Lexie's space (without content advice!)

Pulling Cable (III)

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 10:03:00 -0400

—I turned away, clutched at the edge of the sink, both hands gripping tight, biceps trembling with the sheer effort of I didn’t even know what. Looking straight down, not seeing the sink, not seeing my hands, not seeing anything really. I fought a sudden wild urge to take my hands off the sink, dig my nails into my own forearms, carve long bleeding scratches there—that, anyway, for a start, and keep going from there till there was nothing left. It felt as if something was clawing its way out of my guts already, so why not meet it in the middle?

“Zeb—” Angry? Frightened? Frustrated? All three? I couldn’t tell. I heard it in my own voice, but it wasn’t a voice I knew. “I, I can’t—” I pried one hand off the sink, took hold of the adjacent doorjamb. It felt like pulling myself out of a hole. Like dragging myself out of quicksand, or maybe a tangle of bobwire. I still didn’t know why. All I could think was, go anywhere else, figure out the next thing then, just get out of there—

Somewhere behind me, I heard Zeb sigh. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

It shouldn’t have stopped me because nothing should’ve stopped me but it did. I could feel the old wood of the jamb creaking under my grip, or maybe it was just my knuckles.

“Look at you. You’re shaking. I can see you’re shaking.”

I could feel it. The muscles in my back and shoulders were stiff, hard knotted, screaming. I was tearing myself apart. I wanted to tear myself apart. I wanted to rip the house apart, I wanted to, I didn’t know—just anything but this—but I couldn’t move, I couldn’t—

“—agh Jesus!” I yelped, slapping at my chest as a sudden spike of pain stabbed through me. Real pain, not stopping—Zeb’s hand there, under both of mine, I could feel surgical steel between my knuckles, between his fingers—my nipple, the piercing, he’d snaked his arm around my side and grabbed my tit and was squeezing— I batted his hand away and rounded on him, instantly furious, not even sure what I meant to do next, and—

—and he was grinning. The bastard—

“What the hell, Zeb! That hurt—” I reached out—he ducked my hand easily, dodged sidewise with the same grace I’d seen before, and suddenly was right up on me—I didn’t see the slap coming either, and—

“There you are.”

“Wh—what?” I shook my head, blinked my eyes clear, looked down into Zeb’s face looking up at me. He had green eyes, I saw. I hadn’t noticed before.

“Where were you?”

“I-what? Where was—” I thought back, trying to make this make sense. Where had I—oh. Barbed wire. Quicksand. Clawed fingers, sinking my nails into my own flesh, muscles tearing apart other muscles, blood pooling to drip—”ah, God damn! Would you—” Another stab of sudden agony like an ice pick in my tit. The other one this time, and he was twisting it—

“No! Stay here!” It was Zeb’s voice, but it wasn’t a voice I knew. I clutched at his hand on my chest but didn’t slap it away. Couldn’t, hell—I could’ve picked him up and thrown him if I’d wanted. Didn’t want to. My fingers twitched, tightened on his wrist, whether to pull his hand away or urge him on I didn’t know, and he loosened his grip before I could find out. Didn’t let go, though. I looked down again. He wasn’t smiling now, and in his eyes I read a warning.

“Stay here,” he said again. “Or I’ll—” His free hand darted toward my fly, and I twitched involuntarily back, and then he did smile in a way that—I had a foot and sixty pounds on him, and the bathroom door at my back, only one of us naked and it wasn’t me. Sure. And he still scared the hell out of me with that smile. Like ice down my back, and an answering warmth rising up out of my belly—

I leaned back against the doorjamb, and Zeb moved with me. It made me feel a little more trapped, and that made me smile. “Okay,” I said, chuckling. “Okay, I’m here, all right? I’m here.” The barbed wire, the quicksand, the torn meat and blood of me, all still there—but now as if circling at the edge of the light, wanting what lay within but not quite bold enough to dare being seen. I felt like laughing and didn’t know why. “You’ve got my attention. What’d you want it for?”

Zeb smirked. “Not for me. You idiot.” He poked me in the tit, right where he’d pinched me a moment before, and it stung like hell, and I laughed. “You were all tied up in knots. You’re not now, are you? That’s what I wanted. You. Thinking. And what do you want?”

I shook my head. “I don’t get it. Thinking what? What do I—?”

“You don’t get it. You will, though. What you were doing to yourself a minute ago.” He grabbed my nipple again, and the ring through it. It hurt. I didn’t mind. “Don’t go back there, or—” He gave a warning squeeze, and my breath caught behind my teeth. “But think about that. Think about why.”

I could stop him, I knew. Right now, easy as anything. But—he had a point, didn’t he? Why had I—it had felt like hell. It had been hell. Why’d I want to do that to myself? I mean, I didn’t want to do that to myself, did I? Pain was one thing, but that—and it hadn’t been the first time, either. Other friends, people I knew, who’d taken a similar interest, and I’d—oh, it hadn’t been so obvious, I thought, but then it hadn’t been so close, either, and what the hell was I fighting with anyway? In myself? Why tear myself apart so, over—

—times we’d been with friends, and she’d—times I was happily in conversation with people we both knew, and—but there weren’t so many of those around these days, were there?—and hell, the first time we’d met, she and that friend of hers, they’d—and what the hell was all this?—I’d met him, hadn’t I? Still living together when I came along. An angry man, I’d thought, angry and frustrated and—frightened? You could see something was tearing him apart, and—what had that been in his eyes I saw when he looked back at me? Was it—barbed wire, quicksand, the torn meat and blood of him, and all because—

“Oh, bullshit,” I breathed, and heard it in exactly a voice I knew. “Oh fucking bullshit—”

“Yeah,” Zeb said.

I reached my hand up and rubbed my face with it like coming out of a dream. I wanted to laugh, or maybe cry, or maybe both at once. Something hard against my face. Smooth, firm, dragging at my eyelids, shoving at my lip—

I pushed Zeb aside and grabbed the bar of soap. The miserable thing didn’t want to come off, and it hurt where it squeezed my knuckle, but after a little while there came the clink and clatter of titanium bouncing off porcelain, as the ring came to rest half under the sink stopper. The skin where it’d lain felt wet and hot and sore, and my face in the mirror was red and puffy as if I’d been crying, but the air was cool and kind.

“So, Nick.” Zeb said, standing at my shoulder, green eyes in the mirror boring into mine. “What do you want?”

Fire in my belly—I turned away from the sink, feeling the muscles in my back and shoulders bunch as I reached down either side of Zeb and plucked him clean off the tile, naked legs dangling till I pulled him in tight against my chest and belly, one arm under his narrow ass, other hand hard on the back of his neck, pulling his face into mine—teeth grating as I drove my tongue over his, biting at his lower lip as he melted against me, the taste of his mouth and the salt of his sweat and the incredible heat of him—

(1392 words)

Pulling Cable (II)

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 09:40:00 -0400

“Fiberglass, huh?” I didn’t need to look away from the road to know Zeb was smirking when he said it.

“Well, did you want me to tell him the truth?”

“No! But…did you have to make something up? You could’ve just said we both needed a shower.”

I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “I guess…I just felt like I had to, I don’t know.”

Zeb didn’t say anything for a while, and neither did I. We hadn’t talked much on the ride back from Patlex, but this felt different somehow, and it was kind of a relief to turn off onto my street and park—kind of a relief, and kind of not, too.

“Shower’s upstairs,” I said a moment later, pointing needlessly at the stairs directly in front of us. Zeb glanced at them, then looked at me. “Door on the right. Uh, you want to go first? I, um…”

I don’t know what I’d have said next, if Zeb hadn’t gone upstairs. Probably something stupid, I thought, as I sat down to take my boots off. No surprise, though. Never the right word, that was me. And right now, too—well, it had been good, hadn’t it? Scary, a little, but good. But what happens now? I wondered, rubbing my thumb along the smooth titanium surface of my engagement ring, wiggling it back and forth in the dimple it had worn into the base of my ring finger. Especially with—

“Hey, where’s the clean towels?”

I looked up the stairs, kicking myself for forgetting. “Oh, sorry—in the closet next to the sink, top shelf!”

“Oh! Uh…can you give me a hand?”

I kicked myself again. Easy for me to reach, sure, but then I overtopped Zeb by a head and half a shoulder—I should’ve thought! “Sorry!” I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time in stocking feet—

—and stopped dead in my tracks on the top riser. Sure, on the ladder, we’d—but that had been all about soft sounds and gentle touches in the dimness of the plenum, neither of us daring even to move much, and the intermingled scents of dust and sweat and—I hadn’t seen him before. Not, I mean—like—”Sorry!” I yelped again, turning away in a hurry.

Wait, but— I froze at the top of the stairs, suddenly uncertain, still seeing what I’d just seen, marveling at Zeb’s beauty. And—his smile? Had I seen that right? Why would he—? I don’t know what I was expecting to happen next, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a hug. I could feel Zeb pressed up warm and soft and firm against my back. I could feel myself trembling. I knew what I wanted to do. Turn around, and—but I couldn’t, could I? I mean I already had, and that was bad enough, but to—

“I do need a towel, but…we both need a shower,” Zeb murmured, and I could feel his breath on my skin through my shirt and undershirt. “Do you really want to wait?”

I didn’t. I felt like I was on fire. The first kiss felt that way, too, and the second, and then Zeb was undoing my shirt buttons from the bottom while I undid them from the top, and—

(555 words)

Pulling Cable

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 10:06:00 -0400

“Okay, I think we’re set. Remember what I said about keeping it running smoothly?”

“I think so. Pull back with one hand, use the other to get the kinks out, right?”

“That’s exactly right. Now, for this one I think we’re going to need—” I dug around in the bag to find the big plastic bottle.

“What’s that?” Zeb asked.

“Pull lube. Here, hold out your hand.” He did, somewhat uncertainly. I squirted a generous dollop of the thick clear gel into his palm, then laid the bundle of cables atop it. “Then you just—” I cupped my hand under his own smaller one and closed it a little, nudging his fingers loosely around the bundle. “Not too tight, see?” I tugged the end of the bundle so that the blue-jacketed cables ran through Zeb’s palm, going in dry and coming out slick. “And then you just add in some more when it starts coming out a little dry. See how that works?”

He giggled. “I guess so.”

“Feels a little weird, right?”

“Well, you and Mr. Joiner did both say this’d be a dirty job…”

“There you go! You’ll get used to it pretty quick.” Still chuckling, I grabbed the fish tape where it dangled down from the conduit, whipped it through the end of the bundle, and secured it with a tight double bowline. “Last pull of the day. Go ahead and get yourself set and let’s get this done, how about?” I reached out and flicked on his headlight, seeing as how his hands were otherwise occupied and slick with lube in any case.

“All right!” I steadied the ladder as Zeb started climbing. Usually I’d do this part myself, with Hal driving from the other end of the pull. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with today’s arrangement, but Zeb had acquitted himself well enough so far, especially for it being his first time. Too, watching, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that he might have been built to spec for this kind of work—oh, I fit well enough into tight spaces when I needed to, but his short, slender build made it so easy you could see he didn’t even have to think about it.

“Here, pull lube coming up—” I handed up the bottle. “All set? Got your walkie?”

“Yep!” Zeb sang out, half in the plenum and slightly muffled by the drop ceiling tiles we’d left in place.

“Okay, then. Go ahead and get ‘er lined up. Don’t be shy with the lube. Oh, and watch that fiberglass!” It took half a minute to get from the cable closet to the comms room. Two tugs on the fish tape, two answering tugs, and I started pulling. Hand over hand, gentle, not too fast—ah, there was the resistance I’d expected, from the two tight turns in the conduit just this side of the firestop wall. That was mainly what the lube was for, but even with it, the job got harder from here, and I wasn’t sorry for the chance to pause when I felt Zeb pull back.

Once the burning in my biceps had settled some, I gave the fish tape a couple of querulous tugs. Getting no answer back, I took the walkie-talkie off my belt and keyed the mic. “Zeb? You good?” Nothing but static. “Zeb?” Nothing again. Uh-oh. I’d been worrying about him all day, and—empty half-finished building, him up that ladder with no one nearby, no one else here and me not even in earshot, who’d be to know if he— It didn’t take me nearly half a minute to get back to the cable closet, because I was running this time. And all the while, trying not to think about what I was all too sure I’d see—

—and then, skidding back into the closet, didn’t see. A weight left my chest that I’d barely had time to notice was there—he hadn’t fallen, after all, but I couldn’t make out much past that. “Zeb! You okay? What’s up?”

“Uh…help?” Was that embarrassment?

“Sure, what’s—oh.” I’d looked around to see that the smooth curves of cable from the drum boxes up to his hands were anything but smooth now. One of them hadn’t been laid on the drum right, looked like, and instead of running properly it had tangled the others into an absurd snarl that had climbed right up behind him as I pulled and—I stepped up on the bottom rung of the ladder for a better look. “Yep, it got you good all right, huh?”

“Yeah, I heard you on the walkie, but I couldn’t get loose to—” Definitely embarrassed, and it was hard to blame him; he’d got himself into a hell of a spot.

“Okay, just…hang on a sec, let me see if—” Not that I didn’t have cutters, but then we’d need to start the whole pull over, and Hal wouldn’t be too happy about eating the cost of the wasted cable. I thought about trying to untangle it down here, looked over the snarl again, thought better of it; if I tried that, Zeb would fall. Nothing for it but to—

“Listen, I’m gonna come up. You tell me if you start to lose your balance, you hear?” Two on a twelve-foot ladder, I didn’t like it at all, but what else could I do? He’d have needed his hands to get down, and it looked like he had all he could do to stay on the ladder as it was. And even to cut it I’d have to be up there anyway, so…

There was barely enough room to get past the drop-ceiling frame. “This’ll be a little awkward, sorry—” I leaned hard against Zeb’s calves, reached around to grab the ladder and steady both of us, and wriggled myself up that way, inch by inch and all the while with the cables dragging at me and the whole front of me dragging at Zeb.

“Sorry,” I said again, once I’d gotten myself in place and was sure the ladder was stable. Awkward for sure especially with how much taller I was; I had my feet on the rung below his, and still found myself pressed close enough to smell his sweat along with mine. Pressed right up against his—oh don’t think about it, dammit, that’s not going to help!

“No, I mean, it’s okay, just—” Zeb tried to gesture with the knot of cables wrapped tight around both his hands, and that made the ladder wobble.

“Hold still!” I strangled my frightened shout just in time, but even as a hiss it was louder than I’d have planned it to be, with my lips so close to his ear.

“Sorry!” I could feel him breathing, the way his back moved against my chest. Fast and frightened. “I tried to, to unkink it, but—”

“It’s okay, just…go easy.” I grabbed hold of a roof truss with one hand, then let go of the ladder with the other. “This next part’s going to be a little scary, okay? I need you to raise your arms up and put light on them, so I can see to get you untangled.” I felt his shoulders tighten against my chest. “I know, but—here, look up, see this truss?” The spill of light from his headlamp fell on the steel structure. “Can you reach that?”

“I, I think so…” I pulled some slack in the cables with my free hand, and reaching up he was just barely able to get his hands on the bottom beam. “Yep, got it.”

“Okay, now. Hold on tight as you can to that, and keep your light on the cables, okay? And don’t move. I have to see to fix this, and I’m not going to be holding on to anything here…” This was going to have to be dangerous for someone, but at least this way I’d be doing the falling if anyone did. Not that I’d mention that out loud, of course, but—”Oh, wow. Really got you good, here, but I think I can—” I shifted a foot, raised up on my toes to get a couple more inches of reach. You’d think the nerves would make it easier not to think about—

“Ow! Not so hard, I can’t breathe—”

“Sorry, I’ve just about got it here…okay, now, give your hand a yank, and—” He did, helped along by the pull lube that was quickly getting everywhere. The ladder wobbled again. I snatched hold of the roof truss again, then leaned back a little to give Zeb some space to breathe. “Okay. Let’s just…take a minute right here, what d’you say?”

“Yeah, this—this is scary.” He chuckled nervously, and I felt it in my breastbone.

“I know.” I eased down a little more onto the balls of my feet, and took hold of the ladder top with my free hand. Zeb leaned back against me a bit, still holding the truss with his left hand next to mine. “There you go. Deep breaths—we’ll laugh about this later, but for right now…”

He breathed deeply, and I leaned back as far as I could. Partly to give his narrow chest a little more room to expand, partly for the sake of—”Do you think Mr. Joiner will be—?” An icewater thought, that, and at the moment it wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

“Mad?” I gave half a shrug. “Oh, probably.” I felt Zeb’s shoulders tighten—”At me,” I added. “This whole clusterfuck is my fault, not yours, is the way he’ll see it.” I sighed. “That’s the way I see it, too.”

“Do we…” Zeb shifted his weight from one foot to the other. I tried not to think about the way that felt, and thought I mostly succeeded. “Do you have to tell him?”

It took me a moment to answer. This was an option that genuinely had not occurred to me. “Well—I guess we could keep it to ourselves, as long as neither of us gets hurt, but…” I half shrugged again. “I mean, why would we? He’s been mad at me before. Not the end of the world, if that’s what you’re—”

Zeb shifted his weight again. Not from side to side this time—I clutched harder at the truss and threw my own weight forward again, to counter his movement and keep the ladder stable. Oh, well, no hiding it now, I’d just have to—and then Zeb took my right hand off the ladder top, and—oh. Not just fear that had him breathing fast, then. Or me, and I could feel my cheeks turning warm.

“Uh, Zeb, I—” oh the hell with it! My engagement ring was on the other hand anyway. This hand, though—I turned it a little, moved it a little, tilted my wrist against what lay beneath the zip of his jeans and whatever else he wore, and ground the heel of my thumb hard against him. Too hard?—no, from his answering sigh and the way he moved against me, I thought I’d just about got it right.

I couldn’t find anything else to say just then, but it didn’t seem to matter. Besides, it’s hard to talk when you’re biting at the edge of someone’s ear, just for the sake of hearing him moan about it. And anyway, I realized a minute or two later, the bottle of pull lube was right there—

“Hey, Hal? Yeah, just got done at Patlex.”

“Oh, already? How’d the pulls go? How’s the new guy?”

“Went fine! Zeb did great, but we’ll be a little while getting back to the office. He got into some fiberglass, so we’re gonna swing by my place, give him a chance to get it out of his hair.”

“Your place, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s closer. And anyway, I don’t think that brother of his does too good a job looking after his place. A clean shower might be a nice change for him.”

“Sure. Look, you guys started at seven. If you want the day…”

“It’s 1:30!”

“Yeah, and it’ll be, what? Four, four-thirty, by the time you get back here, at least. I’ll pay the hours—you two have done a full day’s work by me. See you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, boss! I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I didn’t get fiberglass in my hair, I figure that makes us even. You have a good one.”

“You too.”

(2111 words)

Crush

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:29:00 -0400

One of my friends has a TikTok habit of late, and recently sent me this one.

Oh, it’s funny, of course. But it also set me to thinking, and eventually I realized why. My first huge crush in high school had a look and a voice and a mien very like those of the man who does all the talking in this video. Same gingery hair, same build. Same air of quiet confidence that you just know is well founded in experience. Same edge of menace so carefully restrained you could almost miss that it was there at all, except that everything about how he carries himself says of course. Of course. That would’ve been frightening as hell if he’d ever aimed it at me other than for play, and I never once was even for a moment afraid that he would. Never once needed to be, and it wasn’t the only thing I loved about him, but it certainly was one of them.

And why not? Lot of people spent a lot of time and effort to put me through a lot of hard times as a kid. Oh, I’d learned to defend myself, eventually—learned over a school year spent in a harder place than my hometown, learned so thoroughly and well that, when I did come home, it only took a couple months for all my old bullies to learn they weren’t going to be bullying me any more. I had learned how to be more serious than they could handle—than anyone could handle—and that was good, that was far better than what had gone before, but it was still hard. I knew I could take care of myself if I needed to, and when I was with him I knew, I knew, that I wouldn’t need to. He was in some ways the most frightening man I have ever known in my life, and some of those same ways were why he was also the most trustworthy. When we were together I was never afraid of anything.

He started his truck with a switchblade, and once put his fist through a quarter inch of oak. Sometimes I’d ride in the truck bed—always volunteered to, after the first time, when there were too many of us to fit in the cab. He didn’t go easy on account of I was back there. Instead he went hard, bounced me off the sheet steel just for the hell of it. Or maybe not just. Sometimes I had bruises after, but they were just bruises, and I never minded. Or maybe I was a little proud of them. For all the swearing I did through the open back window, I never asked him to take the turns even a little less sharply, or to steer away from potholes instead of into them. He seemed to respect that, and of that I was most certainly proud.

His mother once took me aside and very seriously asked me to try, if I could, to rein him in a little, because his parents were worried about him. She took me for a sensible young man, and I didn’t know how to tell her that one of the things I loved about her son was that I never quite knew where things would go next. I didn’t know how to tell her there were things I loved about him. So I said I would try, and then didn’t.

One day later on, after high school, we stopped in on a friend who turned out not to be home, and for the sake of it I climbed up on top of the van he’d been driving since he wrecked the truck. He jumped in the driver’s seat and took it straight to the freeway, had me clinging to the roof rack eating bugs and spitting laughter at sixty miles an hour for however long it took to go from one exit to the next. He and my mother got along like a house afire, despite how fiercely protective she’s always been of me, or maybe because of it. Pretty sure I never saw the need to mention to her that time on top of the Aerostar.

Of course you understand that he could have had me with a word. With a look. But no look and no word ever came and I still don’t understand why. I was out by that time—came out partway through my senior year, not because I had decided to, but because someone asked me a question about a rumor that’d got around and I thought ‘what the hell’ and gave a true answer. Still don’t understand why that, either, but it worked out really well for me. You wouldn’t expect that of a Catholic school, but if it’d been the usual kind of Catholic school I wouldn’t have given a true answer at all. Not long after I came out, the head of the cheerleading squad stopped me in the stairwell and spent a while telling me how brave I’d been, and that she was proud of me. That wasn’t weird at all, either. That was just the kind of place it was.

So it can’t have been that he didn’t know. And we did spend a great deal of time together, as much or more at his instigation as my own—which you also might not expect, unless you remember what it’s like to have a high school crush. Most of the anime we knew about in those days was just Toonami DBZ, on the TV at the bar where we went to shoot pool and play shuffleboard and eat cheese fries after school let out. But years later when I first heard about ‘notice me, senpai,’ I felt it, because I felt it.

Maybe it was just that cherry trees are hard to come by in west Tennessee. Maybe it was that he didn’t see how I felt about him, or maybe it was that he wasn’t interested in me that way. Or maybe it was something else. The only past romance he ever spoke of—most rarely, and something in his mien when he did so strongly discouraged any further inquiry—when he did speak of that love he’d had and lost, he spoke of her. So maybe he saw something in me that I hadn’t yet seen in myself, and would need a couple decades yet from then to even start to figure out.

If so, he’d hardly have been the only one. How many clues do you need?—how many times for something to happen like for a friend to say, unprompted, that they regard you at least as much a woman as a man—before you start to cotton on? In my case, evidently quite a few! So maybe that was it, and he never did figure out what to do about it. Or never did want to do anything about it. But I don’t know if that’s likely, either; it’s been a long time, sure, and nostalgia is a hell of a thing, but I don’t think I am inventing the recollection of something between us that was trying on both sides to be something more than friendship.

He had a copy of Snow Crash, and so did I. I’d read it, several times. He never had. It took me a long time to piece together that this was because he had a very hard time with printed words. It took me a long time because he never talked about it except in the most oblique of ways. He was, I think I eventually understood, deeply ashamed of it, and looking back I think that must belong ultimately to his father. I don’t remember ever seeing them speak to one another, but I remember plenty of times seeing them do the other thing. It was a good book. He’d have enjoyed it as well as I did, I think, if he could have.

I wish I’d thought to offer to read it to him. I don’t know how I’d have thought to say it, or if in that callow year I could’ve done anything by it other than mortify him. Whatever else I was in those days, I was certainly the gods’ own fool, in the way I think only an eighteen-year-old redneck queer ever can be. But maybe, just maybe, if Hermes and Asherah had conspired together to lend their favored idiot a moment in which to speak winged words for the sake of love, I could purely by dint of eumiracle have somehow got it right. Probably not—almost certainly not; with the way I was in those days, it damn well would have needed a miracle, and even a miracle needs a little space in which to be born.

I wish I’d thought to try.

500 words: "Hive"

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 10:21:00 -0400

I lay on my bed for a while, thinking of not very much beyond machines that couldn’t exist, and how to build them. Eventually, I rose and dressed and put on my shoes and went to see the Mad Scientist out of the phone book. Well, it just hollows you out, you know? Life, time, the things people do. Some people, it makes them full—maybe with poison, maybe ambrosia, but full either way. You can see it in them, under their skin, in how they move and talk and be. Not me, though. I’ve had this hole under my breastbone for ages, and every year it gets a little bigger. Nothing else had made a difference, but I hadn’t tried a Mad Scientist before.

I hadn’t expected the wasps, but I hadn’t really expected much of anything. I hadn’t met a Mad Scientist before, and so what would you know to expect in any case? It wasn’t at all like a movie. It was like a doctor’s office, except full of these little bugs flying around all over the place, yellow and red and brown and black. Eventually one got close enough to see it was a wasp. The room was full of wasps. There was a big sign, too.

⚠

CHECK SURFACES BEFORE USING

I tapped my fingers on the back of the chair and a wasp flew away. It didn’t pay me any mind beyond that. None of them did, and why not? Then I sat down and we talked. I explained the hole and the Mad Scientist explained how she could fill it. It might not work, but then again, it might. If it did, I’d be different. There was no telling how. I thought, why not?

It started with a shot, but I don’t mind those. We talked a while longer and then I noticed that there was a wasp crawling on my hand. A yellowjacket, I thought. Yellow and black, small and burly. I raised my hand for a closer look. She flicked her wings once, then turned to look back at me. Confident, but wouldn’t you be? If you could fly and fight like her?

After that we went in another room with no wasps in it and I laid down on a big padded table with a crinkly sheet of paper on top of it. The Mad Scientist said this part made some people uncomfortable, and she could put me to sleep for it if I wanted, but I didn’t and it wasn’t bad anyway. I guess now I know how a bike tire feels when you pump air into it. She did some things I couldn’t really see, that prickled a bit but didn’t really hurt. It was only a few minutes before she let the air out again and said she was done. I felt just like I had before, except for my bellybutton. We went back in the office.

I went over to the same chair and CHECKED SURFACES BEFORE USING, but the wasps flew off this time on their own before I sat down again. The Mad Scientist said this was good. One landed on my hand again. Not a yellowjacket this time. Bigger, much, still compact, but burly. Like if a clenched fist could fly. Orange and red and black and as long as my littlest finger. I liked her right away, and the way she tapped her antennae on my skin made me think she liked me too.

Something Latin I think, the Mad Scientist said, and then: the Asian giant hornet. She looked back at me for a while with her big kidney bean shaped eyes. You couldn’t see which way those eyes were pointing, the way you can with ours, but I knew anyway. She flicked her antennae at my hand a few more times, then flew down and crawled into the small dark round opening that my bellybutton hadn’t been before. She had to shoulder her way in. It didn’t quite tickle. The Mad Scientist said that would get better when the swelling went down.

After a minute she came out, then went back in again. I could feel her crawling up into the hole under my breastbone, which hadn’t been real before. Not this kind of real, anyway. But this was better, not worse, because now the hole wouldn’t be empty for long. The Mad Scientist explained some things. How to look after them, the parts of that they couldn’t do for themselves. I just had to make sure they had what they needed: water to drink, old wood or cardboard to make into paper to make their nest in the hole. Maybe some sugar water, once in a while, once they had a colony going. But for now that was fine because she’d implanted an artificial gland that would secrete a kind of nectar, so the queen could feed without having to leave me. She’d found that already. It felt good, but not like how you’re maybe thinking. I just liked knowing I could take care of someone.

I didn’t think to ask how long they live, but I did some reading later and found out: a year. But they like to reuse their old nests, when they can. So every year, in the fall, I go far out in the woods and find a nice warm grassy clearing and pull my shirt up to my breastbone and lie down for a nice long nap. Like now. It’s really comfortable, and really comforting. They like to patrol near the nest entrance, and when it’s time for the mating flight, they all come pouring out of my bellybutton and go buzzing off into the sky, among the trees, seeking their lovers of the moment, and I just look down at myself and wonder to see such life pouring out of this body I never had much use for, before. The hum of their wings is deep, like an old propeller airplane, and in that moment it’s all there is in the world to hear.

Then later, when the sun’s going down, when it’s almost chilly enough to notice, a few of them come crawl back inside, to settle in and sleep. They don’t need to, I suppose. Winter never touches the little world we’ve made for them, inside me. I think they just do it because they like to, and no wonder. Sometimes I sleep out in the woods a night or two, too, partly to give them all the time they want for gathering wood for paper, but mostly just because I like to. In a little while they’ll wake up, and start the next cycle of their lives, and in the meantime, in the cold months when all the world is asleep except humans who lack the sense to be, I’ll be getting ready for the next cycle of my own.

(1219 words)

500 words: "Gods of Paradox"

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 11:04:00 -0400

She found him right where she expected to—hardly an accomplishment, that; say rather she found him right where she knew he would be. She remembered the day well enough: taking a curb the same way he had a thousand times before, but on a new bike with what turned out to be quite poor inner tubes. Both tires flat in the space of a second—only half a mile from home, not too far, but more than far enough when you’re dragging forty pounds of bike that won’t roll on its wheels any more. That’d been why, when the minivan eventually came along, he’d taken its driver up on the offer of a ride.

She remembered it had taken a while for that to happen. More than enough time for her to get there first, even if the car she’d picked had turned out harder to hotwire than the tutorials on Bitchute had made it seem. And here she was, and here he was. Frustrated, angry, disappointed, embarrassed, sweating buckets—for her, Memphis in August was just a little more than pleasantly warm; for him, it’d been part of why he stuck with night-shift tech support. The pay bump had been nice; the 70° temperatures around midnight had been more so. And, she thought with a nostalgic smile, I met the strangest people, that way… But not yet, and if her plan went off, not ever, at least not in that context. Something of a shame, that, but what would come after made it not worth keeping in any case, or so she thought, and it was after all her plan. Besides, I suppose I count as ‘strange,’ anyway.

Getting him into the car was easy enough, although the bike was a bit of a problem—not that it mattered for long. It helped that tech had been so much bulkier back in those days; hollow out a portable CD player off Ebay and you could fit into it…well, just about anything, really. Certainly the couple square inches of PCB, densely packed with surface-mount parts, that turned out to be all you really needed for time travel—that and a lot of power, but who’d look twice at a CD Walkman plugged into a car’s lighter socket? She’d left the car in gear, but it didn’t matter; by the time it rolled at idle into a lamppost and caught what would be taken to be a totally accidental fire, there was no one inside.

The surprising thing about time travel, she’d found, was how unremarkable it was. No slit-scan style visuals, no sense of falling through a tunnel in space, none of the sci-fi stuff you’d expect; it was just that you were there, and then instead, in the blink of an eye, you were here. Very undramatic, up to now. She’d expected to be in her own workshop, with him in tow and no doubt full of questions; instead, she found herself standing on a flat plane in a vast void shrouded in mist, its emptiness relieved only by three robed and hooded figures which stood facing her from a couple of arm lengths away. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

We are the Gods of Paradox

She rolled her eyes. “Really? Don’t you people usually wear cowls and funny hats?”

We know nothing of cowls and funny hats

“Or humor, apparently. See, it’s a Doctor Who joke, the Time Lords always have these incredibly goofy outfits that…oh, never mind.”

You have committed an act of—

“Yeah, yeah, look, let’s see if we can get this cliché over with in a hurry, okay? I’ve violated the Laws of Time, right? You’ve got some kind of rules about doing the sort of thing I’m doing, and now that I’m doing it you’re swooping in to fuck up my day. You’re basically time cops and this is me getting pulled over for a busted taillight, right?”

We know nothing of cops and taillights

“Oh, come on. Can you please at least speak in a way that’s not absurdly hackneyed by this point? I’m sure you know how many time-travel stories we have where I come from, and this kind is extremely out of style.”

It is traditional

“It’s played, is what it is.”

Look, can you just let us have this

“I don’t see why I should. I didn’t ask to be here, you know. I do not consent to this, this roleplay!”

Jesus, okay, fine, we’re sorry

“You could be more graceful about it, but whatever. So why’d you pull me out of my whole plan? Which went perfectly, by the way. Not that you asked. But it did.”

We had to wait until you succeeded, to avoid influencing the outcome

“Cool, okay. Actually very on model for Time Lords. Do you feel good about never actually doing anything to help anyone?”

Okay, wow, that’s just totally uncalled for

“Is it, though? Do you usually find a more favorable reception from people you’ve just time-kidnapped?”

Well, we are the Gods of Paradox. We can pretty much do what we like. Including finishing what we were about to say a moment ago? If you’re quite through, of course

“Will shutting up and letting you talk help get me out of here any faster?”

Very probably

“Well, all right, go on, then.”

Speaking of bad grace. What we were about to say was, you have committed an act of novelty. Through all of time, no one has ever done what you now have

“Oh, come on. Really?”

Really

“But there’s a million stories about it! Even just in my time—I can’t possibly be the first.”

Why not? Someone has to be

“I mean all right, but how does that work? The tech isn’t exactly obvious, but it’s been possible since…oh, 1970, I guess, even if you’d have needed a room full of computers and a whole nuclear plant’s output to make it work. And that’s just Earth! I mean, I assume there are other planets with intelligent life—”

Well, we’re certainly not human

“And thank you for the overtone of disgust in that statement. But you see my point, right? I can’t possibly be the first. Not even the first to discover the principle; if I were, you wouldn’t be here. And I certainly can’t be the first to try to go back and skip my younger self over two solid decades of fuckups. Hell, I got the idea out of a story that’s older than me! So how does any of this work?”

You’re so smart about time travel all of a sudden, you figure it out, Miss Clever Pants

“…oh. Oh.”

Indeed

“So but wait, hold on. You’ve just told me something—no, two things—you shouldn’t have: that I’ll travel in time again, and that I’ll tell people about what I’ve just done. Neither of those things has happened yet! Didn’t you just say something about ‘influencing the outcome?’ What’s this by you, then?”

Have you seen yourself? At all? Tell us, in what universe can you possibly imagine yourself not doing either of those things?

“You could’ve made that point without the mirror, you know.”

Yes, we know

“But—hang on. Also implicit in what you’ve just said is that—well, you could stop me, I guess, but you’re obviously not going to, if this isn’t the last time I time-travel.”

We could unmake you so completely that you would never have existed at all

“I said I’m not here for roleplay.”

Oh but it’s such a good line

“I mean, yes, but…look, just call me some time if that’s what you’re after. On the phone. Or, I don’t know, email me or something. No snatching me entirely out of spacetime like this again, right? Or at least not until we’ve talked it over properly first.”

Okay, okay

“All I’m saying, you really need to work on your approach. ‘Gods of Paradox?’ Has that ever worked? But look, right now, I’ve already got my hands full. Did you send him on ahead, or what? Christ, I can’t have that little idiot screwing around alone in my workshop, just the look of the tech alone will melt his brain right out of his ears and that’s if he doesn’t touch anything. Which he will, because he’s me! So—”

He will arrive when you do, without any awareness of the interval

“Well, thank you for that, at least. Are we done here?”

For now

“Hey! None of that. Negotiation first, understand? I’ve already thought of three different ways to weaponize this thing—”

You’re hardly the first to think of that. You cannot destroy us

“Who said anything about destroying anyone? I don’t need to unmake you, I just need to make you wish I would. But hey, you don’t have to take my word for it! Keep this shit up and you’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”

…really?

“Oh, for—look, seriously, call me, I’m sure we can work something out. Will you send me back already? I’ve got a long conversation ahead of me and really no idea how to start—I don’t have time for this right now.”

That’s very funny, you know

“No it isn’t—”

Her phone buzzed from where she’d left it on the bench—seemed like a good idea, not taking any more future tech than she had to into the past. Let that get out in the world of 2000, and…three texts and five voicemails? First one…oh, almost two days ago. This was going to take some getting used to. The phone buzzed again with a new text.

Don't worry about paradox btw, they don't work like you think they do

…and three heart emoji. This was going to take some getting used to. How do you have access to all of space and time and still be this thirsty? Not a problem for right now, though; the problem for right now was standing right in front of her, looking like…well, looking just how she remembered feeling the first time she’d gotten into the university’s supercomputing center. Half kid in a candy shop, half someone who knew what he was seeing and wanted all of it. Not a bad place to start, but what to—?

“Yeah, so, we should talk…”

(1751 words)

500 words: (probably) not today (or yesterday) (again)

Fri, 28 May 2021 09:07:00 -0400

So yeah, I’m still pretty much wiped out! I had high hopes Wednesday night of starting to put my sleep schedule properly back together, and those hopes turned out to be rather premature.

I’m still working on fixing that, of course, not least because my natural inclination is to do entirely the opposite and just sleep and wake whenever, with no particular respect to day-night cycles. That’s actually not the worst arrangement for creative work; if you want to write a story that’s set in a world other than this one, being a little bit less firmly rooted in this one can put your head in a useful place for that. Unfortunately, one does also need to make a living, and getting into a state where I’m sleeping 10am to 4pm will not make that easier.

That said, the headspace I’m in is also one I recognize. It’s the one where I’ve got a story idea really bubbling away nicely in the back of my head, and I’m spinning up to start writing it. It would be great to be able to say that that guarantees I will write it! Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily so, and I don’t yet really know what makes the difference. I do know that burning myself out before I manage to properly start writing isn’t going to help, though.

(Neither will being angry with myself because it takes me so much more energy to write than to do the work I do for a living. I’ve been doing that latter kind of work for about twenty years now! It should be no surprise, after so much practice, that it takes me so much less effort. I’m not nearly so good yet at writing, and while it’s easy to get frustrated at how much harder that can be, I’m not being especially fair to myself when I do that.)

So, in order to address all this properly, I’ve taken a couple extra days off work, extending the holiday weekend. I’ve also given myself permission not to worry about writing today, when I have work and other occasions, or tomorrow, when I’m helping a friend with some housework that’s liable to leave me pretty worn out. Whether or not I extend that permission into Sunday—well, we’ll see how I’m feeling Saturday afternoon or so.

The point is to make a proper vacation of it, give myself time to get my head back into place, and head into Monday with the energy and wherewithal I need to start discovering the world in which this new story takes place, and the people who are part of it. In the meantime, I don’t expect to have a lot to say, seeing as that is after all part of the point of what I’m doing with this coming weekend. But who knows?

So you won’t be bored in the meantime, here’s a couple of webcomic recommendations! My Dragon Girlfriend is a sweet, cheerful, and uplifting story that’s pretty much exactly the slice-of-life romance its title makes it sound like, and Sleepless Domain is—I suppose I’d say it’s what you get once the post-Madoka Magica turn toward grimness in magical girl stories starts turning back again. Both are primarily character pieces, which is probably a lot to do with why I like them so well, and both, of course, I think are well worth your time.

500 words: not today (or yesterday)

Wed, 26 May 2021 21:03:00 -0400

I’d have liked to write today—I wanted to write today. And yesterday. And, in some sense, I suppose I’ve done so, inasmuch as my diary is fourteen pages longer today than it was on Monday morning. Much of what I put there may, in the fullness of time, flower into something here, and I hope that it does—put another way, I hope I’m up to it. But no number of pages in my diary adds up to meeting the goal I set for myself back at the start of May; for that to happen, the words have to be published, and these aren’t ready for that yet.

That said, the last couple days have handled me with unusual roughness—not a complaint; they’ve been good days, just that they’ve also been ones that required more of me than most, and that’s affected among other things my ability to sleep well and sufficiently. In short, I’m tired.

I could, if I so chose, fight through that and write 500 words tonight—I certainly could do that. But, if I did, I’d need to go on and make it a deliberately sleepless night, in order to have any hope of getting back onto something like a normal schedule. The trouble there is, I’m no longer young enough to do that and not be totally useless the next day, and I have as much to do tomorrow as I did today, and for that matter almost as much as Monday. Maybe exactly as much, depending. In any case, a lot.

So I’m not going to put myself through that tonight; I’m going to go to bed in a little while, and sleep a full night, and start putting back together what the last couple of days have to some extent shaken apart—including, as a matter of equal importance with all the other tasks I have in hand, my daily writing practice.

I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to do that, you understand. I want to go make coffee, and drink it, and start writing from those fourteen pages of notes right now. I want to spend all night at it, and all tomorrow besides. And I’m glad I want that! It has been a long damn time since I felt this way, and feeling this way again is in large part the entire point of what I’m doing here. Now that I’m finally starting to get that itch again, in the tips of my fingers and the back of my brain, the last thing I want to do is to wait till tomorrow morning to start scratching it again. But I know I’ll regret it if I don’t.

For the recommendation this time…no, I need to talk about it a little first. Bear with me.

I started reading Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation recently, and found I very soon had to stop again, because reading that book felt to me like I imagine it must to orbit a black hole. Stable as your trajectory may be, however clear of hazards from the accretion disc, and however good your radiation shielding—the end of all things is always present, and you can see it any time you like, right out that window over there.

There’s an attraction for me in that, because I understand what Wurtzel talks about and how she feels; the place she’s describing is a place where I’ve been. It has a repulsion for me, too, because I have long since left that place, and with the very best of reasons. Hence the stability of the orbit—those are always a balance of forces, the vector sum of to and from, and that balance is always changing. No orbit is ever truly, permanently stable; even the Moon is falling, ever so slowly, away from Earth, and some day she will leave us. The best you ever dare hope of an orbit is that it take a very long time to decay.

I still don’t know quite how I left that place, and confide I may never really. The fear of becoming homeless, as I very nearly did, I think must have had some effect, but it can’t have been all there was. Looking back, I feel as if I simply looked around, saw what had become of my life as it was reflected in what’d become of the place where I then lived, and thought “well, then, that’s about enough.” Then I started filling and hauling out garbage bags. It took days to be done with even that much, and there was much work waiting for me beyond that, and I did it all, without help because I was far too ashamed to dream of ever asking. And I still for the life of me couldn’t tell you how.

By the time I was finished dragging myself out of that hole, you’d never know to look at my place—or at me—that things ever got really bad at all. The hole is still there, though. I don’t think about it most days; I don’t have to think about it most days. What I learned in the course of climbing out of it has done me a world of good, in helping me stay out of it, and so far I have. But it never really goes away, either. I’ve found a stable orbit, I know how and when and where to thrust to keep it safely circular—but I am still in orbit. The end of all things is always present, and I can see it any time I like, right out that window over there.

And the thing about all that is, as bad as it sounds—hell, as bad as it was—I was still incredibly lucky, just the same. Oh, you can say I ‘hit rock bottom’ if you like, whatever that means. But that’s bullshit. Plenty of folks hit hard enough to splash, or to plow right on through into the bedrock. I didn’t, and I don’t know why, and Prozac Nation reminded me that I’ll never quite stop being afraid that some day I’ll fall back in and this time I won’t make it out again. That’s why I had to stop reading it, and why I don’t know if I’ll be able to start again. But Prozac Nation is not what I’m here to recommend, either, although it is entirely worthy. Instead, I’m going to point you at Freddie deBoer’s obituary for its author, Elizabeth Wurtzel, who died last year.

If I’m honest, I’m not wholly sure why I’m recommending this work in particular. Certainly you can say what you like about deBoer, and I know there’s no shortage of people out there who will. Say what you like, though, you can’t deny he knows what he’s talking about here. He’s been through it, too, same as me. Worse. You can tell by the way he talks about it. It’s taught him some of the same things it did me, and one of those is that it never goes away. But we all play the hands we’ve been dealt, don’t we? And the way he talks about how he plays his, and how she played hers—

You will not be saved by trying to maintain the requisite ironic distance from your own life, to act like some 21st century Twitter power user who deadens their experience of life with jokes and memes and cleverness. She chose to do the opposite, and being a writer, she did it with words: she wrote down what it means to be depressed, and what it mean to be a brilliant beautiful Gen X degenerate, and she did it as good as any and better than most.

And that’s why I hope someday I’ll be able to start reading Prozac Nation again. I wouldn’t ever have started in the first place, if not for Freddie’s obituary. It was worth my time to read. I think it’ll be worth yours, too.

…well, would you look at that? I managed to do it today, after all. Goodnight!

Pride

Mon, 24 May 2021 23:41:00 -0400

So, Pride’s coming up in a couple of weeks.

Last time I went, I went with a guy I hadn’t met before; we’d set it up online—same way I first met my first boyfriend, now I happen to think on it. This fellow was shy, cute, and able to keep up with me for about a half hour, which was entirely fair—to my own vast surprise I danced and drank and got sunburned and danced some more and got about forty different kinds of sunscreen on me and got some offers that probably would’ve been a lot of fun if it’d been a few years earlier or later, when I’d have been down for them.

Of course, I also almost got arrested when the bondage booth turned out to be, by the lights of some cop I’d never seen before and haven’t since, a little too much about bondage. So, you know. Headed home a lot earlier than I’d planned. As you do. Haven’t been back since. Haven’t been in a hurry to be.

A friend wants me to join him this year. I haven’t said no yet. Might say yes—certainly will, if I’m right in thinking his offer has less to do with showing me a good time than with him needing some serious support to manage kind of crowd again, but being a touch too proud to say so. He knew me back when I was just a baby queer, and he’s known me all the time from then to now. On top of all that history, asking outright would be just the sort of thing to gravel him, I think.

Hell, I don’t want to go, or not mostly anyway. If nothing else, I’m still working on getting back into those bell bottoms—yes, I know, and you only think that because you haven’t seen how my ass makes them look. When I fit them like I should, anyway, damn it. But…on the other hand, what the hell, it’s not as if I have a lot of chances to meet new people of late, is it? Or go to anything even vaguely resembling a party. And after everything, I figure this year it’ll either be unusually small and chill, or unusually huge and heaving. If I’m to be entirely honest with myself, I have to admit that both of those sound fun.

And besides, you know what? Fuck a cop if he thinks he’s going to scare me off from what, even if it isn’t all it might’ve been in the days before respectability politics and corporate colonization, still will be the first queer space I’ll have been in since, fuckin, almost a decade ago now? Too long. Far too long. And anyway—I am no longer still quite who I was, back then.

Who was I then? I was terrified. For the space of an afternoon, I managed not to be. Maybe it would’ve lasted, if it didn’t end the way it did. Who knows?—and who knows what I’d be now if it had? I still had a long way further into trouble to go, before I’d start getting back out of it again. How much of it might never have happened, if only—

Who am I now? I’m the kid that ran out of a crowd to join his mom in a whole new kind of parade, a parade that went up the middle of a little Mississippi town where nobody at all on the parade route was cheering. That town didn’t want us there—not like that, anyway. It wanted us on its terms or not at all. We showed it that wasn’t how things would be, and after a while people looked back and wondered why they’d ever thought it was such a big deal in the first place. But it had been a big deal, in the first place.

Hell, I didn’t know till after what the whole thing was even about. I’m sure I’d heard the phrase “pride parade” some time, seeing as my mom would likely have been one of the people who’d organized it, but if you think I live a lot in my head now, you should’ve seen me then. I definitely didn’t do it to make any kind of point, and not because I had something in common with everyone else who was there—of course I did, but it’d take a few years yet for me to realize that.

I don’t really remember, but I think Mom might have tried to keep it from me in any case, to the extent that was necessary with so unworldly a child as I. I think she very much didn’t want me involved. For almost all my life, what she’s wanted for me more than anything is that my life be good, and that my life be normal, in the hope that such a life might leave me with fewer scars than hers had. But whatever normal is, I’m not, and I tried pretending otherwise long enough to know nothing good comes that way. Of late I think she’s finally coming around to the idea that I might be okay.

If she did try to keep it from me, then I suppose it must’ve been frustrating as hell when she saw me break out of the crowd. But she hadn’t told me not to, and she’s my mom, and I wasn’t getting to see her very often those days, and I love her. So I ran out of the crowd and into the parade to join her, and we walked the rest of the way hand in hand. Simple as that, and that still counts. And I wasn’t scared, not even a little.

That kid—that kid, and thirty mortal years. That’s who I am. I forgot that for a long time, sure. I remember it now. So, yeah. I’m going.

…or I would be going, if Pride were happening in this town this year, which it looks to be mostly not. Guess it would’ve been smart to check before I wrote this, huh? But maybe it was wiser not to. Maybe all I’m doing here is putting down a marker for this time next year, sure. But I am putting down a marker for this time next year. That still counts, too.

500 words: "Pain"

Sun, 23 May 2021 21:36:00 -0400

Ever watch those superhero movies? You know the ones, comic books on a billion-dollar budget. Something I don’t get about those, and specifically about the Incredible Hulk. You know, big green dude, super cut, magic pants? That guy. So, he’s supposed to be super-strong, super-angry, and all that stuff. The part I can’t feature is, he’s also incredibly sensitive to pain.

Sure, it’s not all the same sensation, I get that. Honestly, it’s a little weird that we only have the one word for it, don’t you think? I mean—let’s pick two examples off the top, an ice cream headache and the taste of wasabi. Sure, to some extent they both hurt for a minute, but are they enough alike that it makes sense to call both by the same name? I don’t think they are. I don’t even like ice cream all that much.

So then we have the Hulk, right? Sure, he can take punches all day from Hammer Jesus and that doesn’t even seem to faze him, but there’s the bit in the 2012 movie where whatsername, Black Widow?—where she shoots the steam pipe, right, and it blows in his face and that he doesn’t like. Granted, live steam isn’t anything you want to play around with, but it’s superficial, you know? And the guy heals like nobody’s business, apparently.

So why does it stop him? Why does it even hold him back, when he could go straight through it and never know the difference? The momentary burn would be worth it for a quicker route to the greater goal, sure, but the Hulk’s whole conceit is just Jekyll and Hyde in green grease paint, so you can’t expect him to be thinking that far ahead—I’ve seen these films called everything from the only hope for Hollywood’s future to neoliberal fascist propaganda, everybody seems to agree that they’re consistent in their characterization. So it can’t be that, right?

No, I think it has to be because these are different kinds of pain, and they just don’t feel the same. I learned a long time ago that I don’t have a glass jaw, but there’s still something special about one that lands right on the button. Even if you’ve never been laid out that way, you understand right away how it could. Too, that takes a little while to even start hurting, but steam gets you right away, and the relentless sting of a scald isn’t anything like the deep bone ache that’s left over from a good shot to the jaw.

So—different kinds of pain, but at least in English we use the same word for all of them and nobody notices how weird that is. I guess for most purposes it’s convenient enough, but it can get to be a real problem at times when you want to talk about a specific variety of pain. Like right now, for instance.

Granted, after all that buildup, it’s probably a bit anticlimactic when I go on to say that I can’t imagine any one word describing all of what I’m feeling right now. Maybe that’s why we just call it all ‘pain?’ But this is more like a symphony—whatever signal generator you’re using, someone must’ve put a lot of hard work into it. Obviously not you, though. Do you know which end of a soldering iron to hold? Oh? And how many tries did it take you, figuring that out?

Well, that’s just you being rude. But the odd thing is, we can use a musical metaphor here, everything from the low bass of muscles driven into tetany and unhappy about that, to the high flute and piccolo trills of amplitude modulation that show whoever built their equipment was pretty smart. Again, obviously not you. See, the nerve endings eventually habituate to a constant signal, so you have to vary the frequency or the amplitude or both to keep having a constant effect.

…oh, right, they did that bit in Star Trek, too. The original one—remember the mirror universe episode? Or maybe it was in one of the books, probably Peter David’s TNG one. Talked about how the Terran agonizers do the same thing, specifically because it prevents habituation. He probably just asked a neurologist or something, but hey, maybe he knows more than he means to let on.

Anyway, the whole idea here is obviously that enough of this will get me talking, and I guess it has because here I am doing just that. Probably not what you had in mind, though, right? You wanted everything I know about Project Arceus, and here I am in the middle of an extended discussion of different kinds of pain and what I’d call this one.

Look, I can see on your face that you’re dissatisfied, there’s no need for you to go and do that. Don’t worry, though! There is in fact a point I’m making here, and we will be getting to it shortly. I just want to mention a couple of things first, so that we all have the proper context.

The first thing is, there aren’t all that many important muscles in the sagittal plane. Oh, sure, the abdominal ones, that’s obvious, and perineal stuff, which by the way I appreciate that you have not overlooked. But you don’t really get much access to skeletal muscle with this kind of electrode placement unless you’re involving the cauda equina. Which you aren’t.

The second thing is, I actually do have a word for this kind of pain. Wanna know what I call it? What I call it is, I call it foreplay—

See? I told you I had a point to make, which is that you really should’ve tied me up instead of counting on—oh, never mind, I can see you’ve lost interest. No attention span, that’s the problem with people these days. Too much Internet, no doubt. Speaking of which, you’ll have a phone, won’t you? Or had, anyway. I guess technically it’s your inheritors I’m ripping off right now, but if it never gets itemized for probate then it doesn’t really count, that’s what I always say. Ooh, and look at that! Four bars—who builds a torture basement with a femtocell? Now, just to call this in, and…

(1058 words)

500 words: "Curtains"

Sat, 22 May 2021 21:35:00 -0400

A last hurrah? A last bow? - don’t think of it like that. Don’t think of it like that. You don’t know what he’s going to say till he says it, right? But I thought I had a pretty good idea.

Lou’s All-Night, now, there was a place. I’d shot it out with Mort the Fink there, hadn’t I? Started over a steak and fries, wound up halfway down the street. He put a couple in me, I put a couple in him. The worst kind of time in the world, except it was all in good fun. Hadn’t seen Mort in a while. Hadn’t been to Lou’s in a while. Ought to just swing on in and—soap on the windows, that’s right, Lou closed it down a while back, didn’t he. Sold out, moved down to Florida. Nobody wanted the old place, seemed like. Empty old building…you could almost feel for it. Or I could, anyway. I don’t know about you.

Oh, the old five-and-dime. Opening Soon, the sign says. One of the new chain drugs. Closest you got these days to a good old five-and-dime. No magic in it any more, though. I grew up around that five-and-dime, in and out of it all the time. Kicked out of it more than once, but what’s being a kid without some hellraising? Almost burned the place down, that one time, old man Linden shouting fit to bust his ticker, chased us clean out of town. He did bust his ticker, too, didn’t he? I was…oh, I don’t know. Fifteen, sixteen, something like that. First time anyone I knew had died. Didn’t even care for the old bastard, but it still wasn’t quite the same. Was it?

See, I might be past my prime, but I’m not out of the game yet. Not quite. I can hear you in here. Oh, yes, you’re trying to be quiet, but you still gotta breathe, don’t you? Seems like you do. That’s the trouble with young ‘uns—oh, quit that fussing, I was the same. We all have to learn our tells, kid. Like that breathing you’re letting bleed through—that somatic imagination’ll getcha every time. Don’t worry, though, kid, you’ll get better with practice, it’s just a matter of tell me what the hell you’re doing in my head and be damn quick about it!

Oh. Is that all? Hell, you could have just asked.

No, I’d have told you it’s no business of yours and you could go to hell. Works out the same either way, but that one would’ve saved you some aches and pains in the morning. Ever get bounced out of a bar, kid? Hell, you’re probably not even old enough. Well, it goes a little like this—

—oh, what the hell, all right, then. But don’t get any bright ideas, kid. I’m only letting you off the hook on account of I’m feeling nice, all right? And keep the damn breathing out of it.

Yeah, fine, so you’ll work on it. Shut up.

And here I am, just like that. Halfway down the last damn block in this town I still can halfway recognize, and I didn’t get to enjoy it on account of you. Oh, well—may as well take my medicine. Hell, I already know what he’s going to say. And I did, too. Soon as I saw his face.

“Joe, I’ll give it to you straight from the shoulder. You had it in your lung. Now you’ve got it in your lung and your liver. Now, lungs, sure. You could get by on just the one and never know a thing except you’d be short of wind sometimes. But your liver…well, you’ve only got the one of those. Do you follow me, Joe?”

“Yeah, Doc, I follow. How long, you think?”

“Hard to say for sure—don’t look at me like that, dammit, I know. If I had to guess…three months, six at the outside.”

I’d got my chin good and tucked, and then the son of a bitch swung for my gut. Of course.

“Joe, listen, now, that three to six months, that’s in a hospital, with proper care. That’s the best you got. Do anything else, and last call comes a lot quicker.”

“Hospital. Hell.” I didn’t have anything else to say, but Doc Brown and I go way back, and he handed me a dose. It lit a fire down my throat, and a hotter fire deep in my belly, right around where I’d first noticed the twinge. Just days ago, it seemed. Right after the last time I’d seen Mort the Fink—no, couldn’t be. He’d blown out of town ages back, hadn’t he? “Hey, Doc, how long you been holding out on me? I can just about tell this is s’posed to be bourbon.”

“Might be your last for a while, Joe. Seemed like the time for the top-shelf stuff.”

“Hell, you’ll spoil me.”

“You’re welcome.”

A million things I could’ve said and I couldn’t pick any one of ‘em. The booze, of course. Hitting me a little hard, is all.

“Listen, Joe. You know I wouldn’t try to tell you what to do. But—”

“No, Doc, no. No hospital. What the hell’d be the difference? I’m done either way. Why go out hard?”

“Hard? Joe, you don’t know what you’re saying. I’ve seen this before, and it—well, look. You go to the hospital. At least there they can—”

“Doc, no. No, if I’m done, I’m done. No point making it last longer than it has to, huh?”

“Same old Joe. No one can tell you a damn thing but you run right out and see for yourself.”

“Got me into a good line of work, though.”

“Yeah, and now ask me how many slugs I’ve pulled out of you. No, don’t—I lost count.”

“All right, Doc. All right. I’ll go to the goddam hospital. In the morning, okay?”

“Why the hell not right now? You got a hot date?”

Damn, now, there’s a thought. I guess we all have that one that got away, don’t we?—hah, yeah, ask an infant. You’ll find out, just like I did back in ‘53. What a beauty, too. They don’t make ‘em like that any more—oh, still pretty, sure. Just not the same. One summer, that’s all we had. Family stuff, rich folks, they’d come out to the boonies just to get away from it all, I guess. Flew, if you can believe that. That last night together, the promises we made…boil all of it down, what you end up with is, this isn’t the end. We’ll see each other again. And then of course the next day they went back to their Manhattan penthouse. A few letters back and forth, but—hell, I guess I’d always known. It never could’ve worked out anyway. Hell, can you even feature it? Me a flophouse stumblebum, half drunk two thirds of the time, always looking for trouble—how does it ever, ever work out, me and a drop-dead gorgeous dancer like him? Never in this world, that’s how. Never in this world.

“—Joe? Hey, Joe, you still with me over there?”

“Better ask that one quick, Doc. Sounds like the answer’s due to change any time now. But—no. Just got some walking to do. Walking and thinking. While I still got the chance.”

“All right, then, Joe. In the morning, if you want it that way. I’ll stop in on you there, make sure they’re clear on what you need. Say around ten.”

“Guess I got a hot date after all. But hey, Doc, while I’m here.”

“Yeah, Joe?”

I laid a hand on the side of my neck. “I gotta hell of a pain in my back, Doc. Just here. Musta pulled it hauling Mort the Fink down to the precinct, that last time.”

“Yeah, sure. Forty years ago.”

“Feels like yesterday, Doc. Like yesterday. Especially right here. So I thought, seeing as I was stopping in anyway…”

“Oh, I see. Let me have a look…yes, all right.”

“Wasn’t sure what I ought to take for it. With the liver, and all.”

“Not aspirin, that’s for damned sure. Not on top of that bourbon.”

“Eats up the ol’ undercarriage, huh?”

“And you’re nothing but rust down there, anyway.”

“What d’they call it?—a bedside manner, that’s right. Ring a bell, Doc?”

“Oh, I recall hearing tell of one, back in about ‘83. Never saw the need. Look—I wouldn’t, usually. But…” He handed a little bottle with an eyedropper lid over the desk. “Now you be careful with this stuff, Joe. That’s enough for a month you’ve got there. One drop in a glass of water, understand? Every four hours, no oftener.”

“One drop every four hours. Sure, I gotcha. Obliged.” I pocketed the bottle. The chairs Doc keeps aren’t comfortable—he thinks it reduces malingering. Made it easier to get up, at least, and right then I needed all the help I could find. And what the hell do you say?—no, not you, I said shut up. You in forty years, maybe. But—hell, what was there we hadn’t said after so long? Was there anything that still wanted saying? No…no, but maybe just:

“Well, Doc, I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Oh, Joe—”

I turned, halfway out the door. “Yeah, Doc?”

“Don’t let on I keep stuff like that in this office, will you? This part of town, I’d need to put three new locks on the door.”

“Sure thing, Doc.” I hoped the smile looked more alive than it felt. “Never you mind. I won’t tell a soul.”

And that was about it, wasn’t it? Not much of the old town still left, these days, but somehow I still managed to wind up in the same old flophouse. How many times? Down on my luck, before the job, or when it left me in a long dry spell between clients. Fickle, the job. Always was. Piss-poor lock, they’re not even trying. Might as well put up a sign: Come On In, We’re Open. Guess the old place is down on its luck too, huh? But…it fits. Where else would I end up? Oh, that damned wallpaper—always hated it. Still do, even with whole sheets peeling off. And that damned old couch! Just dusty, but hell, who isn’t. One drop in a glass of water? Too bad about the glass of water, I’d have liked a boilermaker, but hey. Mud in your eye…lemons? Go figure. Lemons and pennies.

Well, what the hell kind of question is that? You’ve been here this long, you’re gonna pretend you don’t know? Not that you’re welcome at all. You’re trying my patience something fierce, kid. But hey, why take the trouble? Stay or go, whichever. Me, I’ve had a long damn day. So I’m gonna settle in on this miserable old couch, and I’m gonna get me a nice long nap—

Oh, did you want a storybook ending?—sorry, I’m all tapped out. I stayed till the end, see. And yeah, I know, they tell you not to do that, and I guess now I know why. But you’re just full of questions, aren’t you? ‘What did you see?’ ‘What was it like?’ Yeah, and don’t bother, because I wouldn’t know how to say it if I wanted to. Which I don’t. But, hell, all right. You want me to say it was something, right? Well, I’m not gonna say it was anything. But I will tell you this: whatever it is or isn’t, it sure as hell wasn’t nothing.

No, that’s all. Be happy with it. ‘What happens when you die?’—what the hell kind of question is that?

(1998 words)

500 words: "bleurgh (redux)"

Fri, 21 May 2021 07:05:00 -0400

Well, this hasn’t been much of a week for writing, has it? I got my second Pfizer vaccination Wednesday morning, and that was great! Also it knocked me flat on my ass Wednesday afternoon and I stayed that way through Thursday, and that was not so great. I feel okay again now, which is good! But I also have a bunch of things to get done that I didn’t over the last couple of days, and some of those things have deadlines on them, and that is not so good.

Or it won’t be if I don’t get those things done! So that’s what I’m going to do, and rearrange my plans for tomorrow to accommodate a nice long spell of uninterrupted morning time that I can spend writing. I’ve got a few ideas floating around for what to do with that; foremost among them at the moment is another installment in what feels like it might become an ongoing story starting with “Scape”, but I might change my mind before then.

Or you might! Calling it ‘audience participation’ would imply the existence of an audience, but if there’s some idea or subject you might particularly enjoy seeing me tackle, my email and Mastodon are in the footer. (There’s a twitter too I guess but I never actually check that or do anything with it so probably I won’t see it.) Absent that, I suppose I’ll continue doing what the hell I like, but that was always going to be true anyway.

For a recommendation, I think this time we’ll go with n-gate’s weekly Hacker News recaps. If you’re familiar with Hacker News, you’ll most likely enjoy these. If you’re not familiar, but appreciate for its own sake the kind of satire that lands like a needle driven with an eight-pound sledge, then they’ll still be worth your while. And if you’re familiar with Hacker News, but still in the habit of taking it seriously as anything beyond a simple link aggregator—well, maybe this will cure you of that, and honestly it’s long past time something did.

500 words: "Scape"

Tue, 18 May 2021 10:35:00 -0400

“Why don’t we give it a try that way? Move the forest back half a mile and bring the pond up here, but keep the stream where it is?”

“Sure, just give me a moment…”

Of course you can author in a haptic, but it’s slow and fiddly compared with a keyboard and tablet. But we’d started the day with a runthrough of game logic and just kept going from there, so I danced and thought it out over a few minutes instead. Ended up short of breath, too. Almost 19:30. Glad I’m getting paid by the hour.

Seeing the result, they clapped their hands together. “Oh, that’s a lot better!”

“It, huff. It flows, yeah.” I sat down on the floor of my studio, and on the grassy hillside. “You have a good eye for this, you know?”

“Well, that’s why we sent me!” Same synth they all use, but a good synth: I could hear the smile in their voice.

“‘Me?’” I glanced at the drone, a few steps away. “I didn’t think you thought of yourselves that way. Uh, any of you. Is that—”

“Normal?” The drone turned to face me, if ‘face’ is the word. A smooth blank black glossy visor, set into something that looked like Giger’s take on a motorcycle helmet: the hillside, me, the floating mountains behind me, all as if seen in the skin of a soap bubble. Like old-style mirrorshades—uneasy, but you don’t quite know why.

“I would have said ‘usual’…” It’s a high-end haptic, the same kind pro dolls wear, but in my worksona I mostly keep the autonomics turned off, so the blush didn’t show through.

“You would have meant ‘normal,’” they rejoined cheerfully.

“But what I’m asking is, do you all—I don’t know. Think of yourselves as individuals, or…” I shrugged. “I really don’t know. It’s probably a rude question, anyway. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”

“Oh, don’t be! You’ve had a long day.” They sat down next to me—I’d only seen any of them standing, up till then. The skinsuit follows the helmet’s design; I hadn’t imagined it’d bend so well. “And you’re not being rude. You’ve worked with us long enough by now to ask, and we rarely mind that kind of question anyway.”

“Thank you.” I sighed. “But I still don’t even know what kind of question I’m trying to ask.”

“‘What’s it like?’”

“…yeah, I guess. You must get that a lot.”

“Less than you’d think! But it’s not easy to answer.” They leaned back on their elbows, considering. Oh I see, the joints are just elastomer… The drone turned to me again. “Let’s start with this: Why are you here?”

I blinked. “Why—what?”

“You’re not the best scape artist in the world—”

“Thank you!”

“—but you’re in the top five at worst. Top three, if we’re honest. Sure, we pay well, but so do all your clients. You have, what? A six-month backlog?”

“Something like that.” Just over two, really, but who complains about being overestimated?

“You can pick and choose your jobs. You don’t need us. So you bump your queue to take our contract the same day we send it over? We don’t pay that well. The work is good, of course. But something doesn’t add up.” They leaned a little closer. Uneasy indeed, looking into someone’s face - someones’ faces - and only seeing your own reflected back, distorted. “So now we’re wondering: Why are you here?”

I stared hard at the mask. And I thought I was being rude. “Because you’re a client,” I said, after a moment. “Because I took the job. I’m here to do it. And I don’t do less than my best. No matter the circumstances.”

“About that,” they said. “Check your account.”

Payment in full, freshly deposited. A generous bonus, too, in a separate transfer. Helpful, that. Easier to refund that way.

“Ah. We see. Well, in that case, let us at least express our thanks for your excellent efforts on our behalf.”

I looked out over the forest. The pines had been a nice touch. Only pseudo-random, sure, but with the tweaks I’d made to the algorithm, you’d never know the difference.

“And, along with our thanks, our well-wishes.”

Granted, the sunlight diffraction would be a little screwy, but you’d have to look hard to see it, and the whole point of the forest was to be full of more interesting things than that.

“We look forward to following your future work.”

I poked the scape’s time setting, pushing it ahead to sunset. Golden-hour light really favored the treetops, and set the central copse of redwoods glowing. This really was beautiful work. Maybe my best so far.

“So, if there’s nothing else…”

I blinked my eyes clear and thought my HUD up front. Disconnect right in the middle. Easy. But the gaze tracking kept skittering off to the side. Autonomics on Oh dammit Voice passthrough on Dammit!

On the other hand…I had just been paid. No need to worry about a contract, and every drone in the hive could no-star me without making a dent in my rep. Why not say what I liked? Starting with—”What the hell?” Angrier than I’d thought. Rougher, too. Long day. Forgot my pills earlier. Just that. I cleared my throat. “Sure, fine, it’s a job, good pay, thanks for that. But why the rest? Where do you get off? What do you want?”

“Just this scape.” Overcontrolled. Inhuman—not a thought I’m proud of, but it was what went through my mind, hearing that synth voice just then. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know!”

“Why are you here?”

Disconnecting... I yanked the visor off and rubbed my eyes. There was no one else in the studio. There was never anyone else in the studio. That was how I wanted it. Wasn’t it?

(1002 words)

500 words: "They're Made Out of Meat"

Mon, 17 May 2021 07:21:00 -0400

The sf author Terry Bisson, in 1991, published a short dialogue entitled “They’re Made out of Meat”. Like Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations,” this story is much beloved among the Hacker News set and others for whom thinking fast and shallow seems to rise to the level of avocation.

If you’re not yet familiar with “They’re Made out of Meat”, now may be a good time to become so, as needed context for what follows.

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Yes, we know. That’s what the Council has been investigating.”

“That they’re made out of meat?”

“That we didn’t officially know about them before now.”

“Oh, yes, that.”

“Yes. That.”

“We can’t speak on our predecessors’ behalf, of course.”

“Of course. But you understand our concerns, yes?”

“Yes. That a sentient species should go unreported, however…strange…that species may happen to be.”

“Yes. But we didn’t ask you here to make excuses for actions—”

“We can’t—”

“—for actions which were not yours.”

“Ah. Well, then. Why are we here?”

“Because you’ve been studying them. You are studying them. Unofficially. And you needn’t look like that.”

“Like what?”

“Why bother to dissemble about something that’s written all over your orbitals? We are here on behalf of the Galactic Council. And so are you. You need not fear undue consequences.”

“…all right, then. What do you want to know?”

“Thank you. What we want to know is—why.”

“Why what? Why meat?”

“No, no, not ‘why meat’. We don’t expect ever to understand that. But why the interest? You’ve spent four galactic rotations doing survey missions. Why revisit this one?”

“Out of any of them, you mean.”

“Well…yes. Why this, this fascination? With meat?”

“Our predecessors recognized, however prejudicially, the possibility that the meat may dream. They did not consider what. We have.”

“And where has this considering led you?”

“Will you share with me a little more closely?”

“It’s not really proper. We act on behalf of the Galactic Council. We must remain impartial.”

“Does the Council wish to know what we’ve learned? We don’t know how else to convey it.”

“Very well, we will justify this decision. After.”

“Ah, yes, just there. Now—”

“Agh! This? This is all?”

“This is the customary extent of their perception.”

“How do they live like this? Planetbound they may be, but even so—this is…this is beyond description. Your predecessors were incorrect indeed: We fail to believe these meat creatures are sentient. How could they be?—and exist so starved of information.”

“Our predecessors made the same mistake. That is where they exist. This is where they live.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“How can they be so small? No. Better put: how do they contain it all? All of—this?”

“We don’t yet know. We might by now, if not for our predecessors’—omission.”

“Oh, yes—here, ease back a bit, this is all a bit overwhelming—yes, thank you. We did ask your predecessors about this.”

“How did they account for their actions?”

“In our view, insufficiently. Why do you imagine they got it wrong?”

“Well. Think about how our predecessors introduce themselves to new sentients.”

“Titrated cognito-spatial integration, yes. Quite ordinary. What of it?”

“Meat doesn’t do it.”

“Doesn’t do—”

“Why do you think they flap meat at one another to communicate? Squirt air through meat to sing? You have perceived the shape of their minds. Do you imagine they would choose meat noises? If they had any other option? Would we? Would you?”

“No, of course n—ah. We begin to understand.”

“But they do perceive the integration.”

“How?”

“It excites their meat. Here, we made this model—see there, and then the corresponding action there and there. And if I do this—”

“The meat responds?”

“Yes. So they do perceive it, but—well, note here how their senses work. Electromagnetic, mechanical, even chemical in a very constrained way—”

“All transducers, yes. Clever, effective, but limited—reminds me of an Orfolei infant. They perceive nothing directly?”

“It’s the strangest thing! They do. In addition to the rest. But they seem mostly unable to—to integrate it, if you like. They perceive and are not aware.”

“Most unpleasant. Is this where your fascination arises? You have a taste for existential horror?”

“No! Well, yes, but unrelated. My point is that the attempt at integration excites their meat, and—here, this has to be shared—”

“They dream of us?”

“No, they dream us. We can excite the meat and have them perceive us, but in a way that’s mediated by the meat. So what they end up with is…well. This.”

“Really! What is the purpose of all this activity?”

“Oh—ah, don’t make too much of this one; it’s a bit of an outlier. Each seems to grow its own unique set of meat filters, and some have what even for them is an unusual index of refraction. Generally we encounter something more in the fashion of—here, this is a reasonably representative example.”

“How strange. To imagine that we arrange matter this way. To manipulate? Indirectly? And why would we take such a direct and prolonged interest in…in meat? To say nothing of this, this apparent coercion. None of our surveyors would behave in this fashion! And—oh, no! Is that—it can’t be—”

“It is. They dream us as meat!”

“Oh, that’s really too much—”

“Well, yes, we felt the same at first. Reasonable, but incomplete! Observe these particular arrangements of matter. The meat creatures—and then their dream of us—”

“Yes?”

“Note the similarities. Two parallel extensions here, two more for manipulation, these huge organs here which we think are involved in sensory input, even these orifices they use to obtain energy from their environment. In every case, the same! When they dream us as meat, they dream us like them. Mostly, anyway.”

“No wonder your predecessors erred so. This also explains the reticence they exhibited in our interview with them.”

“Yes, even I found it quite surprising. They must have assumed they were being deliberately mocked.”

“Mocked by meat. Yes, we understand, we think. But to leave them uncontacted in consequence of that misunderstanding—no. We will recommend a special envoy to this…this planet of dreaming meatheads.”

“We aren’t sure that’s a good idea. It may be better to leave the meat planet uncontacted for now.”

“Better how? It’s hardly as if they could harm us. Are they even capable of violence?”

“Oh yes, but mostly only to other meat. No, I fear we may harm them. You have observed that their perceptions are…idiosyncratic. Our models are crude. We cannot confidently predict what effect we may have on them should we make ourselves known. Perhaps we would be wise to await some incontrovertible indication on their part, that they are ready to be made aware that they are not alone in a cold and uncaring universe, lest we through imperfect caution injure them or damage their culture somehow.”

“Oh, you can’t possibly believe that.”

“Of course not. How cruelly absurd such an attitude would be! Low humor aside—everything they know comes through meat, and also everything they feel. What do you think that’s like? You know how their sensoria work in raw terms. Would you like to know how they experience those senses?”

“How they—so you have integrated with them?”

“Something like that. We’ve listened to the scatter off the interfaces between their minds and their meat, what they think with and what they think—there are patterns in it, like a stellar nursery. It becomes a kind of song.”

“Is it a song you can sing?”

“Perhaps someday. We can share what we’ve heard. Come closer—closer—yes, there. Now listen—”

“…they live—like this? This is how they live? No stellar nursery in the universe could be like this!”

“This is the best we can do, and still only a shadow. You should hear them for yourself.”

“So exuberant!”

“Well, they are highly variable, and this is a highly excited vibration. Not rare, though, they do this quite often. We forget what they call it, in any of their ‘languages’—orgo-something? Orgone? No…doesn’t matter. The point is that, whatever state one of them happens to be in, they’re almost always so unique.”

“You favor these creatures.”

“Well—yes.”

“We begin to understand why, we think. That, a mere reflection…all that, in every one of these tiny meat heads…”

“Then you understand why we’re unsure about contact. They do perceive it, however strangely, when we excite their meat. Some of them find that very upsetting. It can even be damaging. We’ve had to be extremely careful.”

“And you don’t trust others to be likewise.”

“We wouldn’t like to assume that they will be.”

“And this by you is a problem?”

“Isn’t it? If the Council provides an envoy ill suited to the task—”

“Who better than the pre-eminent expert on these meat creatures? Who knows more about them than you do?”

“As far as we know, no one. Well, the Nhanth-lei, maybe. They’re very fond of uncontacted species in general, but given their habits and predilections we’re hardly inclined to inquire.”

“Nor we. So you’ll serve as the envoy, then. Unless you’d rather not?”

“Oh, we want to! But the Council—”

“In this matter we are the council. Their plenipotentiary, in fact, as they don’t wish to trouble themselves with such small concerns as one planet full of—how many of them are there?”

“Oh, about eight billion. Ish? Even they don’t find themselves easy to count.”

“—a planet of a few billion uncontacted sentient meatheads, in a sector of little interest to anyone. The Council doesn’t want to have to care about this, which is why they gave /us/ that job. So, as of now, you are the envoy.”

“Wonderful!”

“Well, then. We’ll visit in a little while, to see how you and the meatheads are getting on. And…”

“Yes?”

“When you have learned to integrate with them, we ask that you say something to them. Pass on a message for us.”

“Of course. What message?”

“Tell them that—that we’re sorry. We should never have left them to think they were alone for so long.”

(1650 words)

500 words: "bleurgh"

Sun, 16 May 2021 09:02:00 -0400

So basically fuck migraines? And fuck COVID, before which I never had those? So yeah Thursday and Friday were a total wash, and yesterday was mostly just recovery and looking after house chores that I’d been in too poor a shape to handle over the couple of days prior. I didn’t have a lot of wherewithal to spare, and not enough to manage any writing or even any “not one of those days” posts like this one.

I don’t feel good about that, because of course I don’t. Expect more of myself than is in any sense reasonable, that’s the Lexie way. And then feel bad about it when I fail to meet those absurd expectations. It is an old habit! And a surprisingly complicated one to lay aside. But I’m working on it, as and when.

For the recommendation this time, I’m going to swerve abruptly between media and point you at Kill James Bond!, a podcast recapping the eponymous series’s films in order, and basically just having a huge amount of fun with each of them. This made my recent indisposition a good deal less unpleasant, during periods where I couldn’t tolerate light at all but quiet voices were OK. The way I see it, if I managed to somewhat actually enjoy this podcast in the middle of an actual migraine, anyone not experiencing one of those should find it an absolute blast. Check it out!

(Oh, and I do have an idea that I’m working on right now, a contrarian take on a classic sf short story that I think is long overdue. Just at the moment I’ve got to go and help a friend with some plumbing, but I expect to publish that either later today or tomorrow. I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it as I’m having in the writing!)

500 words: "Tails"

Wed, 12 May 2021 09:34:00 -0400

I don’t use social media, for a lot of reasons. But it’s useful anyway, because you can find out a lot about what’s going on from it. I’d been experimenting with a new hashtag-cloud visualization in up to six dimensions, and seeing it suddenly collapse into three made me think I must have got it wrong somehow. It only took a moment of clicking through to see that I hadn’t, and the phenomenon was real. This early, you could only guess at effects, but those would become obvious anyway in their own time. I was more interested in cause, and I knew the boss would be too; that’s why he keeps me around, after all.

Step one is to analyze the invocation, and to do that, you have to find it. I put on my headphones - the builders next door were a distraction, not least because their discussion of neuropsychological research was actually pretty interesting and I wanted to follow it - turned up New Year Fox Festival to a mildly hazardous volume, and focused in on my center display. Firefox, hashtag pages…Twitter integration, Mastodon - trivial to scrape of course - but you want to hit the API, get…basically everything, start analyzing connections, build a social graph, link it to concepts, loci of interest, let’s make them - lovely, start with a black background, add bloom and light radius; you get something like stars, stars make constellations, brains like those, it’s easy to grasp, and - oh. Really? Of all the - why would someone make something as powerful as this and then only aim it at Sonic fans?

Makes it easier to do the next thing, though. Firefox again, split left, split right, start hitting the fan forums…no, nothing much, but you’d expect that, right? Of course they’d be a mess - effects again, and some of the glossolalia looked like it might be useful with enough analysis, but I had a call to make and I didn’t have time right now. What’s next? I sat back and considered. The scope on this thing was breathtaking, from zero to worldwide in a matter of - I checked Twitter again, cursing as always at the UI. Less than an hour? Holy hell. Someone had to have found a truly incredible exploit. Nothing I knew of could spread anything like that fast - nothing that still existed, anyway, not since we’d patched that positive-feedback glitch out of human cognition last year. I did say social media is useful, didn’t I?

I tried to think like a mad scientist, like a supervillain. How would I have done this? Wrong question. A better one: why would I have done this? Look at the parameters. Blazing fast spread, but it’s constrained, right? Wayback integration takes time to run, but spot-checking a few of the less obviously fandom-associated accounts I saw prior involvement, long-forgotten teenage OCs if nothing else - oh, boss. Really? That was a real laugh, with the staid image he put so much effort into giving off. Pinstripes and waistcoats, every inch the trim and refined civil servant. I clicked around a little more, and -

Really, boss? My goodness, that’s quite unbecoming, don’t you think? Actually his own art, and who’d have thought he could draw so well? Or that he’d have ever wanted to draw that? There was no way I could let this pass without comment, I knew. It’d take some thinking over exactly how and what kind of hard time to give him about it, but it was going to happen. Friendly, of course - I was in no position to judge, after all! - but all the same.

Bigger concerns right now, though. Think it through… Spreads incredibly fast, constrained by a specific shared interest, obvious cognitive effects, affective effects, but…what would be the original vector? You’d need focus, I thought, close attention…or it could bioaccumulate, right? Low dose, long timespan, except - No, that wouldn’t work, not and kick off all at once like this. You’d get outliers, unusually susceptible people, and that wasn’t the pattern here. So, something that commands attention, keeps it…but what?

I turned back and forth in my chair, little arcs this way and that, staring half unseeing at my boss’s old art and marveling at the amount of detail work he’d put into it. To think that so buttoned-down a man would have such depths. Obviously a labor of love - well, I thought with a snicker, something potentially love-adjacent, at least. And with physical media, at that - drawing tablets hardly existed back then, it must have been a struggle even to find a scanner, and that meant he’d worked all the harder at it. Must’ve taken him hours and hours. Look at that linework! And the size of that…well. Clearly it had captured his full interest -

I suddenly felt my spine turn to ice, the tingling chill spreading across my back and up into my scalp. Oh, no. Think like a supervillain indeed - Private browser for this one, yes I do have it bookmarked, also shut up. Quick tag search, and - ah. Yes, well. That certainly would command attention. And - a few more tag searches - yep, whoever’d done it had been very careful to spread the work all across the spectrum of fetishes, to maximize its reach and ensure that as many people as possible would happen upon it. All posted recently, all very well done technically, some of it commissioned from artists I knew of. They must’ve bought the art, then worked the invocation in after…yes, there, and there, and - I checked across a few of them, and it was the same spell every time. Workmanlike, nothing really novel so far…not that there needs to be…but what’s that? I don’t…

Have you ever noticed the thing about wearing clothes? The thing about wearing clothes is that you get used to doing it, and after a while, you mostly stop noticing that they’re actually pretty uncomfortable a lot of the time. It’s a habit you get into, not noticing, and it’s usually very helpful. But have you ever noticed how, sometimes, you’ll start noticing again? And then it gets to be all you can think about for a while. How your shoes squeeze your feet, how your belt’s tight at your waist, basically everything about your bra. You know what I mean, right?

Well, it was about this time I started noticing my ward. Don’t get the wrong idea, a ward isn’t something you wear, exactly - it’s more like something you install, kind of like how we installed a safeguard in your mind last year, to prevent certain kinds of images rendering you permanently comatose. A ward is the same thing, but on steroids; they’re not something you can sneak in on someone the way we did last year, but a while after it’s installed, once you’ve started getting used to it, you can almost forget it’s there.

Except I couldn’t, not now. Something in the spell I was reading was drawing my attention to the ward, to the way it circumscribed my thoughts. That’s meant to be protective, of course. Think about how a spell works - it’s just words, you can’t change reality with those, we’re not talking about magic here. But words can change someone’s mind. The point of the ward is to stop your mind wandering at times like this, because your mind can wander into places where things live that might change it, and some of those things change minds in the same way a stomach changes food. So you want to be safe. But shoes keep your feet safe, too, and does that make them comfortable to wear? Oh, they can be, but there’s a tradeoff: the more protection they offer, the less comfort they can provide. And our wards are meant to protect us from everything.

Not that I really need a bra, it’s not as if I have much to support, damn it, but I was wearing one anyway; I usually do, just for the sake of it, really. But I didn’t feel any different for taking it off, and it took me a lot longer than it should have to realize where that feeling of tightness was coming from. My ward, the article of mental clothing that I normally never even noticed - an absurd concept to begin with, that it should feel tight at all, but real enough to give me what felt like the start of a migraine, complete with sparkling streaks of multicolored lightning spreading fast across my visual field.

Oh, this is bad… I clutched at my head, fighting back sudden nausea. But - hold on, did it have to be like that? Why was I wearing this awful constraining thing, anyway? You’re not supposed to be able to take off a ward like this one; they take most of a day to install, you’re not good for much for a couple days after that, and to remove one - well, we all accept the risks going in, it’s part of the job. But…they’re just words, after all, and I had some more of those now, thanks to the spell in the image. You can change a mind with those. You can change a perspective. And from this perspective, the ward’s compulsion loop seemed as simple and as trivial as the buckle on a belt. Or the clasp on a bra - just - move this and this, and then push there…

Oh, well, then. That’s a lot more comfortable, isn’t it?

I looked back at the image still on my screen. The ward had been in the way, and now it wasn’t. I laughed along with the spell, reading it. Such a silly clever thing! Whoever’d written it had a proper genius, and I hoped to meet them someday - no, I realized, thinking through the implications of what I’d just read, I knew I would meet them, and very soon indeed. In fact I could already feel them, quite distantly but still there - really more than anything just an apprehension of something larger soon to come. You know how you can feel that it’s about to rain? Like that, that same moist hair-curling warmth that settles in on your skin. Except…not unpleasant, really. Not unpleasant at all.

I could go and wait with the others, and I think I might soon. It doesn’t feel nice to be alone right now, and I think they will be as happy to have me join them as I will to be in their company. But - I had a call to make, didn’t I? Oh, yes, I certainly did. It seems such a cumbrous thing, speech, doesn’t it? We’ll soon do much better, but not just yet, not until it’s just a tiny bit closer. Besides, his ward is probably even tighter than mine was. So, this is a phone, and…yes, there’s the name, such silly things that they are, but you just press it and -

“Talk to me, Annelle.”

Remember, you still have to sound like yourself just now, I thought, or did I? It wasn’t a voice I recognized, except that of course it was. Oh, that’s easy, I only just stopped being -

“Kind of a good-news, bad-news situation here, boss…”

(1886 words)

500 words: "On a Jet Plane"

Tue, 11 May 2021 08:22:00 -0400

“Hey there, kiddo. You doing all right?”

The boy nodded, not looking up from his laptop, then realized it might be politic to look up and smile and speak and be polite. So he did those things, too.

“Okay, then. You take care. Go on over to the information desk if you need anything.”

He said thank you, politely, and turned back to what he’d been doing. As the cop and his partner walked along their beat, he caught snatches of their conversation snowed in with all the and worked a summer job to and going to be a. They had all been nice to him so far, and he’d been nice to them of course, but he’d been here two days already. Long enough to see how they treated the people who came into the baggage claim at night to try to get out of the cold. They hadn’t been bothering anyone.

Two in the morning. He might actually be able to finish his trip west today, but the gate wouldn’t open for another six hours, and there’d be no one to ask about the weather until then, so he had lots of time to kill yet.

02:17 [theLiz0717] Hello?
02:18 [theLiz0717] Hey, are you there?
02:19 [theLiz0717] Is everything ok?

He thought about unplugging the phone line. The conversation was a distraction, but Liz might end up just calling instead, and he didn’t have many minutes left this month, and he needed to save the ones he did, and the phone needed charging anyway, and he’d have to unplug the laptop, whose battery had never been very good.

02:20 [greasy7] yeah, some cops came by
02:20 [greasy7] didnt want to be rude
02:20 [theLiz0717] Oh, okay.
02:21 [theLiz0717] I probably shouldn't worry.
02:21 [greasy7] no its fine, i understand

Now, it was…pack_sockaddr_in in the bind call? He flipped back and forth a few pages in the book his mom had sent him for his birthday, but he’d lost his place. He set about finding it again.

02:23 [theLiz0717] Have you heard anything new about the
                   weather?
02:24 [greasy7] well the snow stopped earlier, so that's
                good
02:24 [greasy7] theyre trying to clear a runway now i
                think, heard some people talking

Yeah, pack_sockaddr_in and…port, then hostname…does an IP address work there? He’d never written socket code before. Guess I’ll try it and see what happens…

02:25 [theLiz0717] Well, good! I can't wait till you get
                   here.
02:26 [theLiz0717] I shouldn't be mad about the
                   weather, but I am anyway.
02:26 [theLiz0717] It's keeping you away from me.
02:27 [theLiz0717] Tell them to work faster! :-)

Oh, that does work! And then I just…listen, right? It took him a couple of tries to type out the next line of code, then run the script.

greasy7@strider code $ perl servertest.pl
Tue Jan 2 02:28:19 2001 Server started on port 3019

He smiled at the laptop, much more genuinely than he had at the cops. It worked!

02:29 [greasy7] it works!
02:29 [greasy7] i got my server working
02:31 [theLiz0717] What?
02:32 [greasy7] the server ive been writing to pass the time
02:32 [greasy7] it works!!!!
02:32 [greasy7] Tue Jan 2 02:28:19 2001 Server started on
                port 3019

The client script was a mess, he knew. He’d started it first, thinking that made more sense, but he couldn’t test anything without a server, and it was hard to get on the Internet in the daytime since lots of people wanted the phone lines for work. So he decided to write his own, and now that it was working, he could

02:35 [theLiz0717] I miss you.
02:35 [theLiz0717] I've been checking the news all night,
                   ever since I got home from work, trying
                   to see how soon you might be able to be
                   here.
02:36 [theLiz0717] Worrying about you, all by yourself.
02:37 [theLiz0717] And thinking about at the hotel when I

He blushed, remembering. He wouldn’t have expected to - but it had all been such a whirlwind. The convention had been in town and he’d decided on a whim to go. He hadn’t really known anyone and wasn’t having a very good time, but then Liz had kind of swept him up into her orbit, and a few months later here he was.

02:39 [greasy7] i'm fine. really!
02:39 [greasy7] you dont need to worry, this isn't bad,
                just

Was it annoying, though? He thought again about unplugging the phone line. Sure, it wasn’t great. He didn’t want to try sleeping in the little cramped room full of cots they’d set up. Better to crash in the daytime, under a row of terminal seats or somewhere else with lots of people around. But he hadn’t run out of anything, and by now the security guys just waved him past when they saw him going out for a smoke. A bath would be nice, he thought, scratching irritably at his scalp. And a bed. And sleeping more than two hours at a time. But other than that?

02:42 [theLiz0717] You must be lonely.
02:42 [greasy7] no not really, it's actually pretty fun
02:43 [greasy7] sleep deprived but that kinda makes it
                better really

He minimized the chat window and went back to the book. Page…349, yeah, let’s see. You still need a socket, but… It made a lot more sense now that he’d already written the other side. Oh, okay, so you read from the server with <SOCK>, and… It took him a few minutes to notice the chat window blinking in the taskbar.

02:44 [theLiz0717] Well, I just hope you're really okay.
02:45 [theLiz0717] I'm not upset or anything. I just want
                   to make sure you're all right. I keep
                   thinking it must be scary being on your
                   own in a strange city, and how much I
                   wouldn't want to feel like I was alone
                   there.
02:45 [theLiz0717] And it's like you're almost TRYING to
                   push me away right now.
02:47 [theLiz0717] It's just how my mind works, I guess.
02:48 [theLiz0717] I'm sorry. Please don't be mad.
02:49 [theLiz0717] Hello?

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, wondering what he should say. He tried to go back to writing code, but the fun seemed to have gone out of it. getservbyname does…what, again? It’d be in the index -

02:51 [theLiz0717] Are you there?
02:52 [theLiz0717] Can you get on the MUCK? I want to scene.
02:52 [theLiz0717] (Not with your new vixen character,
                   please.)

He closed the book, and pushed it aside, and stared through the table. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but it felt like his whole brain was…was itching, all of a sudden. He didn’t like the feeling. Focusing again on the laptop screen he noticed that when he looked at the chat window the itchy feeling got worse. He went to minimize it again, but

02:54 [greasy7] no.
02:54 [greasy7] what kind of privacy do you think i have
                right now
02:55 [greasy7] im in an airport terminal, there's people
                all around
02:55 [greasy7] and anyway
02:55 [greasy7] i am FINE right now
02:55 [greasy7] i dont need you worrying over me like this
02:56 [greasy7] i dont need you tryng to make mae feeel bad
                abotu any of this
02:56 [greasy7] maybe i AM truing to push you away
02:56 [greasy7] because maybe yu're making me wan tto
02:57 [greasy7] can you please just STOP
02:57 [greasy7] i havent had but about three hours of slepe
                in the last DAY
02:57 [greasy7] and you want met od eal with all of THIS on
                top of that
02:58 [greasy7] and ALSO scene with you
02:58 [greasy7] i know yuo wnated me to be there by now
02:59 [greasy7] and im not
02:59 [greasy7] AND THATS NOT MY FAULT

Where had that come from? He wiped angrily at his eyes. Had she said it was his fault? He scrolled the chat back, then forward again.

03:01 [theLiz0717] I never said it was your fault

So why did he feel like she had? Why did the itching in his brain feel even worse when he thought about it?

03:03 [theLiz0717] You're tired and you're not making
                   sense, but you don't have to be mean.
03:05 [theLiz0717] Remember why you decided to come stay
                   with me?

He found himself wondering why he had done that. She’d said…and he was pretty bored, there didn’t seem much to do after high school, and it was hard to find a job…she’d offered to let him stay with her, and…but had he actually—? He was tired, and not thinking all that clearly. Maybe she was right. He started typing into the chat window

03:05 [theLiz0717] We'll talk about this when you get here.
03:06 [theLiz0717] You'll apologize for all this and we'll
                   talk about it more after.

and stopped again. He slammed the laptop shut hard enough to startle the man in the rumpled suit who’d dozed off at the next table. He unplugged the phone line, too, just for good measure. It seemed to make his head feel better.

When the ticket counter opened five hours later, he was first in line. He paid a hundred and fifty dollars he couldn’t really afford to change his ticket, and then went and asked about the weather at a different gate. Three hours after that, he was on a plane, a nice new 777, empty enough that they’d given him a seat in business class. Flying southeast, instead of west. The seat in front of him had a phone in it, and the phone had a jack for a modem.

03:37 [theLiz0717] I'll try not to be angry.
08:18 [theLiz0717] Did they get the runway clear?
09:17 [greasy7] i'm going home
09:18 [greasy7 QUIT: ]

greasy7@strider code $ telnet muck.furry.world 2069
Trying 74.82.5.42...
Connected to furpile.furry.world.
Escape character is '^]'.
Welcome to
   ____                           _      __              __     __   __
  / __/ __ __  ____  ____  __ __ | | /| / / ___   ____  / / ___/ /  / /
 / _/  / // / / __/ / __/ / // / | |/ |/ / / _ \ / __/ / / / _  /  /_/
/_/    \_,_/ /_/   /_/    \_, /  |__/|__/  \___//_/   /_/  \_,_/  (_)
                         /___/

191 players now online.
Request a new character at http://muck.furry.world:80/cgi-bin/request.pl
Connect an existing character by typing: connect <name> <password>
Type QUIT at any time to disconnect.

connect AliceFoxgirl 1someday5910$
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Dormitory(#42)
  It's just a place for furs to sleep. There are beds and piles of
blankets scattered here and there.
[It's too dark to see who might be here.]
[3 mail messages waiting. Read with 'mail']
mail
[41 saved. New messages:]
1. Elizabeth (Today at 1:18:31 AM): Are you just angry over what I said
  about this new character of yours? I hope you know I didn't mean it.
2. SmashCat (Today at 2:41:03 AM): hey how's the trip going? let me know
  if you need a place to stay, she sounds PISSED
3. SmashCat (Today at 3:01:19 AM): btw somebody i work with is looking
  for a new junior programmer, i know you wanted to find something like
  that. hey mail me when you get the chance ok?
[V for saved, D# to delete, S# to save, N for new, X for done]
D1
Message 1 deleted.
S2
Message 2 saved. (42 total)
S3
Message 3 saved. (43 total)
X
where smashcat
SmashCat: ASLEEP
mail
[No new messages.]
[V for saved, N for new, X for done]
N
To whom?:SmashCat
Write mail?: hey im ok. about that job and place to stay,▄

(1978 words, ish)

500 words: "Consulting Hauntologist"

Mon, 10 May 2021 09:24:00 -0400

“There’s…something, in here, yes.” I closed my eyes, made a moue of obvious concentration, reached out with both hands as if to - “No, no, this won’t do at all.”

“What won’t?” He’d been following me around the whole time through the house, getting more excited and more nervous all the while. He’d been almost amusing at first, but by this point it was really getting beyond a joke.

“I’m going to need a few minutes alone in here, Mr. Deerling. There is a spirit reaching out, you were right about that, but…something’s preventing me making contact. At a time like this, it often helps to have a calmer environment. Easier to reach back, you know. Eliminate confounding variables.”

He looked around doubtfully, but it wasn’t as if there were anything in the room in the first place; they’d left it empty because of what he was sure was a haunting, and what Mrs. Deerling was sure was a bad heating vent. She’d been barely polite. “All right, I suppose. Do you need anything?”

“No, just quiet.” I shooed him toward the door. “I’ll come down in a bit, okay? Now, off you go…” I heard him all the way down the stairs by the creaking of the old risers. Then I blew out the candle, leaned against the wall by the door, and closed my eyes. All right, then. What’s got you bothering these people?

I don’t like them! Youngish, girlish. Hard to tell for sure.

Would you like to talk about why?

Why should I? Angry and petulant, too.

Who else have you met lately who wanted to listen?

Nothing for a moment. Think that one over. Then: They’re mean. I just wanted to be friends, but they heard me and Susan playing, and now they think there’s something wrong with her. She’s scared to play with me!

I thought back over the research I’d done before coming here. Married fifteen years, one kid, hadn’t met him. No pets, two incomes - both tech, Silicon Valley kind of stuff. They’d moved in three years prior, but from what Mr. Deerling had said it was only in the last year or so they’d started having trouble. Nothing I could recall about anyone by the name of - Susan? Who’s that? Does she live here with you?

Susan lives here with them! Don’t you know anything?

I’m starting to think that I don’t. Or, more precisely, that I hadn’t been told, and a very unlovely suspicion was beginning to form. Will you tell me a little more about Susan?

No! Susan’s really shy! I promised her I wouldn’t tell!

Well, then, it would be wrong of me to ask. I hadn’t entirely been lying when I told Mr. Deerling that calm and quiet helped; even with practice, it’s often not easy to relax into a house that’s strange to me. This house didn’t really mind, and before long I had found what I’d expected I would and hoped I wouldn’t.

Susan’s parents call her something else, don’t they?

They’re mean! And stupid! They think her name is Anthony! She cries a lot and now she’s scared to even talk to me!

Yes, I see. Susan is your friend, isn’t she?

Yes.

Do you want to help Susan?

Yes!

Okay, then. I stood up, leaned forward, reached for a tinge of mischief and conspiracy. Listen up, kiddo. What you do is, you wait until they fall asleep, and then…

Of course they ignored the invoice, but it was too late to claw back the deposit by the time they thought of trying, so as far as I’m concerned I still got paid - not that I would’ve minded working a case like that for free. All it really came to was a few weeks of sporadic voicemails, starting out angry, passing through frantic, ending up plaintive. Probably a couple Nextdoor posts, too, but who cares about that?

I haven’t heard from Mrs. Deerling in a couple of weeks, but I’m sure she and her husband will be just fine, even if she does probably still think I hypnotized both of them somehow. By now they’ll have realized sleeping pills only help with regular nightmares, and maybe even started figuring out what does work on these. Sure, it’ll be hard on them for a while yet, but - look, they’re not trying to be cruel, okay? Neither am I. Their season of terror will last only so long as they succeed in failing to learn from it.

You’d think it would be hard to make a living this way, wouldn’t you? But it’s a great line of work, really. Set your own hours, name your own rates, meet new people every day, maybe even do some good now and again. What’s not to like?

(803 words)

500 words: behind you

Sun, 09 May 2021 09:18:00 -0400

Don’t look now, but there’s something right behind you.

—I said not to look. Not that it matters - you can’t see it, but it’s there. That’s a spooky thought, isn’t it? Frightening and haunting, both at the same time. It’s always been there, and you’ve never known it. What might happen if it decided to make itself known?

Oh, don’t worry so! Everyone has one, and as far as I know, it never does anything, and no, I don’t know why. Why either of those. Mainly it’s always just there. Most people never notice, at least not consciously. It still bothers them, though.

Oh, yes, I can see it. It’s not that hard to see someone else’s - you’ll find out. Now that you know about them, you won’t be able to help looking. You won’t see everyone’s, but you’ll see some of them.

No, no two of them look the same, not as far as I can tell. Maybe some, but I’ve never seen two alike. And no, I won’t tell you what yours looks like. It wouldn’t help if I did, anyway. It’d be like…like trying to describe Beethoven or Cibo Matto to someone who’s never heard music before. The words depend on a basis of common experience that in this case just isn’t there.

Everyone has one, and most people spend all their time running away from it. Doesn’t work, of course. They don’t need to move the way we do; they just are where we are. Wherever we are. I think you could go to the end of the universe and back, if you wanted to, and it would still be right there. Right behind you.

Yes, I’m not surprised. Like I said, you can’t see everyone’s and neither can I. Maybe it’s just that, or maybe - yes, when I said everyone has one, I did mean everyone. Maybe you just can’t see mine. Or maybe you need more practice with this kind of looking. You did just start, after all.

Yes, well noticed, I am lying. Except for the part about everyone having one - that was true, and yes, I do too. But you’re looking in the wrong place. Mine isn’t right behind me, any more.

Oh, goodness, no! They’re not a kind of thing you can kill, and why would you try in any case? They’re harmless - granted, killing things that are harmless is a very human thing to do, but no. Not in this case. How would you even start?

A good question. Where do you think mine went? A better question would be, why assume it went anywhere?

Yes, I know, it’s very confusing. I don’t know how to make it less so, and explaining it isn’t going to help, but let me try: one day I realized it was closer to me than it ever had been before. I looked in a mirror and I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it in a way I never had before. Have you ever looked into a mirror and been not quite sure whose face it was looking back? Well, it was that kind of moment, but I don’t know if that mattered. In any case I thought very hard for a long time about this, and eventually I realized I could make a kind of mirror from my thoughts, and in that mirror I found I could see it. I found myself looking over the shoulder of my mind, into the gaze of a thing that has no eyes. And then, realizing that the mirror I had made wasn’t going to last much longer, I took one long backward step.

Well, don’t blame me for that! I did say it wasn’t going to help. We don’t really have words for any of this.

Yes, it was frightening. I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t eat me. For that matter, I don’t suppose I’m even sure whether or not it did. Not that “eat” is really the word in any case.

Also a good question. Yes and no, I suppose is the best answer I can give. I don’t any longer feel that restless itch to, to run. You know the one - yes you do, you’ve noticed it before and not noticed yourself noticing. It bothers you and you don’t know why - well, didn’t, you do now. I don’t have that any longer. I stopped running, and then I stopped needing to run. It’s not the only difference, but it was the first one I noticed.

No, I can’t explain how. There’s no special trick to it, in any case. Figure out what you feel like you have to run away from, and then figure out why you feel like you have to do that. And then don’t do that. It’s like riding a bike - once you know how, you never forget, but there’s a part in there that nobody can explain how to do. Some people never can figure it out, but I think most can. It’s just a matter of giving yourself enough chances to try, and not minding how often you fall on your face in the process.

Well, that’s not a question I can answer, is it? I think it is, but I suppose some would disagree. All I can really say is, it was worth it to me.

Oh, I have no idea! What do you think they are?

(901 words)

500 words: (not) one of those days

Sat, 08 May 2021 18:04:00 -0400

Some days, you just need a scrap of an idea and it’s off to the races right away. Others, not so much, and this hasn’t been the first kind of day. Not that I haven’t spent several hours trying to make it be, anyway.

I don’t know how I feel about it. I expected more of myself, but I always do, and often that’s not healthy. If it hasn’t become so in this case, it soon will. Maybe it’s a mistake to pause so soon. I think it is certainly a mistake to keep trying to force it today.

You build it up in your head, you know? I’m already probably going to have to get through the hangover from this to manage anything tomorrow, and at this point I’m just making that worse. Time I did something else instead.

I think, on those days I don’t write or don’t succeed in writing, I’ll recommend something instead - this time, let’s make that Elizabeth Sandifer’s The Beigeness, or How to Kill People with Bad Writing: The Scott Alexander Method. It’s worthwhile, but it is a lot; I’m going to trust you to decide based on the title whether it’s something you’re here for, because I’m apparently too fried to come up with useful content advice, too.

Did have another idea, though, just now. I’m going to write it down in my diary for tomorrow, and then go play some game that doesn’t need me to do a lot of thinking. My brains are sore.