Lexie's space

Pulling Cable (III)

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

Pulling Cable (II)

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

Pulling Cable

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

500 words: "Curtains"

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

This post is NSFW or tagged with content advice. Read it at lexie.space.

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.