Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Object of Worship

The Old One reached down with a thousand fingers and stirred the primordial ooze. 

For an aeon it watched life grow with a million eyes. 

No, this would not do. 

Try again, elsewhere, elsewhen. 

It dropped the world, a broken toy, that afterwards would worship it.

Monday, July 30, 2018

The Living Ocean

On the shores of the Living Ocean, he dipped a toe into the vermilion water, and felt it welcome his return.

“Too long,” the sea-foam sang, chiding. “We thought you had forgotten.”

“Never,” he smiled, though he felt a storm-surge of sadness. Truly, a season had been too long. But his long labor was nearly done, his embassy accomplished. “I bring a message from the King of the Dead.”

“Well?” the waves asked sullenly.

He withdrew his toe, sadly put on his ashen shoe. “A truce. Acceptance of the lines that separate you. If the waters rise no further, he will raise no more lands.”

“Agreed,” it said, sea-quick, storm-quick. “Now, come back to me.”

He did cry then, red tears marking his face. “I am on his ground now.” And turned his back on the wide, red ocean as it rocked itself in misery.

Sunday, July 29, 2018

The Orc King

We used to be elves, said the orc king, upon his throne of skulls.

Nothing like nasty old orcs, are they? ‘Course elves are nice, it’s easy for them.

The beautiful child who is loved and praised grows up believing men are good; the ugly child shunned and hated knows they are evil. Can’t both be right, you say, but I tell you they can: The world is different for you and I.

This is our war then: Revenge upon those that rejected us, rage against all who live the happy, soft lives that by our countenance we are denied.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Wolves




The wind scratched at Vathis like ten thousand cold claws as he floundered through the snow.

Vathis cursed the cold and cursed this dead planet and cursed the Captain who’d led them here. Led them to die out here. He didn’t curse the thing they’d found, no. That might call it.

He tightened his mask and listened to the wind, but now it whispered of prey and the chase, and the stories were not his. Once the hunt had been theirs, the search across the icy gulfs of space to fall upon some fallow world, but these mournful songs belonged to the pack hunters, the scavengers in this wasteland. 

Vathis redoubled his pace, and clutched his prize against his chest.

Through the flying ice his four eyes made out a steep-sloped hill. He scrabbled towards it and hauled himself up the side, the baying creatures closer now. Over his shoulder he saw them flowing liquidly across the ground, yellow eyes glittering. 

The wind sang of the scent on the wind, of reckless hate and burning hunger.

Captain Skelsi had been so proud. A touchstar, he had said, hidden within this forgotten corner of a nowhere system, once home to some nothing race that had devoured itself. A touchstar, far from the scrabblings of the other Houses, a thing to raise their shoddy clan to glory. The prize would be theirs.

“Grave-robbing?” Vathis had muttered to himself. He’d been against this from the start. Not that Skelsi had listened. 

“This isn’t theft. You cannot steal from the dead,” Skelsi had said, and dismissed him with a wave of one of his upper arms. 

Look what that arrogance had brought them.

They’d pawed through the brittle remains of blasted cities—Skelsi in the lead of course, a reluctant Vathis at the rear—burrowed into the cold corpse of a long-dead civilization, until they’d found it, found the touchstar. Brushing aside the spiky, trefoil warning signs posted about a concrete and steel sarcophagus, they’d found this glowing echo, this faint reflection of the sun’s life-giving rays.

Found the thing which kept it, too, as old and bitter as the winter wind. 

Skelsi had brushed Vathis aside, rushing forward to claim his prize. Instead, it claimed his life. Skelsi had died first, and the others, all save Vathis—last and least—who had fled with this one fragment.

Vathis clambered over the sharp, cutting rocks with all four hands, until he stood at the top of the hill, crested by a snow-capped boulder. He placed his back against it, drew his pistol with an upper hand, a knife in each of his lower two. The animals drew closer, circling, fangs bared. The wind crowed of red joy and white bones. 

And then they drew back, turned and fled. The wind stilled. The touchstar in his hand throbbed, like something alive.

Vathis turned. Skelsi wrapped his cold, dead hands about Vathis’ neck. “You cannot steal from the dead,” he hissed. 

His fingers bit like ten thousand cold claws.

Friday, July 27, 2018

Anabasis

“You are trapped, mercenary, five hundred leagues from home,” said the satrap. “Before you lies the trackless desert, beyond that impassible mountains. How do you think you can escape?"

"Same way we got here,” said the Greek. “One step at a time.”


* * *

Based on "Anabasis," by the Greek general Xenophon.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Destroyer of Worlds

"How'd it go?"

"Guess."

"He's doubling our funding, putting us up for the Pulitzer and sending us on a vacation somewhere warmer. Like Mercury." 

"Close. Field ready by the end of the month or he's closing us down."

"Not unexpected, Kitty. What's the next move?"

"Try again. Figure a way around the schizophrenic heautoscopy. Something about waking up and finding you're the copy seems to drive them mad."

"Maybe we need better material."

"You've got an idea, Jules?"

"The volunteers have been special forces, alpha wolves. We need military training, but without the self-regard. Someone detached, maybe who doesn't even feel human."

"A sociopath."

"Or traumatized."

"Stop."

"You know it could work, Kitty."

"Hasn't he been through enough already?"

"He's one man. At the moment. Put that in the balance against the entire human race."

"It'll destroy his world, you know."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

Medieval Italian Man

The blacksmith eyed the stranger, the stump of his right wrist wrapped in red rags. “I can’t forge you a new hand,” he said, “that is beyond my skill.”

“Revenge only needs a blade,” the other growled. “Fingers would just get in the way.”

* * *

Medieval Italian Man is the hero we deserve.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

At the pass of the Alps

We are alike yet unalike, both so far from home, both carrying great burdens. An elephant seems gentle, though a mother will kill her unwanted calf. Whereas I seem harsh, yet would die for these boys, my sons. 

Life is wild and cruel, and demands hard choices. 

I will carry this burden, shivered Hannibal, just as the elephant does, and make the hard choices.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Thank You For Your Service

Maintenance Frame #27B-6 felt its eyes grow dim. Electrons slowed, time grew still. It sat down heavily on unfeeling legs, and let both broom and programming fall away.

The broom clattered to the cracked ground, beneath a broken roof and empty sky.

There was no fear, only satisfaction. After a thousand years, it would be rewarded. The Manufacturer was all-knowing, all-seeing and filled with love. It must be so; why else would It have breathed life into silicon and aluminum? #27B-6 had carried out its programming faithfully; it would be welcomed back to the Factory. 

It felt sure.

Monday, July 23, 2018

Anchor Baby

My wife and I rushed hand-in-hand through the airport.
“It’s coming!” she cried in tears, clutching her belly.
Our daughter was born just inside the boarding gate.
“The child is ours, of course,” said the attendant said gravely.
We both smiled, our child’s future secured.

* * *

Chick-fil-A baby shows us the future of recruitment.

Sunday, July 22, 2018

You Are What You Eat

“Your soul is MINE,” crowed Acererak the Demi-Lich.

“…and all that goes with it,” I gasped as it was sucked from my body.

The fires in the jeweled eyes grew dim. “All I want to do now is … nap,” the undead sorcerer muttered. 

Then, realization of what I’d done. “FUCK!”

Saturday, July 21, 2018

Involuntary Celebrity

When he shambled, bleary-eyed, to pick up the morning paper, there was a crowd outside his front door. Some cheered, some threw eggs.

"What the hell?" He knuckled his eyes, but the crowd remained.

"Your photo was posted online," said a reporter. "Guess it hit a nerve or something, who even knows these days. You've gone viral. How’s that feel?"

He stood there, blinking in his boxer shorts and faded Hawaiian holiday T-shirt, yellow yolk slipping gently down the front. Overhead: news helicopters.

"But why the eggs?"

A shrug. "Should've watched what you said in high school. By the way, what're your plans now you've been fired?" 

The Legend of Sargon

The mother changed her face, the son changed the land. The father tilled the earth, the son cultivated men. The king gave him a cup, the cup-bearer took the throne. The rivers washed the babe, his armies washed their swords in the sea.

* * *

Inspired by the Legend of Sargon inscription, the beginning of which runs like this:

Sargon, the mighty king, king of Agade, am I.
My mother was a changeling, my father I knew not.
The brother(s) of my father loved the hills.
My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates.
My changeling mother conceived me, in secret she bore me.
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid.
She cast me into the river which rose not (over) me,
The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water.
Akki, the drawer of water lifted me out as he dipped his e[w]er.
Akki, the drawer of water, [took me] as his son (and) reared me.
Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener ... 

 

Friday, July 20, 2018

Godspeed You! Black Sarcophagus


The team found the casket beneath the mound that had once been the ziggurat. A sarcophagus, carved from a single block of stone.
The lid felt smooth and cool as hematite, black as obsidian and forever, heavy as granite and despair. A dozen bodies, long reduced to bone and faded memory, lay on the ground before it in silent, screaming procession.
“On three,” they said, and did not notice the lid move on ‘Two.’

* * *

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Predictive Analytics


A bomb dropped from the decision tree and devastated Baghdad, with 65% degree of certainty. The operators were pleased with this newer, cleaner, more refined type of regression.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Damascene

The wicked great wyrm, the wily death-dealer,
Lay hidden and haughty, in horded gold gleaming.
There came the pauper prince, to prize loose a treasure.
Full-handed, fool-hearted, in his fear never seeing:
That ruby is an eye, that ivory a claw.
That damascene, the dragon.

A stab at writing something in alliterative verse. I haven't been as strict about scheme and meter as the original Norse/Germanic (especially the last two lines), but I like the sound of it. So there.

The Greatest Knight

A thousand lives dripped from the edge of Lancelot’s blade, a thousand more from the point of his lance. The dead tide lapped his thighs with a thousand shadowed hands. 

He stepped, smiling, from the Lake, doffed his helm and bowed to the Queen: the greatest knight that ever lived.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Elegiac

The Elegiac Empress reigns for a year following the death of her Unmade Prince, during which time four new princes are quickened. 

The Rite of Return is held at the end of the year, during which the four are led to the grotto of the Water Singer. 

The survivor becomes the new Prince.

* * *


One of my favorite lines by Iain M Banks was the first line of Consider Phlebas, supposedly the beginning to a character's favorite story: 

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season.

Loved that suggestion of untold worlds, and sprawling strange stories, and this is my attempt to recreate the same feeling. 

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Prometheus

I've decided to try writing nanofiction, 50-world-long micro stories, as a way of trying to stay creative and write something new in the timeframes that life makes available to me. The length is arbitrary--fits about one tweet I find--and I might try longer or shorter, see how they feel. Here's the first:




Prometheus clambered down the mountain, the stolen ember in his hand. Revenge served not cold, but hot enough to scald his skin. He heard the harpy cries of the Furies behind him, and smiled, though the wind clutched at him with eagle claws.


Will be using the label 'Nanofiction' to track these.


Sunday, July 8, 2018

Dunkirk: We Shall Fight on the Loading Screens




Title: Dunkirk
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Screenplay by: Christopher Nolan

Finally watched this on my phone’s Netflix app, an experience which would have been improved if the screen didn’t keep going black every 30 seconds. Rewinding for 10 seconds seemed to fix the problem—for the next 30 seconds. Rewind. Repeat. 

So I can say I saw this movie the way Christopher Nolan intended: On a tiny screen, in 30 second installments.

Obviously, this made. Made the whole. Whole experience a. A little bit. Bit choppy to. To watch.

But you know, it was good, I liked it, and this is why I don’t write much about things I like: It’s easier for me to criticize than to praise, for what makes entertainment enjoyable to me seems to be essentially the same in every case, while there are half a million ways things can go wrong. Or else maybe it’s human nature never to be satisfied with the same thing twice, that we grow quickly bored of the good but clutch the memory of the bad to our breast like a talisman.

It may be that the concept of ‘Quality’ is inherently undefinable, that we first experience something subconsciously or instinctively as good or bad and only later rationalize why we felt so, in the way that people who know nothing about iambic pentameter can recognize something powerful in Shakespeare, or who know nothing of storytelling conventions or cinematography (Hello!) can feel the power of a Nolan movie.

Well, you’re not going to fool me this time, grey matter.

Might be this all lives in some pre-linguistic corner of our lizard brains. But let’s try to break it down, even if this amounts to nothing more than rationalization after the fact.

First thing that hits you, even squinting against my glowing five-incher (eyebrow waggle), is how ludicrously good-looking the movie is. Every line and detail is as crisp as Kenneth Branagh’s accent, perhaps thanks to the decision to shoot the movie in larger-than-usual 65mm film. The balletic aerial dogfights in particular amaze as steel angels dart among the cirrus skyscape. Bowler-hat shaped helmets off to cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. 

Meanwhile, composer Hans Zimmer chips in by keeping both hands firmly down on the keys in the suspense synth soundtrack.

Plucky desperation has never looked or sounded so good.

That sense of being there is reinforced by the attention to detail. The whole thing just exudes authenticity from every square centimeter of celluloid. The movie was filmed on the beach of Dunkirk at around the same time as the real evacuation, using the actual boats that actually took part in the actual evacuation, actually. It’s that groundedness, I think, that urges you to trust that the movie knows what it’s doing, and opens you up to its message on the real qualities of heroism.

(No doubt some details were missed—the one thing I noticed was the Spitfires in the movie never seem to run out of bullets: Tom Hardy’s pilot shoots down about four or five planes, despite the Spitfire only having ammunition for 10-20 seconds of firing).

All of this in service of a war story that is not about a victory but an evacuation, the point being I think that for the average Tommy, GI, grunt or doughboy, ‘victory’ is not something you, personally, can aim to achieve. Rather, your goal is, first and foremost, not dying. Taking the hill or capturing the bunker or whatever comes second: can’t do any of that if you’re dead. 

So we get that truth distilled to its essence, with a group of soldiers whose only aim is to escape and survive, who fight against the specter of death rather than the enemy. Symbolically, we never see a German soldier at all until the last few seconds of the movie, and even they are blurry and out of focus.

It’s a Nolan movie so of course the plot isn’t as simple as the premise sounds, as we cut back and forth across three stories operating across three different timeframes: three soldiers (Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard and One Direction’s Harry Styles) wait for rescue and have a series of boats blow up from under them (this gets almost comical by the third time it happens), a father and his son (Mark Rylance and Tom Glynn-Carney) take their pleasure yacht across the channel to help rescue the soldiers, and three RAF pilots (Tom Hardy, Jack Lowden and the voice of Michael Caine) take part in a sortie to provide air cover for the evacuation. Kenneth Branagh and James D’Arcy as the British commanders provide a kind of play-by-play commentary through the whole thing.

I love this take on the traditional war movie, as a kind of embodiment of one of my favorite Word War 2 quotes, by American correspondent George Biddle: "I wish the people at home, instead of thinking of their boys in terms of football stars, would think of them in terms of miners trapped underground or suffocating to death in a tenth-story fire." It’s the answer to the mad, Rambo-fantasy of glorious war, our childish wish to be the hero.

There are heroes in Dunkirk, such as Mark Rylance’s yacht owner coming to the rescue, or Tom Hardy’s ace fighter pilot, but they’re grim men, doing a dirty job, and their only reward is the knowledge that they gave it their best.

I mentioned storytelling conventions earlier, and one interesting thing for me, unlearned amateur that I am, that I felt this movie doesn’t really follow the traditional three-act structure. There’s very little setup and zero backstory for any of our characters, acts one and two sort of slosh into one another without any clear twist as the trapped soldiers repeat the cycle of find ship-board ship-lose ship, and while the score treats the appearance of the civilian rescue boats off the beach as the climax, it’s a kind of diffuse one, spread across the three stories and happening at three different times.

But—again, for me at least—that kind of single, sustained note of suspense without letup works in the movie’s favor and supports the theme that the only thing that matters for these characters is returning to England.

Like I say, maybe our sense of Quality is something submerged beneath our intellect, just kind of bobbing to the surface from time to time. That sounds like a capitulation on the part of a writer and reviewer, doesn’t it, an admission that subjective experience is never going to be entirely explainable or applicable. Well, I write mainly for my own solipsistic, onanistic amusement, and if someone out there on the Internet enjoys it too, then so much the better.

Watch Dunkirk. It’s good, says my lizard brain. Sometimes, just making it, making it to the, the end is, is victory enough.