There’s only so much Internet to go around in El Paso–there’s a war on, after all–and Wanda’s been forced to resort to sucking out a few baud wherever she can. The neighbors’ wi-fi is long since drained, and she got a few minutes from the data plan on an expired SIM. Now she’s weighing a 56k, and wondering if wardialing still works.
“Careful,” says Chevre, “the Glimmer Man will haul you in for that.”
“The Glimmer Man’s not real,” says Wanda.
“Says you.”
“Says Snopes.”
“Prove it.”
Wanda does, and blows the few precious seconds still trapped in an Ethernet coil.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuffy builds the mudlarks out of river muck and straw skeletons, with button eyes and tin foil beaks. They hop around, flinging little silt-drops from their wingtips.
“Do you ever wonder about the consequences of creating life?” says Emmanuel, watching.
“They’re animated, not alive,” says Tuffy. “No reproduction. No DNA.”
“They make choices.” Two mudlarks team up to corral a fleeing beetle.
“No, they respond to stimuli.”
“You’re splitting feathers.”
Tuffy shrugs.
“If you’re making a big point about free will and sapience, I don’t like it,” says Emmanuel.
“I’m making mudlarks,” says Tuffy, and sets the ugly thing to flight.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
“Alert!” she yells in her strange accent, looking around the train station with wild eyes. Â “My postilion has been struck by lightning!”
Svetik starts toward her, but Zhenya puts a hand on her arm. Â “She’s just some coked-out tourist,” he says.
“She said someone’s been hit by–”
“It’s an old phrasebook thing,” says Zhenya. Â “Nonsense sentence to teach you some grammar rule.”
“The monkey has taken my self-defense device!”
“Ah,” says Svetik, “I see.”
Not far down the road, the boy from the stagecoach twitches in the dirt; a macaque hoots, and squeezes the trigger again.
Monday, September 20, 2010
They’re occupying the sidewalk in front of his hotel in much the same way that Stalin occupied Poland. Four of them, jackets tight over muscle and eyes blackly sunglassed: the meat puppets who, in any decent movie, would be merely mooks.
This isn’t a movie, and Jin’s knowledge of the arts martial extends no further than classes at the Y. Social combat, then, he thinks with disgruntlement. His phone is already out.
Flash mobs are passé enough to be sort of ironic by now, so he’s able to procure sufficient twitterie on brief notice. Jin slips through, nothing but another mook.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Since his dad is never around, Guarang has to learn to tie his own neckties, and from first principles at that. He discovers the double Windsor and the Four-in-Hand by iteration; he has no way of knowing their significance. Indeed, among his more exotic variations (the clove hitch-granny, for instance, or the half-Stolypin), they don’t stand out.
Guarang tries not to think about the fact that he could just look these things up. Embedded in his superego is the idea that knowledge won supercedes knowledge taken. It doesn’t. Guarang feeds his silk tongue through slippery hands, going for the triple lutz.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The clock on the oven is losing about a minute a week because there’s apparently a localized temporal viscosity centered around the stove. Cork fills it with watches and eats Hot Pockets for a fortnight. When he opens the door again they’re ticking in unison, one hundred seconds slow.
This has annoying implications for his soufflés.
Later the scientists come: no white-coated Government Men, just some PhD kids from the university. They get excited about the alpha constant a lot. Cork buys bulk Hot Pockets and the Journal of Cosmology, wondering if they’ll show the stain that looks like Steve Buscemi.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Zach did one thing, before he left the hospital, before he even left the dream of the drugs. He wasn’t supposed to leave his secured room, but in silence and darkness, he slid a card under the door to Mirna’s. His email address.
She holds it now in the pocket of her cardigan, running one thumb over the edge as a counselor talks to her about shock and the aftermath of trauma. Mirna nods.
And then somehow her substitute teacher is Sara.
“All of you have great potential,” she says, meeting Mirna’s eyes. “I’ll be watching to see you fulfill it.”
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
“This is Dylan we’re talking about,” says Daniel. “Dylan. The girl Dylan. You know? Our friend Dylan?”
“I saw what I saw,” says Philip. “She was hurting them after they gave up. Not for practice, or to test herself. For fun.”
“I’m with Daniel,” says Tyler. “It’s not like she’s suddenly turned evil.”
“Did I mention she started smoking?”
“Oh shit she’s turned evil,” says Tyler.
“I used to smoke,” Toe scowls.
Everybody takes the tiniest hint of a step back from him.
“Jesus–”
“What are you guys talking about?” says Dylan, ambling up.
The silence hums, taut as a violin.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Aniridia walks and pieces things together. This is a house with a train stop out front: however strange either construct might be, she’s sure of that. It’s not a house she’s meant to leave.
What kind of house has doors that only lead in? A prison. An asylum. Really, the same thing.
The frequency of her heart ascends, but Aniridia quells it. Prisons are just one extension of a system of control. Control implies a desire for order, and order, says Newton, implies a system not fully closed.
Aniridia snaps the handle off the pump and starts prying up the floor.
Friday, September 10, 2010
The Milky Way is still there, but the stars are different: they’re having to invent new constellations. Without the weight of legacy, though, it’s hard to get the ones you see to stick.
“That’s the Harper,” says Aloysius.
“It’s the Sugar Baker,” insists Deena. “See? The twinkly part, that’s the tip of his pastry bag.”
“I’m not letting you fill the sky with food just because you’re hungry.”
“Well I’m tired of pastoral iconography!”
“We should just divide it and each take half.”
“Where’s the line then?”
“There,” he says, tracing with his finger, “from the Crane to the morning star.”
Thursday, September 9, 2010