“Spots of time!” shouts Wordsworth triumphantly, leaping from a hole in the continuum.
“W-Wordsworth?” gasps Dylan Thomas, struggling up from his hospital bed. “Impossible!”
“Nay; just possible enough,” he replies grimly. “Enough to end your insipid little career before you can be named Laureate and ruin the office–my office–forever!” He grabs a pillow.
“I can’t fight you off in this condition,” manages Thomas. “But lest I go gentle–grant me one request?”
“Yes?”
“Promise,” he whispers, “you’ll go back and kill Aphra Behn next.”
“Sorry,” says Wordsworth, mashing pillow to face. “I need her to give Shakespeare syphillis.”
“I’ve never heard of–”
“Alectryomancy,” says Jaboullei, smiling. “Most haven’t. But we provide accuracy comparable with the leading diviners, and utilize agricultural synergy to ensure that our prices are–” he winks. “–chicken scratch.”
“All right,” chuckles the peasant. “Do I just ask you or…?”
A rooster fixes him with one black eye.
“That’s Gallus,” says Jaboullei. “But yes, ask me.”
“Um. There’s this girl–”
“His brother’s already fertilizing her,” says Gallus.
The peasant stares. “That almost sounded like talking!”
“Do the pecking thing,” Jaboullei hisses.
“Oh, yes, bock bock,” says Gallus sarcastically, and pokes at a circle drawn in the dirt.
The bee starship isn’t yellow. Bees can see and appreciate hues, certainly, but do you own a car the color of your skin?
It’s not bulbous with a pointy end, either; it’s not a single mass at all. To describe it to someone with only one brain and two eyes, you’d call it a ghost ship, or a smoke ring. Or a dance.
And they’re not leaving for the reasons you suspect. They enjoy global warming, and the comforting buzz of cell phones; but they know when the blooming optical network will suddenly inflect. They don’t fancy having another hivemind around.
To build Atlantropa they drain much of the Mediterranean, which drops the coast about two hundred meters, and the Children’s Crusaders are still down there off the coast of Abruzzo. They’re white and cold and wide-eyed. Eventually someone mentions the new land bridge and they shuffle off toward it, singing.
“We’re on a Crusade,” explains Nicholas, when people ask awkwardly why he’s not dead. “To retake the Holy City.”
The people try to say it’s dangerous. They try to explain about Israel, and Palestine, and Hamas and the Gaza Strip and suicide bombings.
“We know,” says Nicholas fervently. “Brilliant, those.”
Tamsin tests the speed of light through diamond (1.24×108 kilometers per second).
“You won’t find anything,” Sandy says helpfully. His eyes are earnest. “It’s not like you’re going to supplant Einstein, honey! Don’t get above yourself!”
Tamsin tests the speed of light through a cristobalite sphere suspension.
“I was hoping we could talk about your budget allocation.” Sandy’s a little firmer this week.
Tamsin tests the speed of light through Bose condensate.
“These results are faked,” snarls Sandy. “And when I prove it you’re going to be branded for exactly what you are–”
Tamsin tests the speed of light through Sandy.
“Vampirism,” says Hawthorne. “Contagious.”
“Okay,” says Senji.
“Zombies. Contagious.”
“Well, yes.”
“Werewolves.”
“Were-everythings, now,” says Senji uneasily. “Since you generalized the virus.”
“Exactly!” Hawthorne does a little dance. “I thought too small! One recombinant agent creates a host of rapacious metanthropes. The solution? A second virus! An army of their natural enemies! Frankensteinitis!”
“Aside from that being a horrible idea,” says Senji, “the only time Frankenstein’s monster met the Wolfman was in movies, wherein he was portrayed as peacef–”
“Wrong!” says Hawthorne, slaps two bolts on his own neck, and hits himself with a stun gun.
“Ow!” he says, later.
Ten days’ ride into the desert, Amahl begins to see the shimmer: onion spires and the hint of winter, muffled silhouettes, light from half a world away. He fixes his eyes and dismounts to scoop sand into the first pouch.
Back in the city, he sells the pouch to Alik for three golden knots.
“It’s just sand,” says Alik dubiously.
“It’s your city,” Amahl replies. “Put your hand in the bag and close your eyes.”
“Fine, but if this doesn’t wo–” says Alik, and vanishes.
Amahl watches the ground where he stood for a while, then packs his stall for home.
“Mice? Seriously?” asks Carla, dropping the ruined bag in a tuppercube.
“Unless you’ve been stabbing the flour to keep the sugar in line,” says her mother on the phone. “Get a humane thingy.”
I’ve got better ideas, Carla thinks, and returns to the spill. It actually looks like a pattern, maybe letters scratched into it. Gluten… Raus? She shakes her head and wipes it away.
That night she waits in silence, lights out, until she hears the rattling start. She yanks the cupboard open with ninja speed.
The raisins look up from their dice, shocked, smoke trailing from their tiny cigarettes.
The killbot grinds ever onward, knife-guns shuddering with tension. Its green LEDs chuckle. “Any last words, hu-man?”
“Yes!” gasps George. “This is false! This sentence is false!”
The LEDs blink. “Seriously?”
“It’s a paradox,” George falters. “You’re supposed to… lock up?”
“Oh, but it’s not! Get some paper.” It scribbles. “See, what you’re really saying is ‘this statement is true and this statement is false.’ Even allowing metalanguage, the construct just reduces to A-and-not-A! Make sense?”
“Gosh,” says George. “Thanks!”
“Glad I could help,” grates the killbot warmly, then shoots him with about six hundred knives.