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
“Activity off the consonantal shelf,” says Enrique, eyes tracking a wiggly needle.
Hazel swears. “We’ve been warning them about this for years! Get on the horn to FEMA, tell them to close the schools.”
“It’s too late now. It will have already started. We never could predict them precisely.”
“What’s the point of plate linguistics if we can’t save a way of life?” Hazel demands.
But Enrique’s eyes are wide. “Wait, this is different. Hazel–it might be another big one.”
“What? There hasn’t been a Great Vowel Shift since the savanteenth–”
They stare at each other.
“Oh shut,” she says.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
The whale wears a mask tied behind its dorsal hump with string. Â When it speaks, the mouth’s mask moves; Charlene can see its jaw does not.
“Your dreams are dangerous,” it’s saying.
“Because,” says Charlene, “I want to change the world?”
“Because they are metastasizing.”
“That word is for cancer.” Charlene feels a certain pride for distinguishing contexts, in a dream. Â Wait, this is a dream?
“Sometimes things go wrong here. Â Sometimes they multiply.” Â It kicks its tail nervously. Â “I have to leave. Â Please tell the doctor. Â She’ll believe you if–”
Charlene wakes, bladder taut. Â Urgency competes with memory, and wins.
Ashlock clutches a vast mug of black coffee; Tach, a shot of very potent tea. Together they stare at the iPod, throbbing with nearly-visible menace.
“We could,” Ashlock begins.
“No,” says Tach.
“No one’s buying, we can’t throw it away–”
“I’m not putting that number in my head,” says Tach.
“Fine,” says Ashlock. “But somebody rigged that trap. It’s a curse, and it’s onto us but good.”
“So what? You want to return it?”
“That’s exactly what I want to do.”
“It’ll burn through our backups. We’ve got maybe two days.”
“This,” says Ashlock, “is why I always keep receipts.”
In the base at the heart of the cinder cone
Sits a man who (accustomed to dining alone
In impeccable white with a gauntleted hand)
Ignores the procession of dish drones unmanned
To consider the boy who, despite being doomed,
Sat down at his table and quickly consumed
Half a dodo; pommes frites; a petit-four sold
By a Saudi ex-prince, iced with edible gold;
Truffle-sauce veal served with saffron baguette;
and fruits with no name from the wilds of Tibet.
At last, when he’s sated, cocksure as he’s young,
“Let’s talk,” he says, tiger still strong on his tongue.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Marcel first encounters Security Theater in school, when it is proclaimed throughout his county that henceforth only backpacks of transparent mesh will be permitted; this despite the fact that the kid who got caught with the airsoft pistol had it tucked into his pants.
Purses are exempt. Marcel and Theo immediately buy purses.
Twelve years later, this genre of performance art is the world’s most well-funded, “which is why,” says Marcel, “I’m concerned about the low production values.”
“Please step out of line, sir,” says the lady with the beeping wand.
“One second,” says Marcel, “let me grab my clutch.”
Looking through the heautoscope is unflattering, and Ainsley can see as much on Maartechen’s face. (Ergo, so can Maartechen.)
“Now, like a camera, it does add ten pounds,” she begins.
“I don’t care about that,” he says, not quite fuming. “But the little words floating around–they’re–is this a joke?”
“It shows you the self other people see,” she says. “Those are, um, translated from their impressions…”
“‘Preening?’ ‘Fickle?’ ‘Abrupt?’ Ridiculous! I don’t even know why I wanted this!”
He storms out of the shop. Ainsley sighs. She’d fix the dumb thing if she could stand to look through it.
Tach started out as a scryptkiddie, pulling packaged cants off the flood for pranks and petty larceny. Before long he was tinkering with his own dead linguistics; vintage parchment isn’t cheap, so he took jobs off a slist of indeterminate legality. Â That was where he met Ashlock.
Their shared spark wasn’t attraction: Â it was ambition. Â Two days later they’d burned their employer for fifty bills and walked away to scrounge copper for a hacking den.
Tach has no regrets, because dealing with the unspeakable screws with your memory. Â Considering the circumstances, he’s wondering if it gives you a death wish too.
Thursday, October 21, 2010