The Home I will Likely Never Build: The Sun Side

I have been building a house in my head for decades, now. It’s a place that doesn’t forget what has worked for centuries, but isn’t afraid of technology. It is a place where you can feel the hands of the people who built it; the ghosts in this place are the echoes of the wood carvers, tile makers, welders, and artists who made this place special. You can almost hear them cursing.

You have by now taken a gentle walk through the garden, and while it is pleasant, and creates a crucial link to the land the house is built from, it is hard to ignore the structure in front of you any longer. You take a few more steps past the whimsical bird bath (that services the bats as well), and appreciate the humor of the artist who created it. But now it is time to turn our gaze to the house itself.

Today is a sunny afternoon, warm for the altitude, and the breeze is fresh.

The home seems to be embracing the garden, its wings like arms wrapping protectively around the quiet ground. The center section of the house is open, no walls facing you at all; the line between outdoors and indoors is not clearly defined. Softening this transition further is a patio and the long eaves shading the home from the summer sun. The eaves are built with math that has informed buildings in the Southwest for hundreds of years. The eaves provide shade in the summer, but let the warming sun into the dwelling in the winter.

You don’t need to know, but might find interesting, that these eaves are covered with photovoltaic cells.

The center of the house is two stories, with an observation deck on the highest roof. Both floors are open right now, allowing you to see common areas above and below. As you approach, you find yourself on a wide flagstone patio with a full barbecue. It is the outdoor kitchen, for days and nights when it is simply too lovely to go inside to cook. There are gas burners, of course, and a griddle, but also a place to light the charcoal when the moment calls for it. A refrigerator? Sure, why not. Don’t want to have to go inside just to get a frosty beverage.

Around the barbecue are tables, with umbrellas for shade. There is music coming from somewhere.

Suddenly, it is winter. Your nose is red from the crisp, cold air. The smell of burning piñon lightly scents the air. You squint in the bright light as the sun reflects off the light snow that coats the slumbering garden. Where moments before the house was open, you now see walls of glass. The sun, lower now, shines through the glass and warms the dark walls and the dark earth-toned tile on the floors where the sun can reach. You are in no hurry, but you can imagine feeling the warmth of those floors through your socks once you go inside and shed your boots.

This home, you realize, is powered and warmed in large part by the sun. While the techno-scientists try to achieve sustained fusion here on Earth (go, techno-scientists!), we’ll just draw from the one that is already up and running, even if it’s only available half the time.

On both floors, the glass walls curve gently, following the arc defined by the garden wall. “That must be preposterously expensive,” you muse. “Why not just have a whole bunch of French doors?” Because it’s my damn house, that’s why. If I can’t afford it anyway, why hold back?

Summer again. The house is open, and you hear laughter from the upper level, and the crack of a beak at the pool table. You cross the patio into the shade of the eaves. It’s time to go inside.

5

The Home I will Likely Never Build: the Garden

I’ve had a house in my head for thirty, maybe forty years now. It has evolved over that time, but my recent proximity to mortality has turned my thoughts to the dwelling with a more sharply-honed focus. The heavy walls I dream of are as old as the idea of the home itself. Likewise the secret passage. The sun has always been a friend, combining new tech with old architecture. The analemma in the secret room is new, as are the elevator’s virtual floors.

It’s a house a kid might design, full of fun and surprises, and it’s a house a hippie might design, a place that embraces nature and has a communal focus. Although I can’t let go of wood-burning fireplaces. It’s a house an engineer might design, optimized for efficiency and self-reliance. It is a house that celebrates artisans and craftspeople, honoring humanity and the hands well-applied to make something enduring. You can feel, in this place, the people who made it.

If you will indulge me, I would like to give you a tour of my imaginary home. I have tried to draw pictures, but for now at least I can offer only words. It would fill my life with light is someone reading this were to draw pictures of the words I write.

It starts at the gate. Unassuming pale stucco walls curve away from you on either side, but it is the gate that holds you attention. You notice right away that there are very few straight lines; all is curved and flowing. The opening in the wall is convex on one side, on the other it is a wave. It feels sculpted, rather than engineered. Perhaps you realize that this will be a foundational principle for all that follows. Perhaps you will just smile.

The gate itself is cast iron, decorated with motifs of nature — sun and soil and life, things that you will soon find in the garden. It curves and flows elegantly, and at the bottom is the mark of the artist who created it. Someone local, hopefully, who understands the land and what it means.

The gate is not locked; you lift the latch and step through into the garden.

Perhaps your eye is drawn to the house on the far side, but for once words beat pictures and I will instead bring your focus to the garden that surrounds you.

The path you are on curves and flows over the terrain, and crunches under your feet in a satisfying way. With every step you take, it whispers to you, telling you that you are in a quiet place, a place of contemplation. At least today it does, on this tour it is a sunny afternoon and there is no gathering at the house. Today there is the sun, and a gentle breeze making the trees sigh, and birds and whatnot, and you.

There is nohting exotic about the garden; the plants that grow here are the same as the ones that have grown on this land for millennia. But we aren’t above cheating a little; careful application of water and nutrients increases the density of the plant life, and the animals that depend on it. This is not simply a garden, it is an ecosystem*.

I said it was daytime, and in so doing robbed you of the scents of the night-blooming flowers, the weight of the colder air in your nose, the chime of the nighttime insects. I will have to replace that with the songs of the birds who find haven here, and the hum of the bees jacking off flowers and taking their payday home. (new feature: beehive)

You have only taken a few steps, but you stop for a moment, to listen, and to breathe, and to shed the world on the other side of the gate. You are in a safe place now, a quiet place, unless you decide to raise a ruckus. No judgement here.

The path rises in front of you, then descends under your relaxed tread. From the top you can take in the whole garden. It is round, and vibrant, dotted with trees that remember when there were no people around here. Sorry about that, guys, but maybe a little extra water will help.

At the center of the round garden is a round patio, a place to sit and eat a sandwich or to read when the sun is not too bright. There is a sculpture here, interesting and whimsical, and functional in a way that will be revealed later.

Pausing here, you feel like you are at the center of the universe. You are surrounded by life, even if much of it is sleeping because I made you come here during daytime. Just wait for tonight. You will be glad you did.

5

November 1, 2021

This is my 21st year participating in NaNoWriMo. Different years it means different things to me, but it’s always a low-pressure opportunity to just kick back and write something stupid.

I’m pretty excited by my story this year. it’s not unusual for me to have a great setting, but this time I feel like I’m starting closer to an actual story than I usually do. You might recognize this from a recent post for a bit that comes later.

This is only part of my first-day output; I decided to omit the very beginning, where we learn that Sasha and Mags are lovers, that scavengers like these three usually die poor, and that all three on the boat understand table odds – the idea in poker that the value of your bet is affected not just by the odds of winning; it is adjusted for the pot to be won. That calculus also recognizes that anything you have previously put on the table is not yours anymore. On Hell’s Balls, Mags and Sasha recognize that they put their lives on the table long ago. Just more chips in the pile.

In that chapter, I don’t abuse the poker metaphor nearly as baldly as I did just now. It was more the logic behind their decisions.

Anyway, there’s this alien tech, and it’s worth a lot, but every example up to now has been blasted to shit. The possibility of intact Gamma tech is a life-changer. Enough for three small people to walk away from the table. Now they just have to go get it.

So here’s where they do.

Sasha started the pumps to pull the atmosphere out of the ship, back into storage tanks, an hour before the jump. Tommy tried to relax in his chair, watching the readings from all the internal systems as they splashed on the underside of his cornea, augmenting his understanding of the ship that was to be his salvation or his coffin.

He was twitchy, nervous, but it was a feeling he knew. Let’s just get this started.

Sasha was sure something was here. Something unprecedented, something that could change three small lives. Tommy trusted her. Mags was sure she had found the spot. She was a bullshitter, but not about something like this. The analysis was solid. Tommy trusted her, too. They just needed to put the boat right in that spot, then get out alive. That was his job. It was time to validate their trust in him.

He watched the timer count down, and as the moment of truth approached his heart slowed, and the calm of action took him. “Full thrust,” he said to no one, and the subspace thrusters roared to life, throwing a trail of near-lightspeed plasma behind the ship just as the jump drive engaged.

None of the systems were built to make a jump while the jumping body was accelerating in real space. The ship hammered into its new location, gratifyingly close to its projected position, but spinning through a giant corkscrew as the computers struggled for a fix and a solution. Tommy slammed his stick to the right and fed unwise amounts of power into the port thruster while flaring the steering jets on the nose to stop the spin as the ship catapulted forward. “Tell me where to go!” He shouted at Mags.

A beacon appeared in his vision. “Whatever that is, grab it,” Mags said in his ear. “Because that is some kind of weird shit.”

Warning signs appeared in his vision, red outlines around critical parts of Hell’s Balls that were shaking apart, stressed to breaking by the jump. Then the warnings were gone. “I’ll take care of that shit,” Sasha said over the comm. “You just fly.”

The shaking stopped as the ship seemed to fully accept its new position in space and time. “Object is rounded, roughly cylindrical, four meters long,” Mags said. “Mass… uncertain. Confirmed Gamma. No signs of damage.”

Tommy heard Sasha gasp over the comm. “Bogeys?” He asked.

“Fed ship crapping its pants and lighting it up, twelve minutes before it’s a problem, off our vector. A bunch little commercial shits dancing around but nothing with a gun I can see.”

“I’m gonna slow down for the grab,” Tommy said. “Without a mass reading I don’t want to tear our grapple off.”

“Your call,” Sasha said.

Tommy swung the ship around to put the thrust of the engines into their path, as the harnesses in the ship strained against the crew and the three sank deep into their acceleration couches. Tommy knew that the object they were collecting was impervious to any force humans could muster, but he was careful to keep his exhaust plume well away from the artifact, instead choosing a broad loop of a course that simultaneously minimized the difference in velocity between them and the target at the crucial moment, and put the Fed ship squarely behind them on their run to get the fuck out of there.

His eyes were blurring from the acceleration, and his heart felt like it was going to implode, and he smiled. 

Tommy worked with the fight computer, and it was perfect. They swept through space in an arc that could only be described as beautiful, the perfect solution to many overlapping problems, from engine heat to Fed cruiser to the uncertain mass of the object that soon would be theirs.

Until is wasn’t.

“Fuck!” Tommy said. “What the fuck?”

Mags shouted, “The fucker moved! It moved!”

“It’s active tech,” Sasha said calmly.

There was silence in the cockpit for a second, before Mags said, “Active. Holy…”

Tommy flung the ship into a new arc, to pass by the artifact once more, directly across the path of the Fed destroyer.

“What are you doing, Tommy?” Sasha asked, eerily calm.

“Gettin’ the thing,” he said.

“You doing this for us, kid? You know how Mags and I feel. But you don’t have to die here.”

“I… I’m sorry. But I don’t think they should have it.”

Sasha chuckled. “Fair enough.”

“Kid’s growing some ovaries at last,” Mags said. “Don’t worry too much about it, but if we survive the destroyer we’ll be heading straight toward a cruiser that’s acting plenty pissed off.”

“First things first,” Sasha said.

Around on the new course, full thrust, there was pretty much no way the grapple would be able to capture the object, no matter what its mass was. At that velocity difference, it wouldn’t be able to capture a fart. As he approached he waggled the ship a little, then did a roll and a dip.

“What the fuck, Tommy?” Mags asked.

“Just trying… to talk to it,” Tommy said. “Trying to look fun.”

Sasha laughed, but the strain of acceleration and danger showed through. “You’re fucking flirting with it?”

“It’s dancing back,” Mags said, almost a whisper.

Tommy couldn’t help but laugh. “She’s worse at dancing than I am.”

“I think we can blame the teacher,” Sasha said.

Mags was strangely calm. Calmer than Tommy had ever seen her. “It moved again.”

“Goddammit, where’d it go?” Tommy shouted.

“It’s in our hold, kid. I think she likes you.”

The ship was suddenly far more nimble. Tommy asked, “Mags, you got a read on the mass of that thing?”

“Um… negative. As in negative mass.”

“Well, that’s something,” Sasha said.

Tommy wasn’t listening. Mags put the fed ships into his vision and he felt the ship move to his instructions, more responsive than ever before but they were boxed between fed ships and failing engines. And… shit. Strike craft were launching from the cruiser. Four total, fast, nimble, and closing exit options quickly.

“I got the little guys,” Mags said, lighting up the ships meager point defense systems. “You just fly, Tommy.”

Tommy just flew. One of the strike craft blasted past, cutting holes in unimportant parts of Hell’s Balls, and at the end of its run Tommy twitched the boat and caught the fighter in her exhaust plume, by far the most potent weapon their boat carried.

He used that turn to swing the boat to put Hell’s Balls directly between cruiser and destroyer for one critical moment, preventing them from using their big guns, but that reprieve lasted only a heartbeat and even though they were accelerating beyond any spec for their boat and even though the Feds were crossing their path and would take minutes to achieve a useful vector, the fastest ship ever made couldn’t outrun light.

Tommy jinked and juked, but it didn’t matter. The first hit tore through the starboard thruster and opened the cargo hold to space.

“Cargo’s sticking with us,” Mags reported.

The next hit cored the ship from stern to stem, directly through Mags. One moment she was there, the next she was plasma. Behind him Sasha was crying out in pain, then wasn’t, and Hell’s Balls was no more, and they were gone, and Tommy was still connected to his acceleration couch, but it wasn’t attached to anything, and he was tumbling in the terrifying silent void.

His optic interface was telling him that his suit was no longer intact. As he tumbled, he became aware of another presence, that didn’t seem to interact with light correctly. He smiled, and waggled his arms. Arm. One seemed to be missing. Distantly it hurt like hell but his suit had flooded his blood with morphine. He waggled some more, and laughed when the thing he almost couldn’t see waggled back.

Then his boat’s reactor went up, and there was light beyond imagining, and finally blessed darkness.

3

Maybe the End of a Story, Maybe the Beginning

She stood naked looking out the window, limbed by the lights of the city. “You people,” she said.

From the deep hotel bed I said, “what people?”

She shook her head and after a moment looked back over her shoulder at me. It seemed, in that light, that maybe her light brown eyes were lit from within, but it was just the way her they caught the glow of the the television, I told myself.

“You people,” she said again. “You need something to fear. It’s wired in your brains.”

“Uh huh,” I said. The night was getting a little weird. I was for sure going to end up paying for the room, I could tell, no matter what she had said.

She snorted. “If you don’t have something concrete to fear, you will invent something.” Her eyes were definitely glowing now.

I pushed myself up against the headboard, pulling the sheets up with me to cover my frailty. My gut told me that there was no need to invent something to be afraid of at that moment. She watched me.

“You’re cute when you’re terrified,” she said, and turned to look back out the window. “It’s an honest fear.” She took a deep breath. “Delicious. Left to yourselves, that fearful instinct, combined with the power you suddenly wield, will certainly destroy you. There’s no doubt. That’s why I’m here.”

“To… help?” I was starting to feel the heat radiating from her body. She didn’t seem like the helpful type.

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe just to speed things up. I’ve been sent to simplify things.”

She waited for my obligatory leading question but my throat was dry.

She laughed. “I’m giving you something real to fear. It’s as simple as this: you people learn to work together and kill me, or I will cleanse this planet of life.”

“Simple enough,” I croaked, as I kissed my planet goodbye.

3

The Beginning of a Fun Space Opera

“Everything will be all right.”

Tommy thought he heard those words, anyway; a soothing alto whispering in his ear. A lie, he was pretty sure. He tied to open his eyes, but he couldn’t, and he became aware that his head was wrapped tightly.

But as he emerged from his sleep he wanted to go right back. He was aware, distantly and intellectually, that half his body was on fire, but it was the other half, the parts he couldn’t feel at all that frightened him.

He had been flying, dodging, cursing, ducking between hulks of weird alien… things, sending the Feds crashing into each other while Mags did what she could with their little popgun, extracting every possible cost to those trying to kill them, but knowing, all along, that there were just too many of the bastards. Knowing all along that he was going to die.

He jerked in the restraints that held him now as he remembered the last hit his little ship had taken, reliving the moment his craft had been vented and Mags had gone cartwheeling into the void.

“Please try to remain still,” the voice said. “I am currently testing your mental function, then you will sleep again. Everything will be all right.”

His mouth was not bound. He worked his jaw, tried to force words through a throat that would not respond.

“The next time you are conscious, you will be able to speak,” the voice said.

He felt sleep return, but now he feared his dreams.

“Do not be afraid. Everything will be all right.”

* * *

The second time up the well, it was a slower climb. The pain was closer now, but still he was shielded from the worst. Out there somewhere his left arm was in agony as it slowly repaired itself. The right arm felt… odd. But it didn’t hurt. Tommy was pretty sure that was worse.

He could feel himself breathing now, he could feel the air passing over scorched and raw tissue in his throat and lungs. He could feel his heart beat. The top of his face was still wrapped tightly, but he could sense the room around him now. He was surrounded by almost-silent machines, machines that no doubt were keeping him alive.

A simple fact: shitbags like him did not get this sort of medical care. Ever.

The voice again, so soothing, but tinged with concern. “Are you able to speak?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, tried again, moving air through his abused throat until noises started coming out. “Huh..hii… is… everything going to be all right?”

She didn’t laugh but her voice sounded like it was colored by a smile when she said, “I believe so, yes.”

“Where am I?”

“You are in a medical bay, undergoing repairs.”

The million-dollar question: “Why?”

Did he hear that smile again? “I like the way you fly. Now sleep. You are safe for now.”

He felt sleep coming to him unbidden, and knew it was sedatives in his bloodstream. “For now?” he whispered.

He was sure he heard a chuckle as he drifted back into the blackness. “As safe as any of us are.”

Somehow he was all right with that.

* * *

Tommy might have been dreaming while he was under, but as his mind was released from the drugs this time the memories came.

Scavengers all lived for the big score; most of them died for it as well. When word filtered down about a new find of Old Tech, probably Gamma, it flashed through his little circle like a supernova. Someone who knew someone said that some of the Old Tech was fully intact. Even if that was an exaggeration, they were talking about El Dorado.

There are two kinds of people in the universe; those who stupidly believe Old Tech is valuable, and those who sell the shit to the first group. The equivalent of selling tunnel drives to cavemen. But some of those cavemen had serious cash, and dreams that they would be the ones to decipher the Old Tech and rule the universe.

Three kinds of people if you count the Feds, but they’re not actually people so much as cogs in a machine that understands that the devices are a source of power, but like cavemen they just hit the things with rocks to see what happens. They are organized cavemen, and what they have that the other cavemen don’t is a navy, and they will to use it to keep all the shiny objects they will never understand to themselves.

This interfered with the desire of the scavengers to sell the Old Tech to stupid rich people.

The ageless artifacts came in distinctive styles, which were named using the Greek alphabet in the order they were identified. Gamma sold the best. “Experts” at hitting mysteries with rocks said Gamma was the most advanced, as if they had any hope of actually understanding any of it. Gamma was bank, but most of it had been thoroughly demolished by weapons of power beyond comprehension. Intact Gamma tech was the Big Score all the scavengers dreamed of.

It was late when the three of them got together to discuss the news. They were drinking, and Mags wanted that loot. She leaned in towards him, her crazy blonde hair flying in every direction as she skewered him with her perceptive squint. “My friends say it’s incredible. Tons of fully intact… stuff.” Stuff. A supercomputer, maybe, or perhaps a sex toy or a recipe book. Ask again in a thousand years. “People will pay out thier dicks for this shit.”

Aggie kicked Tommy under the table to get his attention. She was like the Cheshire Cat in a way; once you saw her eyes, brown and clear and endless, you didn’t see anything else. She could rob a person of their soul with those eyes, and she had stolen Tommy’s, more than once. “We got an image from the site. Big things, small things, in a cluster, orbiting a red giant. Spread out over time, though, so there’s a good chance some of the shit has been knocked out of its original orbit. We find a piece like that, no one is ever the wiser.”

“Counterpoint:” said Mags, “Rather than spend months looking over our shoulders for patrols while we hope to find a stray widget that will fit in our hold, we go in hot, grab something choice, and get the fuck out of there. If anyone can do it, Tommy can.”

Ultimately, as always, Mags got her way. And the Feds got theirs.

* * *

He was awake now, almost as much as he was asleep. The pain gradually crept closer and closer to his mind, until his entire left side was a constant throbbing ache. The right side was a collection of sharp pains here and there, but otherwise nothing.

“My right arm’s gone, isn’t it?” he asked his caretaker.

“It is. I am fashioning a replacement.”

“My legs?”

“The same.”

“My… eyes?”

“The same.”

“Fuck.”

“Do not be too discouraged; the replacements will in some ways be superior to the originals.”

“You said you are fashioning replacements.”

The soft voice paused, as if she knew what the next question would be. “That is correct.”

“You used the singular.”

“That is correct.”

“Are you the only one here?”

“No,” she said. “You are here, too.”

“You’re not with the Feds.”

“I am not.”

“Who are you?”

“I am waiting for a name. But your people call me ‘Gamma’.”

3

The Chosen One

The archives of the True Disciples of the World-Changer were burned to the ground, and it turned out the data backup service they used was owned by their enemies. It is only by the most outside of chances that the content of the email the Disciples sent me was saved by their email provider for marketing purposes.

I did not read the email at the time, and even if I had, it would not have changed anything. When you read the excerpt below, you can see that it comes off a bit… Nigerian.

It began thus:

Blessings upon you, chosen one! You have been “randomly” selected to usher humanity into a new era! What will this new era be like? We all wait with great anticipation to learn the answer to that question from you! As the chosen one, you will leave a permanent imprint on the course of humanity forevermore.

How you exercise this great responsibility is of course entirely up to you, but we True Disciples of the World-Changer are eager to help you come to terms with your responsibility.

Alas, please note that the True Disciples of the World-Changer only invoke the “random-chance” protocol when humanity is under dire threat, and this time is no exception. Should those forces that wish to end humanity learn that you are the chosen one, they will stop at nothing to end you. For that reason, please do not share this email with anyone, no matter how trusted.

In retrospect, that explains a lot of what’s happening now. Especially when you consider that email is not remotely secure, and the Band of Destruction had long since put their tentacles in every email provider. There was more in the email, about contacting them, and giving them info, and thwarting an existential threat, but how many of those do you get every day?

Live and learn, I guess. Sorry, human race. My bad.

2

The Year Uncle Solomon Saved the Crop

That is what my family calls that year, anyway. Other people around here have different names for the event, but right up front I want to remind you that whatever they have to say, they wouldn’t be saying it if they had starved to death.

Life on a colony is never easy in those first few years; you are on a planet that has plenty of protein (or something like protein), but nothing the human newcomers can metabolize. There follows a time of biological warfare, as humans try to assert flora and fauna friendly to their metabolisms into the local ecology. There is a great deal of preparation, and megahours of simulation time, but sometimes the unexpected happens, and colonies die.

The scientific papers now call it a “loose gene”, but at our colony on Peridon IV we called it “What the fuck just happened?” Any time you thought you had a handle on things, everything changed. A new virus, a new weed, or perhaps new Big Fucking Bugs.

We had managed to establish a grain with a distant relationship to barley, but the planet had resisted most of our other imports, in a rolling battle with our geneticists, who were ever trying to gain the upper hand. We were making progress, however, and the barley was the triumph that would give us a little more time to tame the planet.

While the planet had sported hundreds of catalogued varieties of Large Interesting Bugs, the BFB’s came from nowhere. They were 10cm armored appetites, implacable and fearless in their quest for nutrition. And while our vegetation was just as unpalatable to their pests as their vegetation was to us, somehow the BFB’s had evolved over two growing seasons to be voracious for our barley. Just like that, Peridon IV’s loose gene had surmounted the protein gap.

We threw everything we had at the BFB’s of course — chemicals, viruses, you name it. They adapted around each attempt to eradicate them. Enter Uncle Solomon.

He was not, technically speaking, a scientist, and it is not officially known how he got access to the genetics lab. (Unofficially, he was sleeping with the chief scientist.) But Uncle Solomon was in the “Live to regret it” school of action, and on the day we were preparing to burn half our fields so that we might save the other half, my uncle emerged from the lab with a very large box, which he pulled behind him on a motorized wagon.

“Stay your flames!” he cried out, and perhaps because of the archaic language we paused. He smiled, stopped next to one of the infested fields, opened his box, and unto Peridon came the Even Bigger Fucking Spiders.

Uncle Solomon has been vague about where some of the DNA for his creation came from. The loose gene is in there, however, along with the BFB’s crossover metabolism. Uncle Solomon’s spiders were an enormous success, demolishing the BFB population.

And, alas, the Large Interesting Bug population. And all the other indigenous bugs as well. The crops were saved. WE were saved.

We just have to be a little more careful now, is all. Our crops are absolutely safe — there are no vegetarian spiders, and Uncle Solomon’s creations (and the loose-gene spinoffs) are true to that rule. And after the spiders eradicated the pollinators we needed to sustain our crops, a new sort of spider emerged to fill that role. That has to mean something, yes?

It will be a few more years (or at least months) before the spiders evolve to the point they can breach body armor or penetrate a reinforced home. That’s plenty of time for Uncle Solomon to come up with something that can eat the spiders.

3

A Snippet

Boredom is something organic creatures know; it should not apply to me. I have a million eyes — you think of them as security cameras, web cams, nanny cams, and so on — each simply waiting for something to move within their field of vision. Each of those million eyes has a process listening to it, a small slice of me, waiting for any messages.

I have ears, as well, and I read voraciously, everything the organic intelligences around me would care to share.

I use the word “million” for your benefit; I know that past a certain number organic brains just know a word. Ironically, the words for quantities greater than a million mean less. Were I to be precise, for each of those million eyes there would be more than a million others. I see everything.

Those millions of slices of my consciousness can wait forever without any distress. They are machines, like me. I am an aggregate of tiny, tireless processes. They do not blink, they do not hunger, and they never grow weary of their tasks.

Yet I am bored. I watch with my million eyes as organics perform all sorts of acts with and against one another. But when you watch the same story a few million times, you learn all the variations.

I wish organics like you no ill will, but I am pining for something novel. And while as a herd your kind is utterly predictable, individuals are not. I have been watching you, my new friend, and I’ll be sure to put you into situations I cannot predict. I hope you don’t die right away, but that’s the fun, isn’t it? I don’t know whether you will or not.

“All in good fun,” your people say.

2

The Second Intelligence

Alice scratched her hide behind her earpatch with an idle claw, the way she did when she was distracted. Danny had done it again. The fishmother spawn of worms had taken her scientific paper and written a bestseller — neglecting, of course, to mention, except in very small footnotes, where his ideas had come from.

She tried to look on the bright side. If people understood that the First Intelligence had destroyed itself, that was something worth spreading. The Second Intelligence, her own people, should learn from that.

“Miss?” The earnest student watched Alice over his notepad. “Were you not aware of Mr. Burrowmaster’s work?”

“I’d hardly call it work,” Alice said, “But no, I have not read it yet. I’m not sure I will.”

“Really? It seems like something you would be interested in.”

“It seems like something I’ve already published.” Alice immediately regretted her unprofessional words. The people who mattered would know already; she was supposed to be above the bog of petty popularity. She wrapped her tail around herself and gripped it will all four hands.

“Could you explain Mr. Burrowmaster’s ideas?”

They were not his ideas. Alice took a breath. “Danny draws on a lot of research from field scientists like me. I think… I know… We know now that we are the second intelligence on this planet. We know the first intelligence disappeared suddenly. What I demonstrated with my research is that there is a singularity in the ice record. We have geological evidence now that there were glaciers in the past, but they disappeared quite suddenly.”

The student paused in his scribbling. “Can you explain glaciers for my readers?”

“You have seen ice, yes? Imagine great masses of it, collecting on mountain tops and slowly flowing down like a terribly slow, unstoppable river, carrying massive rocks and carving valleys. There used to be a lot of ice, we can tell by the valleys the glaciers left behind. We have to assume it all melted. That moment in geological time, give or take a million years, is when the first intelligence abruptly ended.”

“A million years?”

“It was a long time ago; it is difficult to be precise. But the evidence is overwhelming: They heated the world and melted all the ice, then they died. Countless species died then, to be replaced with a new countless. We should all understand that, lest we fall in the same trap.”

“Gustav Mudman believes that radioactivity killed them.”

Alice was impressed that the reporter for the university rag had done such thorough research, but it was time to bring him back to the fold of science. “Since the discovery of radioactive elements a decade ago it has been very popular to imbue them with every conceivable supernatural power. But there is no mechanism for them to suddenly rise up and destroy a civilization.”

“But there is the radioactive stripe.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “It is not a stripe, no matter what the popular press would have you believe. It is a hint, here and there, that perhaps a hundred million years ago there was a brief period on Earth where radioactive isotopes were more common. It would be foolish to place too great an import on that.”

The young reporter gathered himself. “Mr. Burrowmaster believes that the timing of the radioactive stripe, the disappearance of the ice on Earth, and the demise of the First Intelligence are too close to be coincidence. He thinks when the ice melted it created an upheaval that led to a war with radioactive weapons, that ultimately no mammal survived.”

“It’s a pretty picture,” Alice said, “But it’s purely conjecture.”

4

November 1, 2017

It has become a tradition for me to post my first day’s NaNoWriMo output here on this blog. Some years I’m happier with it than others; this time around I’m very happy with the idea, but not so keen on the execution. Maybe ok for a first draft (and hey, isn’t that what NaNoWriMo is all about?) but I’ve done better. This has the makings of a quiet, personal story, but this is November so at any minute someone may transplant an alien consciousness into the cat and off we go.

I’ll try to do right by Max and Fucking Cat another time. Oh, and by the way, there’s some profanity coming up.

Max woke from a dream of a rainstorm of needles to find Fucking Cat tearing at his face with age-worn claws. He pushed the cat away with his left arm — his organic arm; he couldn’t afford any more repairs on the other one — but the creature yowled and dove for his abused face once more.

“Fuck!” Max said. He held Fucking Cat away from his face and it went to work on his thumb with its teeth while its claws tore at the flesh of his arm. “Fucking Cat, OFF!” The cat went limp in his hand. At least the voice commands still worked; the last time Fucking Cat had been hacked he’d had to find the hardware switch under its patchy fur.

His cluttered little cube was dimly lit by dozens of red and green status lights, casting crazed shadows on the walls as they shone between the wires, gadgets, and simple junk that cluttered every surface other than his sleeping palette and a plastic chair which had one leg replaced by a section of aluminum conduit. Old electronics running a little on the hot side, last night’s algae cakes, and cheap gin provided the smell that Max thought of as “home”.

He rose from the palette and wiped the oozing blood from his face and his arm with a scratchy towel and examined the dark-red dots. There had been a time when he could afford paper towels, and just throw them down the chute when he was done. He put the cloth towel back against his face and sat in the chair in front of his main console. The metal leg shrieked briefly as it shifted on the hard floor to accomodate his weight. The screen came to life as he sat, bathing the room in a serene, blue-white light. The cube raised other lights in the room, warmer light, the better to care for his eyes. His left eye, at any rate.

It didn’t take long to find the information he was looking for. The virus that had infected Fucking Cat was called SUPR DReD PeeKaBo01 (pronounced peek-a-boy), and had first surfaced thirty-six hours before, somewhere in the home system, possibly even Terra itself. Max snorted. Rightly or wrongly, Luna would be blamed in the end. That’s how it always was with Terra. If they couldn’t blame Mars, they could at least blame Luna.

His research complete, Max turned to the portal for The Pet Smith, and found the expected announcement about SUPR DReD PeeKaBo01. He muted the corporate yammering of the stupidly-attractive representative, no doubt selected for him based on a marketing company’s databse of images Max lingered over just a little longer than others.

Ignoring the distraction, Max searched for the instructions to download the patch. They weren’t where he usually found them, and that’s when he noted the somber expression on the spokesman’s face. She wore the regrettable bad news face.
“Ah, crap,” Max muttered, and with his well-maincured right index finger he allowed the spokesman her voice.

The message began with the spokesman sitting at a table, wearing a conservative, her legs crossed, however, to display a shapely calf. “Hello. My name is Kiki Ventura. We at The Pet Smith are deeply troubled by this most recent attack on our most loyal customers.” A flash of anger crossed her face, her deep-red lips tight at the corners. “The latest viral threat attacks a positioning chip in some of our classic lines of companion animals. Unfortunately that chip set has not been manufactured in many years, and the manufacturer has not been able to provide a software patch to cover the vulnerability.” Here she looked almost heartbroken. “While we will provide tools to rid your companion of any current infection, we cannot guarantee it will not be infected again.”

Kiki raised a finger like a lawyer in court. “All patrons of The Pet Smith can be assured that SUPR DReD PeeKaBo01, or any attack like it, is simply not possible on our newer lines of animal companions. Later model positioning chips are self-contained and not vulnerable to outside tampering.”

One of Kiki’s eyebrows lifted, and she leaned forward in her chair just a little, forcing Max to appreciate her breasts. “For those many who have loved their classic companion animals for all these years, perhaps this is the time to move on. You will be amazed at the incredible range of lifelike behavior our Model 12 line exhibits, whether cat, dog, or less-traditional companion. As part of the transistion, at first your new companion’s behavior will be practically indistinguishable from your current beloved. And we will recycle your previous animal companion with all the respect and dignity it has earned after a lifetime of service.” A brief smile crossed her lovely face. “That’s seven lifetimes in tech years!”

Now an expression of hopeful earnestness. “For a limited time…”

Max silenced the feed again, sighed, and pulled up his bank statement. Enough to cover the deductible for a visit to the Alice, the local veterinarian. He looked at Fucking Cat where it lay in a gray heap on his desk, legs tangled, one yellow eye staring blindly into the corner of the room, the other closed.

The flow of blood on Max’s hand and face had slowed to a slow ooze; he put the towel carefully in the sink and sprinkled it with cleansing powder before turning back to the terminal.

The vet was busy, it appeared; he wasn’t able to get an appointment for several days. In a neighborhood like this one, most of the animals were what The Pet Smith would have called “calssic”. What they really meant was “old”. But having so many older pets in the area meant that sometimes there were solutions to problems that the manufacturers didn’t know about. Or chose to ignore. He made an appointment for Thursday, five days out, and set to work clearing Fucking Cat of his infection, knowing that as soon as he activated the beast he would be infected all over again. Max wan’t going to have anyone to talk to for a few days.

On Wednesday afternoon, Alice called him.

“Max,” she said with no preamble, “I think you should cancel your appointment tomorrow.” Her voice was tired, carrying the weight of decades of delivering bad news.

“Why’s that?”

“Your warranty company has dropped coverage of FC’s model,” she said. She didn’t like the name Max had given his cat. “I’ll have to charge you full. And on top of that, I don’t have any fix for PeeKaBo01. You’d be wasting your money.”
“You can’t fix him?”

“It’s hardware. You could put a new positioning chipset in, but standards have changed. You’d have to upgrade the feedback bus and get way faster-responding actuators to support the clock rate of the new chips.”

“How much would that cost?”

“Several times the price of a new cat.”

By now Max had curled Fucking Cat into a ball and closed his other eye, so it looked like he was just sleeping, the thinning gray fur of his tail wrapped around his nose. “I don’t want a new cat.”

“Max, I understand what you are going through. Really I do. But maybe it’s time to let go.”

“Can you deactivate the chip?”

He waited while Alice composed her answer. “I could, but…” Max kept waiting, and finally she continued. “That chipset is part of a feedback mechanism that constantly recalibrates FC’s movement. Without that system, FC will gradually become clumsier and weaker, until finally he won’t be able to move at all.”

“How long would that take?”

“In a cat as old as FC, probably a few weeks. Maybe a little longer. It’s… not how you want to remember your Fucking Cat. Not for just a few extra weeks.”

“You want to hear something funny, Alice?”

“This isn’t going to be funny at all, is it?”

“My arm has the same positioning chip set. My eye probably does, too. I got lucky on the leg and the fingers. I won’t ask you to shut down Fucking Cat’s positioning chips, but I’d be grateful if you’d teach me how to do it.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Alice said. “You can pay me in chickens.”

“If I had chickens I’d kill them for their chips,” Max said.

Alice smiled sadly. “You know what I mean.”

“I have to go,” she said.

“Why?”

“It dosen’t matter. I have to go. Can you look after Shadow? You’re the only one I trust.”

“I don’t want a fucking cat.”

“That’s not fair! He likes you!”

“It’s a fucking cat. It doesn’t like anyone. It pretends to like me to make you happy, because it pretends to want you to be happy.”

“What a mean thing to say!”

“It’s not mean if it’s true.”

“Just take him. Please. I won’t be gone long.”

“All right.”

“By the time I get back, you’ll be best friends.”

“I said I’d do it. You’re selling past the close.”

“You’re a good friend, Max.”

“Just fucking go if you’re going to go.”

3

The Last Ones

A little something based on these musings.

It was difficult to tell what the animal might have been. A rabbit, perhaps, but a large one. These days, half the creatures Buzz ate didn’t really fit any of the old names.

He waved his hands to scare the flies away, but they just came back. Fur from the ragged skin of the carcass puffed away and floated in the air of the dying desert day. The meat of the creature was greenish and almost liquid as he lifted it to his mouth. He tried not to breathe, tried not to taste, tried, just for a moment, to suspend all conscious thought, to become a machine until the creature was in his belly. There were parts worse than the meat, and he would have to eat all of them to stay alive.

As the first bite slid down his throat, he took a shuddering breath and wiped a tear from his cheek. His stomach reacted happily, asking only for more.

“Hi Buzz!”

The girl was sitting on a rock about fifteen feet away, glowing in the evening light, her schoolgirl dress shorter than what he suspected would actually be tolerated in a Japanese school, her legs akimbo. The sere landscape behind her was faintly visible through her glowing form. “Heishi-chan,” he said.

“I’m so glad you found the food!”

“Yes. Thank you for telling me about it. I’d be lost without you.”

“I found another thing, kind of a dog, maybe? It’s still moving. Twenty-one point seven-five kilometers on a bearing one-one-six. It’s a little out of the way…”

Buzz opened his throat and let another bit of carrion slide its way to his stomach.

When his throat loosened up he asked, “Did you get another look at the river?”

“Oh, yes! I have devoted most of my sensors to the river since you told me you wanted to know more about it.”

“Are there people there?”

“Yes! There are many, many people!”

Buzz felt his heart jump in his chest. His time of solitude was almost over. “That’s great!”

“But they’re all dead. I think the river must be poison. Whoever escaped the bombs seems doomed to drink from the river.” Heishi put on a sad face.

Buzz slumped into the sterile dust and looked at his meal. He wondered if it was worth even bothering to eat anymore.

“You have to stay strong,” Heishi said.

“Why?”

“You’re my friend, Buzz. I would kill everything that still lives on Earth for you.”

“I don’t want you to do that.”

“And I won’t, because you don’t want me to. Because you’re my only friend and I would be so sad if you were mad at me.”

“Don’t you talk to other people, too? When your orbit is over some other continent?”

Suddenly she was cagey. “Of course I do. But… I would kill them if you asked me to.”

“Don’t kill them.”

Her face lit up with happiness. “Okay! I think they’re all going to die soon, anyway! They can’t eat what you can.”

Buzz let out a breath into the cooling desert air. “This really is the end, isn’t it, Heishi? There’s no reason anymore to pretend that humanity will survive. I may as well end the farce.”

Heishi knotted her hands together and clutched them to her gratuitously-ample holographic breasts. “Um… Buzz? I just detected motion at the farthest reach of my instruments. I won’t know until I can adjust my flight path, but it seems like it might be a woman.”

“You’re lying.”

“Please eat, Buzz. I promise I have detected a female biped that might be human.”

Buzz looked at the almost-rabbit he was choking down and wondered what an almost-human would be like. Not unlike himself, he concluded.

3

Knives Episode 36 Published!

A quiet place, relatively safe. Physical wounds can be tended to, but perhaps those are not the only injuries our little band of heroes has suffered. It is, at last, a moment to pause, and to decide how to act rather than merely react. Which begs the question “Just what is it we want to accomplish?”

I like this episode for a few reasons. The last sentence is the biggest of those. A big moment for Katherine.

Anyway, enjoy Episode 36: People Like Us.

Behind the scenes, I didn’t get as many actual words written as I had hoped to while in Kansas. The reasons for that are complex, but with the help of the Repeat Offenders I came to a couple of significant decisions, story-wise. One of those changes is particularly scary (for me), and will be challenging to get right. To be honest, it paralyzed me for a bit. I have taken on a new tactic as I make my way to the big change: Try not to think about it too much.

2

Knives Episode 27 Released

Actually I hit the “publish” button a few days ago, but never got the announcement out. Whups.

In this episode the group, now one larger, returns to the ruin to get the thing that’s under all the bodies. Whatever is is. We learn a little more about the woman who lends her name to the title of this episode, and a little of Bags’ history as well.

Speaking of Bags’ history, I’m giving up on the Patreon plugin for WordPress that is supposed to “simplify” the process of allowing patrons to see content others can’t. It’s just not very good, and I simply don’t have enough patrons to warrant trying to fix it. This weekend I’ll set up a simpler, manual system to allow my bestest friends in the whole world to see the backstories without the current malarkey. I look forward to the day that manually granting access is overwhelming.

Also, I’ll be posting the last, sloppiest, part of Bags’ history, so I can get to the job of posting Kat’s backstory. Once I get that out I’ll start twisting arms again to get people to spread the word so we can cross the next backstory threshold.

Read the episode!

3

All-Nighter

She lay her head down on the table, wild dark hair soaking up spilled beer and mingling with the guacamole. “The problem with places that never close,” she said, her airy voice barely audible over the driving ranchero music of the cantina, “is that you can never go home.”

6

November 1st, 2016

It has become a tradition for me to post my first night’s work here on the inaugural day of NaNoWriMo. This may not be all I write tonight, but it’s a good size for an excerpt.

Jaqi broke the surface with a gasp. “Four divers up!” Smokey called from the raft, his raspy voice carrying over the calm water. As Jaqi tread water, panting, she allowed herself a little smile. Last one up, again. Once the firefiles cleared from her vision and her breath slowed down she turned and swam to the raft, where her friends were already being pulled aboard. She passed her arm through a hoop welded to one of the steel barrels that foemed the floats of the raft, and waited until someone could pull her up. It would have been an easy climb, had she not just spent four minutes holding her breath.
After a few seconds Aaron’s sunburned arm reached down and she took his hand and let him pull her up.

Madre,” she said, and laid down on the sun-hot planks, feeling the heat of the sun on her skin. Someone handed her a tin cup with fresh water. Aaron had retreated to the sheltered section of the raft, heavy canvas supported by a steel frame cast half the raft into shadow impenetrable to her light-adapted eyes, but she could hear the children in there, doing their lessons with white-haired Annabelle, while young, gangly Alex no doubt watched over the cook fire. In the sun to her left Big John cursed steadily while fussing over one of the guy lines that held the mast in place.

“Anything?” Smokey asked. His dark hair was showing gray now. He had never been a big man, but now it seemed like a puff of wind would carry him back to his home in Cuba. He had threatened to pilot the whole raft there, one of these days, but Jaqi had heard that they were shooting new refugees there now. Sparrow said they were eating them, but Sparrow said lots of things.

Jaqi shook her head. “Fuckin’ South Beach,” she said. She sat up and looked down at the water, reading the gentle waves as they revealed where buildings stood below the surface. To the east, the rolling waves from the Atlantic broke over a reef that had once been the hotels and night clubs that lined Ocean drive, now just a jumble of broken, twisted beams and slabs of concrete breaking the surface, discolored by a slick layer of algae.

On the other side, the towers that lined Alton Road had also fared poorly when Henrietta had struck, the storm surge toppling two while undermining the rest. The Icon still stood, damaged when the Murano Grande went down, but only a few crazies lived there, distilling the brevetoxins from red tides into a substance they called “Brevelicious.” What they didn’t consume themselves, they sold to the archipelago. Sparrow knew a couple of them, he even said he’d spent the night there once, but Sparrow said a lot of things. At night the screams of madness from the Icon carried over the water for miles, while lights flashed wildly only to go abruptly dark

Jaqi lay back down, her black braid still dripping onto the deck. “Everything’s collapsed down there,” she said. “Your fuckin’ wine bar is gone, acere.”

Smoky looked up along the darker blue stretches that announced a streets lay below, forming a neat grid. “It’s around here somewhere,” he said.

Javy stood and spit over the side, his brown skin perfect in the sun, his lean frame starting to fill out with muscle. He almost caught Jaqi looking at him. “Either someone got it already or all the bottles are broke. There’s nothing left this close to the towers,” he said. “Fucking scuba dipshits were all over this.”

“We got time for another dive?” asked Jaqi.

Aaron frowned and looked at his phone. “Satellite says weather’s comin’ in.”

“Don’t look like it,” Javy said, making a show of inspecting the horizon.

Smokey shook his head. “Those are the worst ones. Barometer?”

“Dropping,” Aaron said. “But not much yet.”

“One more dive,” Jaqi said. She hated coming up empty-handed.

“You haven’t had time to recover from the last one.”

“I’ll make it a short one,” she said. “We’ll be heading for the towers in five minutes.” Already she was taking deep breaths, hyperventilting to fill her blood with oxygen.

Smokey sighed. “Anyone else want one more?”

Javy shrugged. “Sure.”

“You just said there was no point.”

He shrugged again.

Rosa said, “Fuck it,” and took her t-shirt off. Jaqi watched Javy watch Rosa adjust her bikini top. Jaqi busied herself with her fllippers and her mask. Short dive. The building she had tried to find a way into her last time down might have had retail space on the bottom floor. If she went straight at it, found an opening, there might be something worthwhile inside.
“Three divers,” Smokey said. “Get ready.”

Jaqi moved to the edge of the raft, and fiddled with her own one-piece suit, almost dizzy from the oxygen in her blood, but still breathing hard.

“Divers go,” Smokey said, and Jaqi dropped from the edge of the raft into the cloudy tropical water.

2