Notes from a dream, part one

The beginning of a story:

A phone conversation.
"Any fool with a disregard for his life and liberty can kill someone. If you care about keeping both, and I do, you must exercise control: control of the time, control of the place, control of the people. The Israeli assassination in Dubai used 18 agents to kill one man: to control the approach to the hotel, to keep the corridor outside the room he was killed in clear, to drug and overpower him, and to get away, and they were still caught on camera, identified entering the country, and warrants issued for their arrest which will dog them the rest of their lives.

"That's why the itinerary of the worlds most powerful people are so important secrets: President of the United States, the most wealthy men and women in the world. The men who defend these people will not let you have control of the situation or the surroundings because they know this is how you kill them. The man you have described... his head of security is with him 24 hours a day, sleeps in the same room if he sleeps at all, is both his chief food taster, as well as his brother. This man will be hard to kill."

The end of the story:

A beautiful tropical beach at night. A Hawaiian band plays, while three men sitting barefoot in the sand eat and drink. One stands up and starts pacing, gesticulating. He briefly places his hand on the head of the second, and the third leaps up and clutches him by the throat. The middle man jumps to the defense of the first, grabbing his brother by the arms and the two men end up rolling in the sand, fighting like they fought as children many years ago.
The older brother ends up on top, snarling: "Forgive him. He is a genius."
Two, silenced gunshots.
The first man: "I am a genius. A genius at killing."
The waiter cleans down and throws the gun into the surf, the band drops their instruments, and pre-recorded music echos out across the bay to the waiting yacht.

The Heat Death of New York

The first day, it rained talking frogs.

He was out, walking his ape in Central Park when it happened - the sky grayed over, there was a thunderclap, and the hairs on his arms and his ape stood on ends for a brief moment, and then, frogs fell - in singletons, pairs, sets and then great groups pouring from the sky, each babbling as it fell: mathematical proofs, formal logic, partial differential equations, and as they tumbled and inevitably squelched into the soft loamy earth, medical texts, anatomical charts, sexual innuendoes, and the few fortunate survivors hopping around discussing philosophical issues with particular attention to Latour's Actor-Network-Theory and meditations on death and mortality as their broken backed colleagues lay dying in their thousands.

The second day, as he sipped a cappuccino in a downtown cafe, it was fish-and-chips, falling packets of soggy battered cod and shark and tuna tempura, and heaped handfuls of crinkled cut potatoes and kumara wedges and frittered yams, wrapped in broadsheets, tabloids, periodicals and scandal rags from the last five hundred years, and occasionally the future. Enterprising residents flung out nets, blankets, awnings, dresses, anything they could find to capture this unexpected bounty, since it had been many decades since the anything except jellyfish had been seen in the acidic seas around them.

That evening, as he watched the world markets crashing on the vortexes of time paradox, his ape looked up from cross-stitching and remarked 'It's kinetic pollution. All the solar power we generate gets stored in fly wheels at night, this great band of velocity chasing the sunset, spinning tensors out of control. We should have stayed the course with global warming. The universe has an inordinate fondness for heat death.'

He folded his napkin neatly. 'So it seems. Gelato?'

Singing for Supper

"It was entirely predictable once Carl Woese realised horizontal gene transfer was a more significant mechanism for change than Darwinian evolution." he said to the shiny black stranger.
"Take the number of your phalanges. Entirely inappropriate for your genus but with the dominant species on the planet having a profound relationship with the number ten, whole ecosystems have undergone what I term decimalisation."
He struggled against his strong bonds as he spoke, trying to find a weak spot he might tear through.
The stranger moved closer.
"The elevation of intelligence is another consequence, helped by easy movement of prion precursors across neural structures. I've written a number of papers that I'd refer you to, given the opportunity and a less delicately poised situation. Perhaps..."
The stranger whispered, rubbing his chelicerae together.
"I hunger. You stop talking. Stop struggling."
It was his last resort.
"Help me. Help me." the human-headed fly cried out, as the ten-legged spider advanced.

NaNoWriMo word count: 5,028

The Challenge of Grinding Lenses for Single Lens Microscopes; also Levigation and Grist mill

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

'You know, I am never sure whether the pain of not letting me drink vodka is worth the price. I mean, I appreciate all they have done for us. This warm little room you have beats sitting on a cardboard mat begging on the streets of Moscow over a Russian winter. And the food here is, well, hospital food reminds me of Army food and I think I was one of the few of us conscripts who enjoyed the food the glorious Russian Army provided. Provided you spiced it up with a swig of vodka. And that brings me back to my first point. If they just let me have a small sip of vodka now and again, my life would be perfect.

'Well, as perfect as you can get with no real eyes. Not that my old eyes did much for me - all burned out and useless. I could barely see the hands in front of my face, for all the thrashings my father gave to make me read. Well, it wasn't a waste of time when I was driving a tank. Ah, the beauty of a T72, the roar of the diesel engines, the useless chugging of the autoloader, was only compounded by the baroque complexities of the operating manuals. At least I could read them - otherwise I'd have ended up being a foot soldier on some forgotten front.

'I guess army issue beatings and a brush with the odd Islamist would have been better than blind and begging in a Russian winter. How was I to know? A blink and you missed it error with the laser range finder, and I'm blind and extraneous as far as the Russian army is concerned. But now... I'm a valued treasure in the heart of the IM Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy. Because Comrade Maykov... sorry, Chief Scientist Maykov... you know, with us no longer being a communist country and all, is not cooperating in the grand Kremlin scheme of things. I'm a living prize until they figure it out.

'Not that the eyes he grew me do much good. Nine times out of ten I wake up looking like the morning after a hard night on the vodka. These black and white spots and flashes. Just like a hangover. Which is why I want the vodka - I'm sure it'll fix things again.

'That's the secret of a hangover. More drinking, good and proper. Fixes your body right up. You see, alcohol converts from ethanol to acetaldehyde, which is the poison that you feel in your system the morning after, the black spots dancing in your vision, the malodorous head aches, the vomiting. It finally cleans up as ascetic acid, which is harmless, but you have to go through the pain first. But at higher alcohol levels, you get the MEOS system kicking in, which doesn't have that nasty acetaldehyde step to bring you down. So keep drinking to top yourself up and you'll feel fine.

'Just like the way we've run Russia since the break up. Keep topping up the binge, on oil, on nationalism, on invading our old property around the Caucasus, keep topping up ourselves until we get drunk and angry and stagger into China in a jealous fit. We should have handled our hangovers the Chinese way. Not drinking in the first place, because they can't handle their drink the way we do.

'Ah well, soldier. Enough of my ramblings. I'd best be off to the next bed. You'll be up and around, just as soon as they figure my eyes out. Of course, my accident is a little different in scale to what the Chinese are using. Just be grateful you're a foot soldier and not in a tank. I hear they shoot our tin cans even after their eyes are out. Whereas you and your comrades they leave behind. Whole divisions of you, cradling your bright, burned faces in your hands.

'A generation lost, the papers are saying. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds. Now that's a hangover... But don't you worry, as soon as they figure out my eyes, you'll be the first to get them.

'And I'll be back to my vodka, with a medal on my chest.'

Ebola for your kids!

I also need a spunky virologist heroine for a story.

'How to Make an Adult Film'

I just had the pleasure of sitting through a two hour audio production of a script that I originally wrote approximately a 12 page treatment for some seven years ago.

Three young talented actors, sound engineers and producers have turned the kernal of an idea I had into a feature length script. They've taken it in directions I never considered, and are now going to turn a 5 minute scene from that script into a fully realised day long full production shoot.

My hat off to them.

Interzone rejection

I've just received a thoughtful rejection from Interzone for the short story I submitted to them in November. I made it down to the final 30 out of 404 stories (apparently adding up to some 1931100 words). The feedback was great - basically keep writing and try submitting it elsewhere, which is always nice to hear, but ran to 10 paragraphs, which I think is a good sign. I just want to say publicly thanks to Jetse de Vries to take the time out to provide such great feedback to an aspiring writer (as well as critically reading through nearly two million words in less than two months).

I've picked Strange Horizons next, over the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, simply because they have an electronic submission process. They also have stricter word limits, so I cut the story down to 8,024 words. Given that Paul J. McAuley's "Gene Wars" covers much of the same territory in a much smaller word count, I don't think I'm being too aggressive in the cuts.

First syndicated article

My 20 Underused Game Mechanics article on the my sister blog Ascii Dreams was syndicated to GameSetWatch.

City by the Zee - Prologue and Brief Outline

The City by the Zee

Prologue

Legend has it, that the Pacha Aleph, found the city by the Zee fully formed, as if sprung from a dream or its marble walls thrust up from the salty desert surrounding it, and like in a dream, first encountered it at the sound of a footfall, stepping through an archway in its central chambers and looking around in marvel. The city was overrun in a riot of colour, animals and birds, reptiles and marsupials thronging its seemingly infinite halls and rooms, their feathers and skins alive with red, blues, bright greens, all gamut of blacks and whites and greys in-between, and the browns and beiges of the heavily podded trees and bushes and vines that they feed on. And the Aleph, in this dream, feed on them too, running naked with a spear cut from the mightiest of the trees that hes could find, striking down the furred and the feathered with well-aimed throws, in those early days, and spitting them on a fire to feast on the fatty meats that they proffered when slain. Fire was never a problem for the Aleph: hes could shatter a stained glass window at hands-length and use the strange crystals to focus the sun on fallen leaves and branches. And so hes hunted alone for many years, sating hir hunger while the world was young and its fruits and fowl ripe and for the taking.

As the Aleph feed and grew, the animals, contrary to expectation, grew to know hir presence and become fearless to him. Hes would have to exert himself less and less in the playing of the hunt, and more and more relied on the uncommon kindness of the city's primitive forebears, cutting the throats of the calf and lamb as they brushed against hir legs and breaking the necks of the birds as they swooped down to sit on hir shoulders. And as hir labours lessened, hir girth increased so that hes was eventually forced to sit in a central divan, in a tower high above the city central, and swallow the many creatures that made their way to hir, drawn like lemmings to the cliff-like passage of hir mouth and throat. And hes become pregnant with the eager food that hopped its way to hir, and one day, heavy with sweet meats and tender loins, gave birth, tearing away hir female organs in the throws of trembling labour, offering up a baby just as hes became a man.

His daughter, he beheld, as beautiful and ebony skinned as himself, crawled away with the waxen skin of a newborn, tugging the now useless worm in the tangle of her afterbirth and umbilical cord. And in her tiny infant hands, it broke the neck of a mouse that crossed her path, and ate it, just as the Aleph continued to feed on the succor of the creatures queued around him. But the baby had mobility that he now lacked, and she disappeared through an antechamber to the great room he occupied, and for many years, he never saw his daughter, while his great hunger continued to drive him, or more correctly, drive the foolish food creatures to his maw.

Whether it was age, or curiousity, or a natural subsidence like the passing of a tide or the sinking of the moon, after ten full years passed, the Aleph refused all the food offerings of the flock who attended him, and slept, and starved. And when his great bulk has finished consuming himself in his dreams, he returned to the stature and size of the boy that had first had the run of the city streets, and stepped out from his divan prison for the first time in half-a-century, to look for the girl-child he had bourne.

As in all creation myths, through the necessity of incest or parthogenesis, he and his daughter begat many children, in the fever heat of their sweaty couplings as they encountered each other in the labyrinth. Suffice it to say, each birth gave seed to further savage and hungry mouths and welcoming wombs, so that the balance of the city population gave way from animals and birds to the spawn of Pacha Aleph, all long limbed, dark-skinned, lithe and frenzied. And as the population feel, the trust between eater and eaten unravelled until the necessity of the hunt arose again. And Aleph's children were skilled to it, fire-hardening the tips of their spears and stabbing sticks, roasting the large game, grouse, gophers and gibblets that they caught, until only the most evasive birds and timid rodents existed in the city.


Chapter One: Parrots

In which the Inspector is introduced, visits his mother and tends to her, and is asked by Pacha Earl to investigate the possible heresy of one Researcher Aden.

Chapter Two: Lizards

In which a plague of lizards leads to strife amongst the Four Tribes: Parrots, Monkeys, Zebras and Rats. A new tribe is born.

Chapter Three: Assail

In which the Inspector is recruited by Pacha Luna for a journey beyond the walls of the city to Aden's Oasis. Much is discussed and learned about the geology of the city and the surrounding desert.

Chapter Four: Mouthpiece

In which the Inspector investigates rumours of the discovery of a diary of his predecessors, fermenting rebellion amongst the Lizardists. The work camps and general living conditions of those oppressed folk are revealed, but the contents of the diary proves to preserve the status quo.

Chapter Five: Deluge

In which, Pacha Solem investigates the now flooded depths of the city and makes an unusual discovery as to the nature of the now extinct Lizardist society and culture. The Inspector is forced to suppress the truth in true Amontillado fashion.

Chapter Six: Monkeys

In which the Inspector is recruited by the surviving Monkeyists to document and spread the word of their research. The Zebras meanwhile suffer a plague of their own.

Chapter Seven: Zebras

In which the city is now divided into Fits and Fats. The post of Inspector serves different functions in each of the two cultures - each a sad reflection on the fate of the city and its inhabitants.

Epilogue: Rats

In which the truth of the missing tribe of Ratists is revealed. The city falls into ruin.

Afterward: The Author Explains