Keiko doesn’t tinker with her bomb much anymore, but once in a while she’ll find a good nail or a thimble of black powder and take it down to the basement. It’s a big lumpy thing now, its capped pipes peeking from under the brown tarp like a shy giant snail. Its yield is around 1200 pounds. The shrapnel would do far more damage than the explosion.
Not that she’s ever going to detonate it, of course. It’s perfectly safe. It’s just a hobby, a way to get her heart going, and why does it even matter if nobody’s getting hurt?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Humans really do boot up pretty fast, Chrysalis thinks. Adult life navigation is a sophisticated task to restart every twenty-four hours, but they manage to get the basic motor skills running within seconds of ending their somnoparalytic hallucinations, and executive function shortly thereafter. Maybe there’s some kind of quantum-entangled optimization under the hood? It’s not like they’re shooting chemical messages around that quickly. She’ll have to map it out.
“It’s certainly the best system I’ve seen designed by accident,” she tells the new one admiringly. “You should be proud!”
“HEEEAAAAGHH,” it says, but that’s probably just from the probe.
Friday, February 18, 2011
If one travels from A to B, there must then exist a route from B to A. He doesn’t care if the world has ended. He doesn’t care if realities overlap. He’s done with this place and he’s going back to where he started: the auditorium, his notes, his work.
She talked about symbols. He tears apart a blank book he found somewhere and folds origami seats, an apron, a proscenium. Purple and green flicker at the edges of his model. The vellum is soft; the velvet curtains, he remembers, were red.
He begins to massage the tip of his finger.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The water is sickeningly warm.
Ashlock knows how far and how fast she can go on one lungful of air, but she’s encumbered, and the sea churns as the island calves blades of ice. She pulls off her boots and kicks out anyway. Tach struggles in her grip, but she has no time to let go.
She fell facing west. The bay door was south, but she still can’t see skylight, and breath fights in her like a frantic bird. Ashlock kicks and kicks, a kata of desperation, and then the razor keel of the Matthew Henson is crushing her hand.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Loxodopolis started out as a howdah with a sleeping bag in it, but its carrier (then three years old and frisky, a gray African named Tasla) just wouldn’t stop growing. They added more tents, then pannier apartments and the crown’s nest. Rickety walkways spiraled around his shambling mountain-body.
Now it’s a caravan city, following an elephant’s whim but rich from his patronage. Most itinerant peoples wander because of persecution, but nobody mutters the usual imprecations about traders when Loxodopolis rises against the horizon. Tasla’s feet can crush houses, and with ears like that, do you really think he can’t hear you?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
“Shit, you’ve got it bad in here,” says Chelsea, playing the flashlight over the recording booth. They would turn the lights on, but there’s no telling which of the switches is real.
“I already called an exterminator,” says Yehuda. “They say they’re booked out for weeks.” He throws a glum bottlecap at the endless dials along the mixing bank. Some of them grow legs and scuttle away.
“Skeuomorphs are everywhere this year,” says Chelsea. “Like cicadas.” She reaches for the door and finds it’s got two new handles. Shuddering, she hopes none of them are already imitating rivets on her jeans.
Friday, February 11, 2011
With shaking hands he finds his cheap ballpoint and field-strips it, fumbling the spring from its barrel and prying it straight as pain until he’s got a sharp point to dig with. The splinter comes free, and blood, as always, follows.
He stares at it for a moment, mind as clumsy as his hands, then sucks it from his fingertip.
He will come to regret the waste.
When he reassembles the pen again it doesn’t work anymore. No matter. He drops it and, unnoticed, a slip of paper from his pocket tumbles down after it to nest between the floorboards.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Up, across the slippery floor, Ashlock grabs the dead drive by its cable and shatters it with the blade of her rigid palm. A shoulder under Tach’s limp tall body and a fireman’s heave: she leans forward into the sprint, down the dark long tunnel.
Silent now but for the tight whistle of breath. Ashlock fumbles her stupid phone from her breast pocket and runs by its bobbing glow. The island begins sobbing, a sound so low it blurs vision, thunder in the cave of her chest.
Ten steps from light of the loading bay, the ice gives way beneath them.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
“All right, we’re going to do another set of leg lifts. Ready? Okay! Five six seven eight! Lots of energy. Great job! Next we’re going to take your thumb and put it right against your shoulder blade. Got it? I need you to bring your chin right down to your glutes. I like to call this one the ‘unspeakable ideogram!’ Feel your calves defying the law of exclusion? Reality should be weakening near your navel. Hold it! Hooold it! The broodspawn of Ur’gthax are breaching the veil of reality! At last! Burst forth, my children, and scourge this world!
“Aaand relax.”
Tuesday, February 8, 2011