“Can’t you see it?” demands Hawthorne, waving the flashlight in their faces. The flashlight’s not switched on, but it has googly eyes stuck to it.
“It has googly eyes stuck to it,” says Senji.
“More than that!” Hawthorne hisses. “When you look at it, you look at the eyes, don’t you? Can’t you feel it? The application of the eyes has given it spirit, person, anima! I’ve found the secret, Senji!”
“The secret,” Senji says flatly.
“The secret to my creation, Senji!” Hawthorne rears up in wild glee, and lightning crashes behind him. “The secret of artificial life!”
He’s wrong, though.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
“It started,” says Dvorak, “about five months ago. My boss and I golf, and I typed up an email about being in a golf-addict support group. Everybody liked it. My boss put it on his door.”
He sighs. “Then someone asked me to write one for Bejeweled, it’s this little… Anyway, it was popular. Soon I was using the addiction-support-group joke for everything! Shopping, cell phones, boy band music, th-the Catholic church–”
He breaks off, sobbing. “There, now,” soothes Lori. “Does anyone have something to share with Dvorak?”
“You gots to check yourself,” says Ratch sagely. Ratch always says that.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Jeneil ducks inside and curses the Cairo heat. She came here for answers, but all she’s found is sand fleas and dead ends. If only she’d never touched that hateful monkey’s paw!
In the bathroom, she splashes her face and then opens her loose robe to look: seven hands now, infantile and old, all sprouting from her body. Every few days she finds an itchy red bump, which means she’s growing another. Sometimes they twitch.
Jeneil’s not ready to take a knife to any of them, not yet. But there’s a spot on her cheek that might not be a pimple.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
“But the weather doesn’t really… change,” says Susie, with a brittle, scared laugh. “I just–I don’t think it’ll sell.”
“Listen here, Miss,” says Roen. Color’s creeping up his neck. “We have a job to do. We bring news to our community, via broadcast, cable or live performance. WAVE 3 Sunrise Weather is a crucial part–”
“That’s something else,” Susie interrupts, recklessly. “Nobody actually sees the sunrise, I mean, since we moved into the caves…”
“You think that matters!” Roen thunders. “I will not allow these Commies–”
“–Terrorists–”
“–Conspirators–”
“Whatever! To change our American way of life!”
Monday, September 13, 2004
It’s Wednesday, which means lesbians: Darla Shotz leans back into the couch, grimacing, as Cherry Glow leers at her pussy. Cherry’s house, Dexter notices, looks like every other porn house. He can reflect on such matters now, having finished a couple of minutes ago.
“Hey,” grunts Bran next to him, and Dexter holds the red Tupperware cup out to his left. Bran caught for him, earlier, so it’s only fair. Dexter doesn’t look, and tries not to listen; that would be weird.
On screen, Darla and Cherry have mounted a double-ended dildo. Each needs two hands to support her own breasts.
Friday, September 10, 2004
Meg actually misjudged things rather badly, because the cloned triceratops hide makes a terrible couch. No matter how much they tan and oil it, sitting on it is like sitting on a pile of tires. Tractor tires.
Somebody else buys the patent for enough to get her mostly out of debt, starts making bulletproof vests that immediately antiquate Kevlar and goes on to do a lot of coke off starlets’ bellies. Meanwhile, Meg’s left with a warehouse full of square, tiger-striped, practically invulnerable leather cushions.
She tries to burn it down, but it turns out the damn stuff’s fireproof too.
Thursday, September 9, 2004
Swift dreams of running free through the forest, he and a vixen and their beautiful pups, a warm burrow and a fresh kill. His legs twitch.
There’s a shock of pain, and he’s awake, snarling but helpless before the smug little face. “Let’s go, Swift!” chortles the creature, resting the barbed lash on his shoulder. “Need to go see the King about some troll trouble!”
Hating it, Swift kneels to let him climb on, thinking all the while of how one day the enchanted slave-collar will be off. Swift will snap him up, then, one bite, stupid pointy hat and all.
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
“Concrete flowers?” says Cote. “I’d think they’d get heavy.”
“Not like wet-sand concrete,” Ballard says impatiently. “Concrete as opposed to hypothetical. The kind of flowers you can touch.”
“You mean real, then.”
Ballard shakes his head. “No, hypothetical flowers can be real. They just have to be either whole or partial, or both, to qualify for that.”
“But–but if a flower is hypothetical, it’s imaginary!” Cote’s eyes are starting to bulge. “By definition!”
“There’s only one imaginary flower! That I know of,” Ballard says, then squints at her across the checked plastic tablecloth. “Look, have you been listening at all?”
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
Chronastromy tends to give its practitioners a young-yet-ageless look, and Mario certainly has it–he’s a forty-year vet who now resembles himself at twenty. So it’s incongruous, the old man’s desperate fear in his eyes.
“Gaia damn those fools,” he swears to himself, shimmering into the middle of a Pasadena mall. “Eighteen ninety-two. I said eighteen ninety-two, and they’re off by a century!”
He’s been spotted by then; the teens have begun converging from all angles. “Slater!” they are shrieking. “Slater!” It’s not his name.
The jet boots get him through a skylight, but he knows he’s not safe for long.
Monday, September 6, 2004
“I need more!” Columbine gasps as he bursts into the basement office. “Please, Bollweevil, I can’t do this, I can’t keep trying to think around it!”
“You knew the limits, Mister Columbine,” says Bollweevil, picking a nail, looking over his glasses. “You received a fair allotment, just like every other customer. With which of your words were you careless, Mister Columbine?”
“–,” Columbine whispers. His face crumples in desperation. “Ah! The–the additive conjunction!”
“You are, of course, willing to pay the overage fee.”
“Yes, yes, anything!”
Bollweevil smiles inside, opening a drawer to slowly, teasingly unroll a fresh strip of ands.
Friday, September 3, 2004