There is a lingering moral superiority inherent in having flossed. Suri scans Harez’s mouth as he talks, searching for signs of gingivitis.
“And, er, they’ve achieved a significant number of our tactical goals,” Harez mumbles, trying to keep his lips close together. “So I wanted to let them, well, blow off some steam?”
“Yes, I see, Lieutenant,” says Suri. “And you’re sure we’ve got the surplus munitions?”
“Absolutely,” Harez assures her. “Triple-checked.”
Suri takes a mouthful of cool water and lets it swish through the aching gaps between her teeth. “All right,” she says. “A little genocide never hurt anybody.”
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
One thing to remember about any given swampy river: there are crocodiles.
Except in the afterlife there weren’t, which made sense: their chief function (in human perception) was largely abrogated. Denied symbiosis, the white plovers wheeled and dove and annoyed the Justin, who was trying to spar.
“Concentrate,” hissed Stevie, reed low and steady.
“I don’t want bird poopy on my soul!” the Justin protested.
“Just concentrate on your time signature. Soon enough you’ll have to deal with more than birds!”
Not far down the river, ready to prove them right, the crocohippolion lurked; and the plovers went nowhere near her.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
King. Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here’s to thy health: give him the cup. (A draught
anointed with a poison most severe!)
Laer. Another bout, your majesty; good Prince,
what sayest thou?
Ham. I’ll justly serve thee nonce.
[They play.]
Gert. Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, dab thy brow.
King. (But is that kerchief one I poison’d hence?
I’d best be sure.) Nay, take instead the wine.
Gert. I’ll have it. Gack!
Laer. Look here, a hit!
King. Poison! The Queen!
Ham. A venomed foil? This treachery will out!
Here, see how I have poison’d this grenade–
“Short fiction market’s disappearing,” says Ballard.
“More precisely, it was never there,” says Cote, “but fine, let’s take it as a proving ground, a brand-builder. What are you building toward?”
“Novels, which aren’t worth the time required. Um… video games?”
Cote snorts. “Writing for games is like sculpting for wolverines.”
“Then I guess TV or movies,” says Ballard.
“Right!” says Cote. “Except, thanks in part to my copy of Bittorrent, the money’s disappearing there too.”
Ballard frowns. “So how do you make money off stories when information is free?”
“Well hey!” says Cote. “This one doesn’t have a goddamn ending!”
“Your father was a good friend,” says Ratio. “We fought together against the Backstroke. Like so many of our order, he was betrayed and murdered by Reaching the West Reaches; now the Hopeless Warriors are all but extinct.” He’s rummaging through a chest. “But when you were old enough, he wanted you to have this…”
“Is it a war-name?” says See Me eagerly. “A bolter?”
“Bolters are clumsy and random.” Frowning, the old man draws out a long blade of steel–knifelike, but impossibly long and slender.
“What is it?”
“An elegant weapon,” says Ratio, “for a more civilized time.”
Thursday, October 11, 2007
“All right, Tikal,” says Mother, “you’re thirteen now! Time to choose whether to Buy In to the Great Collective.”
“Is that a real choice?” asks Tikal. “Everyone I know–”
Father frowns. “It wouldn’t be much of a Collective if we were forced to join!”
“What if I refuse?”
“You get thirteen thousand thalers,” says Mother.
“Wow!”
“And nothing else, ever again,” says Father. “Also, you can’t work, or invest, or actually spend it at any Collective institution.”
Tikal considers it. “I think,” he says, “I’ll Buy In.”
Mother claps happily. “Splendid! Let’s pick your new middle name off the approved list.”
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The scavenger’s daughter saves out the honey from a broken crock and the copper from insulated wires. She saves out pearled buttons and the flints from lighters, compass needles, the lenses of little round eyeglasses. She keeps them in the cage of her chest.
She gives almost all of it to her father for bartering days, but this time he isn’t waiting to collect the day’s catch. She finds him at the back door, clutching his chest.
“Lunette,” he whispers. “Lunette, I’m so cold, my darling, so–”
She saves out his eyes and teeth, and the rings on his little fingers.
Maybelline camps out on those great wide American steps and won’t leave, which gets easier when somebody donates a camp shower and a cot. Her posterboard sign grows weathered; somebody gives her a plywood copy. Passersby ask her to shake their hands. People hear about it as far away as Norway and Morocco, and some of them come to join her.
Eventually a man in a black suit comes out to see them. “Fine,” he says, “we’ll concede whatever you want! But–look, you know you’re not in Washington, right? Just the EPCOT plaza?”
“I don’t understand the question,” says Maybelline.
The male seahorse, unusually, has the babies. The female seahorse (Debra) is kind of freaked out about this.
“When did you last see him?” ask the seahorse police.
“He said he was just taking them to his mom’s for the weekend,” frets Debra. “That was yesterday morning, then I called her and she says he never even mentioned–I–I knew I shouldn’t have complained about his cooking!”
“Let me guess,” chuckles the seahorse police officer, “cold or burnt, and never ready when you got home?” He and Debra share an understanding look.
A few weeks later he gets morning sickness.
“But when I’m fighting,” says Alex quietly, “it’s like–”
“Don’t say a dance,” groans Phillip.
Alex laughs. “No. It’s like walking on one of those things at the museum, where it lights up and plays a tone where you tread, except each move subtly changes the chord.”
“Seriously?” says Tyler. “I get wireframes and countdown timers, pick a path, hit the targets…”
“What about you, Daniel?” says Phillip.
Daniel smiles. “Pachinko,” he says. “Pachinko forever, and I always win.”
“Toe?”
“Huh?”
“What do you see when you fight?”
Toe blinks. “A bunch of people,” he says, “trying to–like–hit me?”
Thursday, October 4, 2007