Two days without radio contact, and relations among the Arctic scientists are strained.
“I know at least one of you fuckers is infected,” she says, backing up with the axe. The door’s a foot thick, but the cold still pounds through it.
“Calm down, Jana.” Isolde’s trying to edge around one side. “It’s probably dormant up here–”
“Not in the nice warm lab it’s not!” Jana’s shivering uncontrollably. “Everybody show me your wrists!”
Yarborough goes for the fake-out, but before her eyes snap back he’s leaping. The axe comes down. Jana, like the first scientists, tests her hypothesis in blood.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
It’s twenty minutes, walking from Woosterford Manor down to the village, or thirty seconds if you grease the cookie sheets. Lavender and Tilla certainly do, speed being the first consideration on this trip and safety fifth (parasols notwithstanding). The residents are scandalized, but residents will be. Lavender discovers she’s lost a crown to an ill-placed branch but they’re laughing too hard to establish which one.
The marriage goes through anyway. Lavender makes the best of it, and when the children ask if she has a gap smile like the legendary sled girl, she winks and hides teeth under their pillows.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
“What can you tell us about this panel you’ve assembled?” reads the nice reporter, off his hand.
“It’s a group of leading incompetists,” Sychko says, “who, I believe, are the only men fit to demolish this fine institution.”
“Yes, why are they all men?” pipes up somebody clever.
“Well, we’re an equal-opportunity employer, but we haven’t seen any female candidates with the lack of training and experience we demand.”
“And did you in fact say that your tenure would ‘end up driving this place into the shitcan?'”
Sychko laughs. “Please! The toilet will be only the beginning of our journey.”
Friday, November 12, 2010
“Did they name you that as some sick joke?” asks Mirabelle.
Cassandra bobs peacefully in the enclosure, a faintly luminescent little green girl with a cuttlefish head. “Not in the way you mean. Â Dr. Abernathy understood the truth of Cassandra.”
“Which is?”
“She didn’t need a curse. All that is necessary to be disbelieved and then hated is that one predict with accuracy.”
The station’s lights are dimmed and flickering; water gushes somewhere, and the air thickens with the smell of burning insulation. “We’re going to die down here, aren’t we?” whispers Mirabelle.
“One hates to say one told you so.”
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Kirrily’s money laundromat has no physical location, but her penthouse does. Â They case it for hours before deciding it’s empty. Â Tach does unspeakable things to the lock.
Inside it’s messily well-appointed, with a distinct shortage of blueprints marked “Screw Over Tach and Ashlock, Start Here.” Â Tach peels a banana and starts gingerly sorting her trash; Ashlock looks for the office.
There’s a desktop PC in there, retro relic, a beautiful beige box with a bulbous VGA monitor. Â Ashlock strokes it admiringly, then tries the keyboard. Â One of its little legs collapses. Â She flips it over.
“Adélie,” says the note stickied underneath.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
You don’t need a lamp in here. It’s perfectly well-lit.
> GET ALL
What? Why? It’s not even your stuff!
> S
You’re back in the room with the humming sphere. There is a lever here. There is an empty bottle here, because you dropped it on the floor, like a slob.
> PULL LEVER
Nothing happens. Again.
> GET SPHERE
It’s six feet across. Where would you even… no.
> PULL SPHERE
Oh come on.
> PUT LEVER ON SPHERE
This is stupid! Look, you have to float the sphere by blocking up the drain in 5B/2, is that clear enough?
> HINT
I HATE YOU
Breakups are hard in the postapocalypse: fish remaining in the sea number in the dozens, plus your ex might get ripped on engine cleaner and set half the compound on fire. Â Amid the frantic sand buckets and wet burlap, Helen catches accusing glares. Everyone liked them together. Couldn’t she have stuck with him? Taken one for the team?
They find him sleeping it off in a spider hole near the burnt-out greenhouse, and comfort him. Helen, exhausted, grabs an MRE and trudges off to eat in dawnlight. Hot sauce packets are liquid gold these days, but, Helen decides, she deserves one.
Heliersdorf is cold, and wind cuts through the concrete slab housing like a knife through the glue of an envelope. Aigrette touches the paper in his coat pocket again: already the corner is soft as fur from his nervous brushing. Four blocks to the room on the second floor. Three. Two.
“Dobroi nochi,” says the crackling Director on his red Bakelite telephone.
“I have the names,” says Aigrette, his Russian still clumsy after years of working for them. “Four. Is that enough?”
“Excellent work,” says the Director, and Aigrette can hear his smile. “You’ll change the very nature of the game.”
Thursday, November 4, 2010
They’re building the Sinner King, all forty feet of him, his skeleton a stark spread-eagle of quiescent neon. Â It’s hot work, but if they wanted to be cool, they wouldn’t be wearing sackcloth on the playa.
It does get cold when the sun goes down, though. Â Circe shivers as she takes her place in the concentric ranks, shivers more as they all douse themselves in grain spirit. Â They say if you can hold really still the Sinner King won’t see you, the sackcloth will consume itself and leave you unharmed.
The neon lights. Â Circe raises her match to the desert wind.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010