All his primate-brain mapmaking machinery is worthless in these dimensions, but Salvador likes to feel it trying. Teasing it, he turns four right angles and still ends up orthogonal. His brain struggles like a beetle on its back.
There are physical laws here, of course, like the conservation of characters. Salvador nods to the only old man in the world, from whom he’s asked directions nine times.
“Howdy,” says the old man, “nice to meetcher, sentientlike construct.”
“Sentientlike?” retorts Salvador.
“Sorry!” The old man guffaws. “Didn’t realize you took the Turing test… and passed!”
Seriously, in that dimension it’s hilarious.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
“They say we must move out,” says Wanartaka, “that there is no solution but to run like dogs from the evildoers. But I say no. I tell you the Dance is real!” Roaring, stomping, fists to the sky. “I tell you their weapons cannot stand before the might of our people united! I tell you that I will put on this holy garment and stand before a thousand explosions, and defy them all!”
They believe, or believe they believe. They bind the Ghost Shirts to their rifles, to their Humvees, to their desert fatigues, because it’s all the armor they have.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Oates runs quiet as rain up the midnight side of the tower. She’s done everything possible to delay her opponent. With a bound, she’s horizontal again–
“Is it cliché,” asks Atwood coolly, “to point out that you’re late?”
“You’re the expert,” says Oates, and then they’re shooting each other’s bullets out of the air. Guns empty, they go to swords; swords bent, they flicker through hand arts: krav maga to hapkido, taekkyon, abir. They break apart at the click of the roof door.
“Take it from a reporter, girls,” drawls Didion, grinning, Automags in both hands. “Always skip the opening ceremonies.”
Monday, February 12, 2007
“Free at last,” she squeaks, and they chuckle as she turns off the modulator. “Free at last,” Vickie Lynn repeats, in her near-forgotten alto.
“We’re glad to have you in from the cold,” says the secret man on the seat opposite. “You’d pushed the limits of the role.”
“I won’t miss climbing into that latex,” she murmurs.
“The agency considers you one of history’s greatest dogwags. You’ll have medals–classified, of course.”
Vickie Lynn smiles. “I had fun with the farce,” she says, “what else can we ask?”
The black car whispers down the Hollywood highway, windows dark as ink.
Ava does a little acting.
“Excuse me,” says a man in a PT Cruiser, “which way to the conference center?”
“Twelve blocks that way,” says Ava. The man thanks her and drives off toward the worst neighborhood in the state. Ava never broke character!
“What can we get for you today?” asks her waitress, later.
“‘Ows about a stoik and kidney poi,” says Ava. Her dialect is perfect!
“We don’t have that,” says the waitress.
“And that’s why you attempted to strangle her?” asks the judge.
“No, your honor,” says Ava. “It’s because she’s carrying my baby!”
But she’s totally not!
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Alone in a strange bed, Eola makes men out of Kleenex to protect her from invaders. Some of them she puts on the nightstand and the footboard; others she gives Kleenex parachutes and tosses toward the periphery.
The Kleenex men cut silk and secure the LZ with Q-Tip rifles. The dust is cohering into hunched and leaning shapes, boiling at the edges, burning blue eyes in the corners and under the chair. The Kleenex men draw together, sweating.
The boiling dust monsters don’t understand their hunger. They advance with open arms, needing more, needing anything, needing not to be alone.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Everybody knows how Proserpina Macnair won three bouts against three pros with three right hooks all in one day, in her shirtwaist; if you want that story you can read the papers. But that’s after she came to town with the seal already dry on her degree. What you don’t hear is how she earned the title of Radcliffe Professor of Self-Defensive Sciences, Ph.D., or what it cost her, or why she wanted it so badly. You don’t hear about where or how she got that hammerhanded hook. You don’t hear about her faded black tattoos.
Unless you ask nice.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Ghostly hands tipped with rotting talons reach up from the ground, amidst discordant howling, to grasp Wilhelm’s ankles. He’s too surprised to stop them from pulling him down.
“Oh hello,” say the owners of the hands (who turn out to be, themselves, giant hands).
“Did you want something?” asks Wilhelm.
“We never actually get anyone,” says one giant hand.
“They always pull free at the last minute,” admits another.
“So what do you do between grabbings?” asks Wilhelm.
“Scrabble, mostly,” volunteers a hand.
Wilhelm beats the hands at Scrabble, because he knows lots of two-letter words, whereas they can’t read.
The Very Important Debate of Ten Thousand opens with stirring rhetoric. “Us good,” says Grung, before pointing keenly to a hill where Thag maybe saw somebody he didn’t know once. “Them bad!”
His opponent Hoog chuckles. “Well, us good,” he agrees, then jerks a thumb Grungward. “But them not good.”
Grung’s brows climb nearly above his ears. “Them good?” he asks in disbelief, pointing again.
“Us good,” Hoog clarifies.
“Them bad!” cries Grung.
“Us good, them bad,” explains Hoog quickly. “Them bad; conversely, us good.”
“Us bad?”
“Us good!”
Then a tyrannosaur eats all of them. Shut up, it could too.
Chicago’s mother’s sister’s boyfriend was her sitter, two or three times a month, while she was in first and second grade; and each of these times he hurt her. It ended when he moved away. For her tenth birthday he sent her his silver hip flask.
Over the course of her thirteenth year, remotely, she removed the foundations of his life. She left him bankrupt, disgraced, severely injured and finally arrested; still an amateur, she nearly blew her cover several times. She learned quickly. He died in prison.
She carries the flask, filled with gin, in the pocket of her jeans.
Thursday, February 1, 2007