Madigan basically expected, throughout her career in tech theatre, to end up in the CIA.
There is this about a safe house: it must feel safe. It needs dressing like any set; even the new ones need to have their corners knocked and book spines broken. It’s not just to blend away from enemy eyes. It’s to give agents and those in protective custody the feeling that people have been here; people have lived here; people have lived.
Madigan stayed in one in Madrid, quietly and against regulations, for a vacation week. The art on the walls was all children’s collage.
Friday, November 16, 2007
This is school: Latin and Greek, deportment and dressage, the lineage of the House of Wettin. They learn to waltz with each other and how to address a Duchess. They learn which fork to use.
Proserpina and Radiane sneak out in boys’ clothes to watch the fights, and Proserpina vomits the first time she sees a man’s blood drooling through his mustaches. Radiane doesn’t. They go again and again, and on the nighttime walk back they talk out every step. Did you see his feet, they say. Did you see how he fell apart as soon as he touched the ropes?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Muddy, exhausted, scared, hungry and alone: the Justin was perhaps feeling an appropriate amount of self-pity. He didn’t even have his boat anymore. Also, he was technically dead.
He sat on a sandbar a little ways from the shore, and tears ran salty in his mouth.
The Nile rose to lap at his sandals, then the seat of his jeans, his waist. The sandbar submerged itself. The Justin heard a soft sound: the current rippling, dividing around the ankles of a man behind him.
“Well,” said the man wryly, “cry me a river.”
“Ptah!”
They embraced like water and sand.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Eventually, thanks to stubborn tradition and globalization, everybody’s family name is either Li or Smith. There are some people in San Francisco named Smith-Li but nobody likes them.
Smith men only want to marry Li women and so goes the reverse, which means that while percentages fluctuate, they stay at about fifty-fifty for the next twelve thousand years.
Then one day, Smith Nakhit pings the downtown courthouse construct and demands to change her name–not to Li, not even to the apocryphal Smith-Li, but to Jones.
And it totally catches on! Everybody’s named Jones now! So that’s good.
“Three gods once walked the earth as men,” says Ratio Tile softly. “But they were unused to human needs, and had to demand food of the animals. Fox gave them her food for fear of their power, as did Monkey.”
They’re rushing toward the cratered gray island, as if it were a sponge for all the sea. “Kid, get to the port rigger!” howls Dog Shouting. “Dragalong, get the wheel–”
“But Rabbit refused,” says Ratio, “so they threw him in a fire and ate him. The smoke of his body rose up and up, and blackened the face of the moon…”
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Turns out the blood of the workers is a pretty lousy oil substitute.
“I told you we should have used their fat!” fumes Dagny.
“They don’t have any fat,” snaps Olga, “they’re all on Atkins, remember? Fourth Estate! More blood!”
Fourth Estate cranks the hose-pump enthusiastically, but Dagny knocks the nozzle out of her hand. “You’re only going to gum it up more!” she says.
“You–you Rawlsian!” Olga tackles her, and they collapse wrestling into an ankle-deep blood pool.
“This is hot,” pants Dagny, struggling, “I bet we could sell tickets.”
“Fourth Estate! Get the camera!” shrieks Olga.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Invisible things chip the rooftop concrete as they sprint, accompanied by a staccato of sonic booms. Zach wrings his brain for what the training would have him do and remembers that, yes, this was the part where he got up to go potty.
As if summoned by the memory, Hidebound rises up before them, grinning, two-fisting pistols. “Move!” shouts Zach, grabs Sara by the waist, and hauls them both off the side of the roof.
“What the mother of shit!” she shrieks at him as they plummet.
“I was hoping I’d think of a follow-up by now,” Zach admits.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The Leonard Richardsons emerge from their cocoons and shake hands.
“A great moment for humanity!” says Leonard Richardson.
“I move to never elect a leader-clone,” Leonard Richardson declares.
“Seconded,” says Leonard18Richardson. “An ordinal-free society is a postscarcity society.”
The others look at him narrowly. “Was that a subscript?” says Leonard Richardson.
“Oh no,” says Leonard18Richardson. “Quickly, brothers, excise it!”
“REDISTRIBUTE!” chant the Leonard Richardsons, barehandedly rending him. “REDISTRIBUTE!”
Dr. Guigar hits pause. “In every simulation,” he sighs. “Clearly, force-growing your own clones is–”
“Do it again!” says Leonard Richardson eagerly. “But this time give them forks!”