Wehr signs a haiku for him: dog eyes the water / how are you, friend, one question / how’s the moon down there?
“Are you trying to be cruel?” asks Dyson. “You know I could never count syllables.”
“Just to tease,” she says. “Never mind.”
You have to stop thinking of this as a handicap, he signs.
“I can’t even sign that word!” Wehr shouts. “You have to remember that I’m not good at remembering that your world is, is different–”
“How’s the moon down there?” he mocks.
She crosses her arms and turns her face to the wall. He stomps his foot.
Lot doesn’t want to hurt tonight, so when bat with the nail in it makes contact he refers the pain to his crabby old aunt Renny in Fort Lauderdale. She’s dead, but she left a forwarding address, so her neighbor (and sometime lover) Horton gets the pain instead. Horton refers it to his lawyer. The lawyer refers it to his go-to pain expert. The expert sends it to Guam.
Jumps and skips, fast as electrons down a nerve fiber, the pain skitters between continents and family trees. Until finally it ends up with Miranda.
It always ends up with Miranda.
Nobody’s buried in Washington’s Tomb, but they don’t let you go down there to see for yourself anymore. You know. Security.
“And why would you want to see it anyway?” asks the guard. “If you know it’s empty?” The guard’s hand wanders closer to her radio; Joliette decides not to push things.
“It was supposed to be built so everybody could see it,” she sighs, “but glass was harder to come by back then. Sorry, thanks.”
She rejoins the group and looks up at the Rotunda like a good tourist. Two floors down, Washington prowls a rectangle, tail high, eyes glowing.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
When Murphy Kozal builds the Luxurious Rex, people talk so much about the Titanic that she decides to sink it before it launches. They build a Fuller dome on top and install a reactor. Its maiden voyage traces the Puerto Rico Trench.
Naysayers naysaid, Murphy decides to build one that actually floats. But bigger. Much bigger.
“Not just a putting green on deck,” she tells her imarchinects, “a nine-hole course. A theme park. A lagoon.”
“There’s a big lagoon planned,” they assure her.
“How big?”
“How big should it be?”
“Can we fit,” she asks, “another cruise ship in it?”
The golden age of the Space Opera House is past. Its velvet curtains are leprous, its holograms blank; no infrared gowns file in on Saturday nights. The regulars now come at midnight, through the broken basement door.
Because the acoustics–oh, the acoustics! You can sit on the apron and clear your throat, and the House will turn you into a roaring lion. Can’t get that sound in a hypertrain tunnel. Not for free.
Milandra’s turn, tonight: seventeen eyes on seven beings watch her ascend the stage. Villi pluck a lasertar.
Milandra opens her facial sphincters and sings the Neptunian blues.
Twenty-six years later it occurs to Marty that she probably cheated on him that week, in college. It bothers him. He buys a plane ticket to Italy.
The village streets are still dangerous and the woods are still beautiful. He hikes deeper, into the green shadow, to the cold mouth of the cave; he pays Charon, crosses, and walks up to a particular tree on the other side.
“Remember when you went to see that band? The Somethings?” he asks. “Did you sleep with the guy in it?”
“Probably,” she says grayly.
“Okay,” he says, “I just wanted to know.”
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Candace buys some peopleware and configures it to keep the children amused. She comes back from Rotary to find it dented in the corner, nine-year-old Uriah standing over it.
“You have to kick it sometimes,” Uriah informs her, “or it locks up.”
“No mas!” sobs the peopleware, trying to shield itself.
Candace gets a Rottweiler, but the peopleware is totally incompatible. She tries hacking it and manages to expose an interface, but she leaves it open for one minute and the Rottie’s in neck-deep. Then Uriah finds it. He tries his favorite reboot.
The childware fares much better.
Friday, September 1, 2006
Tegan cries angry grownup tears all the way to the zoo.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go, Tegan,” says Marlo quietly.
“Why,” mutters Tegan, “did I not teach you to call me Mom?”
“Because–”
“That’s enough, Marlo.” She wipes her eyes again.
Most of the animals are indoors, but Rombach the Panthera leo persica is out and pacing. He doesn’t have much of a mane; his eyes are brave. Marlo watches him until Tegan makes her leave, then slips away and comes back and gets yelled at entirely too much.
Marlo gets a stuffed lion at the gift shop with her own money.
Tuesday, September 5, 2006