Across the country, flatscreens flicker on, and the populace hurries to abase themselves before the evening broadcast. It’s technically a Klingon ritual, but the ruling caste doesn’t mind. Once they stopped their internecine arguments about canon, they had free time to do things like conquer the world.
“Good evening,” smiles Herman, smug and pockmarked. “In tonight’s top stories, we’ll explain why females are inferior, then investigate why they won’t date their new overlords.”
“On the forecast, a promising drizzle will keep everyone indoors!” chortles EvangelionFan08.
“Turning to the stock market,” says Herman, “the NAZGÛL gained eleven points; the Drow, nine.”
The List is out again and the important part goes 5) Stalin 4) Snyder 3) Limbaugh 2) Jake for the eighth year running, and everybody’s buzzing about Gaddafi’s leap back into the top ten. Everyone except Jake, anyway.
That 2 gnaws at him. Realistically, he can’t compete with an icon; Ol’ Number One isn’t going anywhere. But the kids beneath him know that too, and they’ll gun hard for his spot instead.
Mere fuckuppery can’t keep him competitive forever. Jake feels old. Maybe he should try his hand at film or genocide? That community college catalog just came in the mail.
Aniridia closes her eyes and it comes burning at her, the one memory she never summons, the day her father didn’t come home. It was incongruous and beautiful, a sunset like brushfire. She sat and watched television until fear beat in her heart like wings.
No note. No trace. No end to the questions, all these aching lost orphan years later, and finally she knows:
The end of the world’s not a girl or a dream.
The end of the world’s not a house.
The end of the world is the story you tell when your reasons for living run out.
Phosphorescent hexadecimal crawls the web of wires.
Kirrily’s holding her with a tight grip on her hair. Celesque tries to keep her mouth shut but the bluetooth’s murmuring to her, a seductive sequence of piping numbers that tugs at her mind. Her lips want to follow. She can hear the ecstasy in the voices of the others around her, and hypnagoges boil out of the depth of the pit.
They pause, together, to inhale.
Ashlock steps out of the door, a thick black band tied across her eyes and ears. She bends to touch the trembling floor; and then she smiles.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011