-07:00

I woke to the percussive orchestral movements of noise from my kitchen. A cacophony of crashes and bangs made with deliberate chaos in mind. I sat up in bed and tried to discriminate between reality and the unreality of whatever dream state I had previously been in.

Turning to my partner I tried to shake her awake but with no success. She was deep, fast asleep, breathing hard, eyes squeezed shut in a stubborn attempt to ignore me completely even at the most superficial level. Her thinning grey hair spread out across the pillow, her wrinkled face still beautiful after all these years of togetherness.

I sighed, straining my ears in a vain attempt to pinpoint the noises as outside the house or mere fragments of my semi-conscious imagination. But there was no denying it – the noises were real and they were really coming from my kitchen.

Tentatively, as slowly and reluctantly as possible, I got out of bed, searching with cold toes for warm slippers. I reached to the hook and took down my dressing gown, wrapping it firmly around my otherwise naked body and tying it tightly, almost aggressively. Looking around I could see nothing that could pass as anything like a weapon so I clenched my fists in a spasm of faux-readiness and the released them in order to pull open the bedroom door.

A light shone from the kitchen downstairs, its reach reflecting up the stairs as a dull glow of barely yellow luminescence. I could pick out certain noises now in the rush of crashes: the wooden bangs of cupboard doors, the slightly hollow sound of the washing machine door being slammed against the neighbouring wall, the rattling clash of the dishwasher being raised violently up and then down again.

My anger began to rise. Rage at the idea of my home being violated in such a random way, disgust as the attitude of carelessness and lack of respect. I found my heart beating hard in my chest, sweat beading in my armpits, a difficulty in breathing. Anger started quickly to turn to panic and I felt myself stagger as I descended the stairs with a firm grip on the slightly wobbly banisters. As I moved gradually down I kept trying to peer round the corner into the kitchen, but the door was only slightly ajar and all I could see was the yellow of the main light and flashes of intense white light that I could not imagine a reason for.

I reached the last step and paused. The noises had stopped suddenly, as if whoever was in my kitchen was as aware of my presence as I was of theirs. The thought was not a pleasant one.

But what choice did I have but to continue.

So I girded my loins, in whatever way you may interpret that phrase, and walked towards the kitchen door, one arm out in front of me to push open the door as I advanced.

It took a while for my eyes and brain to take in and interpret the scene I saw in front of me. The first things I noticed were my belongings, broken and strewn across the small expanse of the room. Chips and splinters of wood and metal littered the floor like straw in a stable. The cutlery drawer had been removed and apparently thrown into the air with no regard for its eventual resting place – silver glints of knives and forks and spoons and miscellaneous implements rested haphazardly around the kitchen, in the sink, on the floor, over the work surface. I thought instantly of the reaction of my wife, she would not be pleased.

It took longer for my brain to process the information it was receiving about the cause of all of this anarchic destruction. All emotion drained away as recognition dawned. But it was a qualified recognition in that, although I could instantly see that the being in my kitchen was outwith the usual threats of drug induced thieves or craven youths intent on mischief, I had no clue as to what it actually was.

The creature was supported by translucent tentacles, too many to count in a rush, that clung to various parts of the kitchen and commenced to oscillate in turn as they began again to slam and crash and throw drawers around the room. The tentacles, drawing my eyes in, met centrally in the terminus of a lump of amorphous muscle that hung suspended in space in the very centre of the room. Perched on top of that huge body was a tiny humanoid figure, its face dominated by a mad grin, a top hat on its head and an unkempt white beard descending from chin to knees. The figure held on with one hand to a strap that reached to a harness that straddled the larger creature, the other hand clasped a tiny hair-thin whip which the figure was using with glee to whip the creature into a renewed frenzy of destruction.

Marketplace

2010-08-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

I visited the market again last night. It is a place in my dreams. It is never quite the same, although I have been to it so often that it takes on the shape and feeling of a physical reality in my memory. So much that it is hard for me to accept that it is not real, that it is not somewhere I have ever been. The changes are frequent and large although there are similarities that inform me it is the same place. A corner of interzone that I am required to visit. Somewhere buried within it is a food stall, sometimes it's a sit-down restaurant although it never has moor than wooden chairs and plastic covered tables. It is in China, selling noodle soups and jiaozi, CHinese dumplings. They are the best dumplings and noodles I have ever had. The staff are as permanently changeable as the place itself. And although the menu is the same the actual servings are quite different. Always cheap, always delicious.

I am not always able to find the restaurant. Sometimes it is hidden, tucked around a corner I can't quite reach, past the fabric and plastic shops, the piles of blue and red striped bags, the grey clothing. The sky is often grey. Once it appeared on the grass near the end of Norris Road, although that had been stretched, houses moved out of the way. A perfect English park crushed alongside the chaos of the market. Sometimes I am alone, sometimes with others. People I have not seen in years, people I was in China with, or people who I have only just met, or do not know.

I have tried to pull at the memories that might inform the look of the place but they do not exist. The market is completely imaginary, and yet I have been there, as much as I have been to the Arndale Centre or Machu Picchu. It does not exist but that does not make it unreal. It calls me back to it, with the promise of one good, cheap meal more.

The Walk

2010-08-10T15:10:00.001-07:00

Kara and Angelo strolled along the alley, the rain-heavy branches of the trees dragged low over them, their hands linked together in peaceful togetherness.

They were arguing.

‘It’s not what you think.’ Kara was protesting.

Angelo responded angrily. ‘You have no idea what I’m thinking. You never have a clue.’

Kara was quiet. They continued to stroll along, both making a conscious effort to play the role of placid participant in this game of romance and intimacy, conscious too of the watchers. Expectations rode high on their performances today.

As they arrived at the centre point, the highlight of the walk, they paused, turning to each other and smiling. Their smiles were good, professional, but the eyes told the truth.

They kissed and then stayed firmly wrapped in a hug and embrace. Angelo took the opportunity to whisper in Kara’s ear, blowing away the auburn wisps of hair that framed her pixie ear. ‘I know you’re lying to me. I will find out why.’ He pulled away and looked for signs of recognition or acceptance on her pale face.

Instead he saw shock, unmitigated, unhidden, frank and honest shock and horror.

‘What? What is it?’ he wanted to shake an answer from her, his hands still on her shoulders as a reminder of their broken embrace.

She tried to speak but couldn’t seem to form the words necessary for meaning and instead she raised one otherwise limp arm and stroked her fingers across his head. He flinched slightly at the contact and at the feeling of dampness it invoked. And then he saw the blood on her hand and his confusion finally reigned over his anger.

Together, truly together again for now, they looked above them to locate the source of this blood which was so obviously not from Angelo’s head.

Kara took a couple of steps back and gasped in wonderment. Angelo stood his ground through fear rather than bravery, he was fixed to the spot, couldn’t have moved even if he had the mental capacity for it. Above them, tangled in the canopy of the wood, cushioned by the stern branches, a body lay, face down towards them, lank hair streaming towards them, blank eyes open and staring, or so it seemed, directly at them. It was from this body that a steady outpour of blood droplets came, dripping in a set pattern of timing and consistency, and had found a floor on Angelo’s forehead.

As they watched a bird flew from a nearby branch, disturbing the equilibrium of the system, and an arm from the corpse was knocked free. It swung for a few pendulous motions and then became still, the forefinger of the hand outstretched, pointing at them, accusing them, targeting them.

Angelo, still paralysed, acknowledged vaguely the knowledge of Kara running away down their chosen path, her breath coming in huge sobs. When he himself could move it was only downwards, to his knees, his face still turned towards the body, his head still acting as a poor receptacle for the body’s blood.

‘Forgive me,’ he said in a low, sincere voice, ‘I did not know.’ He bent his head in shame, tears dripping down his blotchy face into the leaf mould below.

2010-08-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

He looks upwards, away from me. A hand caresses the golden leaves that extend from his forehead, the way it always does when he is preparing to lie to me.

"It's work." He says.

I freeze. I don't dare move a muscle. My face tenses but I know this is barely visible. I don't look at him again. I let him think I am listening. He does not need to know the thoughts of anger, of fear, of betrayal that I can barely form in my mind. If I were to open my mouth they would tumble in an an incoherent rage. I would hurt him. I would beat him. And he would think he had won. That his new adventure was somehow justified by my pushing him away.

There is nothing I can do to keep him. Not even silence. A small, delicate bud curls under my chin, I feel it withering, un-cared for. I pluck it. The movement surprises him. His hand stops moving. The confident, new-born smile disappears from his face. Replaced with a flash of anger.

"Ok, it's not just work. I need time away. You need to get help. You need to see someone. Please. I can't take it any more."

More lies. I let the dead bud fall from my fingers. It tilts on the floor, a small, blue petal has edged through the green scales.

"Then go." I say. I pull my vines over my face, looking for comfort in their sticky, velvet touch. "Go."

The Fight

2010-08-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

The Councillor followed his source through the overgrown tangled shrubs of the once exclusive cemetery. This part of town was shrouded in pitch darkness, no moon, no street light, no helicopters chasing criminals around the dark streets. The cemetery was an unseen mass, a pungent aroma of rotting vegetation and the whiff of recent rain, faintly blacker shadows revealing trees or gravestones or paths or people.

The Councillor shivered. He was out of his comfort zone here in so many different ways.

Rounding a corner of the gravel path the men were suddenly confronted with a huge edifice. The light sources scattered up its walls only accentuating the darkness of the remaining bricks. A tall tower, sharpened at the top, revealed a steeple fit for a church and the Councillor found himself shocked for an instant before he remembered. He remembered that the cities were littered with abandoned buildings. There was no reason why churches would have escaped the decimation of the population and the exodus from certain parts of town. Nothing had escaped.

The source beckoned the Councillor to follow him into the now open door of the church, its gaping light blinding him for an instant so that he didn’t see the other men until they stepped in front of his path to halt his faltering progress.

‘No weapons.’ One of the men said bluntly. He was large, well built, no apparent sign of intelligence in his face or manners.

The Councillor stuttered ‘I have no weapons.’ But the men weren’t looking at him, they were looking at his companion who shrugged and then opened his cloak and removed various guns, knives, throwing and poking implements. Some of these instruments were unrecognisable, others made the Councillor, not a squeamish man by rights, flinch.

‘And the rest.’

Again the shrug, again a rifling through clothing until a small white sphere was placed in the security man’s outstretched hand. It beeped shortly and a blue light flashed forlornly as the men were allowed to move further into the main body of the church.

Noise grew around them, the cacophony of many voices, mostly male, shouting and swearing, entreating and begging and threatening. And then people bustled around them, pushing them along an ill-defined route towards the centre of the chaos.

The Councillor tried to avoid physical contact but found himself jostled in ways unfamiliar since his school days. He struggled to keep an eye on the man in front of him; the man was, after all, his only link to the outside.

An overdressed waiter appeared from somewhere within the crowd and half-led, half-pushed, the two men away from the main crush of bodies and to a small booth, two chairs set inside around a small circular table. As they sat down the booth began to rise, floating above the floor and above the heads of the screaming masses. The Councillor could see other booths now, all hovering, bouncing slightly with the combined heat and moisture, surrounding them in all directions. He had never been anywhere like this before. He looked down, over the edge, in the direction in which all of the booths and, now he could see, all the attention of the gathered crowd was facing.

The centre of attraction was a simple square stage, surrounded by ropes, a boxing or wrestling ring. Inside the ring was a low bath of mud, nearly reaching to the edges, and in this bath two creatures tussled and fought, encouraged and coaxed and roused by the shouts of the crowd.

The Councillor could only call them creatures as they were made in such a way he had never seen before. The basic physiognomy was recognisable: one head, two arms, two legs, a torso. And the creatures appeared to be female judging by the overdeveloped breasts that dangled low to the ground. But only a single eye emerged from the centre of each breastbone and the naked skin of the creatures glowed creepily in the gloom.

‘Why am I here?’ The Councillor asked. ‘You said you would show me an Alternative but I see no Alternative here. All I see are infringements of our laws and a whole heap of trouble for me if I am discovered.’

‘Look down there.’ His source said briefly.

‘I see all I need to see.’

‘Are you not curious? Do you not long to know what they are and how they come to fight for our pleasure?’

The Councillor shook his head.

His companion frowned. ‘You must wait until the main event. Relax. Be patient. Have a hit.’ This last while indicating the collection of bottles and pipes that littered the faux-wood surface of their table.

Disdain filled the Councillor. ‘Do you follow no law? No law at all?’

‘I follow the natural law. You will see. Once you meet her then you will...’

The Councillor meanwhile was on his feet, his face turning puce with rage finally unleashed. ‘Her?’ Horror trembles through this single word and the man comes close to losing his balance. Realising the danger of tumbling out of their booth and onto the sweating heads of the men below the Councillor sits down again. Cautiously.

The other man laughed without humour. ‘Oh dear. You really are stuck in the old ways. Perhaps we made a mistake after all.’ He leant forward, the shadows and the proximity making his regular features sinister. ‘If so then it is a mistake that will be short lived.’

A moment of petrified clarity occurred to the Councillor. He mind-flashed his wife that he loved her but was cut off before he could indicate more. A sadness filled his heart as he stared open-mouthed at his aggressor.

‘Now now. None of that here if you don’t mind. You are among friends here, but friends can be just as... shall we say unpredictable as your very worst enemy.’

...

A billion years

2010-08-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

A billion years pass.

Another billion, a fraction slower as he feels the explosion of his own body falling through the universe, becoming a part of it.

The signature of the ripples in space-time, the exotic sparkle of particles in the vacuum foam, coaxed and changed by his movements.

It feels a physical act but is only thought.

Body clings to him. Dust clings to him. World clings to him.

Coalescing into a dream of a world built from the imploding, slow-burn ignition of a sun.

Trails of gravitational attraction, tails dragged along into planets. Clockwork time broken by sucking and spinning, the playful destruction of asteroids.

He gasps for air. He needs air. He opens his eyes onto a street. He almost falls through it, catching himself in time. He floats slightly above it. Fortunately no-one sees him. The street is grimy, cold. Different yet the same. Shops and traffic. The people are different. Taller, thinner. Eyes somehow smaller, noses misshapen. He raises his hand to his face and rubs until his own head matches theirs. Now he would like a coffee.

A Major Headache

2010-07-28T08:21:00.001-07:00

‘Master?’ The courier bowed low into the room and remained with his unreadable gaze fixed on the ornate marble flagstones of the floor.

The tall figure, its already above average height greatly increased by the tall base-gold and gem-encrusted headpiece, nodded in vague recognition but did not turn around.

‘The Qap’t delegation is here, Master.’ The stooped figure reversed from the room, bowing the full length of the furniture-poor but furnishing-rich space.

Shira was alone again, for a few precious moments, to collect her thoughts and prepare for this meeting. She didn’t like the Qap’t, didn’t like their ways or their intentions. And yet they were powerful and she did need their influence, not to mention their weapons, to quell the rebellion in the southern districts.

Shira arranged her ceremonial robes around her and mounted the dias to her security enabled throne, a personally configured forceshield emanating from its podium, and sat, carefully, down. The robes were bad enough, heavy and unwieldy even if they did provide full body armour, but the headpiece was something else. The overly elaborate design disguised weighty mindshield technology that was still in the early stages of development. Shira’s chief scientist was remarkably proud of this infuriating prototype which buzzed slightly though only Shira could hear the steady hum of the motor.

This meeting would be its first live test.

The double doors at the far end of the throne room swung smoothly open and Shira composed herself behind a mask of calm reflection and serene intent.

Qap’t dignitaries were famed for their lack of acknowledgement of local common courtesy and for this reason the half dozen members of the delegation had not bothered with clothing for this visit. Shira could instantly see that these visitors were of the highest order of the Qap’t meritocracy as no shred of rag covered any part of their obscure skin.

It was not pleasant to see creatures with opaquely gelatinous outers which revealed grotesque and active internal organs striding quickly towards one, especially as the four hands of each Qap’t were all busy manipulating various limbs and layers of body fat in order to portray a vision of intense movement and nausea inducing clinical lucidity.

Shira smiled and nodded majestically at her guests and motioned them to the specially adapted couches that formed a neatly semi-circular audience around her feet.

The Qap’t ignored the couches and remained standing, forming instead a straight line of confrontation. Both sides remained silent for what seemed to the watching officials to be hours of negotiated one-upmanship. It was probably only minutes, maybe even seconds. To Shira it felt like an eternity as she struggled hard to keep her mind clear and positive – just in case the fledgling technology could not protect her from the telepathic intentions of her supposedly friendly guests.

A shiver ran up and down Shira’s spine and she could feel prickles of sweat popping out over her back and deep in the folds of her armpits. This was going to go wrong, she could see that now, the delegation had a plan that did not fit with her own.

comida corrida

2010-07-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

The narrow street ascends steeply, bordered by white walls that make it impossible to see the houses and apartments beyond. The space is further constrained by stubby green trees offering shade and cool in the summer. Argo is happy to have the shade, even though it is winter. He is not used to the weather yet.

He sees a chalkboard sign marked with a price and advertising comida corrida, meal of the day: chiles relenos, rice and beans and a coffee. There is no indication of the name of the place but he guesses this must be the one described to him. He peers into the dark hallway of the open gate, there is a small courtyard beyond vegetation-filtered light dances invitingly and so he steps inside, rehearsing the little Spanish he knows in preparation for ordering.

A woman, middle-aged, barrel-shaped, steps from a doorway and points him towards an empty table. There are several people eating already, mostly alone. A warm breeze carries a scent of cumin and fade again. Argo sits, accepting the laminated, grubby menu from the woman's hand. It simply repeats the chalkboard menu and Argo points and says please.

"Algo mas?" The woman says.

"Agua." He replies.

The bottle of water is brought out with a shout to the kitchen. Instinctively, prompted by reading guidebooks, he checks the seal on the bottle is still intact. A hummingbird falls through the courtyard and starts to dart around the falling pattern of red flowers tied to the wall.

Everything seems to come alive; a contentment unlike any other he has known seems to fill him, pouring through every cell of his body, dripping from his skin, splashing and pooling around him into the world. This is not his place, he realises. He is watching it from the outside but he is here, waiting for a three dollar meal in a Mexico he has never seen before.

Contagion

2010-07-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

The boy watched as the truck moved off, its electric motor straining with the effort of its load, tears streaming down his young face. He blinked, wondering if this was just a dream but knowing that it was not.

The truck, an old-style flat bed with a rusted cab and wide tyres, paused as it waited for the pressure door to rise sufficiently for it to enter the air lock and then moved forward, pausing in the bubble of territorial limbo. Once in the air lock the automatic cover switched over the vehicle, doubling its size and altering its character. And then it was gone, the plastic moulded tyres grinding slowly over the dusty grit of the planet’s surface.

The woman came up behind the boy and wrapped her arms around him, bending slightly at the knees to reach down to his level. She too was crying.

‘He’s gone.’ she sobbed. ‘It’s just us left now.’

The two of them remained standing, watching the fading dust cloud spiralling into the poisoned air behind the truck carrying the lifeless body of their beloved father/ husband.

--

It was the next day and neither of them had slept. Dawn came, shocking bright flaming colours drenched the sky, but a new day brought no comfort.

‘What do we do now, Ma?’ the boy asked as they reluctantly munched reconstituted mush.

She shook her head, refusing to look him directly in the eyes, and concentrated on her barely touched bowl of food.

‘Ma?’ the boy put down his spoon.

She sighed.

The buzzer rang, they had a visitor. She looked relieved, the boy looked interested.

fountain

2010-07-18T12:01:00.001-07:00

The square is bordered with grey, four storey buildings, delicately faced in an age when architecture meant more than concrete and glass. Aggie sits on the edge of the exploding fountain, the stream of its water firing upwards, becoming light, while drawing down the dark, bilious clouds into a fractal, slow-moving statue of energy.

Chairs, black and austere, remnants of a brass band concert earlier in the day, are scattered, facing in all directions. Aggie feels uncomfortable, not just the chill, but she feels exposed and disturbed by the chaos of the scene around her. There is a natural tendency to order which she cannot shake, but she has to wait. The message was very particular, and the parcel might contain the object she has been looking for; her father's knife.

Policy

2010-07-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

‘But what’s wrong with the idea?’

Essika sputtered into her coffee and looked at me as if I had transformed in front of her eyes into a green skinned alien.

‘Are you kidding me?’ she shrieked. I’d never seen her quite so worked up before. It was quite sexy. It made me want to tease her a little more.

‘Well, why not? Tell me why this wouldn’t solve a lot of our problems.’ I smiled, watching the cogs rotate in her brain, knowing how much she was struggling with the concept but knowing that, probably, somewhere down deep deep within her she knew I had a point.

‘I don’t know where to start...’ she started.

‘That’s because you know there are no good arguments.’ I interrupted her before she could get into a flow. This was great. Usually her insane beauty and wide ranging intelligence were obstacles to my ability to interact in any meaningful way with Essika. If only I’d known months ago that all I needed to do to unnerve her was come up with some sensible but politically dangerous idea.

But already she was starting to rally.

‘Let me just throw some ideas into the ring to start with. These are in no particular order...’ she paused to collect her thoughts.

I groaned internally, I didn’t actually want to have a discussion about this after all, that wasn’t my purpose in raising the subject. I just wanted to get her goat a little, see if I could crack the surface of the stereotypical ice maiden that had blown apart my otherwise contented little world.

She started counting off counter-arguments on her fingers, a small furrow in her forehead reflecting the intensity of her thought processes. I didn’t bother to listen. In my job you got used to people arguing at you and I had very quickly learnt how to wear a mask of polite interest, when to grunt encouragingly and in which direction to shake my head at each phrase.

You could tell an awful lot, I mused, about someone just by their tone of voice when they were thinking through things out loud. The way the music of the voice changed and flowed, then stopped, halted by some obstacle of its own, then moved on again. The volume, the frequency, the pace of the words. The inflection of certain parts of each sentence. The way her lips moved with each syllable, revealing tantalising glimpses of teeth and tongue.

‘Well?’

Oops. Looks like she had finished and I hadn’t even noticed. Must pay attention, must speak soothing but non-committal words of broad agreement.

‘You have some valid points. I’ll give you those. But I still think it works as an idea. You haven’t changed my mind on that. Though...’ I grinned sneakily. ‘...you can keep trying to persuade me if you want.’

Essika drew back away from me. Too obvious then. Damn.

‘You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you!’

Now then, the question was: would she respect me more for owning up to not listening to her even though she liked being listened to, or would it be better for me to attempt to lie and hope that she couldn’t see through me. A lot could depend on this decision. I hoped.

Rain and magic

2010-07-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

Manchester, slick with rain. Light falls like glass. It glows, bringing every grainy surface of Deansgate into sharpened focus, the air wiped clear, bringing it to solidity as every surface reflects all others. The streets are busy, dark huddled figures moving quickly inbetween each other, focused inwards. Behind the reflection of a Starbucks window Aldervale watches for the mathematician while nursing a cool, flavourless latte which films his mouth and he is only grateful he did not bother with their tea. He wipes his forehead, bitter with memory.

Aldervale has plenty of time for contemplation when he is on watch but finds he has nothing left to think about. Sometimes, when partnered with someone, he is amazed at the thoughts that spill from their mouths, the joins and connections that seem to come so easily to them, the passages of reading and learning that seem to mesh together. Instead he finds he has nothing to add. He is blank in the presence of others, unable to communicate, afraid to, really, because he does not know how. He is a perfect watcher, he knows this. He fumbles with the grimy package in his jacket pocket, seeking reassurance that it is still there, wrapped in sticky newspaper.

Across the road the mathematician emerges from the travel agency, bitter at the weather and shaking his tiny umbrella into the air. Aldervale does not bother finishing the coffee. He stands and leaves, pulling up his hood over his thinning hair. His hand casually unwraps the package, pulling out the coin within while holding onto the plastic that offers a last layer of protection. Crossing the road, ducking behind the deep red glow of traffic lights, he falls into step behind the mathematician looking for a way past the couple that are a walking barrier between them. His chance comes as they reach the next crossroads. He steps forwards and around, as though he were any other commuter in a hurry to get home, while taking advantage of the crush to get close, to slip the coin into the mathematician's pocket.

The mathematician's umbrella knocks him. THe mathematician turns to apologise. Aldervale shrugs his head with what he hopes is a smile and turns away, looking for the light to change. He steps into the road, growling with traffic and the growing winter dark, muttering the activation mantra. He feels the little veil of maya slip, the hidden world behind suddenly slips through. Rain falls from his hood into his eyes, washing it away.

Poppies

2010-07-08T01:18:00.001-07:00

The grey of the cement was broken by a single thrusting flower. Its grey-green stem thrust valiantly through the dead ground into the thin air. At its peak was a single bloom, simple red petals in a circular bowl of vibrant colour, transparent and yet more real than anything else.

The flower had somehow seeded itself into a miniscule crack. It had nowhere to retreat when the girl came over and yanked it thoughtlessly from its hard fought roots.

She looked at it closely, sniffed it, looked at it again with a fraught brow full of questioning confusion, and then ate the fragile petals in one sudden gulp. The discarded stem was dropped, pointless and lifeless now, to the ground. The girl stuck her tongue out in distaste.

‘Don’t do that.’ An elderly man, raggedy but with the kind eyes of one who has known what manners were, came hurrying over to the girl. He slapped her hand and she looked up at him with the threat of tears in her almond eyes. ‘I told you not to do that. These flowers are precious, they’re rare, and they’re not for eating on.’ He sighed, knowing his words fell on deaf, insensitive ears.

The girl shrugged, started to look around eagerly for more mischief.

She was too much for him already, the old man acknowledged to himself and he watched helplessly as the girl ranged around the long abandoned playground. It was his role, his purpose and his given task to keep her safe and to try to instil in her some values that might fit her for her own given task. But he was beginning to feel real pangs of despair. The more time he spent with her the more it was becoming obvious to him that she held no sprouting tendrils of potential greatness. Kass was mean spirited, stubborn in her ignorance, cruel to the few creatures they encountered on their travels, and ungrateful to her guardian. The old man was beginning to wonder how he could end this charade and yet still keep hope alive within their community.

A moment of inattention and Tess had wondered off out of sight.

The old man stood for a moment more. He inhaled the freedom of her absence, noting the sudden lifting of the weight of her company, savouring the natural silence. But then he froze, hearing sounds of other voices beyond the high wall to his side. He snuck towards the wall, tilting his head to hear more. There was one voice only. It was deep and gruff, manly and sure. It started with sounds of entreaty, promise, and then moved quickly to sounds of cajolement and, finally, threats.

Reaching deep into the right hand pocket of his long woollen coat, the old man pulled out his knife, its dull, short blade refusing to glint in the low sunlight of the new dawn.

He held the knife like a bar-room brawler, one finger tight along the edge, the blade itself half obscured in the folds of his too-long sleeve.
‘What do you want?’ he asked as he rounded the corner, ready to fight but ill prepared for the sight he saw in front of his weary eyes. The knife dropped to the floor and clanged as it bounced on the stone.

...

Portraits

2010-07-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Felix the portraiture is aware that he is being followed but he does not dare to stop, or even to glance around and look. He keeps his gaze downwards, focussing on the grey stone in front of him, not looking up at the faces of the dark, thick-coated crowd around him. The mist is growing thicker, the dim light of the streets barely bolstered by the lamp-lighters casting their little balls into the air, carrying the little touch of magic to the cheap crystals threaded on wire across the street.

In his mind two tasks fight for attention, each thought jumping from one to the next refusing him any progression with either problem. The first is where to go, where can he get to on foot from here where he can be safe. This is not a part of the city that he knows well, returning from the commission with the old woman; his only paying customer and even she has paid less this week, promising the full amount later. He cannot afford to take a cab. He regrets blowing what little he had over the past couple of nights of drink, blue and gambling. The other skein of thought is working through the pitiful list of his past and present clients to determine what the purpose of his being followed might be. His headache beats out a tattoo of frustration and pain.

He moves to step around a figure stood still in front of him but the figure moves to intercept. he nearly screams but looks up into the grey eyes of a pretty, slight woman, close-cropped red hair and a sense of deep magics. A small, tarnished badge is fixed to her coat. Police, he realises, and he wonders if he can tell her about the his tail.

"Felix Ovgorod?" She says.

He nods, sagging with a wearied fear.

A carriage pulls up, the thick, rubber-masked driver turning to the woman for instruction. She opens the door and pushes Felix in, then follows him. The carriage rolls off with a whine.

"What is this? Am I in trouble?"

"Probably. But that's not my business with you. I need you to identify a body for me."

"A body? What makes you think I would know someone? Who do you suppose him to be?"

With a shock he wonders if a friend of his has been murdered.

"We found this card in his pocket. We've been looking for you for a while. You haven't been home for a couple of days."

He shows him one of his own business cards. A crude printing, cheap, edge-worn card.

"I. I've been on commission." Not completely a lie.

Within a few minutes they are walking down the dark, sullen corridor of the police precinct, heading downwards into the cool of the morgues. Doors are opened for them by uniformed officers keen to show respect to the woman whose name he has been too afraid to ask. They look at Felix, take in the dirty jacket, grease and paint worn into its fabric, into his skin, the grimy smear of beard over his face, and they offer an almost imperceptible sneer.

In the green painted room where they stop the woman points to the table at the centre where there is a sheet laid over a body. Felix has seen the dead before and thinks he knows what to expect. But when the sheet is moved down from the body's head he sees something he does not expect. The face has been torn away leaving only red muscle and the white of tendons and fat. Felix feels himself want to be sick, his stomach heaving, trying to release whatever pitiful morsels remain from a breakfast finished too long ago. He turns away.

"Do you recognise him?" The woman asks.

"Recognise him?" Felix says, spitting and coughing. "How am I supposed to recognise him?"

"I understood you are a portraiture. You should know him even in this condition, if you are of any little skill at all."

The dig at his ability annoys him. He knows she is right but he has no desire to look at the faceless body again. The one glance will be enough to sear the image into his mind. He calls it back up, lets himself reconstruct it.

"I'm sorry." He says. "You are right. But I do not know him. I don't know how he came upon one of my cards."

The woman looks disappointed but motions the medic to lower the sheet again.

"Does the name Elias Smith mean anything to you?"

Felix nods.

"Yes, he was my client. I finished a commission for him a few weeks ago. He still owes me money."

"I am reliably informed that this is his body. That is why I was hoping you might be able to identify him."

Felx shakes his head.

"No. No, that's not him. Really. You've got the wrong man."

The woman turns and beckons him to leave. She had seemed so certain that the body was that of Elias. Felix was sure that it was not. Someone wanted the police to think that Elias was dead when maybe he was not. That's why he was being followed. Those people must have known that Felix could have be used as proof that Elias was not dead. Likely he really was in danger. His thoughts suddenly come together as he tries to think of something to say that can convince this woman that he cannot be let go, that she must look after him.

The Book of Roses

2010-06-30T05:46:00.000-07:00

Damien strode into the vestibule of the gothic style library and paused, shaking the cold rain drops from his cloak and tossing his wet hair, composing himself physically. The library vestibule was cold and silent apart from the steady patter of heavy raindrops drumming a primeval rhythm on the glass roof. Damien sniffed, his long sharp nose moving agilely as it analysed the faint smells of the ancient building. Finding no cause for further delay Damien progressed to the heavy wooden doors and raised his right hand as if to knock. Instead of knocking he allowed his hand to caress the deeply indented carvings of the oak door, the tree of life with its intricate branches and falling leaves, before grasping the golden handle and wrenching open the door. It creaked in protest but nothing more.

Releasing his inheld breath, Damien entered the main room taking in the sight he had so long envisioned but had hardly dared to believe in as a reality. The room was one vast repository of knowledge. Wooden shelves lined each wall from end to end and ground to ceiling. The interior of the room was thronged with more bookshelves of various sizes, an occasional individual reading table with deeply upholstered easy chair, and lamps burning steadily to light the way.

There were, however, no books.

The shelves were empty, the tables and chairs were useless in their loneliness. Only the lamps were as they should be – highlighting the missing, serving to enhance the feeling of absence.

Damien staggered to the nearest chair and slumped heavily into it. His heart was still beating hard but his eyes had misted over, he felt drained with the wasting sensation of anti-climax.

‘You expected something different?’

Damien barely moved at the interruption of his introspection, glancing briefly at the librarian then looking back at the flagstones.

The old woman shuffled slowly towards the centre of the room; this was her theatre and she was used to an audience. She was hunched over with age and wisdom, her fallen face pale but glowing with passion. Her clothes were poor but ornate, stitched closely with colourful embroidery of mystic symbols and meaningful phrases.

‘You think you are too late?’ The crone asked with a tenderness flanked with steel.

Damien shrugged and indicated the empty shelves.

The librarian laughed, a true laugh of abandon and mirth, but the laugh turned abruptly into a cough and she bent over until the wracking subsided.

‘Why do you laugh?’ Damien rose dramatically to his feet and moved on fleet and soundless feet over to the librarian. ‘What is funny about...this?’

‘There is nothing funny here.’ The woman replied, composing herself, taking deep breaths, a ghost of a smile on her thin lips. ‘Your reaction is funny. Your assumption that what you see is what you have most feared.’

The young man frowned impatiently, though he had nowhere else to go. He felt like shaking the old woman until she made sense.

She looked at him full in his weather beaten face, peering deep into his eyes until he felt a warmth in his brain and a calm enter his heart, then she turned away from him and walked quickly away towards a small, plain door in the side of the hall. ‘Come.’ She said simply. Damien followed without for a moment questioning her intentions.

--

science spy, or regards to raymond chandler

2010-06-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

The carp glides through the water, a twist of its body tilts forwards to hide under a lily pad. A girl laughs, her head poking through the wooden slats of the little bridge over the pond, her chubby hand pointing at the dark water where other shapes flow with gold and red. Arret watches her, trying to remember the simple joy of seeing, of letting the flow of thoughts fade and simply to know that there are clouds low in the sky, threatening rain, the smells of the hot dogs from the barbeque stand, the wordless chatter of the people in the park.

It cannot happen. His mind is wrapped around this thing so completely that there is room for nothing else. He wonders how he got to the park and he does not remember. He has come here a lot, he knows this, but there is only the problem. The knot of mathematics wrapped inside him, trying to break its way out but hampered by the constant bewilderment at the sudden row that has erupted, the shouted arguments and irrational behaviour of the managers above him fighting for possession of something he does not yet even have and which they certainly do not understand.

The girl has turned back to her parents. Her mind has switched to another matter, to another thing in front of her. He is envious, and realises that in that envy is the way out. That he can let it all go. He stands up and readies himself to go home, walking to the edge of the park where he can catch a taxi.

Before he can get there a woman has fallen in step beside him. He has caught a glance of her but does not want to look again. She touches his arm.

Dr Arret? She says. He halts and nods. You need to come with me.

He starts to protest but there is a nudge of metal from underneath the coat over her arm. He recognises it as a gun although he has never seen one before.

Your bodyguard is not around. She tells him. He has been compromised. If you do what I say you will not be hurt.

Which way? He asks.

She tilts her head for him to carry on along the path.

Scar

2010-06-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

Celine sat up in bed, startled. ‘What the hell’s that?’
Pieter also sat up sharply, he’d been half asleep, exhausted from a disturbed night’s sleep. ‘What?’
‘Those marks on your back. They weren’t there last night.’ Her dark eyes pulsed in the dim glow of dawn, her thin lips were drawn tight with restrained emotion. Pieter saw fear and anger in her eyes and liked neither.
‘What marks?’ he felt behind him, an awkward wrestling tussle with his own body, trying to reach where her eyes were intimating there was a problem. His fingers encountered a raised ridge of warped skin, a couple of centimetres across and apparently reaching far up and down his back.
‘What is it?’ Celine asked again, she was starting to annoy him now.
‘I don’t know. Is it from last night? I don’t remember you scratching me.’
Celine pulled away and tumbled out of the bed, backing away from him as if he was suddenly a threat to her. ‘I didn’t.’
Pieter frowned, feeling again the length and height of the scar tissue, then switched on the bedside lamp. ‘What does it look like?’ he asked, appealing to Celine to come back to him.
Slowly she edged round to his side of the bed, her hands clasped in front of her, her naked body extra white and shaking slightly with shock and chill. She peered closely at his back, her hands hovering over the scar but not quite touching it.
Pieter strained to see her face but could not read her expression. ‘Well?’
‘Does it hurt?’ she countered.
‘No. I can’t feel it at all. If you hadn’t said anything I wouldn’t know it was there.’
‘It’s deep. It looks like it has been almost welded together. It looks like it’s been healing for a long time.’
There was a silence as both parties pondered this information.
‘Well?’ Celine finally broke the silence, a sharpness to her voice that Pieter disliked and had rarely heard before. She sat down in the armchair next to the open window, the curtains blowing occasionally in the slight morning draft.
‘What do you want me to say? I don’t know what it is or how it got there.’
They were at stalemate.
Without saying another word Celine rose, picked up her dressing gown from the floor at the foot of the bed, and headed towards the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind her.
--

All you can do is wait

2010-06-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Thin, dark, like a junkie needle threaded through space, the ship is barely visible in its approach. Too thin in cross-section to make out any markings, any indication of weapons or crew. Unnoticed until it is barely an AU distant from the planet, sending out pulses of thrust to slow it down.

Panic is immediate.

Talk of launching crude armadas of re-purposed ballistic nuclear warheads, revelation of hidden laser defence satellites, preparations for rapid evacuations to the Moon, to Mars; chatter over radio bands broadcasting signals of welcome, laser pulse transmitters blinking binary messages of peace, any scheme that seems able to carry a signal tried in desparation.

All met with silence.

And the wheel keeps turning

2010-06-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

The cartwheel rolled off the rubble of the track road, bouncing as it tumbled down the embankment, before circling to a stop and falling slowly over on to one side.

Soloman cursed his luck and cursed the ban that prevented him from using mechanical transportation. Looking around him, seeing nothing in the flat distance covered with crop yielding fields, he smiled to himself and performed a tiny act of rebellion. With a twitch of his wrist he switched on his personal forcefield and levitated himself down to the foot of the embankment. A few seconds of civil disobediance. He reached the bottom of the slope and switched off the field, looking around guiltily, waiting for 'them' to come and find him. As if he were the worst of their problems.

The wheel was useless, he could see that now, several spokes were completely broken, sheered right through as if by a laser. Soloman's heart sank as he realised that this had been no accident.

So here he was, several miles from the nearest village, much further than that from home, with no quick means of transport and an unknown enemy. He daren't use his hidden technology. A few seconds was one thing, but using it for a prolonged time would surely bring the attention not only of the Enforcers but also of the Others. No. That was something he would have to save only for real emergencies.

Soloman struggled his way back up the steep embankment, using his stubby fingers to grasp clumps of tough grass, and dusted himself off as he reached the road. There was still no-one else in sight. The sun was dipping towards the horizon, the dusk was not far off.

Behind him the rough track of the road stretched back towards the far off market place, a flat field of dirt where the local farmers would congregate weekly to barter and swap their goods. It was unlikely that anyone would remain there now. All the farmers knew better than to linger when dusk was approaching.

In the other direction the road also stretched out with no sign of habitation as far as Soloman's squinting eyes could see. But he reckoned that his neighbour's farm was about five miles off along the road, his own farm another five miles beyond that. He looked again at the position of the sun. Fives miles. He might be able to make that in time.

With one final look back down the road towards the market, where someone had seered through the narrow wood of his cartwheel, Soloman gathered together his meagre supplies and set off towards the distant horizon. To one side of him a dust storm blew up, whirling the dry particles in a vortex of short-lived energy, but Soloman did not see it. He was already counting the strides towards his destination. Hoping that he would make it in time. Trying not to think about what might happen if he did not.

castaway

2010-06-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

Frenton watches the planet grow larger. Its atmosphere a thread of glare around the green circumference partially lit by the distant sun. Scattered lights in the black tell of the colony below. Frenton tries once again to pull his hands free, then his legs, struggling with a renewed energy marked by the visible changes in the planet as he is drawn deeper into its gravity well. His arms and legs are firmly fixed, the suit that provides him with his only air and security from the vacuum has been welded to the rock.

He gives up again. Becomes still. He blinks to try and activate the suit comm unit, then probes the switch panel with his tongue but nothing works. He is tired and exhausted. He has had nothing to eat since he was cast adrift. No sense of time although he knows that he has drifted in and out of consciousness. The orb has featured heavily in his dreams, of falling into its atmosphere and the fast burn that would vapourise him. Sometimes he dreams that he cannot breath, that the air has been misjudged and he is to be lucky enough to die an early death. But still the planet grows larger.

He does not even know the planet's name. It looks unreal to him. There is no sense of presence, no tug of gravity that would tell him that any of this is real. Only the feel of the suit material and the immobility of his limbs. He turns his head but he cannot even make out any part of the asteroid he has been fixed to.

The world starts to fill his vision. As it grows he starts to realise that he has not been fired straight at the planet. He is off-centred. A longer, slower journey. He starts to do calculations in his head but he cannot make sense of them. The planet is roughly Earth-sized. Its rate of growth must be of use in calculating his own speed. But he has no real data. Only a glimmer of hope. That maybe they got their trajectory wrong. Maybe he will not fall into the planet but will be slung around it. Perhaps even noticed by one of the emergency support satellites for the colony. Rescued.

It is too good a thought to be true. Even if a mistake had been made he would only drift until his air ran out. Instead, he finds himself wondering if it is true that a human can die by biting off their own tongue. He is not sure he would have the will power and the thought of drowning in his own blood is no more appealing than the real options.

He starts to imagine the roar. The buffeting of the atmosphere against the rock. The drag that will bounce him, aero-braking, heating, burning. He finds himself willing it to happen. A last chance to feel something other than the weightlessness of the past however many hours or days. He an see nothing but the planet now. It cannot be long

And yet it does not happen. Almost imperceptible except to his painful study he realises that the planet has started to recede. That maybe the wild hope of earlier has become true. Then there is a jolt. He spins. No, he realises, now it is happening. The planet rolls away from him. He is turning away from it. Instead he is looking at blackness. And then the ship. The pirates are right up against him. Maybe they want to watch every last moment. There is a short glare of thrust and the ship comes closer, arms stretched out and ready to grab him. With horror Frenton realises that they are rescuing him. That this has all been an extended torture. A proof of what they will do. He does not know if he has the will to resist a second time.

One Hundred and Counting

2010-06-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

Devon walked quickly and purposefully along the street and through the automatic doors into the building. A buzzer sounded, alarms rang, banners descended down the walls of the ante-room he had entered and he flinched in response.

‘Congratulations!’ boomed the receptionist, clapping silently. Other people emerged from doors and corridors, all of them clapping and shouting and beaming wide joyful smiles.

Devon turned, almost as if wanting to flee back out of the main door and into the anonymity of the street, but his road out was blocked by celebratory workers. He looked around in panic and disorientation. The banners all read differently but with a common numerical theme. One hundred – a goal is reached or Congratulations to you, one hundred today. Other banners, static in the marketing of the room, delivered upbeat messages such as Living beyond death or even Infinity awaits you.

The receptionist meanwhile had left his desk and walked over to Devon, grasping his hand and pumping it enthusiastically in celebration. ‘Well done. Congratulations.’

And then, as quickly as it had erupted, the cacophony died away and people disappeared back to wherever they had been before. Only Devon and the receptionist remained, awkwardly clasped together.

Devon finally found his voice. ‘What is this?’ he asked uncertainly, his voice cracking, his mouth dry.

The receptionist grinned, over-bright teeth glinting in the gleam of the artificial lights. ‘You are very lucky today, sir.’ He said, a faint whine of condescension in his voice. ‘You are our one hundredth customer.’

Devon wasn’t sure how to respond to this. ‘One hundredth? That doesn’t seem so many.’

‘Ah, but we have only been open a short time so it is very exciting for us. Very exciting.’

‘Oh. Do I win something?’

‘No. I’m afraid not. But we are very excited for you.’ The receptionist finally ran out of welcoming steam, letting go of Devon’s sweating hand and returning to his post behind the reception desk. ‘So, sir, what can I do for you?’

‘I’d like a… a… what do you call it? A consultation. Please.’

The receptionist didn’t answer, just picked up his phone and poked digits in quick succession, then hung up without saying a word and nodded Devon over to a chair by the far wall.

Devon shuffled over and sat down, his certainty dented by this odd and unexpected reception. He’d expected something a lot more low-key, maybe even a little solemn. This was not how he had pictured it at all.

A door opened to his right and a woman came out, smiling broadly of course, and already her arms were spread wide with welcome. ‘Welcome to Life Centre.’ She said, her voice oddly deep. She was middle aged but well preserved - good makeup, good surgery, expensive clothes. ‘Please, won’t you come through to my office.’ And, without touching Devon at all, she swept him into a small, white walled room.

There were no windows but the walls were covered with bright posters of scenes of blue skies, clear seas and pure white-sanded beaches with verdant mountains in the background. Devon sat in one of the chairs, the woman sat in the only other chair. There was no other furniture in the room. Devon had expected at least a desk, he didn’t know why, he didn’t know why it made a difference to him that there was no desk.

‘So,’ the woman started, dragging out the word slowly and softly, ‘you have decided to take an alternative path.’

It wasn’t a question but Devon nodded slowly in agreement. ‘Yes. I don’t want to live anymore. I’m ready to die.’

The woman frowned. ‘We don’t like to think of it that way, sir. Our service does not offer death but everlasting life, immortality; the security of never growing old, becoming a burden or facing life alone.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Devon hung his head. He knew what he wanted. He also knew that, to get what he wanted, he would have to explain himself to their satisfaction. He had to watch what he said.

‘We have some questions we have to ask. Just to make sure you are at the right place at the right time in your life. We hope that is okay with you and that you understand that we do not mean to cause any offense or upset.’ The woman talked like an automaton, like she was pre-programmed with these lines. There was emotion in her voice but it was fake and unsatisfying.

Devon nodded. He’d learnt his lines too.

‘So, to start with, maybe you could explain to me in your own words why it is that you are here today.’

He paused and took a deep breath. This was it. ‘My life sucks. There is nothing in it that makes life worth living. That’s about it really.’

‘Okay. That’s great. Now, if we could go through that in a bit more detail. Have you any family?’

‘Yes. A wife and two children, two boys, both teenagers.’

‘And they do not bring you comfort?’

Devon nearly laughed. ‘No. No in fact they make my life as painful as they can. I spend all day working in a boring job being humiliated by my boss and by everyone else on my team. Then I go home and my wife treats me with disdain and my boys, if they bother to acknowledge me at all, just want money.’ He paused and waited for her next assault.

‘So, that’s work and family. Any friends?’

‘No. Not anymore. I did have friends once. I don’t really know what happened but they all just drifted off.’

‘Okay, no friends. How about hobbies?’

‘No. I have no time between working seven days a week and housework and DIY. When I have the chance to sit down I just fall asleep. I have no time for myself. And even if I did I don’t know that I’d want to do anything. I have no idea what it would be.’

‘Pets?’

Devon did laugh this time. ‘No.’

‘Parents? Siblings?’

‘Parents both dead. I have a brother but we fell out ten years ago or more. There’s no reconciliation there.’

‘And how is your health?’

‘Well, bad frankly. I have sore joints, arthritis that is getting quickly worse. It’s agony for me to move and it even hurts when I don’t move. I’m on the strongest painkillers you can get and they barely touch the pain. I also have arrhythmia and reduced lung function so it is hard for me to sleep properly. I’m overweight but can’t do anything about it because my health is so bad. My wife won’t let me eat anything healthy as she says it’s bad for the boys, she won’t cook two meals and she won’t let me make my own food.’ Devon ran out of steam, forgetting whether he’d got his whole litany of complaints in but feeling like he’d said enough. The woman was looking at him with undisguised scorn but then she caught herself and transformed her expression into one of feigned sympathy.

‘Oh dear. You do have it rough.’

‘I do.’

‘So you have thought about what this means?’

‘I have, I really have.’

‘Shall I explain the process a little?’

He nodded, feeling worn out by his own description of his life.

‘We go from here to the back office where you sign the paperwork for the procedure. Then you are taken into the clinic and given your own room where you can prepare yourself. We supply legal representation so you can arrange your affairs. After a suitable period of time you will meet the doctor and they will give you an injection. And then,’ she paused for dramatic effect, ‘then it will be all over. You won’t be in pain anymore.’ She smiled, the warmth almost genuine for the first time. ‘So, do you feel ready to move on?’ She stood up and walked over to the door, opening it to a brand new world of opportunities.

Devon remained seated, his mind whirling. Everything he had said was true. Everything in his life was awful, there was barely a second of each day where he felt even the slightest vestige of anything that could be called happiness. Everyone around him seemed determined to drag him down, make him miserable, make him wallow in his misery. There really was no reason to carry on. And yet…

‘Um. No. Actually I’d just like to leave now.’ Devon stood. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, I really am.’ And he squirmed his way past the woman and out into the reception hall and was gone out into the street.

The woman returned to the room and faced one of the posters. ‘I don’t understand,’ she complained to the poster, ‘what did I do wrong?’

A light came on behind the poster and revealed it to be an opaque window, a shadowy viewing area was dimly visible behind it. ‘Nothing.’ A voice came from the room, detached due to the speaker distortion. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’

‘Then why did he leave?’

‘Sometimes, you will learn this if you pass the course, sometimes people just need to know that the option is there.’

The woman frowned, she didn’t understand. As she exited the room she noticed that the banners with One hundred on them were furling themselves back into the ceiling of the reception hall. The celebration would have to wait.

---

Journalism for bloggers

2010-06-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

A light comes on in the distance. The signal S has been waiting for. He shifts his weight by rolling his body lightly, relieving some of the cramp that has built up over the hour of waiting. To move is to risk being spotted but he cannot help himself. Tucked into the eave of the building, its rough brick beneath him, he focuses his eye back along the lens of the camera, hoping to get the shot.

Fifteen storeys below the road is silent, dark. Puddles reflect the gun metal sky, threatening exposure. S watches the vids that line the street slowly glitch, tilting themselves in odd patterns to clear the path for the big, silver car that is driving along it. A virtual anonymity carefully constructed for the meeting that S is hoping to witness.

Normally he ignores anonymous tip offs, but there was something about this one that caused it to be flagged up. The mask worn by the message was a little too sophisticated for the average loser looking to waste his time. The message not so obviously a plant by the police of the secret service. Worth checking out. Even letting out a sniff of the message will spoke traffic and revenues. Maybe even push him to the networks, if he can attract an agent.

The car stops. There is only the sound of the wind in S's ears. He does not hear the click of the open door. He tilts his camera and begins taking shots. He is barely taking in what he is seeing at first, and it is only as the figure below moves away from the car and into the shaded doorway of the building opposite that S realises this is the Secretary for Defence. He wants to curse. The flicker of a kite in the corner of his vision keeps him silent and he becomes rigid and still again, letting the cheap camo do its work.

Chains

2010-06-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

Tedsa woke with a start and heard the rattle of his restraints before he felt their grip. Heavy metal cold-ringed his wrists, two stiff collars joined by dense linked links of more heavy metal. He groaned.

'So. You're awake then.'

Tedsa grunted, nudging himself into a sitting position with his elbows.

'Do you know where you are? Why you are here?'

Tedsa frowned. 'Are those trick questions?'

The man looked surprised, his otherwise blank face gave little away. His body didn't move as he spoke. 'Well, no. No.'

'At least you're not asking me how I feel.' Tedsa said, a little attempt at grim humour his only way to stem the growing sensation of panic. This wasn't right, he knew that much. And he didn't know where he was or why he was there. Why would he know? The last thing he remembered was drinking with some whore in a bar downtown somewhere. 'That bitch.' he spoke with a bitter realisation, the realisation that when a gorgeous creature comes up to you and appears to want to spend time with you then there is always, always a catch. He'd have been happy to pay cash but this, what was this anyway?

'Yes. I'm afraid you were dooped.'

'Dooped? Do you mean duped? Say, where is your accent from anyway?' Tedsa was stalling for time, trying to find out any information he could, trying to look around himself to assess his chances of escape. As far as he could see he was pretty well trapped. But, in his experience at least, there was always a way.

The man rose from his simple wooden seat and turned his back on Tedsa, heading towards the wall. He turned again and leaned back against the wall, solid plaster with several layers of thick paint sloshed haphazardly against it. 'Nowhere you've ever heard of.' he said as his body melted through the wall and disappeared.

'What the...'

an accident

2010-05-31T08:09:00.000-07:00

Looking at the devastation in front of him Craig's first thought is that the council is going to be very unhappy with him. He scratches his head with a belch caused by an entirely inappropriate breakfast of chicken kebab in pitta from a street vendor whose exact location was probably the pool of bubbling plastic next to the charred lump of rock.

The helicopter flies in low. The scratch of sky on the horizon widens with the dawn. Craig looks behind him, wiping the faint, greasy ash from the undamaged wall and sits down to wait for it. No point trying to run, they have him tracked thanks to the sub-cranial implant oozing microwave data through a small aerial drilled through his skull.

"Look." He sub-vocalises, knowing his remote handlers will pick it up, "I really had no idea. Check my memories. I mean, what kind of idiots keep that kind of fissile material in a populated area?"

He already knows the answer to that. Ever since arriving he has been constantly surprised by the twists and depths to which that stupidity can reach. Besides, whether he know or not, his actions were a little over the top.

The helicopter drops noisily into view, blowing dust into his face. He feels the sparkle of radioactivity against his skin. The door slides open and masked, NBC-suited goons jump down, armed with sprays and clicking measuring devices. Craig stands, his hands held up, palms out.

S E D

2010-05-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Danny shook me by the shoulder until I was properly awake.

'What??' I slurred.

'You were shouting out in your sleep. Were you having a bad dream or something?' As my eyes unclogged I began to see the concern in his eyes.

I shook my head to try to clear the fog of disturbed sleep.

'I was...' I frowned, trying to remember what had been bothering me. 'I was dreaming someone else's dreams.' That didn't seem right, even to me.

'What?'

'I was having someone else's dreams. I could tell I was and I didn't like it.' I was beginning to feel more confident in what I was saying, I knew it was true, even if it didn't make sense.

'How could you have someone else's dreams?' Danny asked sleepily. I must have woken him up. 'Don't you mean you had a dream you didn't want to be having?' He lay back down as if he was finished with the conversation but I felt like I was only just getting to the heart of the matter.

'No. No really not.' I turned over to face him, making him squint up at me in the too early morning grey light that was filtering through the thin curtains. 'These were not my dreams. They weren't meant for me.'

'Well then. Whose were they?' He asked triumphantly, bored and wanting to go back to whatever dream he had been enjoying.

I lay back down. 'I don't know.'

'Go back to sleep. It was just a dream.'

Danny turned away from me, gently but firmly, and that was that over. But I wasn't going back to sleep again, not this morning. I was lying there trying to work out what had happened to me. Why was I so adamant that I had been dreaming dreams not meant for my mind? And how was that possible anyway?

In the woods

2010-05-23T02:26:00.001-07:00

Overhead tower blocks gently swing, waving in the breeze like fruit hanging on a tree. Wavebox and Sandy lie in the orange light of the fading sun, waiting for shutdown. A nearby tree tries to start up a conversation but Wavebox shushes it politely.

"Tree's are fun but they can be quite slow as the sun goes down." Wavebox explains to Sandy. It is his younger brother's first trip into the parkland. Sandy is just ten, Wavebox is in his teens and an impossibly romantic and large figure to Sandy.

The light starts to fade from the trees. Slowly they start to sleep.

"Listen." Wavebox says.

In the space left by the trees and plants there is a gentler hum, a slower, deeper sound.

"The rocks." Sandy says.

Wavebox nods, sitting up. The rocks sound so different from the apartment wood, from the trees. There is a stillness to their thought. Wavebox smiles. He is glad his brother has come with him.

"It is time to go." He says.

Sandy nods. They get up and walk together along the path, lit gently by the over head lights of the city. Wavebox listens to the rocks, letting them guide him. Since he and his friends learned to listen to the rocks and used them to pass messages they have begun to organise the parties.

Further up the path darkened figures stand, waiting. Sandy feels nervous. Wavebox queries ahead and puts his hand on Sandy's shoulders. It's ok, they're with us. We're nearly there."

Wavebox nods at the two sentries. One of them he knows. A girl from his class, pretty and dressed well with bright pink hair woven with soft pulse light. She smiles at him and he feels a warm nervous glow. Beyond them is a clearing. The overhead is covered with woven trees, the result of a month of gentle negotiation to create an arena that will be hidden from above. He clearing is already half filled with people, mostly young, around Wavebox's age or slightly older. No-one over twenty, that's the rule.

Ambient music plays, punctuated by random pop hits that fade in and out. Wavebox looks around for someone he knows. He finds Steel, already mixing it with a few of the others. He doesn't know Steel so well, an state of ambivalence has already existed between them. But Steel sees him and waves him over. Wavebox, realising he cannot walk away, goes to his group.

"Who's the little one?" Steel asks.

"This is Sandy, my kid brother."

Steel nods. "Good to met you." He says.

Sandy feels timid. Everyone is larger than him. He has not seen anyone his own age. He feels a little angry towards his brother but excited at the same time.

The music starts to change. It gets faster and louder. A few people start to dance. Others stand around, collecting juice from the trees and passing it around. Sandy tries some. It is sweeter, deeper than the stuff in the blocks.

"It's not so diluted when you get it from the source." Steel explains.

The music suddenly stops. There are hollers and shouts of approval as everyone sits down. Their hands run through the grass, the rough earth. Everyone becomes silent. Listening. Sandy copies Wavebox. He has been told what to do but the strangeness has forced the explanation from his memory. He is mostly terrified of making a fool of himself.

The murmur of the stones seems to grow, becoming louder until there is nothing else. Each person seems to take on the call, creating impossible sounds from their mouths, from their throats, from their bones and flesh. The world begins to melt away. Sandy feels himself begin to sink. All becomes dark. The rough feel of rock against all his skin. But then it ends. There is no movement, no sense of falling. Sandy opens his eyes.

They are outside. He cannot see the others but he knows that they are there. He can feel them, supporting him like knots in a net. He looks about. There are only stars, a thousand million pins of light, textured clouds of coloured gas. The feel of exotic particles against whatever he has become, an eternal wind of quantum foam breaking against the bow of the ship. He tries to turn, to look back at the ship. Its pitted surface stretches outwards below him. He cannot see its length.

It's all true. He thinks.

Sandy suddenly feels himself pulled back inwards. Quicker than before he finds himself sat back on the grass, his hands in the dirt. He feels the grin on his face. His eyes open to look around at everyone else. They are all the same. Looking at each other with the same sense of wonder and magic. Grinning and moving towards each other with a pleasure and openness none has experienced outside this. A girl hugs Sandy and he hugs her back.

The music starts up again, this time louder and faster. They start to dance. Everyone dances. Sandy laughs at his brother, who has found the sentry girl and is dancing with her, with everyone really. The feel of the universe a powerful scent between them, binding them together.

Suddenly there are lights, reds and blues, piercing through the canopy, from the sides. Sirens wail. A raid. Sandy panics. Looks again for his brother, but he cannot see him. A few people near the edge decide to run. Others sit down. Sandy desparately tries to remember what his brother told him about raids, words he repeated to himself over and over again. -The best thing is just to sit. Most of the time they just frisk everyone, take down a few names and let everyone go. They don't like it but there's not a lot they can really do. But Sandy does not feel so confident. Something in him takes over and he runs, heading for the thickest part of the wood, where there are no lights.

Squirrel

2010-05-20T04:39:00.001-07:00

‘I was tailed to work by a squirrel.’ Said a breathless colleague as she entered the room, wet bedraggled from the spring rains.
‘There’s a pun in there somewhere, I just can’t find it.’
She frowned at me, obviously not in the mood for my morning brand of witticism.

Birdsong

2010-05-20T04:37:00.000-07:00

‘What’s that noise, Gran-dame?’
We were sitting on the edge of the window, the wooden shutters were spread wide open to either side of us and our shoeless legs dangled freely out into the calm air, over the five storey drop. Her legs were covered in skin coloured mesh tights. Mine were bare like pale sausages, ripe with child puppy fat.
She cocked her head to listen and a smile spread beatifically across her wrinkled grey face.
‘That, my dear, is a bird singing.’
I vaguely knew what a bird was, though I had never seen one and especially not in the shared open space of our housing complex. I always put birds and trees together and there were no longer any trees in the whole expanse of the territory in which I roamed.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that we are approaching dawn. The night is about to end.’
I looked about at the clear blue sky and thought about the tasty lunch that was lying, digesting, in my stomach. ‘But it’s already day.’ I protested.
Gran-dame looked at me and her smile changed to a more recognisable tenor – it was the smile that meant that I should not worry about things I did not understand. She always reassured me that things would become clear in time. With one hand, its translucent skin paler than usual in the wan daylight, she reached over and ruffled my hair playfully.
‘There is some darkness that you cannot see with your eyes. That you only feel with your heart.’
I squinted at her, more confused than ever.
‘You will understand eventually,’ she continued, turning away from me to look out over the wild concrete below us. ‘The main point is that things are going to improve from now on.’
I watched her face for a little while longer, seeing thoughts flit over the textured surface, soundless words being muttered through her thin lips. And then I too turned away to look out over the limited view and forgot my confusion in the simple joy of banging my legs against the brick wall below me.

life in a vacuum

2010-05-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

The shattered spine of the ship stretches out into the darkness. Haloes of blue light flicker and burst from its cracks. It falls away from view, hidden by the tilted spin of the command section. I turn away from the viewport and sit down on the wall that has become a floor. That leaves me with only the ruin to look at. I only want to close my eyes and wait for the dark cold to seep into the ship and take me away.

I do not have the luxury of the time it will take to die. They will be here long before, scouring for survivors and technology, and it is my duty now to find a way to stop them. I look over the command, the large open space, a hundred metres long and nearly as wide, broken with torn metal and the dead reamins of my colleagues. I hold my breath, listening to the silence for a sense of a moan, of life. There is none.

Weapons and tools are my first priority. I crawl under a piece of fallen floor to where the emergency locker is kept. It remains undamaged. Inside there are swords and crossbows, tipped with neurotoxins designed to drop most species of attacker. Boarding a ship is almost always a bloody and difficult affair. I blink away a memory and select one of each, as well tucking a small knife into a pocket in my trousers.

Next I will need food and water. Enough to keep me on the run for several weeks. Even if our emergency buoy manages to make it back home there will be no rescue for at least that long.

priestly

2010-05-16T13:28:00.001-07:00

The priest watches the old woman. He does not like her but cannot put his finger on what. He liks to think that he is past the medieval concept of witch, of crone, the ancient enemy of the celebate church with its rule of logic. These things were left behind on EarthThatWas. But there it is. She glances over at him and he turns away, ashamed. He feels that she has read his thoughts.

Overhead the blue-tinged sun begins its slow fall to the horizon. It is time for the priest to get on with his new chores. He enters the welcome shade of the cloister, bowing lightly as he passes through the gateway to the slight statue of Ran, who looks back with a sly wink and hops from one leg to the other. Ran has guessed his thoughts, his lack of logical thinking, and is mocking him for being too unsure of himself. Better to ignore it and get on with the cleaning.

The windows have slowly become encrusted with the dust deposited by the morning rains of the winter months. It is a task that should be seen to by a junior priest, but there is no-one else to do the task. The congregation has become more slight. Fewer people are believers anymore.

He dips the sponge into the bucket and splashes it onto the glass, rubbing it in a strong circlular motion to draw the dirt and water down. He is reaching for a scrap of paper to provide the final sheen when he senses someone behind him. He turns. It is the old woman. He face is lined with light. It ripples from her like a beatitude, shimmering with an animal purpose. The light is seeking him and he wants to run but he does not dare.

Traveller in a strange time

2010-05-12T08:55:00.001-07:00

Quinn looked up and saw only gnarled and twisted branches of grey bark against a pale, almost opaque, blue sky. His head ached. Come to think of it, his entire body ached. Quinn made a mental inventory of his limbs and was relieved to find that they all seemed to be in place. It wasn’t always the case.

Now then. What was all this about? Quinn thought to himself, his forehead wrinkling. He sat up, wiping away the dust of the ground that had accumulated over his face and arms. His suit was filthy and he could tell that his tie was undone. Frowning he started to adjust his tie by reforming the knot and fixing it firmly up against his collar.

‘Hello?’ A voice came from behind the thin trunk of what Quinn now recognised to be an olive tree. In fact, looking around, he seemed to be in an olive grove; the trees stretched out around him with contorted branches and ancient cracked bark indicating senescence past useful life. There was no sign that this grove was alive, no leaves broke the monotonous crumpled grey, and no fruit tempted the hungry. And as there was also no sign of a body to belong to the voice therefore Quinn replied directly to the tree.

‘Hello. Perhaps you could tell me where I am?’

‘Don’t you know?’ A small boy crept from behind the tree and Quinn felt relieved that things were not as strange as he had first assumed. The boy wore a simple tunic that appeared to be very like the boy himself: dirty and uncared for.

Quinn shook his head, gingerly. ‘I don’t know anything actually. I seem to have a complete blank where my memory should be.’ He paused, confused that this state of affairs was not more worrying to him, and shrugged. ‘I’m relatively sure this is only a temporary inconvenience and I have every hope that things will become clear at any time now.’

The boy simply stared at the man with his strange clothes and even stranger way of speaking. Fidgeting from leg to leg he looked like he wanted to run away but couldn’t quite bear the idea of missing something interesting. His stare was unnervingly direct but there was vulnerability behind the slightly crossed eyes.

‘I do know that my name is Quinn,’ Quinn said gently ‘what is your name boy?’

‘Arsenio.’ The boy whispered uncertainly, a pronounced lisp in this single word. He looked around furtively and then took a few tentative steps towards the man. ‘Did you bring the building?’

Quinn’s head was spinning already and he wondered whether something had gone wrong with his translation mechanism. ‘Eh?’

‘The building.’ The boy indicated with his left hand and Quinn noticed that it was as gnarled and hard and useless as the olive trees surrounding them both. ‘It was not there before. And now it is. As are you.’

Quinn forced his fascination away from the boy’s deformity and looked in the direction indicated. There was, indeed, a building just on the outskirts of the grove. And it did not look like it should be there at all. He stood and walked carefully over to the edge of the olive grove.

A mountainous land spread out in front of him, dry and dusty looking, littered with rocks and small pockets of tough vegetation. He thought he recognised his location now, somewhere in the dry heat of the Mediterranean, and, he felt with no real excuse to his certainty, more specifically probably somewhere in Greece.

Quinn inhaled deeply, his inner nanotech filters telling him that there were no pollutants in the air and suggesting that the timeframe for this adventure was a long time before industrial activity tainted the planet. Millennia before Quinn’s own time.

And that meant, Quinn figured, that this mosque which appeared to have been shoehorned into this ancient Greek landscape, now existed in a time before Islam had been created.

‘Bugger.’ Said Quinn, knowing instinctively that this was probably his fault.

Black Hill

2010-05-09T09:07:00.001-07:00

The scent of rice cooking. Zhao touches his hand to mouth, the taste of food so tantalising. Soft rain soaking into wool. Zhao lowers his hand back to the sword at his side. His poetry will not be of much use to him now.

The black hill broods over the village, the dark heather and grasses the same colour as the soil, growing from the neat mounds of graves a thousand years old. The keening wind cuts into damp clothes. He shivers, pulls the padded jackets tighter with a tug on the rope belt and continues the climb, following the faint etching of the path.

Looking back the mist has grown. He can still make out the houses, the smoke from the fires, the courtyards and farm houses but they fade in and out of his vision. He unslings a small gourd and takes a sip of sweetened tea.

Walking on he hears a chanting. He is frightened at first but remembers the words of the town mayor. The Daoist priest may be able to help him. Or he may be the cause. Either way Zhao is committed.

Factory Fodder

2010-05-05T05:43:00.001-07:00

‘I don’t want to go to school today. I don’t feel well.’ The whining voice perforated Anna’s morning meditations, disturbed her hard-fought inner peace. She took a deep breath and carefully started to emerge from under the apex of her meditation pyramid.

‘I know darling. But you have to go.’

‘But I hate it. No-one likes me and I don’t understand what’s going on most of the time.’

‘Yes but, there are some things in life you just have to do. Work is one of them.’ Shaking out her tense knees, Anna stood up and walked tenderly over to her husband. ‘I know you don’t like your job but we need the money.’ She reached up to stroke his bearded face but all she got in reply was a petulant frown.

‘It’s alright for you.’ Jake pouted. ‘You like your job. You just don’t understand.’

Anna’s heart sunk. He’d forgotten. Sometimes she felt like she didn’t exist for him as more than a support mechanism. She stepped back and turned away, starting to get dressed as a way of distracting herself from his lack of attention. With little real hope, she wondered if he would realise before she actually left the house. But when she turned back he had gone, only an empty space of misery remained, the front door banged behind him and the house was silent apart from Anna’s near-tearful breathing.

--

Half an hour later Anna was ready to set off for her new job. She walked out of her house, turning left instead of her habitual right, away from the business parks and towards the centre of the city. A shiver of trepidation ran through her, an awareness of the large bags under her eyes from her sleepless night, a fear of the unknown.

This new job had been spun to her as a good thing, a promotion into a highly specialised part of the organisation she worked for. It was a secret, well-paid, good prospects type of opportunity of the kind that doesn’t come along very often, if at all. Anna had said yes without the luxury of thought, she’d felt that she had no choice given the enthusiasm and firm direction of her manager, but ever since that day, only a few weeks ago, she had regretted that she hadn’t at least had a night to consider.

Rumours were all there were, but rumours were enough to unsettle.

For a start the location of the factory was an anomaly. Nearly all economic, education, retail, practical activity went on in the specially built and security maintained business parks that ringed the residential areas. In the centre of the city only chaos remained. Anna had seen the web footage: the collapsed buildings, pot-holed roads, vegetation forcing nature through concrete, rusted wrecks of cars and machinery. And then there were the people: those who couldn’t afford to move out when the economic collapse came, the mentally ill, the old and infirm, the odd. The collapse had caused a situation where, once the weak recovery finally stuttered into life, it was more cost-effective to rebuild on new land and simply abandon the inner city to whoever could cope with it. That strategy had the added bonus of leaving the residential and business areas free of undesirables.

And then there was the nature of the role she was being asked to fulfil. It was incredibly vague. All she knew was that they were looking for a problem solver, a new way of looking at things, and that she had been recommended by someone anonymous but influential. The rest, she’d been told by the blank-faced HR representative, she would find out when she arrived.

It was all very disconcerting.

The Big Catch

2010-04-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

Danny had watched the shoreline of the tiny island fade over the horizon, its single tree waving forlornly from the shelter of the stoic church, with trepidation outweighing the usual gut churning sensation.

There were too many stories of accidents circulating the one village pub in the harbour where they waited out their shore time between fishing trips. Over the years of course boats would falter in bad weather; that was only to be expected. In more recent years boats had been lost or damaged by nets that seemed to have been snagged by naval submarines – though incidents were always strongly denied by the authorities.

Battling the sea was part of what trawling was all about. It was the draw for many of the men, weathered and beaten early in life, and for the women who waited for them and lived as best they could in the absences. As long as they understood the odds, all of them, as long as they could see that the fight was fair in the long run. Men would lose their lives, sons would lose fathers and wives husbands. But then the sons would grow and take on the wreck of the boat, repairing it and setting out as their own captain, continuing some unspoken mission of anachronistic survival. As was the case with Danny.

Danny only felt accepted in the company of other trawlermen. He could see the withering looks of other passengers as he travelled by train to see family or friends in the big city; the frowns at the oil stained clothes and bodies, the disapproval of the emptying bottles of monk-produced tonic wine and the greasy takeaway food, the shudders at the strong language and coarse jokes. What did they know about him and his life. How did they think he should spend his rare safe time?

The last boat to disappear had been The Scottish Rose and Danny had known a couple of the crew, at least to share a few drinks and laughs in The Mishnish of an evening. So Danny was shaken by their loss because he knew some of the faces of the men whose bodies had not been recovered. But it was also the sight of what had been left of the boat, Danny’s boat being one of the search and rescue party that reached the scene of the mayday signal: the shards and splinters of wood, the matchsticks of rigging, the floating patches of net, and, above all things, the thousands of dead cod, their lifeless eyes reflecting nothing but death all around.

Danny’s own trade was scallops not cod but he had had his own close shaves in the past, the teeth of the dredger catching something it was not flexible enough to skim over as it snaked over the sea bed, scratching at the surface and throwing grit and scallops into the metal nets. Once, it seemed like a lifetime ago, he had been caught in a rough Atlantic blowout, the waves coming too quickly for the boat to adjust to their rocking, and the boat had listed over to the starboard side. Just as it seemed the boat would go all the way over, tipping Danny and his frightened crew into the unforgiving icy waters dark and deep, a brief lull in the storm had allowed them to get themselves right again. Danny’s dad had always taught him that it wasn’t the height of the waves that would do for you, it was how close together they were the affected whether or not they tore you apart.

But Danny had never seen a boat so completely stripped and destroyed as this The Scottish Rose had been. The usual causes didn’t make sense for this. An inquest, hastily put together so that it could be quickly forgotten, recorded an open verdict and expected life to carry on as before.

How could it?

Job offer

2010-04-25T07:21:00.001-07:00

Jetain watches the young boy climb the steps, the box of water bottles heavy in his hands. He is new to the job, she hasn't seen him before. His master stands in the dusty road, piling up more boxes for the kid to carry into the mosque. The water master and Jetain do not get on. The master does not approve of Jetain sitting outside, only her head covered against the sun, her dark eyes looking on disapprovingly. They have argued any times. She has little choice but to sit here and watch. The caravanserai located next to the mosque is one of the few places that will allow her to stay, unaccompanied, while she waits for her rocket to be repaired.

The boy disappears into the cool darkness for a brief while and emerges again.

"Good morning."

Jetain turns to see Williams has joined her on the roof. She nods back at him, sipping at her tea and wincing at its sweetness.

"Day twenty eight, huh?" Williams continues. Jetain has no wish to talk to him and keeps her focus downwards, towards the road. "You sure you won't reconsider?"

"Parts are arriving on Tuesday. Then I'm gone."

"Tuesday? On the freight? Sorry, I heard it had been delayed. Major sandstorm. Going to be another week, at least."

Everything Williams says strikes her as bullshit and she has to be careful to try and filter it for fact before she responds. In this case she knows that he is not lying. She curses.

"Look, I know you don't like me, but this is a genuine offer and a good job. You have a lot of experience flying around here and my client is offering a good day rate. Being sat here has got to be hurting you."

The boy has finished carrying all the boxes and jumps onto the back of the cart. The water master fires up the engine with a cracking spark and a drift of ozone. The cart moves off with a dull hum, its dusty wheels leaving narrow tracks in the sand.

"How long is the job for?" She asks.

"Three days, top. Drop off, wait around for a couple of nights and then bring them back."

"Archeologists?"

Williams nods.

Jetain takes another sip of tea. Williams takes it as a yes, necking the coffee held delicately in his hand before he disappears back down the stairs.

Sleep

2010-04-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

The lack of sleep tears at my eyes. They are pushed and pulled with distortions of vision, causing gaps to appear in the floor in front of me, bending and warping it. I stand still, close my eyes and wait for it to pass. When I open them again there is only the ripple at the edges, the corners of my vision, but at least I can fold enough reality around me that I don't slip through the cracks and get carried away again. I've spent a lot of time re-building my life in this world and I am not keen on the idea of losing it all again.

Sky Angels Redux

2010-04-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Prologue

The meeting took place in the confessional of a disused church. The metallic booth, rich in lead, offered a safe refuge from the spy-cams and voice monitoring procedurals, the only refuge that existed in these paranoid times.

One man acted as confessor, another as priest.

‘Are the preparations completed?’

‘They are. It was easier than we thought; she is not worried about security it seems.’

‘There is no reason for her to be.’

‘That is true.’

A pause, only the solemn rhythms of the calm breathing of the men filled the empty church with life.

‘You are clear about what happens next?’

‘I am.’

‘You are clear about the limits of your authority?’

‘That is a trick question. I have no authority. I have no mission or context apart from the obvious pattern of my life.’

The ‘priest’ nodded, a thin smile of satisfaction played briefly on his lips.

‘Then go. Ready yourself. Our success depends on your dedication.’

‘I will not fail you.’

‘We hope not.’

--

Finches in a thorn bush

2010-04-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

Every day they were there. Hanging around outside my window.
I didn’t even notice them at first and then I wondered how I had ever been ignorant of their presence.
Their squawking fascinated me.
It was the thorn bush that seemed to draw them to my front garden. A scraggy, twiggy, sparsely leafed bush that was nonetheless densely twisted and laden with sharps thorns. Many was the time, back in the past, when I fought with that bush – trying to tame it into some modicum of civilisation with my purposely sharpened shears. Every time the tree fought back, and won.
So now its tangled boughs were inhabited by dozens of tiny finches.
The first time I saw them it was only the movement of one of them flying into the bush that caught my eye. I watched them for a few minutes and then realised that I could hear them too. Their chirping cheeping conversations were at a pitch I had hardly acknowledged but, once I had heard their calls, I could no longer get the noise out of my head. Their calls were insistent, veering from musical to annoying, and I started to think about what they had to talk about. And then I left to go to work and, when I returned in the evening, they were gone.
The next morning I watched them for a little longer, eating my toast as I stood in front of the window. They were tiny creatures, small enough that I could fit several of them in to my closed fist had I wanted to, but they sat in amongst the thorns as if they were scared of nothing. Fluffing themselves up, so that their feathers stuck out likely new born chicks, they chattered away with no concern.
Over the next week I realised that my time at the window was increasing. After I arrived late to work on a couple of occasions I started to get up slightly earlier so that I could spend more time just watching the finches. Watching the tiny brown blurs as they flew across to the roof opposite and then back again. I couldn’t work out where they came from or where they went.
Their movements and interactions mesmerised me. I started to be able to recognise certain individuals and gave them names according to their activity levels and perceived erudition.
I started not to mind when I was late to work, finding it almost physically difficult to drag myself away from the window, wondering what I would miss if I moved for even an instant.
My manager pulled me up for being late too often. She said she understood that I was going through a difficult time; she understood that I was grieving; she was sympathetic. But that it had been six months now and there was only so long she could protect me, protect me, before she would be forced to act.
As soon as I went back to my desk, that one photo still staring out at me as if encouraging me, supporting me, I wrote out a terse letter of resignation. Work was no longer of any interest to me. Nothing was of interest to me except that overgrown bush and its teeming inhabitants. For some reason it made me feel alive, though I was no longer doing anything that could be recognised as living.

The duel part 2

2010-04-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

This post is a follow on to Vaslov's post: The Duel.

The muffled sound of iron ships slowly twisting in the dock punctuate the silence.

"The challenge has been issued." The ragged man says. "It must be met."

Daniel does not know whether to support Marcus or run away from him. He cannot express his regret.

"Marcus, we cannot pull out now. The price is too high."

Marcus is shaking, he cannot stop it, his mind is locked with his fear. He knows that if he is to earn Sarah's love, to gain any kind of position at all, he must prove himself here. Yet this is nothing like the fights he is used to. The blur of steel, the whistles of the gangs of Parliament roaming together in the night, the roar of the Members fighting. If he is to be of quality then it is here, in this wretched place, with the stench of rotten fish and blood, that he will show it, or die.

He tightens his fist.

"Then let us get on with it." He finally says.

The ragged man reaches back down to the sack and continues to unknot its cord. Marcus breaths deeply and turns to receive the briefcase from Daniel, who snaps the lid open exposing the dark reds of the velvet inside. On it rests the head. The flesh is grey, and the man was old when he died. Daniel's great-grandfather, a fierce man, a long-time supporter of the Parliament and a proud weapon of his family for generations since his death.

Marcus reaches out with his left hand and whispers the incantation. The eyes of the head snap open, exposing crystal globes that emit a faint light, barely visible. The head rises of its own volition, turning about as if stretching a hidden neck. It moves to Marcus's shoulder and hovers there, waiting.

The ragged man, a wizard of centuries long experience judging by his appearance, is stood facing them, a head of his own chosen from the bag and positioned near his hand, ready to respond to its instruction. The head is even more hideous than Daniel's great grandfather. The flesh is torn and loose, held together with crude, thick stitches and metal staples. One of the eyes is sealed shut and the other contains a dark green orb. It is a well seasoned weapon. Daniel has tutored him, warned him to be cautious. Their practise duels, with the heads of dogs and birds, have taught him the basics, but he feels nothing could really prepare him for this.

Daniel watches the ragged man. It is not the first time he has seen a master like this but his own station has meant he has been secure from walking into such a challenge. He feels guilty at dragging Marcus into this, as if his friendship inevitably meant this moment had to happen. That Marcus would need to see himself as Daniel's equal at all cost.

When Daniel sees the ragged man nods he raises his whistle to his lips. Before blowing into it he whispers a charm of luck for Marcus then gives the short, sharp blows that signal the start of the duel. Within minutes the dockside will be swarming with witnesses, but the fight will have already begun.

The two heads glide towards each other with respective flicks of the controllers' hands. They seem to shimmer in the dark air, ghost shadows falling on fog. There are a few shouts in the distance as the heads begin to swing around, nudging carefully at each other but not yet engaged.

Suddenly the ragged man's arm lifts up, his palm outstretched. The head under his control darts forwards, crashing into Marcus's head with a snap of his jaw and the swipe of a razor buried in his ear. Marcus cries out in pain as the hit is lodges within him via the link between his mind and that of the weapon. The pain is harder and sharper than he imagined it would be. The practise fights were barely more than light blows while the impact from that strike is buried deep in his nerves, a fire of neuronal activity. He recovers with a defensive strike that does little damage. Better prepared now he makes a move to parry another swipe and follows it up with a bite against the back of the neck. It does little damage but Marcus sees the ragged man wince in his own sympathy and Marcus feels heartened by it.

Suddenly the ragged man's head swings low and speeds too quickly for Marcus to react. It punches hard, driving Marcus's head away with a wooden crack, almost to the edge of where Marcus's control ends. Then it drives quickly forwards, directly at Marcus, aiming to attack him directly and claim a trophy that is the ragged man's desire. Marcus reaches out with his hand defensively, trying to block the rotting skull but it bites down onto his hand and severs a finger. Screaming, Marucs reacts instinctively, pulling his own skull back faster than he had thought possible with a drawing back of his arm. The ragged man does not notice in time, too focused on driving in for another attack, hoping to tear at his whole arm this time to claim it for his own. Only trphies claimed within the battle can be kept.

Marcus attacks the skull from behind, the old features of the grandfather are contorted with a sincere rage as it tears into the back of the ragged man's floating head, ripping into the stiches and pulling apart the metal hinge and staples that hold the skull's jaw on. The grandfather spits away the loose jaw and it falls to the ground, closely followed by the rest of the head.

Marcus falls to his knees, clutching his bleeding hand. He summons his head back towards him and seeks out the old, ragged man. The ragged man has fallen, unconscious and inert. Marcus has won.

Devotion

2010-04-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Almost the last thing I do is pray. I get down on my knees on that sun-warmed rough concrete roof and I close my eyes, raising my hands together to the sky I mouth words of comfort and explanation. I don’t wait for a response but I know, I can tell in my heart, that I have been heard.

My pursuers are banging on the door, the entryway to this roof terrace, it won’t be much longer now.

I stand, brushing off loose gravel from my bare knees, and walk over to the slightly raised brickwork of the edge of the building. The ground is a long way below me. I can see particles of quartz glinting from the marble pavement in the early morning sun. Although it is too early for many people to be up and about I see a few joggers over by the ocean’s edge. They do not see me.

Taking a deep breath I step up onto the edge, no longer looking down, now just looking out and ahead into the pale blue sky that promises a hot, cloud free day.

Spreading my arms wide I mentally fix them in place. Use them to glide not to flap, I entreat my body, conscious of dignity even in these last moments. As the door finally splinters apart I casually shift my centre of balance and soundlessly tumble over and down.

Even as my pursuers look down upon my broken and bleeding body, smashed against the smooth marble pavement tiles, a dark stain spreading out, reaching into tiny cracks in the stone, I am already gone.

I exist.

And now I must search for a new vehicle. A working unit of flesh and blood to carry my will until my will can be done. Despite the pain and the frustration, despite the always seeking always hiding always running, I will persevere.

You will see.

Five minutes

2010-04-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

My best calculations are that I now have only minutes but it's hard to be accurate, the macro conversion of time being subject to too many fluctuations to be sure. Maybe if I had access to the kind of quantum computing power that is only dreamed of in this backwards place I could be more accurate. Instead I have to wait.

I look back on my life. With so little time left it seemed inevitable that I'd start to fall into reminiscence instead of action. It seems so little compared to my previous life. I arrived here thirty years ago, got a job, met a woman. We settled down. We didn't have kids and the cancer took my wife too early. I cry when it is night sometimes and my thoughts are only of her. But life was good. Better than I could have hoped, despite how primitive it has been. Perhaps that gave me an advantage. I think it maybe harder to find, giving me a couple of extra seconds that have made all the difference. This could have happened ten years ago, while Sarah was still alive. I almost thought it was going to, the signs were so strong.

When it happens I don't even notice. Just one moment I'm looking at old photo albums, plastic wrapped pages that stick to your fingers and blur the images, and the next I'm looking back at the scrawny, ugly face of my hunter like those thirty years never happened.

To the hunter I guess they didn't. Only five minutes have passed here. That's as long as I could escape this prison for. How long it took him to track down my location. But on that other plane, that multiversal parallel, time is more compressed, more tightly wound. Those five minutes gave me more freedom than I could ever have hoped for. The hunter spits in my face and raises a hand to strike me.

"You'll never get away, physicist. We'll always get you back. Your sentence will be fulfilled."

The alarms in the prison are shut down, order falls again like a comforting blanket smothering all. A couple of guards come in to the portal room and cuff my hands and legs before leading me out to return me to my cell.

I only smile and think of a summer's afternoon with Sarah. Five minutes bought me a lifetime of memories. I feel I never truly thanked her enough for that.

The Duel

2010-03-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

Mist slackened over the dockside and a foghorn blurted from the unseen distance. Night had turned the illuminations of the gaslights to smoggy grey blurs which served only to accentuate the shadows that lay beyond their reach.

Marcus paced the deformed wooden planks, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed. He was deep in contemplation. Fine spray had soaked his clothes until his body was as damp and uncomfortable as his mind.

Next to the edge of the dock stood Marcus’ second. Daniel stood motionless, gazing out towards the unseen sounds of the harbour - the sloshing of the waves as they broke on the wooden supports below their feet, the throb of boats cutting through the treacherous tidal currents, the warped shouts of men’s voices calling out instructions or pleas.

Daniel sniffed, his first movement for many a minute, and then turned to his companion.

‘They are not coming.’

Marcus paused in his relentless pacing, looking up into his friend’s face with a mixed expression of hope and denial. He shook his head. ‘They will be here.’

‘And how long are we supposed to wait for them?’

‘Until they come. I fear it will not be long.’

Daniel huffed and turned away again, cross at his friend for not taking this opportunity to flee. His eyes would have seen nothing even if the scene had been clear for they were full of cold and salty tears.

Marcus resumed his fevered walk. The movement made him feel somehow better, somehow more in control. Daniel was right to fret, he thought, if I stay here, if I face them, then I will die. I know it. He tried not to think about the circumstances that had led him to this place, this godforsaken pit of stench and depravity. If only… but he stopped himself before he could go too far. Choices had been made with reason and with purpose; it was not up to him to judge the consequences. No, he thought bitterly, it was up to him to wait and then to die. A vision of Samantha flooded his consciousness suddenly, wiping out his resolve and threatening to dissolve him in despair; her face, her golden hair, her sweetest of honeyed smiles, her small alabaster hands and her rosy lips. Oh she had fooled him alright, taken him in and led him so far astray that he had no hope now of returning to the life he had once led.

Why did they not come?

A slithering noise stopped him in his tracks, the stretched noise of a damaged leg being dragged along the wooden walkway. The men moved to stand together, the mist swirling around them in rough vaporous wisps as if it was meaningfully forming ropes to bind them together, and both felt shivers of mingled disgust and bitter cold shaking their body.

A single man emerged into the patch of grey light. At least, he might once have been recognisable as a man. Now he appeared to be a ramshackle conglomeration of body parts badly assembled by a partially sighted creator. His face was patched with half healed scars that gave him a highly irregular appearance. This face was framed by locks which were as patchy as the face they surrounded, with clumps of colourless lifeless hair apparently placed at random across the high dome of the man’s head. A slash created a mouth, a dark gap from which issued strange gurgling noises, a tiny stalactite of drool hanging down from one lopsided corner.

The newcomer carried a hessian sack over one shoulder. It weighed him down so much that as he swung it out and down onto the planks he visibly grew, standing taller almost as if he had some pride. Still saying nothing coherent he reached down and started to untie the cord that wrapped together the neck of the sack.

‘Stop. Wait.’ Marcus could hold himself back no longer.

The human scarecrow looked up in surprise, grunting an impenetrable question and letting go of the cord, allowing the ends of the knot to trail reluctantly through his gnarled fingers.

‘I.. I do not know if this is what I.. what I want after all.’ Marcus stammered.

reason

2010-03-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

I stare out through the window at the slow moving Martian landscape. The view is fuzzy and distorted with the constant scratching of red dust and fines over the diamond pane that forms the outer layer. It is a subtle new vista, evolved overnight by the steady three kph crawl of our base. I chew the last of my breakfast eager to get out.

Science rarely offers last chances. If you've searched in nine places and there is only one remaining, then experience tells you that the thing you are looking for will not be there. It has nothing to do with probability, just that's how it goes. We have one last site to prepare, one last science station to plant into the red soil. To be honest, while disappointing, this does not distract from what we have achieved. Being here, mapping, exploring, finding what a robot never can. Our footprints will be erased in the coming storm, but the fact of our being here will remain.

I turn back inwards, looking at the other three sat at the table with me. Wei, the eager, young Chinese geologist. Adoyo, our engineer, is bleary and irritated. He has been arguing with the boss again. The boss being sat opposite me, eyes fixed on the latest download package describing his business empire as he prepares his responses to be sent back in the evening reports. Maxwell Johnson, the richest man on Mars. That was the tagline they were using back on Earth. I don't know if they still do, or whether the sheer tedium of real exploration and science has been knocked off the news feeds. I haven't been keeping up.

*

The muffled noise of tires crackling over the regolith helps to clear my head as Wei races me to the horizon, the lip of an oversize crater. I follow his tracks, nipping at his heels occasionally, while checking that the delivery of breadcrumb transponders is active and tracing our way back. The metal tube we call home is out of sight, but it emits its own beacon, reflected on the display in my rear-view mirror. The breadcrumbs are in case that beacon stops working, which has happened twice in the months that we have been here.

We slow down after twenty k, waiting for the triangulation messages from the positioning satellites overhead to provide us with more resolution on our destination. Wei comes to a stop and I slide alongside him. Looking over he seems troubled. Unusual for him. He's been pretty positive all the way through, even despite the conflicts between Adoyo and Johnson.

"What you thinking?" I ask.

"Nothing. Just, you know. This is the last time."

"Yeah. But there's still plenty of work to do. And the data is going to keep us busy for years."

His fingers click at his equipment. He's just toying with it, switching things off and on again.

"Lal, do you think we're going to find anything now?"

I wonder how to answer that before choosing honest.

"No. We've given it a good try, but this is a puzzle that has been going on since the first ESA orbiter told us the methane was here. Even with confirmation of the Carbon-12 there's no guarantee we will find out where this life actually is, or if it's actually here. Looking back at the planning I did it seems hopelessly naïve now, faced with the reality of being here. Live is buried deep, it must be if its going to survive. The real science is going to be done over the years that these stations are here and working, not by us. Maybe that's not a bad thing."

"What do you mean?"

"For all that machines can tell us what we need to know, we needed to come here. And if we still have no answers then there's maybe a reason to come back. If we do find life then there's going to be so much opposition to colonisation it will probably stop any attempt. Whether it's from fear or a desire to preserve. There'll just be more robotic missions while it gets debated in the UN."

"I don't think that would stop my government. Or men like Johnson."

I shrug.

"That might be true." I reply. "But there still has to be a reason, a purpose for spending the money it would take for humans to live here. Having somewhere to dump surplus population is one thing, but there needs to be a way to support them, and there needs to be a way to make a profit. That's why Johnson is here. Sure he gets the kick out of being the big explorer but everything that man does is to make a profit."

Wei is quiet suddenly. Even his breathing is paused.

"You've never talked like this before."

"No. Because it doesn't matter. Look around us. We're here. Nothing else compares to that. We're the first people to land successfully on Mars. I don't even care if we get home at this point."

My comm beeps. The triangulation overlays on the map and I flick on the electric engine of my rover.

"Let's go." I shout, hitting my accelerator before Wei has even had chance to get started.

The Switch

2010-03-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

Angel clattered down the last of the concrete made stairs and ran forward into the inner court of the tower block complex. The echo of her stilettos enlarged the effect of her entrance, an edgy imbalance to the previously quiet zone. Angel looked around frantically, her overlarge silver hoop earrings swaying in time with her high ponytail, swept back tightly in an informal and temporary facelift, and in obvious distress.
“What’s the matter? He run off without paying?” The old man chuckled.
Angel jumped, she had been looking about so intently but she had not seen the old man standing in the damp stained corner of the lobby. She frowned. “It’s not what you think, old man. It’s not like that.”
The old man chuckled again, his mouth barely open beneath his nicotine stained moustache. “Whatever you say love.” His hands, arthritically cramped together, shook with suppressed laughter and contempt.
“Which way did he go?” Angel asked him. She started to move closer to him, scrutinising him more carefully to see if she could place him in one of the myriad apartments in the complex. Her skinny jeans highlighted every contour of her legs.
“Ah,” the old man shook his head in mock regret, “that would be none of my business.”
Angel stopped within smelling difference and her nose wrinkled in distaste, the old man smelt bad, really bad. “Come on. I’ve told you, it’s not what you think.” She said in her most persuasive voice.
The old man simply grinned, an uneven sight of fractured and missing teeth, enjoyment apparent.
Angel’s heavily made up face changed expression again, from reasoning to pleading.
“He stole something from me. Something important. Can’t you tell me which way he went?”
“See no evil, hear no evil… that’s my motto.” The old man rocked on his battered tennis shoes in glee.
Angel moved away from the man in exasperation, took one last lingering look around the empty courtyard, then turned around and headed, slower now, back up the unforgiving stairs.
The old man listened to the noise of the woman ascending above him, tilting his head in concentration. A door opened, slammed shut, and quiet returned. He chuckled again and began to shuffle his way out into the limited daylight of the court. He turned right and headed towards the exit corridor, taking his time.
Several streets and corners later, all travelled in that slow old man shuffle, the last vestiges of his disguise melted away. Face, body, walk, all transformed in a matter of seconds without an obvious effort or an obvious trigger. Instead of an old man there only remained a young man, a wide smile on his face and his right hand firmly holding something, something that didn’t belong to him, in the pocket of his trousers.
Even the old man smell had gone. Only the reek of recent intercourse and betrayal remained…

Envoy

2010-03-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Janek felt scared. From the window of the little bus snaking across the cracked concrete he could see the rocket. It hissed with a thousand stresses and strains from the gases that it expelled, coolant for its chemical engines. He had known this would be how he would be leaving this world, too newly colonised for an elevator and too far from Centre for other, more advanced forms of lift, but faced with the reality of it in front of him a near panic seems to over take him. The shape and physicality of it intimidates him. Even the landing, falling from orbit in little more than a heat-shielded tin can, was less terrifying than the prospect of sitting on top of several tonnes of explosives ready to detonate and propel him into orbit.

The other two men sat in the carriage with him seemed calm. One, a fat business man from the system's fourth planet, was obviously used to travelling this way. The other, Oorta, his attaché and bodyguard, betrays no sense of fear having had all common sense of danger carefully edited out by training and genetic manipulation.

At least the mission has been successful. The planet's contract treaty with the UN had been about about to expire and there had been talk about secession, all too common in the past twenty years. Janek disliked secession. It was always too bloody and it never succeeded, but time and again planets thought they could get away with it. At least this time invasion and cultural shift was not going to be required. Assuming he survived the take-off.

He did not hear the shot. The first he knew was the sticky, wet splash across his face. He turned in annoyance and only then realised it was Oorta's blue blood that had spurted from the gaping wound in his shoulder. Oorta looked annoyed, reaching out with his undamaged arm to pull Janek down, away from the window, across his lap.

An insurrection. Part of Janek's brain is almost relieved.

ash

2010-03-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

The darkness echoes. There is a dim glow. Ahead a slicing of light from Jean's torch illuminates the metal corridor. The Captain is in the doorway of the control centre. His hands are made of ash. They hang loosely at his sides. Gray overlays black-flecked scales. Loose white flakes drift loose, catching on his clothes, the floor and the walls. He raises his left hand, deep within the ash a red glow kindles, his crumbling hand points, the finger melting and falling as a cone of powder that lands and rolls along the floor carried by the internal convection wind of the ship. Jean looks to where he is pointing. There is nothing he can see. The Captain falls, his body consumed by the burn, falling to dust.

Communing

2010-03-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

The day started with a little more stimulation then I was used to. For once I was lucky enough to get a seat in the crowded rail carriage, a chance to sit down, claim my own space among the heaving mass of humanity. I settled in for the journey, my document bag clasped firmly on my lap, demure and calm. I set my expression to secure isolation and resolved to make no eye contact. A daily mantra.
Then, at the very next stop, a flock of new travellers flooded in to the carriage. I ignored them except to pull in my toes a little, partially making room, partially in a vague attempt at self-protection.
But I couldn’t ignore the movement.
The train set off, a long way now until the next stop, under the rivers and the dead zone, into the long tunnels black as night and narrow fitting. A highly charged worm. The battered carriage rocked from side to side as it rumbled along the poorly maintained rails but that was not the movement that caught my attention. The rocking of the carriage I found soothing, a gentle lullaby of action, rhythmic meditation for a tired mind.
In front of me however, right at my eye level, a young man was rocking his hips in time with the music he had plugged into his ears. I could hear the faint buzz of electricity. His crotch was jerking back and forwards with an occasional wiggle. This was distracting.
Surreptitiously I glanced up at the man’s face. With eyes half closed he was smiling, lost in his own world.
I envied him his youth, returning my watery eyes to the vision of my wrinkled aging hands as they lay forlornly on the document case. I envied his obvious relaxation, a striking counterpoint to my efforts to portray the appearance of calm. I envied his joy in his music.
My watch beeped and I knew that I was close to my station. Getting a grip on my case, and on my wandering mind, I got ready. When the time came I stood up, trying not to bump into the oblivious boy, and blinked.
The short jump to the station, with the train still rattling at top speed through the dimmed tunnel, was always disconcerting. This time I felt like I had left something behind and I wobbled on the balls of my highly polished shoes.
‘Morning.’ Harry Short had been on the same train. He greeted me now with an expression of inattentive curiosity on his grey and whiskered face.
‘Morning.’ I pulled myself together and turned towards the lift, putting the shiver that ran down my back to the windy absence created by the now departed train.
--
I recognise now that the real reason for my lack of mental balance that morning was enclosed in the faux leather wrapping of my document case…

Wilson's Clipboard

2010-03-09T11:32:00.001-08:00

Wilson stood in front of the open cargo door and tapped his clipboard against the handrail of the gangway. The clipboard was a fake, a prop, an affectation that was as unnecessary as the clear glass spectacles that perched on the end of Wilson’s angular nose.
A drone emerged from the gangplank with a whirr of sudden braking. Its low level body flittered across the raised threshold and banged onto the gangway, stopping at Wilson’s feet. A camera head scanned Wilson’s knees and beeped.
‘What did you find?’ Wilson asked. He made an effort to ensure that his speech was clear and simple (not his usual style at all). These drones were basic models and very little effort had been spent on their cognitive abilities.
The drone flashed its data through to Wilson’s implanted receiver and he frowned. ‘Nothing?’
The drone flashed an identical data package and Wilson kicked it off of the gangplank and down into the far distance of the floor of the hanger deck. There was a brief clang and a frustrated whirr as the drone righted itself and set off on its next mission.
‘There’s no point taking it out on him. It’s not his fault.’
Wilson started, he hadn’t heard the man creeping up on him but he recognised the voice all too well.
‘It must be faulty.’ He started, trying to justify his pique. ‘It reported nothing at all but there must be something. A ship can’t just turn up empty and not have any data on board to explain why.’
‘Can’t it? This ship seems to be telling you that it can.’
The other man was shorter than Wilson but carried more authority in the relaxed set of his shoulders and the way his hands nonchalantly rested in the pockets of his regulation jumpsuit. His face was kind and his eyes were alive with joy and a twinkle of good humour. The man’s genial demeanour only made Wilson seem more pathetically sour and Wilson was not ignorant of this effect.
‘Then something is wrong with the system. The data must be there but we’re just not getting to it yet.’ Wilson paused. ‘Unless you know different?’
Wilson had remembered the rumours about Mack and his set. The experiments and missing equipment. The personnel who also disappeared.
Mack smiled with the still-mobile left side of his face. ‘I don’t know anything that you don’t.’ He said, walking stiffly past Wilson and up into the ship.
‘Hang on. What do you think you are doing?’
‘I’m going to have a look around. Are you coming?’
‘But we don’t know that it’s safe…’ Wilson protested weakly. The empty ship made him feel scared and he couldn’t explain why. Since the moment he had spotted the dark green blip of the incoming signal he had experienced an odd feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. ‘We don’t know why it’s empty.’
Mack paused and turned back to Wilson, making no attempt to hide his contempt. ‘You’re right. You don’t know anything.’
Wilson felt the focus of his fear shifting. ‘We… we should wait for the inspectors to… to arrive.’
‘Yes. Yes we should.’ Mack raised his left hand and starting wagging an accusatory finger at his bureaucratic adversary, his face turning red and ugly with anger. ‘And that is what you would do because you are a coward. A yellow-bellied hollow shell of a man with a misplaced ego large enough to smother your pathetic weaknesses in red tape and excuses. Pah! Arguing with you is a waste of my time. Do what you want, I’m going to look around.’
Wilson watched as Mack disappeared into the shadow of the ship, drenched in nervous sweat, his heart racing wildly and erratically with the effort of enforced confrontation. He looked around the vast expanse of the otherwise empty hanger. There was no-one watching. He felt his trepidation being transformed to rage. How dare he! How dare Mack talk to him like that! As if he was nothing.
I’ll show him, Wilson thought, I’ll show all of the engineers and pilots and, yes, even those darned drones. Dropping the clipboard to the floor of the gangway and clenching both hands into determined fists, Wilson followed Mack into the darkness…

a discussion between monkeys

2010-03-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

"It is a common misconception." Hutton Ambo removes the pipe from his mouth, stabbing the air with it to emphasise his point. As he is currently in the body of an eighteen year old who has barely fluff on his chin and upper lip the action is both more irritating and ridiculous than usual. I roll my eyes.

He puffs on the pipe and coughs, his new lungs untrained to accept the stink of the cherry shag tobacco that he insists on polluting us all with, before he continues.

"It's not that consciousness is a quantum activity in the sense of the brain's physical position in the universe, like some would think. That there is some special effect at work in the structure of the human mind that somehow gives it consciousness, or even life. It's more pervasive than that. The whole universe is alive, what Professor Rucker called pan-psychism. We are merely bubbles that erupt from the underlying quantum foam of thought that is at the heart of every particle of matter. That is what allows us to travel between universes, what we call parallels, by the sheer effort of thought. We are slowly training out wavelength to a new frequency, one that slips us through the brane separating the parallels and into the specialised host body waiting for us."

"Yes, but what I wanted to know is why is our the only parallel to have developed the technique? Why do none of the other monkeys seem to be able to do it?" I look to the girl who has asked the question. Her mind really isn't much older than the teenage body she is in; her first mission and clearly uncomfortable, she's provoking the debate and pushing Ambo's buttons in all the wrong ways.

"Well, that's simply not true." Ambo replies. "There are many agents who have come from different parallels. We do try to reduce the amount of interference and limit the knowledge of the ability to travel. We don't really know what the effect of large amounts of inter-parallel travelling would cause."

"That's why we focus on cleaning up our own mess and, occasionally, that of others." I say. Time to bring this to a close and back to the mission. "We aren't evangelists, these other parallels must be free to develop as they would."

"So long as they don't break our rules." Ambo says.

Face First

2010-03-03T14:49:00.000-08:00

The force of the fist smashing into my face drove me against the side of the ship and I crumpled down the cold metal to the wooden floor. In apparent slow motion the man came towards and heaved me upright by clenching a huge fistful of my hair and tugging until I rose, gasping with pain. I could feel blood dampening my cheeks, mixing with the tears that coursed freely down my face, diluted drops that dripped nonchalantly to the floor.

The man peered closely at me through my swollen vision and I cowered in anticipation trying to raise my hands to protect my face but failing to find the strength to move. His face was contorted in violence, his features unrecognisably human.

'That's enough.' A woman's voice broke through the rushing noise of blood racing around my heightened system. 'Back off for now.'

The last was ominous, threatening a resumption of hostilities, and I could see that I had a painfully narrow window of opportunity.

The man crossed rapidly to another part of the room and came clumping back with a stool for me in one large, manicured hand and a brass mug of water in the other. I perched, protecting the base of my spine which was throbbing in a most unpleasantly insistent way, and took the mug, sniffing it before I drank.

'Are you ready to talk?' The woman asked. She moved into my line of vision as she spoke and I realised with a jolt of recognition that I knew who she was. Her face betrayed no knowledge of me, however. Perhaps I was still safe.

I nodded. She smiled, inclining her head in a gracious invitation for me to continue.

My mind raced as I pondered, trying to work out strategically what the best thing to say would be. But I was taking too long and the woman's fixed smile began to slide away. She started to physically move away, nodding to her tame thug as she went.

'No, wait!' I yelled. She turned back to me, her satisfaction apparent.

'Go on.'

'I'll tell you whatever you like. Just keep him away from me.'

She frowned. 'What do you mean? You'll tell us whatever we like? We just want the truth.'

I drew a deep breath through sore ribs. 'Would you recognise it if I told you?'

The woman flinched. Unexpectedly I had scored some sort of point. But then her features composed themselves back into her former resolution and she shrugged.

'If you're telling me it doesn't matter then you are telling me that you don't matter.' She said simply.

I wished I had her composure but both of us knew how important this was. We were dancing around each other, hesitating to be the first to give anything away. And, somehow, I was expected to convince her to change sides.

I began to think that I should never have said yes to the old man...

Chewed up and spat out

2010-02-28T06:35:00.000-08:00

I chew the gum cautiously, wincing at the bitter taste seeping through the mint overtones. The engineers assured me there is no risk of it exploding without the chemical stimulus of the detonator, but they've been wrong before. I curse the rules that say we can only use appropriate tech for the parallel we are active in. If it's not nanotech the engineers seem to treat it like some kind of game, an academic experiment in antiquity. As soon as the gum turns sweet I extract it from my mouth and push it gently into the lock. I take the packet of cigarettes from my pocket and pull one out, checking it to make sure it is one of the ones that I need. I lick the paper wrapper and gently break it apart. I tease out the dark, thin thread hidden within it and push it into the gum. Next I take off my watch and wrap the thread around the diver's face which I twist ninety degrees. A push of the wind-up knob sets the timer going and I quickly run around the oversize desk and duck behind it.

Unseen by me there is a fizzing and a sharp crack. I wince. I'm hoping the sound of the party below will cover up the noise of my break-in but there are plenty of guards patrolling around, keeping an eye out for people like me. I lift my head over the desk. The safe door is open, a small wisp of smoke caught in the moonlight crack of the curtain. Running back to the safe I start to explore its contents, pocketing the jewelry, putting the folders with documents to one side. The theft of the trinkets will help to provide a cover for my real reason for the burglary as well as inject some much needed local cash into the project's coffers. I spread the documents on the desk and begin to quickly identify those that might be of use. Plans for rockets, buildings and other assorted hardware, signatures on deals and contracts. I quickly photograph them all and then scatter them around the safe to give the impression that the have been discarded and thrown to the side. It won't fool the Professor, but there won't be enough evidence to prove we were here, either.

I clip the camera back onto my belt buckle, rearrange my bow tie and brush down the tuxedo jacket. I check the hallway outside. Still no-one. I need to get back to the party unnoticed and get out of here before the robbery is noticed. Always the fun part. A door opens and my hand slides to my gun. Agent Kowalski steps out of a side room, messing her hair a little. I take her arm and, turning the corner we begin to stagger down the hall with our best drunken walks. It's all going well until we reach the stairs to almost walk straight in to the guards forming a wall blocking our path. Behind us the Professors gentle voice speaks.

"Kill them."

Kowalski and I both launch ourselves at the guards, drawing our guns, but we are too slow to get off a shot and, deafened by the sound of shots, we fall. The pain and blood mix into my senses into a single flailing cry of annoyance.

Back at the base Kowalski, now back in her normal body, is cursing. Staggering around the office space as she paces through the adjustment exercises. I watch her, waiting for the hangover kick of the transmission to peel away before I start my own exercises.

"Not only did we not get anything, he also knows we are here. He's going to find the bloody camera and know it was us."

I shrug.

"We can still pull the images from my mind. Won't be as good, but it's something. And the Professor would have known anyway. It's not stupid."

Jung, the blue brain consciousness currently in charge of us, watches from his screen silently. He's a patient one, and he already has a plan in place, I can tell from looking at him.

Emancipation

2010-02-22T15:07:00.000-08:00

Jace stood on the shore, his bare feet balanced on the slimy seaweed of the wet rocks, as the waves pounded against him. Spray leapt in his face and made him blink. Even the saltiness of the water couldn't wipe away the large grin that split his face as he looked out over the expanse of rough sea.

Away in the distance, littered casually on the far horizon, land promised a new life. Jace could clearly see the green hills leading away into a future time.

Toes curled against the coldness of the waves, hands held in iron fists against his hips, Jace contemplated the distance from where he was to where he wanted to be. He sighed. There was no way he could swim it, he thought slowly to himself. A boat though, a boat could make it.

Without looking around Jace could picture the handy logs and planks washed up against the nearby beach. Long fronds from palms and scraps of rope from shipwrecks could hold the wood together. At least for long enough.

Jace could see himself sailing through the dawning mist, eyes forward, never looking back, his hand firmly grasping the makeshift tiller as he steered his way towards the welcoming land.

Behind him, dogs barked.

He didn't need to turn to know that they were close now. Jace closed his eyes, focusing on the moment when he would first reach land, the tentative step on to the sand, the slight stumble as the surf rocks the now pointless boat against the occasional pebble.

The path leads on, up a gentle gully and into wilderness of ferns. Small birds twitter in the foliage and he can hear singing over the next rise. It is a woman's voice, young and free, sincere yet filled with good humour. He can't see her yet but he feels that he knows already how she will look. How her face will glow when she sees him emerge.

The dogs are closer now, they are snarling and yelping, trying to tangle with Jace and yet restrained. Jace can feel the hems of his trousers wet with their slobber.

'Jace, Jace, Jace.' A voice, confused more than angry, shatters his thoughts. Returns him to reality. 'Come on now. You know you shouldn't be here.'

Jace turns then, the smile faded from his face without a trace remaining except in the deepest secret part of his soul.

As they returned Jace to his cell, locking his manacles back to the bare stone wall and securing his grated door with additional, stronger locks, the senior warder pauses in his work and looks, long and hard, at Jace.

The warder is old. He has been here for longer than he cares to remember. He has been through more wives than he cares to forget. He doesn't understand this prisoner.

'What I don't understand is why you keep trying?' he asks in a polite voice. 'You know you won't ever get off this island so why keep going?'

Jace pauses before he replies, though this is a question he already knows the answer to. 'I want to be free.'

The warder frowns. 'But you'll never be free. They'll never let you go.'

Jace smiled, the thin lipped grimace of a man who has known happiness but not recently. 'When I stand there, with the wind in my face, my feet feeling the rough rock beneath them, when I stand and look out at the horizon, the thin strip of dark blue all those miles away...'

'Yes?'

'Well, then I feel free. Even if it is only for the shortest of times.'

The warder shook his head and finished turning the final key in the shiny new padlock. 'You realise that one day you'll find that you can't get out there anymore. We'll have locked you up good and proper for once.'

Jace turned his face to the walls so that the warder could not see his tears and shrugged as if he didn't care.

Pana

2010-02-21T06:02:00.001-08:00

pana pana

the call issues from a smile with a wave of the hand.

behind it dark water laps gently, stretching across the wide surface of the lake to merge with the low mist. malo mayo. the start of the rains. the too perfect cones of dead volcanoes slowly drifting into reality as they rise through the fog. the smell of diesel and the rattle of ancient engines invite me to leave but i am happy here.

the dull cyclic repetition of swimming and beer is enough. when people, strangers, talk to me i smile and spin them the story; the car accident that explains the scars, the need for peace and quiet. occasionally i go for a run along the lake edge, past the suspicious eyes of the women clothed in thick black and the opportunist shouts of the children. un peso. i laugh and run faster, leaving them behind.

sometimes i go out on the water, taking the hotel's little plastic shell of a boat with the tourists here to dive. riding along the water, wet suits and air on, leaning in to keep the weight of the tank inside so we don't fall off until the engine is cut and we roll backwards two by two. dropping though the dark, the strange feeling of the hot mud where the earth's skin is too thin, the feel of the pipe of hot water as you swim through. not too often. the murk of the water leaves me claustrophobic with the memories the ride can dredge up.

i'm lying in the hammock with the pynchon i managed to claim from some young college student. i glance up to take in the new arrivals. one of them is checking their phone with annoyance. no signal here. only hardline. a figure throws out a rucksack from under the tarpaulin covering the roof of the little ferry. a subconscious hidden markov model flags up a warning and i watch the man climb out of the boat with growing concern. i know him.

i have six exit routes planned. but with a sense of inevitability, even curiosity, i sit and wait. if he had come to kill me then he would not have come with the tourists. it's part of the message; parley. he looks over to me, his legs firm on the slippery wood of the jetty, and nods. i sit up, struggling with the sucking gravity of the hammock, feeling very out of shape. i want to run. i want to slide the knife strapped to my back clear and hit him before he reaches land. instead i place my bookmark on my page and reach for my beer.

he lifts his pack onto his shoulder and walks past me, following the others to where the young guy on an expired visa waits for them, ready to check them in and find them a bed in the varied wooden accomodations spread across the steep hillside behind the bar. i take another sip of beer and wait. this cannot be coincidence.

within a few minutes he is back, carrying a beer of his own and a packet of cigarettes.

mind if i sit down.

i wave my hand and he takes this as a yes.

how did you find me.

you got caught in the corner of a photo, uploaded, we found it eventually. followed it up with sat before i came. surprised you're still here.

i like it. it's a hard place to leave.

he looks around. yeah. he takes a sip of his beer and lights a cigarette. i can see that. blue smoke catches in the afternoon breeze. he reaches out a pocket pulling out a small metal box, dull and brush polished. a black square comes to life on it with a swipe.

know what this is.

i shrug.

i brought a linkup with me. i control it from here. i can turn it on and bring you on service again with a brush of my finger. it's keyed to me, of course.

so why don't you.

i'd rather you volunteered.

Whimsy

2010-02-19T05:06:00.000-08:00

So there I was, numb, dumb, and unable to move.
And flying.
Below me I watched in confusion and awe as I flew, feeling nothing that would indicate that I was alive but knowing that I was not just alive but awake and aware.
I couldn’t feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on my back but I could tell that they were there as I could see below me the fuzzy shadowed outline of my shape. I appeared to be a cloud.
Somewhere within my brain a tiny bell rang and I thought, a-ha.
I was beginning to remember something. A glimmer of memory, a tiny shred of elusive knowledge, that may or may not lead to elucidation. It began with an argument, or a heated discussion. Perhaps it was only a conversation but one that was weighted with a heaviness of importance and significance beyond the meaning of the actual words.
And then my brain grew quiet and all that remained was the ability to see what was below me.
I was flying over fields and meadows. The early spring flowers punctuated the green sprigs of growing crops with tiny pixels of colour. A stream rippled away from me. Light reflecting from the cool morning sun flashed brightly as the water trickled unstoppably to its final integration.
Grey haired rabbits emerged from dark brown holes of homes, white tails bobbing in a teasing target practice risk.
No! I must think, not see. I must remember why I am here rather than… well, rather than wherever I usually am. Wherever that is.

Funeral

2010-02-14T13:08:00.001-08:00

Stringer's mother stands, looking down at the grave. The wind whistles and gasps as it tugs at their clothes, the few spare trees, the words of the priest. The old man had been a bastard but one look from his mother had warned him never speak ill of the dead. Despite everything the old man had finally broken the only contract that matter to her. Now she is left keeping a contract with the dead.

The graveyard is untended, overgrown. The weathered stones, pocked with the spreading stains of lichens are scattered like chess pieces. The church wall is hidden behind blood-coloured ivy and dark vermillion moss. Tall grasses, yellowing in the Autumn sun, rustle. Barely a couple of hours back and Stringer wishes he could be gone again. But something wrong has happened. Something that no-one will tell him about. They fear him. He has become an outsider, he feels it in himself as much as the ragged, furtive stares of the village.

Moral Neutrality

2010-02-09T03:58:00.000-08:00

‘Arnie!’
The shout reverberated urgently around the chamber, falling on deaf ears.
Arnie’s head slumped forward, his foppish blond hair flopping lifelessly over his slightly protruding eyes. His hands were fixed to the controls in front of him, knuckles tight white against the silvery metal of the grips, flesh literally bonded to the machine.
‘Arnie? What’s going on in there? Arnie!’ Bill continued to shout but Arnie just wouldn’t move, wouldn’t respond. The glass layer between them began to fog with Bill’s vocal moisture and a deep sensation of physical panic started worming its way through his body. He banged on the glass, feeling it bend slightly under his strength. Still nothing. It was time to get help.
--
The man who responded to Bill’s breathless phone call did not give his name as he entered the control room. He grunted at Bill in combined recognition of his presence and his status and then strode confidently straight over to the glass panel.
The man, dressed in an anonymous civilian suit of dark blue with a light blue shirt and striped tie, peered myopically through the clear glass. For a moment it looked like he was going to reach up and touch the glass, trying to form a connection through the barrier, but then he hesitated and turned back into the room. The full force of his questioning stare came to rest on Bill.
‘What happened?’ he asked, the first time that Bill had heard him speak and the voice was unexpected. It was a weak voice, tremulous and uncertain as if the man was searching for words from deep within limited resources.
Bill blinked. He didn’t really know where to start. ‘He just stopped.’ It seemed so inadequate as an answer and, from the look on the strange man’s face, he wasn’t the only one to think so.
‘Just stopped?’
‘Yes. He was operating as normal one minute and then the next thing he’d just, just stopped. Suddenly he wasn’t doing anything anymore.’
‘No warning? No message?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘And it’s never happened before?’
‘No. Arnie’s been a good worker. Never any problem at all, let alone a complete breakdown like this.’
‘Arnie??’
‘That’s what I call him. He’s an R-9 model after all. It just seemed to fit.’ Bill looked into the enclosed chamber, hoping for some sign of movement from the android on his throne, some twitch in the thick wires that connected Arnie to the computers that fulfilled his directions.
...

System fall

2010-02-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

Fifteen years out. The array of sensors poking out from the shield send an electrical pulse to the core which takes the decision to begin the rotation, turning the engines to start the deceleration of the starship so that it will be slow enough to be caught by the gravity of the growing, pinprick yellow sun. As the engines cycle through their tests before they dare to reignite, the rows of tanks buried deep within the protective shell of the ship are filled with gelatinous growth mixtures while three thousand zygotes are checked for flaws that would cause them to be discarded. Eggs that pass the test, that have not been damaged by cosmic rays, radiation or age, are injected into the gel along with the alchemical mix of fluids that will prompt the growth of the cells into humans.

The core, meanwhile, starts its slow communications with the chaperones leading the way. Over the course of months evidence is checked and rechecked, compared with the observations taken at the start of the journey, two hundred years distant, and corrected. Aboard the pathfinder vessels robots are readied and prepared; on arrival, five years before the starship, they will fall into orbit around the largest gas giant in the system and begin to dismantle several of its moons for raw materials. These will be used to construct the station habitat and the mining equipment required to extract the brief flickers of anti-matter generated by the collision of the sun’s rays with the power of the gas giant’s magnetosphere.

By the time the humans are fully grown, and the neuronal and chemical components of their brains encouraged into the configuration of the memories of their original bodies, their new home will have been constructed, their starship gently nudging itself into a local parking orbit, ready for them to disembark to their new lives.

Daylight

2010-02-02T04:05:00.001-08:00

Camille sat on the fallen tree trunk, caressing the ruffled bark with smooth fingers. Around her a single shaft of strong yellow sunlight threaded into the forest clearing. She felt warmed by its caress. Sparkles of fragments of dust twinkled in the strangely harsh exposure of the ray, wafting in the draught, floating in haphazard patterns of fall.
Her visitor introduced himself with nothing more than a grunt of acknowledgement. Camille stood up, reluctance visible in the exaggeratedly slow movement of her muscles, and moved tentatively towards him.
Grmph stood two heads taller than her and was covered from top to bottom in a thick and matted coat of dark green fur. His limbs were long and heavy, powerful blocks of potential violence, his face hidden beneath the slightly more delicate feathering of his facial fleece.
Camille stood detached from him, looking up into the general area of his face with a forced smile, and opened her arms in welcome.
‘Thank you for coming.’ She started, pausing until he nodded, wanting to make sure that she was being heard. ‘I have a job for you.’
Grmph tipped his head to one side to indicate that he was hearing her, that he was listening.
Camille’s heart was racing, adrenaline pounding her body into frightened numbness, but she couldn’t say what she was scared of. It wasn’t of Grmph, he was reasonable in his violence, a creature that would only unleash the power of his body for a good, or well paid, cause. She knew also that she shouldn’t take his ineloquence as a sign of lack of intelligence.
It wasn’t that she was scared of what she was asking him to do either. The job simply had to be done. There was no choice. She had thought about it ceaselessly for days and unending nights and had come up with no other way.
‘I want you to kill my father.’ She said, her voice shaking resolutely.

Ambassador

2010-01-31T07:43:00.000-08:00

A dusting of snow lies on the just-frozen surface of the water garden. A bird flies across the surface, landing briefly in a display of all four of its wings before launching itself back into the air. The sky overhead continues to lighten, the weak, yellow sun occasionally breaking through the low cloud. I sit on the cold wood of the observation deck, a tea slowly cooling in its vacuum cup, the steam rising elegantly from its bowl. To be asked to sit here, to wait, is something of an honour and a test.
There is a sound like the tearing of paper behind me and I slowly turn to see Weran coming out form the door to the main complex. He is short for a Renonsian, only seven foot, but he has all the casual elegance of his species that always makes me feel inadequate to the light gravity of their moon. He clasps his forearms together in greeting, bowing slightly to expose his rear wings. Although they are not able to support any Renonsian in flight they are elegant, well-looked after, the feathers falling along his back in a short cascade of muted colours.
“Ambassador.” He says, in English. I understand their language well enough to be able to speak it flawlessly, the twenty year flight gave me plenty of time for study, but they always insist that dialogue be conducted in our tongue. None of the reasons that I have heard have convinced me why.
Behind Weran another Renonsian emerges, taller, dressed in the light armour of their warrior caste. Finally, I think. This is turning out to be a very interesting day.
I have seen many soldiers while I have been here. Although they nominally fall under the command of the civilian authority they conduct themselves with a disdain for any that are not of their caste. The civilian administration defers to them in a great deal, although there is a separation of concerns between economics and politics that has been proving particularly difficult to navigate.

Fred

2010-01-29T06:00:00.001-08:00

Fred woke up one morning and could see nothing but colour. It wouldn’t have been so bad, it didn’t sound so bad, but it wasn’t just the colour of now he could see. The memory of colour became visible to him also.
Streaks of colour, stripes of shades, swam in front of his confused eyes.
The only way he could get out of bed and make his way to the en suite bathroom was by working out how dense the lines were, hoping that the denser the colour, the more permanent the actual thing behind the colour. His wardrobe formed a relatively solid block of dark blue for him to steer around. The open door to the bathroom was signified by a dark patch, particles of light blurred across the darkness so that even this wasn’t firmly delineated in his sight.
Running water from the shiny grey reflective mass of the cold tap, shards of reflections glittering out across the sink in a bewilderment of rich jewels, reached more by touch and memory than sight, appeared like a fractured stream of individual drops of silvery blue moisture. Pink blurs represented Fred’s hands. He felt the water in the normal way, the shock of the cold subsiding in the growth of familiarity. Pooling the vibrant liquid in the palms of his alien looking hands, Fred splashed his face, hoping for reconciliation with what he expected to be reality.
A blur of stubbled pink in the vague outline of the place where the mirror usually hung reflected what he assumed to be his face.
He tried to peer at himself, screwing his eyes together in an imitation of seeing, but this made no difference. The straggly lines of colour were all around him, surrounding him in movement, drowning him in visual stimulation.
Fred felt okay. He didn’t feel dizzy or disorientated. He didn’t remember banging his head or feeling any different from normal. So what was going on?
In the bedroom, which seemed like another world away, Fred heard his alarm go off with harsh tones. It took him some time to negotiate his way back to the relative safety of his bed and to knock about on the bedside table to find his alarm. On the way he cursed his habit of leaving his worn clothes in haphazard piles across the floor, they were now like traps waiting for his unlucky feet, tripping and trapping his surprised toes.
Fred sat on the bed, sighed, then lay down and closed his eyes tightly. Wanting this to all just go away…

terror, even when overcast

2010-01-24T09:41:00.001-08:00

You see, I was there. All you know, you saw on television, through the internet, blurred with commentary and idiotic rambling by people who knew nothing about what was happening. Filling others’ ignorance with their own base desires and cravings. I didn’t see any journalists, just the suffering. I can only think that the journalists stayed away, reporting by looking inwards from their hotels and the fly-over footage provided by the UAVs while they stayed safe in the knowledge that no-one could possibly contradict them.
I was going to work. It had already started and none of us standing on the platforms knew. I had seen it and not understood.
The sky is always open, even when patterned with the flowing underside of clouds piled over each other, sliced by the arcing paths of darkly silhouetted birds. It is the sky of a flat land, not hemmed in with hills or mountains, stretching and filling the mind of those willing to look upwards. The shapes above tear and fight leaving wounded pictures of emptiness. Only when the tram arrived did I look down, back at the earth.
I was jammed against the doors once they closed, as usual. Trying to avoid the press of strangers bodies, find enough space to be able to place my feet in balance against the jagged movement of the tram. I turned myself around to look through the window, through the condensation forming on the glass, at the speeding scenery; The blank spaces between people melt. The tram passed under the twin concrete flyovers of the M62. The gap between them a grey shaft of light punctuated by the upward flight of a startled pigeon and the illumination of an inane and brilliantly coloured graffiti. Beyond it the industrial estates, the tarmac retail park, the endless lines of garages selling cars hidden behind industrial scrubland.

It was as the tram descended into Manchester that I realised the colour had gone. Then the tram stopped, shaking to a sudden halt with the application of the emergency brake. The carriage mood split into annoyance and the usual expectation of shoddy service. Then the doors opened. I almost fell out. After checking that there was nothing coming that might injure me, and irritated at the way I had almost fallen from the tram, I jumped down already composing the letter to the company in my head.
It is not so simple a thing to describe. What happened next, I mean. A few on the tram had followed me down. The rest were stoic, watching me from the window with impassive faces. Looking down the road towards Piccadilly I caught sight of its head, rising and falling above the buildings. A shade of non-colour, almost the same as the sky but of a different light, a feeling of reality broken and ground under foot. A daikaiju imagined by Escher. Then it screamed, crying with a scent of destruction, dust billowing around it even as the scream began to try and infiltrate my own mind. It feels now like it was a reflexive, animal instinct that caused it to destroy the city. It was not a judgement, or a warning. It was not summoned by some ancient Mayan treasure brought to the museum, or physical experiment at the university. It wasn’t some super-dimensional rift caused by City’s win in the derby. Watching it I knew that it had always been there. We had just never seen it before.
I turned and ran.

Moving On

2010-01-20T04:02:00.001-08:00

Marie checked herself out of hospital after too few days. She was bored and frustrated with everything around her from the plastic coated sympathy of the nurses to the few awkward visits she had received from her fellow police officers. So she decided to go home, so that she could think and plan.
Unfortunately her wounds had not healed. As she dressed, and even more so later as she walked, the thin scabs of the many stab wounds across her back and arms would rub against the material of her clothes and she could feel the fabric begin to cling to her with the grim dotting of blood stains.
Marie ached all over, not just where she had been stabbed but everywhere. She was bruised from the attack and felt belittled by its ferocity. And the worst thing was, she told herself over and over, that she hadn’t seen it coming.
She should have known, she should have seen. Or so she argued to herself.
It didn’t matter to her that everyone else told her that she couldn’t have predicted the attack. It didn’t matter that he had been under the influence of a brain altering mechanism. She had seen him coming and she should have seen the danger in his eyes. Had she begun to see him so little? Had she got so slow and complacent?
As she reached the door to her flat she paused. The door to his flat door, which was opposite hers, was closed to her forever now. It accused her, standing as it did all firm and locked up. She could almost hear the scream of the void on the other side. He wouldn’t be coming back, the fish had done irreparable damage to his brain, and to a great extent he wasn’t really there anymore anyway. And it was her fault. Or at least, it was her responsibility.
Marie sighed. She pulled her own flat key from her coat pocket and was just about to insert it in the lock when the door flowed open before her. Her heart started jumping wildly in her chest and she felt dizzy. An instant of panic widened her eyes and her head pulsed with the pain of frustrated control.
Before she could actively think what to do next she had stepped mechanically into the room. Then she stopped, half turned to flee, an anger rising through her from her gut to her grinding teeth.
A man stood with her back to the door, oblivious to her presence, unsensing of her anger.
Marie noticed a couple of things almost simultaneously. The first was that the intruder appeared to be feeding her fish – not the most obvious occupation for a criminal with malicious intent. The second was that the shape of the back, the way the shoulders were hunched high into the neck and the faint ripples of muscles stretched the fabric of his shirt, was achingly familiar to her. She slumped a little, letting out her held breath.
She wasn’t sure whether this was worse than she had initially imagined.
“Jon?” she asked in a voice weak with emotion.
The man turned and she saw that she was right. It was her ex husband, in the flesh, looking slightly greyer than she usually pictured him, older and more tired. He said nothing, appraising her in return. She avoided his face and instinctively started looking around and about the apartment, knowing that something was missing. Too hurt and tired to be hopeful.
“Where’s Toby?” she asked finally, watching his face now as a wave of emotion swept across his features. This didn’t look good. Marie felt for the door handle, using the cold metal as a crutch.
Jon looked down at his feet, a crimson flush spreading over his white face. “Our son is missing.” he muttered quickly.
Marie felt the world ripple underneath her feet. A veil of ivory lace fell across her sight. She decided that she should sit down.

Anomaly

2010-01-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

Arkady shuts down the lights leaving the tiny cabin space absolutely black. The thin curve of glass, reflectionless, leaves only the vacuum and his own thoughts. His eyes slowly become accustomed to the pinpoint rainbow of stars. Up ahead he sees the distorted crescent of Saturn, the arc of the rings just visible. There is no sign, using only his own eyes, of the anomaly. He sits back in the contour of the chair, letting the dark purity of the vision soak into him, drawing up memories of his uncle’s farm, lying on his back watching the stars in the slow spin of Earth.
He hears the grind of the door behind him as someone spins the lock. Arkady remains still, trying to lose himself in the last moments of silence, to disappear, before whoever it is comes through and disturbs him.
“Arkady? You in here?” A woman’s voice calls out; Klein. The chief of the science crew. Arkady sighs and grunts a response. He gets up and switches the lights back on as the heavy, white door slides open. “I need to talk to you.”
Arkady turns to face the scientist. She is young for her responsibilities, made her name in studying the anomaly and eventually a Nobel prize. She has a European prettiness, stretched by Martian childhood, that does not carry into photographs. Her blonde hair is cropped short, framing a strong jaw-line. Arkady will occasionally admit to himself that he has a crush on her.
“What is it chief?” He asks. “I was trying to catch some relaxation. It has been a long shift for me.”
Arkady has been overseeing the work crew repairing the starboard array after it suffered a micro-meteor strike a few days before. The physical damage was not so great, the structure being reinforced by carbon nanotubes to the best spec available, but some of the electronics were hit leading to a long stretch of fiddly work replacing parts and testing them. Arkady, in years of accumulated time in space, has learned to despise electronics.
“I’m sorry, Captain. I think this is important, you should come see it.”
Klein deigned to call him by his title, Arkady notes. Not a good sign. He follows behind her as she navigates her way along the corridor to climb down the ladder to the low centripetal gravity of the ring where the labs and living quarters are arranged. Within a couple of minutes he is looking at a screen painted against the lab window. The three junior scientists are studiously watching their own monitors and ignoring them. It is easy to see what Klein wants to show him; he can see the large cluster of bright red icons flashing and mutating around the location of the anomaly as it slowly spins around the window.
“What am I looking at? Has something changed?”
Klein raises a fist and pulls it towards her, causing the screen to magnify on the anomaly.
“It hasn’t just changed. It’s moved. Not far. But it is accelerating.”
“Towards us?”
Klein shrugs.
“Of course.”

Warmth

2010-01-13T05:13:00.000-08:00

Blue-green waves lapped up against the sun-warmed sand, frothing slightly around the point where solid and liquid clashed. Joe looked down at his toes, bright orange in the deflected sunset light, and wiggled them.
“What are you doing?” A harsh, high-pitched voice broke into Joe’s thoughts and dragged him reluctantly back into reality. He turned to face the voice.
The sand led back calmly to the edges of a palm tree fringe. Tall scalloped trunks reached up into the deep blue sky, topped with massive dark green fronds that swayed languidly with height not wind.
It was, all in all, an idyllic desert island. The affect was spoilt only by the metallic gash across the beach that led to the mangled pile of debris that had been their transport. And the leaping, shouting, bloodied form of Joe’s companion.
Pwjlk was finding the sand too hot to stand on so was hopping from one of his four feet to the next in strict rotation. In consternation and anxiety Pwjlk was waving his two upper arms in the air while his two lower arms clasped and wrangled each other. The crinkled, layered face was beetroot red against the pale yellow of its skin and the single eye was stretched wide and unblinking.
“What are you going to do?” Pwjlk screeched again.
Joe sighed. He looked back out again to sea but there was nothing there. Only the faint streak of black smoke vapour trail in the sky remained to signify where they had come from.
Pwjlk hopped awkwardly down to the ocean’s edge, sinking slightly into the wetter sand but finding no relief in the relative coolness there. He looked up at Joe from his full metre high height. Joe patted him on the head and Pwjlk flinched.
“We wait.” Joe said simply. “We wait and see what comes next.” He started trudging back to the wreck of the ship.
“What if ‘they’ come?” Pwjlk yelped, running after Joe and pulling at the shredded remains of his jumpsuit.
“Then they come. We can’t do anything about it if they do.” Joe paused and frowned in thought. “Well, maybe we can see what survived the crash. You never know. We might get lucky.”
“Hmph.” Said Pwjlk. “Not likely though is it.”
Joe smiled. At least a cynically grumpy companion was better than a panicking one.
The wreck was still smouldering and Joe grimaced, remembering the instant of impact before they had started their enforced descent, searching through the still hot metal for anything that might be salvageable. He still couldn’t work out what had happened, what it was that had hit them and brought them so abruptly down. He did know that they had been in the middle of nowhere, looking down upon an unbroken expanse of blue ocean. So this island had been a very lucky occurrence. A chance in a million. His stomach knotted with the bitter sensation of disquiet. It was too much of a coincidence wasn’t it.

Colour

2010-01-11T00:03:00.001-08:00

Light scores the horizon. The sky is a faint grey bleeding to the palest of blues. The promise of a clear Winter morning. I let the net curtain fall back over the condensation-edged window.

I fill the kettle with water and click it into its dock, flicking it on. The kitchen side is cluttered with dirty cups and plates. The old, laminated surface bubbles with age and damp at its edges. Brown stains reach through the black and white pattern in the plastic. The curling grind of the kettle slowly joins the stereo hum of the boiler and fridge.

Raising the curtain again the sky is lighter. Grey is the wrong colour. It is white, but not yet bright enough to be true white. On the edges of the roofs and walls the snow takes on the luminescence of the sky, reflecting it with a deeper, crystalline blue.

Winter Hunt

2010-01-03T10:35:00.001-08:00

A melody of snowflakes plays across the large cockpit window. The Captain steps from around the wheel, passing control with a touch on his First Mate’s shoulder, moving forwards into the bubble frame of the window. Some of the snow catches and melts against the glass, some sticks in little piles. Beyond the flickering white leaves there is only the dark, grey sky. To the Captain’s senses the rest of the world has disappeared. Only their instruments tell them where they are.

The Captain sighs, lightly, rubbing a finger along his forehead, wiping at the irritation where the band of his cap clings tightly.

“How are we suppose to find anything in this?” He asks. Neither the First Mate nor the navigator bother to answer. Each just keeps their eyes focused on the panels in front of them. “Sergeant.” He calls out.

A young, squat man with dark hair and a scar running along the side of his face, distorting its natural and beautiful symmetry, enters through the heavy door that passes joins the cabin to the rest of the command gondola.

“Sir?” The Sergeant asks.

“Fetch me the passenger. Tell her we are in need of her assistance.”

The sergeant does not stop to ask which passenger, even though there are more than twenty civilians and a small platoon of Red Army soldiers on board. Only one would be summoned to see the Captain and only one is a woman.

Bees (7)

2009-09-28T12:28:00.001-07:00

MICROFT was built without the ostentation and affections I gave to HOLMES. He is a tool of the government and, although I designed his brain, I gave him a more serious practicality than my own detective. With the Home Office scientists helping me it seemed harder to justify gimmicks such as the metal face and pipe for expelling excess steam like a man deep in thought. Instead, MICROFT’s pipes are tucked away behind panels and lead away, dispelling the effluence of the computer into dark sewers nearby.

I know that since I first built him, and further developed him in the war years of 1914 and 15, he has been expanded and enhanced by the team of younger men dedicated to him. I am, however, unprepared for the extent of the change. Bigger, I knew. The small screen fixed with simple brass bolts to his surface was something new. I had heard of the technology, a television, but had never seen it. On the grey, snowy screen the features of a stern, jowly old man peer out from an over-size white moustache; the very picture of English sensibility. The figure grins at me and I realise with a start that this is MICROFT. A speaker, hidden behind a delicate wooden grill, crackles and the familiar, deep voice spills into the room.

“Watson, my dear fellow” He says. “It’s good to see you. How long has it been? Ten years? Fifteen.”

I nod, still slightly in awe.

“Things have changed, eh?”

“They certainly have. I’m not as young as I used to be,” I say, shaking the cane in demonstration of my fragility. “And you have certainly grown.”

It offers a small bark of a laugh. This is a device well beyond the primitive imaginings of HOLMES and I find it slightly terrifying.

“Your new face is particularly remarkable.” I say.

“Indeed. I felt it would help me project a more human, trustworthy air for our masters. Sometimes I felt that they would not take my suggestions as seriously as those of a person in a suit.”

“I would have thought your successes in Germany would have been enough.”

“Memories are short. And the dangers are greater than ever. This is why I’ve asked for you, Watson. I fear that it is only you that can help me now.”

Summer

2009-06-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

Rock encrusted with dead grass and moss. Dry, brittle, a tired, old scene of late summer, the harsh buzzing of insects, the heat heavy on the soil. Brakeman leans over the wooden fence and pulls the flask of warm, brackish water to his lips. He sips gratefully and with a grimace, his lips and tongue flickering like a pale amphibian to stop any of it escaping.

His throat feels like it will work again and he coughs, gently.

"What are you doing?" He asks.

The boys stare at him, a mixture of awe and fear. Brakeman is the stuff of their nightmares, fed up on half-heard tales of vengeance whispered amongst the older kids.

UFO

2009-01-04T12:53:00.001-08:00

The first feeling I get is one of inquiry, a gentle interest like that of a Buddhist monk looking to understand the world that is in front of him by simply sitting and watching. Then the lights start to move away, a spiralling and intricate dance leaving a smell of dying autumn leaves. They shrink, briefly illuminating the clouds, and suddenly disappear in the dark sky to leave only after-images, the fading false glow of memory.

The sight has been increasingly common, reported on local news channels across the world, but it is still dismissed by the major nationals, apart from Fox who have run it as a nut piece. No-one understands it yet, no one has thought about it enough yet. The truth is, people seem unwilling to really acknowledge that it might be real. Fear, I guess, keeps it hidden in plain view. Despite all those films the truth we all know is that alien invaders would win. Apple computers, cold viruses and good, old-fashioned, human ingenuity will not win us a war against creatures so advanced that they could probably just wipe the planet clean of life and start again if they chose.

2008-12-14T08:33:00.000-08:00

Johan's long, heavy face is dark and angular in the bare, red lighting of the pod. We are hanging in space, nearly a kilometre from the <<la terre sans la ciel>>, only a thin but incredulously strong cable tethering us to the bulk of the space craft.

Flickering on the glass the image of Saturn fills our vision, overlaid with real-time infrared pictures of the aurora. It is beautful but incredibly unnerving to watch. The blue streaks reach out, sketches of magnetic waves that should not be behaving in this way, red hexagonal shapes below mapping out the nothern pole of the planet with an alien isometric view. None of it looks real.

I wave my hand over the overlay, and begin twitching my fingers to pull up files and videos from half a century's worth of compiled data on this phenomenon. It flies over the screen in waves, from the earliest, laughably low rez videos of early probes and Earth-based scopes, through to the latest purpose-built flyby cameras. The maths underlines it all with records of patterns that should not be natural. This is not a view that Johan shares. Look at pulsars. He has said to me many times. Before we understood them they seemed to be messages from other civilisations, we couldn't imagine otherwise. But the truth is nature can produce very many strange and unusual things that we do not yet understand.

Even aliens, I mutter under my breath.

What? Johan asks.

I smile and shake my head. How are we doing? I ask. Time to get back yet.

Feeling exposed?

Hanging around like this? Yes, I feel exposed. I know we need to collect the data away from the ship to avoid interference from the drives, but do we really need to be here too?

Johan laughs. He is a much more physical kind of person that I am. He has to be here, I can sense that. Simply seeing this thorugh a camera would never be enough for him.

nanowrimo 4

2008-11-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

An unexpected interlude requiring more work...

The monk breaks into an even larger grin and bows in return. Together they walk back up the path, chatting in broken Chinese and sketching out the occasional Sanskrit word in the air in front of them in order to learn more about each other.

The monk's name is Geshe, Wei learns.

The monastery is larger than he expected. It is built of thick, whitewashed walls that seem to erupt from the earth itself, with small red-framed windows and ornamented eaves.

Li spends a few weeks with them, discussing the sutras, enjoying the debates that form the basis of their teaching style, and learning too about the strange beliefs that accompany their faith. Sometimes it seems like they do not follow Buddhism at all, but then a phrase or an expression will turn his misconceptions on their head and affirm their understanding of the Mahayana to be at least as deep as any Chinese priest. It becomes clear to him that their understanding of the psychology that Buddhism propounds is deeper than any school he has previously come across. Yet he can't help feeling culturally adrift, cut off from familiar practises and even his own language. Eventually it is time to leave.

nanowrimo 3

2008-11-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

More unpolished work...

The crowd is warmed and ready. They have listened to what has been said and know that it makes sense. They have seen the ghostly Christian missionaries come, offering their food and their books of magic to those fools willing to listen and lose their souls to the foreign magic. Big Brother raises his hands.

“These devil princes and their slaves carry weapons that we are supposed to be afraid of. They have defeated the weak armies of the Manchu's but they cannot withstand us. They cannot harm us. We are protected, because we are strong. We do not touch opium, or alcohol or tobacco. We refuse to become slaves.”

Ho'Er knows that this is his cue. His chanting becomes louder. He presses his hands together in front of his chest, his first fingers outstretched. Suddenly he leaps up with a scream and begins his demonstration, leaping with his own well practised kicks, his face an expression of possession and the demon he has become. Reaching the far end of the stage he halts, becoming still once more. The crowd cheers his skills and inside he feels their faith and strength. He has no fear as the young Red Lantern, springing on her tiny feet, climbs up onto the stage, a rifle slung over her shoulder. The crowd fall silent. Even those who have heard of this act are quiet, faced with the reality of the weapon.

The girl raises the rifle to her shoulder and swings it towards a clay pot carefully positioned on the edge of the stage next to Ho'Er. She squeezes the trigger and a firework pop is followed by the sharp crack of the clay collapsing, pieces flying with the bullet's impact. Ho'Er increases the speed and volume of his chanting once more. The crowd is as still as he is. The Red Lantern tilts the weapon towards him and he looks again into her eyes. This is not the first time he has looked down the barrel of a loaded gun, looked into the eyes of the one aiming it at his heart, but he does not have any fear. He knows that he cannot be harmed. Even if there has been a mistake and the bullet loaded into the gun is real the gods know that he is fighting for them and they will protect him. She pulls the trigger.

Smoke pours like liquid from the barrel. Ho'Er raises his hands and turns to the crowd triumphantly. They are cheering him, cheering Big Brother, cheering the Red Lantern girl. Nothing can defeat them.

Nanowrimo 2

2008-11-09T13:13:00.000-08:00

“That's right. His full name is King Earth Treasure of the Great Vow. Do you know what the Great Vow is?”

The two boys shake their heads.

“He is the most perfect of the Bodhisattva's. He resides in hell to try and bring enlightenment into even the worst of hearts, the most terrible of places. He has forsaken his own Buddhahood until he is able to bring all beings, even those so lost in hell that they can never be freed, to enlightenment. He was born a young girl who prayed for her mother to be released from hell after she died. Finally Buddha granted her wish to go to hell to see where her mother was. Her mother had already been released, thanks to the girl's efforts in accumulating merit, but while there she saw the great suffering of all the other beings trapped there and made her vow. Are you capable of such a vow? Can you strive to learn from King Earth Treasure and bring enlightenment to all beings?”