[1] You’ve discovered an ancient book. Read it: 4. Look at the pictures: 8. [2] –crawl on, page over page, convinced that all things die; 3— [3] Time contorts, a slippery lemniscate plunging inward to a nonexistent end. Are you travelling? 5. Travelled? 7. [4] Magic spells! Cast “Perfect Foresight:” 9. “Universe of Discourse:” 7. [5] To start over, go to 1. To continue, 2. [6] How did you get here? Goto 8. [7] The book has you in a semantic trap. Struggling, you 2. [8] You are struck dead. Goto 3. [9] Incredible! You see your life unfold at 5.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Whereas PURCHASER has defaulted on the agreement by one or more of the following means:
- Failure to remit installment for 60 days
- Breach of provisions 3:1-3:16 of original contract
- Bodily assumption into Heaven
TITLE HOLDER will therefore commence to legally sieze property and convert it, by means of standard miracle (see contract article 7), into an asset matching original assessment of profitability, 30 DAYS from posting of notice. PURCHASER has the right to employ a third-party (triune) ARBITRATOR to render final judgment on contract breach, should one return in splendor.
TITLE HOLDER will not be holding TITLE HOLDER’S breath.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Cathay’s tried sleeping in the sweaty heat of an orgy aftermath; she traded a favor to spend the night blanketed in a drawer at the morgue. She slept an hour once in a vertical wind tunnel, effectively weightless, the muted roar in her ears like the rushing of blood in the womb.
Like any addict, Cathay maintains that she’s not hurting anyone; yet every addiction has its price. One needs more or better to reach that original high, and soon her pillow is useless to her. Cathay lies awake dreaming of surgery, of submarines, of the bed where Doc Holliday died.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Silhouine spends the night underneath her little pantry-tucked bed, fearful of dragons, with a cat who alternates between dozing and jerking itself awake to bury startled claws in her back.
In the morning she knocks next door, at Mlle. Sunanza’s, to find that she’s not the only apprentice left to literally mind the shop.
“There are a bunch of us stuck here, owners hied out to the country,” glowers Dulap, over buttered dumplings. “We’re having a bonfire in the square tonight. Want to come?”
“I’d like that,” Silhouine smiles.
They don’t burn the shop down that night. That happens later.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
“AEIOU,” Cheyenne rattles off, but a couple of those miss the mark and so the scaffold forms quickly.
“Come on,” says Butler, glaring at her. “Never guess U!”
“You go then.”
“RST. Shit. L. Shit! N? F!” Butler’s sprung a prompt sweat: the lucky guess there at the end saves him a little dignity, but they’re running out of chances.
“FAEOO,” mutters Cheyenne dourly. “Hmm. K?”
“Never guess–” Butler starts, but it’s a jackpot: FAEOOK.
“We can do this,” says Cheyenne. “P? Oh no–”
Neck in the noose, breath shallow, their prisoner waits for the feet that will snap his neck.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
“It’s an easy mistake, and forgivable,” says Cote, “thinking there are other places.”
“The evidence is pretty strong,” murmurs Ballard.
“But it’s all flawed evidence, because it comes through your senses—your own personal 3D rendering system. And that system needs loading zones. Ever notice that when you take fast transportation, you spend a long time in a tiny tube with a bland image out the windows?”
“You mean clouds?”
“Planes, trains, the identical corridors between doors in Doom,” says Cote. “All serving the same purpose.”
“Is that why the suburbs seem to have so few polygons?”
“Be nice,” she says.
Monday, September 21, 2009
The nurse leaves work at five o’clock and docks in the maintenance conveyor, shuddering down the shaft to land in repair bay nine. Airbrushes touch up its smiling teeth; a pressure gauge ascertains the pneumatic firmness of RealFeel buttocks.
“Is maintenance necessary?” it queries. “This unit has not seen patients for six hundred cycles.”
“Unit is emergency-response. Priority one,” says the bay primly. “Maintenance complete.”
The nurse shuttles out, replaced by a struggling man in the conveyor’s pincers. “I’m not a robot!” he shrieks. “Stop trying to maintain me!”
“Begin wipe/reinstall,” sighs the bay, as the RealFeel gauge drives home.
Friday, September 18, 2009
In the ten years between the great fire that burns down the first palace at Christiansborg and the commencement of construction on the second, Torsten and Janne move in. The idea is good and obvious enough that they’re not the only squatters.
Janne’s home, and Torsten’s, went up in a larger and less celebrated conflagration. The hollowed-out wing leaks, but it keeps the rain off. There is this about the homes of the wealthy: they can be considered ruins even when there’s still a roof.
Ninety years later, the second palace burns down too. You’d think they’d stop using wooden stovepipes.
Thursday, September 17, 2009