Some days let you have your farm implements, but others require tools of war. Either of those needs fire and anvil, sweat and time. Some people march to the front for battle. Others march out back to the forge.
She’s got her hammer free, and she’s beating fear from hot steel on the flat of a February morning. Try as you might, you can’t hone an edge on worry. You just set yourself to the work.
A flare of light from the cooling metal: recalescence. She smiles in the glow of her swords and plowshares, and marshalls summer against the dark.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Aniridia shouldn’t be surprised to find that someone’s left their copy of the script down here.
Not that it’s the kind of thing one can memorize. The words are scribbled in haste down the inside cover of a blank octavo, and they slide and blur under the wobbly pinhead of light; by the time she gets to the bottom, she’s sure the top has changed:
Fever dreams and mondegreens,
Innocent of time;
Tarry, scurry, hide the seams,
Multiply your eyes
Close the book of holorime.
Night will swallow day
And ink, and knives, and things unkind.
You’re better off this way–
Friday, February 25, 2011
“Better do this while it’s still numb,” she chatters, and though the medic’s knife is sharp, everyone hears the slippery crunch. Tach staggers off to be sick; the captain is pale. Ashlock exhales through pursed lips and then manages “I need a drink with all possible speed.”
The medic fumbles gauze. “You shouldn’t have alcohol until we get the bleeding–”
“I can still kill you with this hand.”
The captain finds a plastic flask of something clear and burning, which Ashlock hits hard. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asks.
“Just make the boat go faster,” says Ashlock.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
1944 and it’s cold in occupied France, cold enough that PFC Jack Kirby spends a night in the mud and ends up with frostbitten legs. The London surgeons have no choice but to amputate and give him cyberprosthetics made of starmetal.
Seriously, look it up.
Between Steranko’s escape artistry and Ditko’s phantom cloak, the three of them are a crack team on the European front. Fists fly; energies crackle; the Axis cowers before them. Soon they stand atop the ruins of the Reichstag, triumphant, titans of the age.
Stan Lee is one of only nine official Army Playwrights, so there’s that.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Keiko doesn’t tinker with her bomb much anymore, but once in a while she’ll find a good nail or a thimble of black powder and take it down to the basement. It’s a big lumpy thing now, its capped pipes peeking from under the brown tarp like a shy giant snail. Its yield is around 1200 pounds. The shrapnel would do far more damage than the explosion.
Not that she’s ever going to detonate it, of course. It’s perfectly safe. It’s just a hobby, a way to get her heart going, and why does it even matter if nobody’s getting hurt?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Humans really do boot up pretty fast, Chrysalis thinks. Adult life navigation is a sophisticated task to restart every twenty-four hours, but they manage to get the basic motor skills running within seconds of ending their somnoparalytic hallucinations, and executive function shortly thereafter. Maybe there’s some kind of quantum-entangled optimization under the hood? It’s not like they’re shooting chemical messages around that quickly. She’ll have to map it out.
“It’s certainly the best system I’ve seen designed by accident,” she tells the new one admiringly. “You should be proud!”
“HEEEAAAAGHH,” it says, but that’s probably just from the probe.
Friday, February 18, 2011
If one travels from A to B, there must then exist a route from B to A. He doesn’t care if the world has ended. He doesn’t care if realities overlap. He’s done with this place and he’s going back to where he started: the auditorium, his notes, his work.
She talked about symbols. He tears apart a blank book he found somewhere and folds origami seats, an apron, a proscenium. Purple and green flicker at the edges of his model. The vellum is soft; the velvet curtains, he remembers, were red.
He begins to massage the tip of his finger.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The water is sickeningly warm.
Ashlock knows how far and how fast she can go on one lungful of air, but she’s encumbered, and the sea churns as the island calves blades of ice. She pulls off her boots and kicks out anyway. Tach struggles in her grip, but she has no time to let go.
She fell facing west. The bay door was south, but she still can’t see skylight, and breath fights in her like a frantic bird. Ashlock kicks and kicks, a kata of desperation, and then the razor keel of the Matthew Henson is crushing her hand.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Loxodopolis started out as a howdah with a sleeping bag in it, but its carrier (then three years old and frisky, a gray African named Tasla) just wouldn’t stop growing. They added more tents, then pannier apartments and the crown’s nest. Rickety walkways spiraled around his shambling mountain-body.
Now it’s a caravan city, following an elephant’s whim but rich from his patronage. Most itinerant peoples wander because of persecution, but nobody mutters the usual imprecations about traders when Loxodopolis rises against the horizon. Tasla’s feet can crush houses, and with ears like that, do you really think he can’t hear you?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011