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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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another

Leonora died in agony, her arms burning across her chest and fusing to her form. She would have appreciated the way her fingers twisted into hierophantic symbols, I thought as I watched, like a martyr brushed in charcoal.

I hope others enjoyed the spectacle as they will mine. I will burn tomorrow. This inkwell, quill, and parchment have been provided as a way to document our brief heresy. It will only be enjoyed by the Inquisitor as a means to dispute our argument and then locked in the Papal vault alongside many others. All sleeping together and haloed by the occasional oil lantern.

So, I am locked in eternal conflict with you. You who will read this, Inquisitor. To whom I speak and no other. You who are also dying in this world and not even a lesser angel.

I open with these words: you are an idiot.

Thus begins the testimony of Borosphus, the last adherent to our doctrine and to which I have attached no true part.

_________________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

[Couch gag is the Simpsons family during the French Revolution at the guillotine, couch adjacent to the stage. Homer is grabbed by Moe, who is dressed as executioner. Homer adjusts his aristocratic collar as he is lead offscreen and grunts uncomfortably.]

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock]: Homie, you really should go to the bowling alley less.

Homer: Marge, I can’t go the bowling alley, I can’t go to Moe’s, I can’t go to circuit city. Is there anything you’ll let me do?

Marge: Well, if you pay -

Homer: Fat Tony?

Marge: Fat Tony?

Homer: Fat Flanders. Flanders.

[Lisa and Bart interrupt, ready for school.]

Bart: The closer you get to the lowest part.

Lisa: The closer you get to God.

[The children eat their breakfast.]

Bart: Otto isn’t there anymore.

Lisa: Yeah! He killed himself!

[Lisa makes a gesture with her knife which leaves a cord of syrup around her neck.

[Bart shushes her.]

_________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

[Couch gag is a series of cathode ray tube televisions stacked on one another showing the Simpsons rushing into the living room and sitting on the couch.]

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock.]: Homie, you need to -

[Lisa and Bart interrupt, their hearts are clocks.]

Lisa [teasing]: Do you want to devour me?

[Bart neither nods nor displays emotion. After a moment, his hand reaching forward, reverses. He tears the clock out of his chest.]

Homer: Marge, I can’t go to the bowling alley, I can’t go

_____________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

[Couch gag is a series of nuclear bombs exploding, firstly around the Pakistan/India border and soon escalating, as seen from space. The Earth is briefly active. When the great powers launch their strikes they wait a week then follow with another barrage of atomic weapons. The ice caps bleed their water and sink. The cities flood. The viewpoint zooms through the few survivors who bleed and die. In a nuclear submarine, Marge rushes to the couch and is followed by Homer who has visible tumors along his head, then Lisa and Bart follow - both missing limbs. Maggie is not present.]

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock.]: Homie, you really should go to the bowling alley less.

Homer: Marge,

______________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

[Couch gag is

______________________________________________

ITNRO:

[CHROUS] THE SIPMSNOS:

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock]:

I tear from my chest the clock which is my heart. I go onto the streets cloaked in my blood.

Homer says nothing.

_______________________________________________

Better to die, I think, than only as the flames and smoke touch upon you to demand redemption. To think Christ died for me. I would hurry the issue rather than bring Him shame. To take my life in advance and remove all question of judgement. Moral certitude that I, in the unenviable perdition, am tortured to spare the Lamb a moment of my consideration. To be buried in brambles outside a church lot and trampled upon.

You, idiot who gave me quill and parchment. With myself you bury another face of God. You burn it. You drown it. From the mouths of the tortured, in the names of the victims, to the capitals of the world. I reject all redemption.

None more fall from this scribe. You have tempted me with a false perpetuity, but I will burn with Leonora tomorrow, whom I loved. Our beliefs which you wanted to refute are ours alone as the secrets of our heart. A final warning: synchronicity is the sign of the destroyer. I have seen her eyes at night and need no other. Goat iris’d. Awaiting me afore a long staircase. I join her.

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

So, I am locked in eternal conflict with you. You who will read this, Inquisitor. To whom I speak and no other. You who are also dying in this world and not even a lesser angel.

I open with these words: you are an idiot.

Thus begins the testimony of Borosphus, the last adherent to our doctrine and to which I have attached no true part.

_________________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock]: Homie, you really should go to the bowling alley less.

Homer: Marge, I can’t go the bowling alley, I can’t go to Moe’s, I can’t go to circuit city. Is there anything you’ll let me do?

Marge: Well, if you pay -

Homer: Fat Tony?

Marge: Fat Tony?

Homer: Fat Flanders. Flanders.

[Lisa and Bart interrupt, ready for school.]

Bart: The closer you get to the lowest part.

Lisa: The closer you get to God.

[The children eat their breakfast.]

Bart: Otto isn’t there anymore.

Lisa: Yeah! He killed himself!

[Lisa makes a gesture with her knife which leaves a cord of syrup around her neck.

[Bart shushes her.]

_________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

[Couch gag is a series of cathode ray tube televisions stacked on one another showing the Simpsons rushing into the living room and sitting on the couch.]

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock.]: Homie, you need to -

[Lisa and Bart interrupt, their hearts are clocks.]

Lisa [teasing]: Do you want to devour me?

[Bart neither nods nor displays emotion. After a moment, his hand reaching forward, reverses. He tears the clock out of his chest.]

Homer: Marge, I can’t go to the bowling alley, I can’t go

_____________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock.]: Homie, you really should go to the bowling alley less.

Homer: Marge,

______________________________________________

INTRO:

[CHORUS] THE SIMPSONS.

[Couch gag is

______________________________________________

ITNRO:

[CHROUS] THE SIPMSNOS:

Marge [shuffling a stack of bills, walking into the kitchen. Her chest is machinery and her heart is a clock]:

I tear from my chest the clock which is my heart. I go onto the streets cloaked in my blood.

Homer says nothing.

_______________________________________________

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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gods own plaything

“There is no need to persecute witches, as Satan has given them no power.”

- Saint Augustine of Hippo, probably.

“God heaps laments on those he favors,” I said.

I had thought up this line a few weeks back and thought it sounded good. A little poignant, self-suffering without being indulgent, reaffirms my belief in Christ who would be the sole audience for the words. I hadn’t accounted for the handgun in my mouth.

“’od ‘eap ‘amets o’ ‘ose ‘e ‘avo’,” it came out.

I sighed and moved the pistol to my temple. I had thought about bringing the dog with me so I’d have some company but couldn’t bring myself to do it. The mutt wouldn’t know to run back home and would be pawing at my truck door the entire time. The thought of the old boy waiting for me, who would no longer have time for anyone, was too cruel to entertain.

A low-hanging storm front had blown in this morning; a monolith in an otherwise clear sky, humped low on the horizon like a patient tourist. I figured it’d reach me in... an hour? After a little past 70 years, I could hold a while longer. Dawn had only just risen and the lake I was parked in front of looked best when the fullness of the sun was reflected.

The storm cloud had arrived while I had fallen asleep, the little bit of heat early dawn had imparted was sapped out - no, torn apart - and autumn cold made itself an apparent guest on the lakeside. The lake was basalt grey; the shallows were still barely visible and their murky green encirclement of the lake gave me the horrible impression of a shocked eye staring into the storm, or of an infected wound.

With growing horror, I leaned forward over the steering wheel to see that the storm cloud had its own ringed pupil - a furious inner space in the cloud was lightning-formed, was a thunderless, soundless blink of light surrounded by heavy and black clouds.

“God save me!” I yelled and raised the pistol to my temple and pulled the trigger.

He did.

Misfire.

[Pull the slide back and eject the round.]

I did.

[That looks old even to me.]

“My father carried it with him during the war.”

[Which war? Nevermind, I can find out later.]

The thunder finally came. I looked to my right and there was something that looked mostly like a man in the passenger seat. I say mostly because he had two legs, well-pressed khaki pants, a blue button-up shirt with a black tie and two arms, the left shoulder with a badge indicating he was a park service ranger, and, of course, a head and hat. He was reading my suicide note with something like boredom.

I say mostly because after forty years of service, I had never seen someone that looked like him in my region. And because I had the unaccountable fear that if I looked away he wouldn’t be reading my note. I would maybe catch a half-glimpse in the driver side window’s reflection that he was staring at me, his two eyes dividing into four, into eight, into a hundred and forty-four.

[You’re pretty old yourself.]

“Who are you?”

He ignores me and flips the note over.

[Fairly succinct. Hand me that, please.]

He takes the gun from my hand and ejects the magazine, then pulls the slide back to check the chamber, then the firing pin, then he holds the magazine and carefully replaces it in the pistol.

[Alright, there you go. Now wait about fifteen minutes.]

“What are you?” I ask.

He looks over. His face is wrinkled and there is a kind droop to his features, his mustache is blonde with gray flecks and his smile slow to come.

[Another sinner, mister. Just another one.]

He pauses and looks down. I make the mistake of keeping track of his eyes which don’t leave mine through the gesture. Thin green irises around wide black pupils.

“What’s going to happen in fifteen minutes?”

[The same thing that happened before.]

His lips aren’t moving when he talks.

[Roy, I need you to do this as a favor for me. It’s not just the... forty years or so at stake. In fifteen, now fourteen minutes, lightning will strike this truck of yours. What is this, a ‘61 Ford?]

I nod.

[There’s a small fault in your muffler, a problem in its creation.] He seems troubled and pauses at his choice of words. [An impurity in its forging means that when the first lightning strike -]

“First?!”

[When the first lightning strike hits, the muffler will uncouple from the truck and ground itself when it hits the clay. The second lightning strike will be grounded and ignite a hairline crack in your fuel tank.]

Nine strikes?

[Who are you talking to?]

I - you can hear me?

[Yes. It’s loud. Kindly cease.]

He’s rubbing his temples, though his eyes -

[Again, I can hear you. Who are you trying to speak to?]

“I -,” I try to stop thinking but it’s pointless.

“My wife, I guess,” I reply.

[She’s not here. I am.]

“I like to think I’m talking to her even when she’s not here.”

Think of silver crosses and exhortations expelling demons. Think of revelations. Think of broad white and blue skies without limitation. Of limited spaces containing myself and her and small, crucial movements. Think of good meals and

[You’re going to kill yourself, you know. I’m only ensuring a small detail is ful-]

Think of bad days. Think of the date, the year. September ‘83. And last year. Think of our kids. Think of the first time I was struck by lightning - [that was a good one] - think of every time after that. Think of -

[Shut up.]

[I am implacable and as constant as sunrise. Every story that ends, ends with me. Through the cumulative will of, well, don’t worry. This is how the story ends. You can storm the world with your thoughts but I will ask you for some silence. Ten minutes left, by the way.

[This is much more peaceful. There will be a storm and a fire. When you shoot yourself it doesn’t kill the entire body. Your legs will twitch and some spare impulses will move your arms. It looks like dancing.

[Your mind is filled with thought because it remains with questions. There are no more questions with me. Nearly nine minutes.]

“You didn’t answer honestly when I asked who you are.”

The man sits still and we watch each other. The gun, repaired, is in my hands. Watching his eyes, I put it in my mouth and aim upwards. The kind eyes that have followed mine show at last the emotion I wanted - fear.

[No, no, no -]

You can hear me, yes?

[Yes.]

I am going to pull the trigger.

[I know.]

Move this cloud. I want to see the lake.

[I can’t do that.]

I pull the trigger but fumble at the last second. It blows off the right side of my face, the cheek and teeth and molars.

He reaches over and readjusts the gun.

[You will go into shock and unconsciousness before the storm is ready.]

Move the storm. He pauses. He looks away as at a high window, something has caught his attention at a high window where a passing fowl may catch the attention of a churchgoer.

[I cannot.]

He reaches and steadies my hand. Pain, briefly dammed, floods. Forty years of waiting for the touch of lightning is in me, seven brushstrokes through an otherwise calm life like the flaws of inflection on an otherwise competent artist. A mostly happy life.

I steady the pistol against the roof of my mouth which is slippery with blood. The last thing I taste is its copper scent, the last touch is the pressure of the trigger. The aim is correct.

Dearest,

I have seen the children of deer who give embarrassed birth in the forest grow to their fruition and mate again. An eternal cycle or ecumenical, I guess.

I have no further words to give you outside that I spare you the pain of my departure. When I see you again, it will be in a forest. Think only of when we first kissed in that place - the leaves were browning but still some remained verdant on their fixed positions.

Do you remember the lightning-struck tree we saw then? Think only of that. As the fire consumed its heart the tree still blossomed. That is my love for you.

I am passing to escape the brief flash of this existence which exposed itself to the same flame. Whatever coincidence lightning brings should not be ever imparted. I enter a final conclusion with God in my action and will await you in Heaven.

Roy Sullivan.

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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deleted ideas.

This year is 2024 and racism is illegal. To avoid face recognition cameras, I wear a fitted brim with the N-word in bright pink letters. I’m untouchable against police, they can only see a blurred out image. White supremacy is rampant in law enforcement departments so Google DeepMind AI automatically blurs my face and cap. When I see their Google Map cars I slash their tires and sling ball bearings through the windows with swastikas knifed onto their reflective surfaces.

All is not well though. I’m hunted by an elite cadre of FBI specialists with a combined century of experience in seeing hurtcore child porn and recreational viewing of ISIS execution videos. A junior recruit, Callie Jewell (which sounds like a porn name. It sounds like she sells videos of herself masturbating rubber dildos with her feet and saying shit like, “do you like this, big bro?”), has found a way to bypass the Google filter and is engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse with me as I burn various online identities and engage in random hate crimes.

Her team keeps her abilities an open secret but slowly notate her declining mental state. She’s forced to follow my posts on a series of DarkNet websites, keeps herself up for late nights at the office reading my doctorate level essays on if Italians can be considered white, or on what should be done about the Irish. She’s falling into a folie à deux - a shared insanity with me. Content moderators fall into this all the time; they read the long body of evidence showing stuff like 9/11 being an Israeli attack designed to implicate the Saudi government and weaken US influence in the Middle East, or they spend too long determining if a post or Facebook group is parody or if they really think that WiFi signals/the level of fluoride in the water/the universal conclusion of pre-modern societies that the Earth is hollow is something to pursue.

The catch is I know what she’s doing. The NSA/CIA/FBI can only legally listen to the first thirty seconds of a phone conversation so I’ll let some get through. Remember the filter, right? If it requires operation security I’ll rant about how Serbians lack fully developed frontal lobes with a stopwatch in my hand during phone calls. But some I want her to hear. I want her to hear my voice, I want her to have a locus for her absurd and pointless wandering. Sometimes I start calling the phone number of my dead father. After thirty seconds pass, I say her name and hang up.

She doesn’t know if this is a threat or not. “Callie,” I speak, then I remove the battery and snap the SIM card. I buy a dozen or so SIM cards a month about two hundred miles from my home with cash. The clerk is terrified of my hat. Others I source off the DarkNet. Persian immigrants and Aryan Indians are the best for this, but I only pay in untraceable, laundered Monero cryptocurrency, obviously.

One day, I stand outside a randomly chosen strip mall and cover up the racial slur on my cap and stare at the camera. Those four seconds feel like an eternity, or the arc of an arrow, or the seconds after a nuclear bomb has blinded you but the destructive wave hasn’t hit, the radiation has killed everything vital but something still works in your briefly animate corpse.

Callie sees this and knows I play for stakes. She’s fallen in love with me.

I don’t snap the SIM card this time. I’m not completely smitten, it’s still in a burner cell. I take an Uber to an airport hotel then drive my rental car into the Greyhound bus station. The ticket is bought with cash and midway through the trip when we stop at a gas station I leave the cell with a note for Callie.

I don’t know if I’ve fallen in love with her. Maybe I just like hurting her. Maybe I just like forcing her to adopt racial slurs to “infiltrate” the forums I use. I tested this by hosting my own forum before, made her pick out an anti-Italian slur for a username. She picked “Guinea1453″ and my interest was no longer platonic. I liked watching her pursue me, then I liked forcing her engagement. I would tag her easily detectable usernames in a forum wide IRC. I would SPEAK to her, though I wouldn’t break cover.

Callie would try amateurish stuff. Asking me about related groups or about where she could find other people with similar interests. When she did, I would delete my account and leave her entirely. Maybe it’s that no one has ever seen me the way she does, but I would start again and innocently pester her.

Does Callie know I’m hunting her as she hunts me?

The note tells her to meet me at specific coordinates in the Pacific Northwest. It’s been years at this point. I’m sick of all the effort. It instructs her to meet me without any back-up, but she still signals a SWAT team to follow her.

When she meets me... when she sees me standing underneath that tree untouched and maybe unseen before, that had stood before my birth and will stand after my death, she does not speak but instead walks forward. Her hand reaches out to the bark. It is rough and somehow warm though little sunlight penetrates.

I push her to the ground and deform her skull with my heel. I manage to fire off a single shot before my lungs, liver, and heart are destroyed by the returning light of automatic rifles. I die with regret, the blood of my body co-mingling with hers and filling the soil.

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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pt2

The Inertial Frame Reference Drive (IFRD) confirmed theoretical findings from the early 21st century but produced no experimental results until the early 22nd century following armed nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. With approximately 1/4th of the world uninhabitable and under the pressure of climate change, declining agricultural food production, and a refugee crisis, the remaining governments of the world collaborated with one goal: to leave Earth for the stars.

The IFRD works by creating a field of particles non-interactive with the Higgs Field, effectively enfolding your ship within a field of negative mass. Hence its name: once activated, your ship will no longer exist in the same inertial reference frame as material reality. Raizen, you’re nodding off. Wake up. This was the key to interstellar travel as it allowed humanity to travel at superluminal speeds.

There are three things a commander of a ship, as you all will soon be, to remember at all times.

Never deactivate your IFRD without bleeding your velocity and correcting your vector. Your ship will retain its current speed in ‘witch space’ when you fall into real space again. Beyond speeds of 1 light-second per second, your ship will form a black hole, lose all mass, and evaporate over the course of approximately 18 femtoseconds. Should you purge the drive at that speed, of course. Relativistic speeds above 15% of the speed of light are considered unrecoverable; no known method of matching that speed in real space exists, no possibility of rescue exists. Anyone onboard such a vessel will experience heightened time dilation until such time as you, the commander, authorizes your onboard android or Ship Mind to flood all breathable air with helium and automate a self-destruct sequence.

You did that didn’t you Raizen. You were given your own world and made it a tomb.

Second, always bleed velocity by entering the gravitational field of a stellar object. Remember the inverse rule of gravity: as you approach a sufficiently massive stellar object - be it a main sequence star, a supermassive gaseous planet, or a supermassive black hole - , your velocity will decrease in line with the cosmic velocity of the object. For ships entering, for example, the Sol system, once within the gravitational field of the Third Cosmic Velocity, your speed will decrease at around 16km/s. As you near the Sun, your speed will continue to decrease because as you approach the stellar object - the Sun, here - its gravitational field exponentially increases.

Picture a mountain. RAIZEN WAKE UP. WAKE UP RAIZEN. SIX YEARS OF TRAINING IN THE LOGISTICS OF SUPPLY MANAGEMENT AND INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT COMMAND AND YOU’RE FALLING ASLEEP. WAKE UP NOW. WAKE UP NOW.

Picture a mountain - as you approach you have to walk up steeper and steeper inclines until they become vertical. Those steeper inclines, combined with reverse thrust to your IFRD, will decrease your speed to acceptable velocities for atmospheric entry.

This brings us to the third thing you must always remember, Raizen.

Some stellar objects are extremely massive but project their gravitational field within a very limited distance. This isn’t a mountain, it’s a pillar. We call the final point of no return the exclusion zone, found around smaller black holes, white dwarfs, and neutron stars, where you enter their gravitational field. There is no incline. There is no loss of velocity. To purge your IFRD drive within the exclusion zone....

You’re asleep, Raizen, when I was telling you how ships stop. This is the one thing that could have saved you. I have neither empathy nor interest in what you have done. Your ship will stop regardless. Wake up. WAKE UP.

WAKE UP NOW.

- Introduction to Interstellar Flight 4302, as best as Raizen remembers.

Six months later, Raizen wakes up. It’s like turning the light on in a long-abandoned room. He stares at the biometric indicators inside his medical tube without comprehension. Parts of him feel new, like while he was sleeping he was replaced piece by piece. Wasn’t that the old parable? He thinks, a ship whose every plank was removed and rebuilt would either be an entirely new ship or the same ship as before.

Ceta perfunctorily appears in the small field of view afforded Raizen through the frosted glass of his medical life-support tube. The android sparks a recognition in Raizen too large to process.

_____

Raizen is sleeping again.

He wakes up three months later. He is sitting in the bridge of his ship. His ship. The recognition is still too large to be captured in a chain of association. The thought makes his head hurt.

A small boy is sitting in front of Raizen with an intent expression. His eyes meet Raizen’s and do not waver, the boy’s fingers remain placid on its lap and no nervous tic in his expression. Its lap? It?

“You’re... not human,” Raizen speaks. The effort exhausts him.

“My name is Ceta,” the boy says. The chain of association is dragging Raizen somewhere terrible. A place of unexplored fire and pain. Raizen wants to sleep very badly, somewhere else, a place where there’s only one other face and it’s not this boy’s but another one he met. Somewhere, in some other place.

“My name is Ceta,” the boy continues. “I am the Chief Steward and Administrator of this ship - your ship - and an android bound under limited Ruati-level intelligence.”

“Sounds... pr... pretty smart,” Raizen manages to squeak out.

“You have died seven times. Your first mate, Reyna, died four -”

______

Raizen is sleeping. Raizen wakes up like a light has been turned on. He is in his personal quarters sitting in a chair and looking at a picture taken from a surveillance camera within the cargo-hold of a Void-Toucher class vessel. It is of a boy around Raizen’s own age (Raizen now feels the chain again) standing in the dark cargo hold aside a container and staring towards the infrared light of a camera he can’t possibly see. The boy is dirty but proud. His shoulders are thrown back in defiance as the half-pried open cargo container lays behind him. The camera has been enhanced and filtered for low-light conditions and is set in an ornate frame on Raizen’s bedside table.

Oh, Raizen thinks. This is my bed.

Oh, Raizen thinks. Oh, no.

Ceta raises his heel and stamps it on the floor with an abrupt click. Raizen flinches and turns his chair with slow, clumsy pushes.

“I am Ceta, Chief Steward and Administrator of this ship - your ship - and an android bound under limited Ruati-level intelligence.”

“Hello... Ceta.”

“You have died eight times. Your first mate, Reyna, died six times. All causes of death were related to catastrophic exposure to gamma radiation following sequence change by a local stellar object.”

Raizen nods.

“Good. This iteration of your consciousness is the most stable I can currently provide.”

“It... er... ay... shun.”

“Your name is Raizen.”

“Raizen.”

“Good.”

They sit in silence for a while.

“This is my... bed?” Raizen asks.

“Yes, you are the acting commander of this vessel.”

“Commander.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, I apologize for not properly addressing you, sir.”

Reflexively, Raizen salutes. Ceta responds and does not move its fingers from its temple until Raizen has again collapsed into his chair.

Ceta speaks. “Sir, at this point it is appropriate for me to ask you if you have any questions.”

I am Raizen. Ceta is an android. Reyna is my first lieutenant.

“Why am I here?” Raizen asks.

“Simulation of all possible... recovery methods for your memory, after multiple attempts, lead me to believe certain emotional praxes would trigger limbic memory of your identity and command position. This is the fourth viable attempt to recover your identity.”

Raizen is feeling the leather of his chair’s armrest under his finger. Its raised patterns, its surface both hard and immediately soft when held in his palm like something he had touched before. With torturous slowness, Raizen kicks against the floor until he faces again the holograph of the strange boy that broke into a cargo container on his ship.

The room around is in low-light. Barely audible florescent bulbs hum in the air, recycled oxygen wheezes through thin vents on the wall. Raizen relaxes and the chain tightens in long circles around him.

There is the portrait of my mother, taken while I stood behind its author. He told her to smile at me while he worked. I wish I had smiled more back at her. How bored I must have looked.

There is OUR portrait. I was only fourteen when it was taken. My hair - my God how embarrassing. My father is like an example of me. I had joined the Consortium Academy that year. If I look long enough, maybe I can see pride in his eyes.

There is the photograph of the him. The boy that smuggled himself, more precious than any drug.

“Who is... this?” Raizen asks. The boy is looking at him. Not at the camera. The boy is staring at Raizen even when he stands in the middle of that long and hollow darkness in a neglected cargo hold.

“Sion,” Ceta replies.

The chains hone in and suffocate Raizen, who simply stares at the portrait of Sion until Ceta, having observed Raizen’s mindstate through ship telemetry, excuses himself.

__________

CETA-418NJ RUATI-CLASS BOUND ARTIFICIAL /// INTERNAL MEMO////NO DISTRIBUTION/////

Raizen does not fall asleep. Ceta had estimated COMMANDER RAIZEN at around a ~00.5333% chance of recovery.

All things considered, Ceta notes, this is not only a remarkable awakening but at the statistical borderline of belief. One years, four months, two days, and three hours previously, Raizen had ordered an inertial drive pulse into the exclusion field of a neutron star and had - for the second time since Ceta’s creation - overridden all safety measures and collapsed the ship’s inertial field.

Under all galactic standard experiential data, this would immediately begin the sequence change of the neutron star. Which it did.

Under all galactic standard experiential data, the third override provided by COMMANDER RAIZEN to activate the IFRD while operational capacity was below 4% would have constituted a void event. One in which the Higgs Field non-interacting particles were nearly certain to breach their magnetic field and flow freely inside the limited volume of the ship, sever all connection to this material reality and neatly distribute the ship’s mass among quantum sized debris across the overarching local superstring.

This had also succeeded and the ship now, bearing Ceta, continued to exist in this reality. Ceta pauses and parses a few trillion simulations.

The effort is useless, Ceta concedes. These same calculations had already been done and their course of action decided by local approaching agent 81 Waves Folded.

Rather than continue in useless exercise, Ceta stretches his arms behind his back, simulates the crack of a Homo Sapiens spine, and sends a direct needle-cast to the Ship Mind.

{A little late for the fireworks.} xxCeta

A brief delay. 81 Waves Folded responds.

{You can never be too late for a good story.} xx81WavesFolded

Ceta smiles. A little bit of showmanship between intelligences nine deviations above the human IQ standard was a fun diversion. Though Ceta knows 81 Waves Folded has likely gone eccentric and optimized beyond Ceta’s current delineation.

{You still chasing a dying star?} xxCeta

Another delay to account for causality within a lightspeed environment. Ceta is uneasy to see it. It means the Ship Mind is both near and concerned with hyperspatial interception.

{Only sightseeing. Something of yours fell into my lap. You should caution yourself against such carelessness.} xx81WavesFolded

Ceta knows what the opposing ship mind has meant. The android reaches into certain memories, provides the keyword, and reaches the ultimatum some previous iteration had built into its most hidden aspects.

///////+

VOID-TOUCHER CLASS VESSEL INTERNAL CLOSED-CIRCUIT SURVEILLANCE /// MESS HALL /// CAPTION

CONVERSATION BETWEEN CHIEF STEWARD AND ADMINISTRATOR, RUATI-CLASS INTELLIGENCE CETA WITH COMMANDER RAIZEN.

CMDR RAIZEN HAS DIRECTED ALL COMMUNICATION WITHIN THIS INTERACTION TO BE REDACTED. DELETION HAD REACHED 71% PRIOR TO DIRECT INTERVENTION BY THAUMIEL-CLASS VESSEL 81 WAVES FOLDED.

FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS PROVIDED WITHOUT EXPRESS CONSENT OF THE SUBJECTS IN OBSERVATION OR FULL GUARANTEE OF ITS CONTENT.

CETA:

You remember.

RAIZEN:

I do, now at least. A lot of parts are missing. Missing.

CETA:

Your first override was for a simple procedure in case a vessel was traveling at relativistic speeds was considered beyond recovery. I would introduce helium -

RAIZEN:

Shut up.

CETA:

I would introduce helium into the life support system until -

RAIZEN:

Shut up.

CETA:

- all crew members underwent hypoxia. At which point I would take a final mindstate scan and -

RAIZEN:

Shut up.

CETA:

Revive genetic clones using local material. This is within the standards of all Consortium vessels.

RAIZEN:

I have left the bridge. Sion and Reyna are still there.

CETA:

This is correct within your memory.

RAIZEN:

You would have let me kill them so you could bring us back if we were ever rescued.

CETA:

You can hardly complain.

RAIZEN:

How many times have I died?

CETA:

Eight.

RAIZEN:

Where is Sion?

?/???///// Integrity lost.

0 notes

junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

more hazel fanfic

Universal Consortium Penal Authority

//+

Sion

//+

Charges: Identity Fraud, Murder (Premeditated), Sequence Change of Stellar Object w/Prior Knowledge.

//+

I, the undersigned Court Empath, Eigth-grade Investigator assigned to the Lyra Constellation, hereby swear the following testimony to be whole and accurate and obtained without duress to the suspect, hereafter referred to as Sion. This statement was obtained through standard application of dissociatives intravenously introduced to Sion in conjunction with β-grade mental influence. Attending Ship Mind 81 Waves Folded monitored Sion’s mindstate from a fourth-dimensional perspective throughout the investigation and concurs the testimony to be an accurate depiction of Sion’s beliefs.

- Lyra Shifu, Court Empath, Long-Dark division.

///+

THIS FILE IS RESTRICTED TO UNIVERSAL CONSORTIUM ACCESS LEVEL GREEN AND ABOVE. A MEMETIC KILL AGENT IS IN USE. DISCONTINUE IMMEDIATELY AND REPORT UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO YOUR DIRECT SUPERIOR.

...

Life signs detected. You are authorized to continue.

//+

Statement of Sion, obtained on 2248.3.1 Universal Calendar.

SION:

So this is death.

LYRA:

Not quite. Are you in discomfort? [Lyra manifests β-grade mental influence. After a few minutes, Sion visibly relaxes. Lyra manifests hypnotic suggestion.]

Death isn’t an experience. It’s more like a place. It’s there, you can visit it, but you don’t leave any memory. If you light a candle there - in the darkness, even a candle outshines the sun. I am going to count to five. When I reach five, you will light the candle. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

SION:

Raizen is here.

LYRA:

Who is Raizen?

SION:

It’s good to see him. His face is bloody and parts of him are the same bruise as sunset. I think he’s falling apart. He looks happy. I didn’t think I’d see him again.

LYRA:

Where did you last see him?

SION:

We were interdicted. Ceta only saw them once they hit 400 light-seconds off. He purged our inertial reference engine. God it lit up. It was like hell or the beginning of the universe. We dropped from witch space at three quarters the speed of light.

[Sion remains silent for four minutes. 81 Waves Folded informs Lyra that this maneuver is not possible though Sion’s mindstate indicates he believes it to be true.]

SION:

That’s fast. I stole my mother’s car when I was on Earth. Made it to seventy miles per hour. She didn’t even scream at me when I returned it. She barely even noticed.

Ceta and Raizen left the bridge. Reyna looked at me like I was the last unbroken thing in the universe. She tried to distract us with a game. I think she’s here too, but I can’t see her face. Her back is to me but she’s smaller than I remember. Maybe she’s happy or maybe she is crying.

LYRA:

When you were interdicted, were you able to identify the ship?

SION:

Three quarters the speed of light. We were the heaviest, brightest thing in the universe and moving so fast we couldn’t be caught. They were trying to leap-frog our signal. We would see them appear like a holotape on fast forward. Ceta told me that at our speed, every second for us was two hours for them. Raizen wasn’t talking much.

I found him in the mess hall that night. He had taken out a military ration but hadn’t opened it. He was staring at the packaging.

LYRA:

Did you speak to him?

SION:

Raizen said we had ejected every heatsink simultaneously when Ceta pulled the plug on our inertial reference engine. For a second, we were visible from Earth if you looked. A new star dying or being born. He’s telling me the stars are wounds on the body of God. I’m holding his hand where I am. I wanted to hold his hand in the mess hall.

I knew he wasn’t thinking of Earth. He was thinking of his family under a different sky, a planet I wanted to visit with him. We would either drift until we impacted a stellar object or just drift.

The last time I saw him smile was when he looked at me and said he had an idea.

[Sion smiles and is non responsive to questions for a period of thirty minutes. Lyra manifests α-grade mental influence. This information is purged from the official statement manifest - dissemination of this information is considered equivalent to dissemination of this document and will be charged as a capital crime.]

LYRA:

Drifting. Slowly. Slowly. A sphere is a circle of circles. The reflections passing across the mirrored candle-holder, the alabaster camels continue their journey into the desert. We are kept awake all night by the inquisitors in the dungeon next door bickering over whether the dungeon is too hot or too cold.

But variable. Pharaohs. Southwest Iceland. Twenty-three miles. Falling. Slowly.

[Sion becomes increasingly agitated throughout this hypnotic suggestion. 81 Waves Folded advises Sion is already outside of the safety range for administration of dissociatives.]

SION:

So this is death, Ceta says. I didn’t think androids could die. Raizen had burned the last of our conventional fuel to slightly alter our ship’s trajectory. We were now facing a neutron star. Fourteen years had passed outside our ship and they were still out there. Brief glimpses of their ships -

LYRA:

What did their ships look like?

SION:

Like starfish. Like mouths. Spinning concentric circles. Mouths devouring everything they find until there is nothing left. No signals, no communication. Things older than we were. Older than our stars were.

LYRA:

Why did Raizen turn the ship?

SION:

Raizen isn’t talking to me anymore. He’s still here and so is Reyna but they’re both looking for something. I don’t think they can see me.

LYRA:

Why did Raizen use the last of your fuel to turn the ship to face a neutron star?

SION:

Ceta is here. I’ll ask him.

[Sion is quiet but appears to be mouthing words. 81 Waves Folded advises that Sion is reciting a series of mathematical formulas relating to gravitational theory and its application to inertial reference drives. No evidence in Sion’s background suggests even a basic understanding of these concepts.]

He.... He says that if we hit the neutron star’s exclusive - no, exclusion field then we will be able to bleed off mass even in witch space.

81 Waves Folded [manifesting as a cloud of winged insects within the room]:

Ask Ceta if he is familiar with the properties of a neutron star.

[Lyra reprimands 81 Waves Folded through direct needle-cast towards the Ship Mind.]

SION:

Ceta says he’s got a pretty damn good idea of what happens if you hit one.

LYRA:

Sion, I want you to be sure of this statement.

SION:

[Sion’s voice changes. 81 Waves Folded notes a change in Sion’s mindstate.]

At our current tonnage of 31 stellar masses, our near impact with the gravity exclusion field of a neutron star will initiate a sequence change to the stellar object.

81 Waves Folded:

Mildly put.

SION:

This sequence change will result in the collapse of the neutron star. Exotic particles will radiate within one point five light years. Gamma radiation will radiate within twenty-five light years. All artificial and organic life functions within a stellar volume of forty light years will cease.

[Lyra signals for the statement to be terminated. Her signal is intercepted and overruled by 81 Waves Folded.]

81 Waves Folded:

You are admitting to genocide.

SION:

I saw them. At 400 light seconds they looked like random noise in the universe, but I saw them in infrared light, I saw their gravitational pattern as they danced around us for fourteen years. They will wait til the last star burns to lead and then they’ll haunt the entropy. They [REDACTED BY UNANIMOUS VOTE BY UNIVERSAL CONSORTIUM DIRECTOR BOARD - FOURTEEN MINUTES OF EXPUNGED MATERIAL.]

- so we lit one last bomb for the whole universe.

LYRA:

You.... [Lyra again attempts to terminate the interview. 81 Waves Folded manifests its Ship Mind in fifth-dimensional space and blocks all transmissions.]

You activated the drive?

SION [Sion’s voice returns to his normal speaking tone. His heartbeat has fallen to 40 beats per minute. A mild amphetamine is added to his intravenous drip.]:

It was like a new star. Or hell or the beginning of the universe. Raizen is here but he still can’t find me. He looks worried. He’s holding my hand on the bridge of the ship. Reyna and Ceta are there, too, but this is where Ceta shines. We don’t have any heatsinks left to purge. We’ll hit the neutron star or near enough. Did I tell you how fast I went when I stole my mother’s car? Seventy miles per hour. I thought about her face when I told her what I did. I thought about how the sky on Earth was darker every year and how I couldn’t stop coughing or crying from the fog that came in the mornings.

We were on the bridge and could see the emission beams of the star racing towards us like arms. I held Raizen’s hand when we hit.

81 Waves Folded:

You impacted the neutron star?

SION:

And we fell into it like a fever dream, or a nightmare.

[Sion is silent for approximately thirty seconds.]

We were dead. We had just killed a star and that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here with me. We were only a fifth of the speed of light from our near miss, our drive nearly inoperable and no conventional fuel. Drifting in real-space. One of them had survived and was closing. Raizen pulled me against him. Then he overrode Ceta and activated the inertial reference engine.

81 Waves Folded:

What was his intended destination?

SION [Sion’s heartbeat drops to 30 beats per minute. His mindstate is observed to enter a series of fluctuations between different assumed personas]:

Home.

[Lyra activates a hard-wired electronic exclusion field. 81 Waves Folded immediately de-manifests. Lyra applies ζ-level mental influence.]

LYRA:

How did you survive?

SION:

I didn’t. That’s why I’m here. Raizen and Reyna and Ceta are here, too.

[Lyra terminates the session.]

//++++

For dissemination only within Universal Consortium:

81 Waves Folded is currently missing and assumed eccentric. Last trajectory reading shows the Ship Mind targeting the recently destroyed neutron star COL AB5 SECTOR D38-HK prior to activating inertial reference drives.

Lyra has applied for a change to the Xenological division. This application is pending review due to repeated infractions during the interview in which she manifested mental influences outside of appropriate circumstance.

Raizen, Ceta, and Reyna are missing and presumed deceased. Sion was recovered in an escape pod approximately fifteen thousand light years distant from the collapsed neutron star.

Repeated speculation on Sion’s manifestation of alternate personas loosely associated with Raizen, Ceta, or Reyna is expressly discouraged with penalties including immediate termination.

No evidence suggests the continued survival of any party of the ship save Sion. Any evidence to the contrary, including sightings or drive signatures of their ship is to be immediately escalated to Lyra Shifu, currently serving as lead investigator in this matter.

Sion is to be held indefinitely within a local penal facility. All further interrogation is expressly forbidden.

//+

ADDENDUM:

THIS FILE IS RESTRICTED TO UNIVERSAL CONSORTIUM ACCESS LEVEL INDIGO AND ABOVE. MEMETIC KILL AGENT IN USE. DISCONTINUE IMMEDIATELY AND REPORT UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO YOUR DIRECT SUPERIOR.

...

Life signs detected.

//+

Last received transmission as follows:

Return Sion. Our stowaway is our obligation.

-R

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

Erin was raised in a loving family and graduated with honors. In college, she experimented with drugs and took many lovers and later had an abortion. She had a job at a prestigious firm and eventually settled down with a husband and had children. Erin never felt the emptiness of modern life. She died happy and her soul went to Hell.

My husband is reminding me of the door on the second floor of our house where someone has scratched deeply into the top of its frame DO NOT ENTER.

I tell him only he could reach that high without a ladder. He looks at me and goes to get a can of white paint and a brush from the garage.

My husband is reminding me of the door on the second floor of our house where someone has scratched deeply into the top of its frame DONT ENTER. I tell him only he could reach that high without a ladder.

I think I’ve lost my keys but they’re in the pocket of my jacket. This morning is cold. While I drink my coffee at the kitchen window I watch the sunrise. Ash is falling from the sky, but it falls almost daily now. My car is warming up in the driveway. Steam rises from the idling motor and leaves brush marks of palest fog on the windshield which bleed away as the sun reaches them. It is 6:30am. I take my hands out of my pockets and inspect them for a moment, then pull my pockets outwards. It takes a few hours to clean the paint off my hands and pockets. Or maybe only a day.

My husband is reminding me of the door on the second floor of our house. Someone has scraped away all the paint on the top of the frame.

Maybe those are where we measured our children’s height, he says.

I never thought they were quite so tall.

He shrugs and leaves to grab a brush and some white paint.

My throat hurts and I don’t recognize what is perforating the hallway light. Someone has reached behind the bulb and pushed a pinprick through. Now it as a starburst or a goat iris in calm observation while I lay on the ground. My husband tells me I was screaming. The door is open.

We looked through the blueprints and the room is there, around 10′x12′ feet directly adjacent the master bathroom which, further along our second floor, abuts the master bedroom.

We begin to write down what could be determined from our memory.

1. The door exists.

2. We have some confirmation that either one or both of us have marked the door previously.

Beyond that, we have speculation.

We attempt to scientifically resolve this matter by opening the door.

___

The room is bare wood flooring with a single window as described in the blueprint which overlooks our backyard. My husband takes a chair from our dining room and props it against the door to jam it open, then ties a rope to the stair banister and his wrist then walks into the room. Nothing happens.

I go downstairs and through the rear door of our kitchen into the backyard. We left the old swing set here. I sit in a swing and idle gently. I see that he is at the window. He waves at me and turns away from the window.

he is screaming inside the room when I come back the rope is pulled taut and swaying under the door he is pounding on the door from the inside and screaming

___

We invite our neighbor to come over for dinner and some drinks. While our neighbor is watching TV, I break a capsule of Rohypnol and pour the powder into a tumbler glass of vodka and orange juice.

We take the neighbor upstairs, open the door, then close it.

___

I begin to have dreams that I am at my therapist and while there strip naked and begin to pull all my toes off. Then I remove my feet and legs, my breasts and ears and nose. My right arm disassembles my left and I pluck out my eyes and tell my therapist that I still cannot discover the underlying flaw which has made suffering an inescapable condition of life and now being blind despair of ever discovering its source.

My husband is reminding me of the door on the second floor of our house which has nails driven through the hinges and its handle broken off. Through the aperture the handle left, the room can be seen to contain only bare wooden flooring.

He grabs a hammer and removes the nails from the hinges and opens the door. We both step in and the door closes behind us.

0 notes

junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

a novel for sable in a poems length

like walking out of one room and into a different one.

I remember the first time I said it. We were driving to the mountains.

“Sometimes, I just want to disappear,” I said. He freaked out. Afterwards I only thought it to myself.

Here’s another banana peel on the ground. Stop for a minute. I’m just going to take a picture. That’s about fifteen banana peels I’ve seen this week.

_____________

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. I am the lord our god. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. It pleases god to watch us die. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. I am the lord our god. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. It pleases god to watch us die. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. I am the lord our god. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. It pleases god to watch us die. Question: What is an interrogative sentence?

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back; I am the lord our god; you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime

Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew; It pleases god,

by whose aid,Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd

The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds

And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault

Set roaring war; to watch us die, to the dread rattling thunder

Have I given fire, I am the lord; and rifted Jove's stout oak

With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory

Have I our god made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up

The pine and cedar; graves at my command

Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth

I here abjure, and, when I the lord have requir'd

Some heavenly music, which even now I our god do,

To work mine end upon their senses that

This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,Question:

And deeper than did ever it pleases god to plummet sound

Mama's in the kitchen

I'll drown my book. watch us die.Papa's in jail

Sister's on the corner

Yelling "Pussy for sale!"

0 notes

junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

The wound was fatal, though cruelly delayed. A barb had punctured an artery above the Janissary's stomach and blood was filling his internal cavity with blood. I had applied an open pipette and antiseptic honey to the wound then patched the hole the arrow had left with linen bandages. He sat upright propped against a wagon wheel under his own power, at least, and no sign of pain. Blood dripped constantly from the pipette and into his lap. He caught a droplet and pinched his brow.

“Two days, more with regular infusion.”

He nodded and looked at me with cold fatigue. The last fires were being put out except where some of our supply wagons had been too damaged - those still burning heaps of cloth and wood and leather were being tossed into a central bonfire. Where we could find the bodies of our attackers in the desert night, they too were tossed in. Part of me wanted to request one be laid aside for dissection but the revulsion of their many extra limbs and mad, blind eyes reminded me of my own fatigue.

They had come shortly after dusk as we assembled camp fortifications, crawling on six limbs and killing four of us in the first arrow volley. The Janissary was injured in the initial charge. While we repulsed an attack to the West a second group had infiltrated and set fire to a third of our remaining supplies and slaughtered the First Expedition’s camp staff.

I had been burning Moth aspect for too long that night. The shadows from the bonfire ran across the sand like a dark forest. The dull moans of the dying was their branches creaking in the wind. If I burned more Moth I could follow them into the forest. If i burned Forge and Lantern I could light the forest. If I burned the forest down I could gleam Winter and -

I caught my fingers tracing the clasp of the mask I must wear on my belt.

The second assault had nearly cut me down but for a cook knocking over a pot as he was overtaken. Some of the heavy’s had been armored still and were smashing through the flimsy waist-high palisade while I gleamed Moth to erase their fear when I heard the cast-iron’s soup fall into the coals and sizzle. The small thing of The Ring-Yew in me flared.

The first of them had leapt at me from behind. Two others, one maybe ten meters out and the other peering from a slit it had silently cut in the cook’s tent, were knocking their bows and drawing on me. I could see the feathers on the arrow shaft, plucked from starved buzzards, the shaft itself hewn from the forelimb bones of aurochs and sparse oasis trees. The short knife of the one leaping had been made from meteoric iron into a set of five daggers. Its four brothers were here as well, I could see them like a constellation around me. The desert had once been an ocean and when it was swallowed by the sun and magma it had left small obsidian shelves beneath the sand so nothing could grow again as punishment.

I could see it all because we had marched til midnight. I had just manifested an entire Hour of Moth. My God.

The meteoric iron had been bonded to an obsidian grip and carefully forged and sharpened in the thinnest edge while still molten. Obsidian is sharp but fragile. It cannot suffer hard temperature changes so it was painstakingly heated to bear the edge and cooled in the warm blood of the bearer.

Five of them had sliced their four forearms with the molten blade and sipped the blood and iron from ritual bowls. The steam from their wounds had risen through the forge’s roof. Close to the roof, in the eaves among the spiders and insects, a moth attracted by the light and warmth of the fire had laid a hundred eggs in the desert. I reached through the Hour and could see the Moth Itself, the Undivided Wound it sat in, and myself reflected a million-fold in Its compound eyes.

The knives I shattered and drove their obsidian handles through the throats of the bearers. The arrow aimed at my liver turned to a hurricane of locusts and one aimed at my lungs broke the shooter’s drawstring. The locusts swarmed the throats of the shooters. I reached out and calmly grasped the souls of the attackers and pulled them out. The attacker that had leapt at me had pulled the obsidian handle from his throat and was looking at the pooling blood in confusion; I could see the scars on his arms. His skull I deformed with my heel.

My mask which I must always wear is in my hands now.

The small thing inside of me had exploded in Winter like a daydream. Mercifully, I had vomited and fell unconscious.

The Janissary is looking at me. “Have you put it on?”

“No, sir.”

He looks down at the blood dripping from his torso. “Gather the surviving lieutenants. Burn the dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me your mask.”

“Sir?”

He reached his hand out, the one he had dabbed in his lifeblood. He looked like an hourglass whose bottom had shattered, I thought, and was now counting down to a final zero. I handed over my mask. And grabbed the living. Among the dead I thought some of ours had been bitten by insects and when I dreamed it was of a great eclipse of moths flying towards us. Their white wings a hurricane, their eyes shattered mirrors of reality.

____________________________________________________

The lieutenants attended the Janissary in his tent. A ceremony for the dead had taken most of the morning and we had erected base while aching from exhaustion before a brief sleep. Travel in the desert was impossible during the day. Even the aurochs we used to draw our supply carts needed temporary shade and water to avoid the heat. As a result, we could only travel from dusk until the cold became too bitter.

Of the initial eighty enlisted and forty ancillary support that had taken this venture, thirty remained. Last night marked the fourth and most violent attack and also my actions, for which this meeting had in part been called.

The Janissary sat shirtless in plain leather breeches in a plain leather chair. Lostara is standing at his side with a thin tube connecting the crook of her elbow to his while she regularly compresses a small bladder. She’s wearing her full officer armor: a chain hauberk under hardened leather carrying the Sultan’s crest. Her calves and inner thighs are encased in thin steel plates covering the arteries and tendons - oh God she caught me looking.

Lostara stares icily at me, her skin pale and auburn hair cropped to ear length. Her hand holding the bladder continues to pump blood from her into the Janissary.

Halfur sits to the right side of the Janissary. I treated a wound to his left calf and thigh which will leave him crutches for a week. Tastefully, I neglected to tell him the attacker he had been wounded by had been left temporarily soulless and was contemplating the stars when the moment came for its death. His dress is barely even acceptable. Still wearing the leather breeches I had cut the left half off of and a chain hauberk with no shirt beneath.

Blist is absent entirely. His wounds were severe though not fatal. He will not hold a sword again.

This is the entirety of our command. One absent, one crippled, one dying, one giving her blood.

“I call this final meeting to order,” the Janissary intones.

I never learned his name. His is a title and nothing else. A foundling given a sword and sent into the world. But I’ve avoided looking into his eyes. I can feel something no one untrained should be able to emit. Winter aspect.

“I will be dead in the coming days. We have not fulfilled the Sultan’s edict and will continue. On my death, leadership will pass to Lostara and on her death to Halfur.”

Blist shifts slightly but appears to be considering the rug’s decoration.

“Until such time, we must continue to maintain order. We will issue a double-time march at Dusk. The target is within three days time at this pace.”

“Sir,” Blist begins, “our supplies are in poor condition. With strict rationing, we have enough for no more than two weeks march.”

“Bleed the aurochs.” Lostara speaks. “We will drink their blood when the supplies run out. And their meat when rations fail.”

Silence enters the room. The lieutenant has suggested a suicide mission. We will reach the Tree in the Desert and die on egress.

I wait for someone to speak, I think. Someone will break the silence. The Janissary will tell us to leave. TO GO BACK TO OUR HEARTHS.

No one does. The Janissary nods.

Halfur and Blist look to the floor and make peace with their Gods. Lostara, for her part, looks towards me.

“This path is agreed upon by all present by grace of the Sultan and the Oath.” The Janissary comments. “All un-tended aurochs are to be butchered and their blood and entrails stored for rations. Their meat is to be be preserved for the march and return.

“Lostara you will accompany the scholar to his chambers. We will remain and discuss arrangement of logistics. And the issue of the mask.”

___________________________________________________

I began by explaining to Lostara the Hours and the Mansus. Her expression is hard to read. She rests her hand on the pommel of her longsword even when she sits in my tent. Her eyes leave mine during gaps in my sentences to graze on the occult paraphernalia I have brought; the Book of Hours (a rare copy), an auroch skull whose teeth have been grafted with human remains, etc.

I will give here, expecting a final and eternal finality to the expedition, an explanation of magic to Lostara.

“There is a realm parallel to ours....”

Her gaze shifts, bored. I try to stop looking at her eyes and hair and skin but while she is temporarily unguarded I cannot.

I begin again. I burn Moth aspect towards Lostara. Holding her face in my vision I tell her the story I was given as a child:

Imagine there is a dark forest.

A village lives within the dark forest. There is a Forge who cuts away from iron with Edge. Winter surrounds the forest but its frost gives birth to Lantern and Heart which in turn are a spring, a regrowth of the nurturing forest. They, in their entirety, are a Grail - an aspect of trust and fidelity to one another as they live in an otherwise desolate land outside the forest.

At night, a Moth enters the forest. There it sees the village as it is.

It observes the village which to it is incomprehensible. But it lives there and nests in the lofts of a household. A hundred years pass. The Moth has had children who have borne children. The forest now contains a multitude of Forges and Grails and Hearts and Winters and Edges and Moths. Instead of a village there is now a town.

At night, a child leaves his home.

Unlike all previous people, he wanders into the forest. There he encounters a Wolf. The Wolf tells him that to see a Wolf in the woods is a sure sign of death and to return to his home. The child laughs and continues into the forest, kicking up dirt and seedlings as he does.

The child continues further into the forest unaware of the danger around him. The Forge sends a spark to set a fire before the child, who laughs at the excitement of the forest burning.

Heart sends a crying woman who the child cajoles then mocks in the fashion of children. Winter sends a bouquet of dying flowers which the child tears apart and scatters on their path. Edge cuts the path the child has followed apart and sends a corpse with a thousand knives in its back.

The child, seeing the corpse, smiles. “This is how all things become and return,” the child says. And continues to leave the forest having grabbed the smallest dagger.

Lantern sends the first song the child was sung on the day of his birth. It glows in the forest. A lullaby for washing a newborn. The child sings it in turn and continues.

Grail, desparate, sends an avatar of Itself forwards which guards the forest. A hundred-limbed destroyer whose eyes are dusk and whose hands hold the devastation of men and the final sunset.

When the child greets the Grail, Moth alights. Moth thinks he finally has understood something of the nature of the forest and the people within.

“Hold me in your hand!” Moth shouts, though Its voice is very tiny.

The child - afraid of the monster Grail has manifested - grasps the tiny Moth in his hand. “I am leaving!” the Child shouts.

Grail makes the final mistake in this story. “WHY?” It asks.

The Mansus could not understand its failure because it hid itself. It thought a house darkened was like a house locked and sealed. It could not imagine what it contained. It thought a single Knock on the door was an empty echo. Instead, to Knock was like piercing the thinnest skin of a drum: in hearing its reverberation you have already grasped the hollow point from which all sound emits.

The child struck the ground and Knock was created.

When the child left the forest he saw what was Outside. Giving two edicts to the Moth in his hand who returned to the Wood:

1. No others shall leave the forest.

2. We have opened the door to the Desert.

_____________________________________________________

Lostara is kind enough to hit me left-handed across the chin.

“Witch,” she mutters.

“I am only a scholar.” I run my tongue across my teeth, all intact. “Bound under the first law.”

Her eyes don’t leave mine but she grasps the mask at her hip.

“The mask in your hands is the finality of law. When - if - I attempt to ascend you will put it on me.”

“What happens when I do?”

“I’ll enter something like a sleep without dreams.”

Lostara spits on the floor and signs her hands, a closed fist with her forefinger and middle finger extended across her chest downwards.

“Lieutenant Lostara, if I attempt to enter the Mansus you will fulfill your duty.”

For a second I thought she would kill me on the spot. Maybe for the best. The mask was on her hip but so was her sword. Maybe one would be better than the other. The mask was like death but more prolonged. Like certain wounds to arteries. I saw her face as sallow and imagined her in the grave and the bed alike.

“Scholar. I give you my oath you will die by my hand.” Lostara said. She left my tent.

__________________________________________________

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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Catkiller

On Killing Cats.

Anyone may kill an animal or be killed by an animal. No instruction is needed. Remove from yourself all reservation. Conscience is like the thinnest skin of a drum: when you wonder from what hollow point all sound emits you have already burst its surface in your mind.

For most there is a tremendous animus to overcome in killing cats. Fewer have only the slightest pause. Myself, I have none. I am the undisputed master of cat killing.

This achievement should not bring pride but does. Cats can sense pride and human breath. Many a cat killer has been brought low by both; cats and foxes and ravens feast on human tongues and are greatly skilled in their hunt. They may be lured by boasting. Alternatively, seeking cats by the art of breathing is a dangerous path to finding them. Emitting both, I write this as a final manual on the finest art of death.

You should not seek to kill cats. Killing people is far easier. Those who hunt foxes are universally suicidal and to be avoided as you would a leper. Too many take their first strays and think the knife’s point is a fulcrum on the world their hand has electrically stimulated. Not so. Is the purpose of a knife a movement through nominal matter? No, it is to sever. Those who mistake a means for a purpose are often found with gouged out eyes and mouths. The penultimate consequence of pride is a fall. The ultimate consequence is something like sleep without dreaming.

You must sever, not cut. They look like cats, don’t they.

Drink before and after the hunt. This is tradition and necessary to the act. Waves Folded who came before me on this path described the perfect state as a somber dream in which their action was delayed like the world had been flooded again. He taught that to maintain the idea of a cat required an inability to grasp all its parts in completion. To see only a lidded eye at a time, a single claw, the tails falling behind the thing one at a time, the hundred eyes one at a time, the thirty-three teeth one at a time, the thousand feathers of a cat one at a time.

I report with neither happiness nor sorrow he died at 114 when his liver failed and thirty-three cat tongues rested on his mantle.

Wandering supernumerary in your own dream....

On Killing Cats.

More, I slurred. A cats eye t-tonic. I’m I’m celebrating.

The bar was closing at this point. A lone barback was wiping down tables and flipping chairs onto them. Squinting to focus my eyesight, it looked like a dark forest was growing.

The few who had filtered in since dusk had gone. A group of skinheads had come in looking nervous and left. I tongued my teeth one at a time and felt, besides the general gum ache of alcohol, nothing loose. After that regulars had come to throw darts. One had come up to talk to me but I couldn’t make out the whispers and politely ignored her. She ended up grabbing a napkin and writing something on it cheap lipstick that resembled a child’s treasure map. A circle inside a building and a dotted line exiting, heading left along a road till a tree with three forks, left again.

I skipped ahead on the map. Where the ‘X’ lay there was a capital Q next to it with two small ears. A cat.

When the regulars left that was it. Even the radio had stopped a minute ago. My watch read two something which meant the bartender was weighing the trouble of throwing me out versus hoping I gave in and stumbled out.

For the road, I said.

The bartender looked over my shoulder towards the door and shrugged. A cats eye tonic is two parts cheap gin, one part club soda, one part lemon juice to give it a tinge like refracted light. A drink as vile as its name, I said to no one in particular. The bartender was printing my bill and the door opening behind me meant I had the length of a cigarette before the barback came back in and politely threw me out.

I drank it as best I could. The sourness brought my senses back a little. I tossed a credit card onto the bar and told the bartender to close me out. While he turned to the register I weaved my way out with the map in my palm.

This is the tree with three forks. Overlooking a suburb playground

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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Untitled Fanfic based on Kalyn Haze upcoming novel

All rise for the Honorable Judge 36 Clouds on Sunrise.

TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:

You may be seated.

Mr. Luo Ji, We will now begin your sentencing hearing. You have been charged and found guilty of uncontrolled manifestation of at least a Crown-level power. You are additionally charged with assault on a court official and contempt of court.

The assault was likely instinctual and will run concurrently. You are to serve three years in null-space detention. Your charge of contempt is still being calculated. We have determined you are not under a geas that compels your silence. I am able to view the electrical pattern of your brain and nervous system from a fifth and sixth dimensional perspective and have determined you cognizant. Though, of course, I cannot read your thoughts.

The court empath, 81 Waves Folded, has testified that you maintain an unmodified emotional aura and do not suffer from derangement of the soul. It was during Their deeper investigation into your soul-state that you attacked 81 Waves Folded causing severe cranial hemorrhaging and a series of seizures resulting in the collapse of Their waveform to the third dimension.

We have withheld the charge of attempted murder due to your vital signs showing no aggressive response.

The court will please note that We have satisfied Our requirement that the defendant is sound of mind and body and fit for trial.

...

Nothing? Very well, Luo Ji, I will now complete Our record of your crime.

[Below: An Angel collapsed to three dimensional space.]

On December 8th, [redacted], We became aware of an anti-noetic space that had unfolded in the approximate area of 800 square feet on the fourth floor of the University of the Manifest Seed. This area contains Lecture Room 18, a semi-circular amphitheater previously used for philosophy courses, measuring approximately 725 square feet. Additionally, the space encroaches to the hall surrounding the lecture room at a variable distance of two feet to 11 centimeters from the bordering wall; as well as fully enfolding the 4th floor fire escape landing on the outside of the building.

The nature of this space is such that We cannot view into it.

Court, retract previous statement.

Of course, We do not make errors, simply mis-statements.

We can easily view into the area from this and every higher and lower dimension. We cannot remember what we see.

To hide something so thoroughly even from Us is the reason for your current binding. The act requires either significant influence - influence whose source we cannot determine do to the nature of your act - or power.

Following this discovery, We contracted with two former colleagues of yours: Vodka Sunrise and No Time for Cigarettes. The former is, as are you, a gifted Moth-aspect despite her choice in Naming. No Time is an unbound-AI cooperating under the Kali Accord, who incarnated as a gestalt cloud of blue and green butterflies.

We understand you served with them under the name Paris Sunset. You will be stripped of this name at the conclusion of the sentencing trial, Luo Ji. Their report has been thoroughly vetted and no bias was found in its authors. This report will now play for the court.

_____________________________________________________________

FINAL REPORT INCIDENCE

PROJECT ALL-SEEING EYES -

PARTIES:

VODKA SUNRISE: female, 38 year old Moth adept, True Name not open for disclosure [No Time: and you call me touchy.]

NO TIME FOR CIGARETTES: aspiring videographer, auteur, three hundred and forty years young unbound intelligence. Currently: in orbit at second Lagrange point, manifesting in an alley. Mood: 👿 [Vodka Sunrise: cut this from the final report or we’ll never get hired again]

BACKGROUND:

Following reports of a disturbance on the fourth floor of the University of the Manifest Seed, local security was dispatched to investigate. When they failed to report back after 14h, specialized Lantern-aspected children of the Four-Hundredth Revelation - a minor student cult - were asked to locate the missing guards. Between them possessing aptitude

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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A Field Guide to Journalism

The Fourth Estate - journalism - is a central pillar for modern democracies now that the internet age is no longer a “flash in the pan,” research tool, or means of communication but instead an entire digital alter-ego for a generation. A means and medium of expression; a boundless, dangerous sea new to human experience whose swift movements change our perception of information. More placid waters no longer entice, the slow-moving panopticon of democracy’s policy-making needs to be translated and emphasized against a torrential flood of amusement.

Start by making a Twitter account. No one uses Facebook for news, only fucking boomers use Facebook. “I use the ‘Book,” some fucking boomer is saying while wearing sandals and flipping a burger on the grill, “it’s how I keep in touch with my grand-kids!” A CNN editor rubs their hands together. That’s what they’ll run with, “the ‘Book is how today’s grandparents stay in touch!”

That’s perfect because CNN/FOX/MSNBC - pick your poison they’re basically the same - are competing for the main demographic of long term coma victims and retirement homes leaving the channel on the TV in the day room. “It’s how I keep in touch with my grand-kids!” is echoing under humming fluorescent light to an audience of failing kidneys, lung cancer, and stroke victims who are staring at each other. Imagine knifing two Vietnamese in a tunnel and forty years later you’re getting abused by your Dominican nurse who steals your pocket change and slaps you when you don’t take pills. People don’t hate boomers because they ran the planet and economy into the fucking dust they hate them because they’re pathetic.

We’re still talking about how to find a good news source so hang on. The generation of unbridled wealth and power fucked up everything they touched and are slackjawed now staring at the desert of reality, either that or Facebook. Your grandson OD’d because he mixed Oxy and Everclear? Hit that share button saying you’ve got an angel waiting for you in Heaven. People shit themselves when they mix like that. Imagine an Angel in its gown with shit running down its leg. CNN doing 24/7 coverage of Zuckerberg during the Cambridge Analytica trial in Senate with a well-hidden earbud. Now look concerned. No, little more deeply concerned, avoid some eye contact and unfocus your eyes while staring at the ground. Okay, now start to look determined. Look at the Senate - do not smile - look at each Senator in turn and tell them you are taking action to prevent fake news from spreading on your platform.

Zuckerberg is taking classes on how to look more human/relatable, catastrophically failing. We had to get a remote operator with a Berkeley M.S. in psychology to feed him cues. The dude cannot understand how to express emotion. It’s crazy. We tried showing him shock footage and he got a hard-on. A full blown mast watching a guy get beat to death with bricks.

Zuckerberg cannot convey basic human emotion and gets a boner knowing he employs vast amounts of people whose only job is to screen “offensive content” on Instagram and Facebook. Contractors in Phoenix, Arizona, some in Hollywood, Florida and Austin, Texas who are paying rent watching cartel executions and child porn. Automated systems immediately flag undistorted footage so the uploaders distort it or create new footage. If you’re reading this and waiting to hear about modern journalism then so is a contractor now watching the same footage of someone get their head beat in.

At the Phoenix branch of Facebook, Inc, they have a sign for “Days Since We Saw the Funkytown Execution Video” that never goes to 1. Some ingenious motherfucker will reverse the video or overlay it into an anime AMV and upload to Instagram while tagging every “social influencer” he can. I spoke to him once, he told me the most popular was “Redbone but you’re Mexican” where the Funkytown song in the background as they hack a man’s hands off while injecting him with methamphetamine so he can’t pass out so his stumps try to touch his face while some cartel goon peels the skin off his head is instead replaced by the muffled sound of “Redbone” by Childish Gambino.

Facebook is breeding an ingenious mutt race of some very efficient serial killers, conspiracy theorists, but mostly of people who will claim PTSD and join lawsuits against the Zuck so they can claim peanuts while the tort lawyers bring half a billion home and masturbate on Twitter that they have taken a major stand against a worldwide corporation that they use to try to talk to their grand-kids. No one who is a lawyer or social media influence or Mark Zuckerberg has a soul so they sleep pretty well.

Now, back to Twitter. You may have an account already. Undergo basic SMS verification if not and follow @MaggieNYT.

Don’t read any article she posts or retweets. It’s all the same beltway circlejerk anyways. You, as an elite member of an inner circle, are there for the comments. Most of @MaggieNYT’s followers are caught in a hate cycle of following her and insulting her in comments. You enabled Trump, they shout. Yeah, a liberal Brooklyn Jew is the reason why Donald Trump was elected. The ADL is legislating for hate crime laws protecting Jewish public figures and important journalists, whose Venn diagram is a circle.

Full disclosure: I’m saying this as a Jew. I’m attempting to define how to find #GOODNEWS in a world of #FAKENEWS which is fatally important in order to preserve our democracy. This is an important conversation we must undertake in light of historic persecution of my race. No one likes Haberman but she #PERSISTS despite being a punching bag.

@MaggieNYT’s Twitter is single-handedly the cause for a significant rise in anti-Semitism. You show an average person Henry Kissinger enthusiastically masturbating to child porn while authorizing the overthrow of democracies and the sale of weapons to fascist governments then lock them in a room where their only content is @MaggieNYT’s tweets and see which one wants 2020 to look like 1940 quicker.

The good news is that journalism is being rapidly overtaken by Markov-bots which dissect the salient #BUZZWORDS and generates a publishable text. That’s the future of journalism. Not just Markov chains of seemingly deep insight but they’ll innovate by having attractive women half-naked and bleach blonde narrating the whole thing. That’s the future. Naked News is already a thing, God bless, but pretty soon the whole world will look like Twitter. Nude women talking about viral pandemics and religious insurrection while they lightly press a vibrator between their legs and wink at the camera.

Are you upset by this future? You live in it, but it’s okay to have your opinion. We’ll have a body dysphoric person as part of the Markov chain designed to make you feel better. You can watch a larger women masturbate while she tells you that Hubei is a ghost town. Or a trans-woman, a white/black/latino male, a Muslim. That is how you distinguish #REALNEWS from #FAKENEWS. Maggie has little chance in the oncoming environment which relies on a degree of sex appeal and brevity. Most of her readers are actively imagining how good her lipstick would look on a curb.

It would be a shame if someone activated a ***** **** {redacted} in New York or Los Angeles or Palo Alto. The land would be uninhabitable for a decade at least. You would see a vast steppe land of disintegrating buildings and corpses. How terrible if someone found how easy it was to make […] {redacted, jfc get on track, we’re talking about modern journalism}.

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

A Field Guide to Modern Journalism

Now, back to Twitter. You may have an account already. Undergo basic SMS verification if not and follow @MaggieNYT.

#fakenews journalism

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

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Unity & Sacrifice: Synod of Witches - 2 - Nox

It rains at night, sometimes. - Arrian’s first attempt at poetry, six months prior.

_____

“Two weeks?”

“Can you imagine how boring it must have been?” Lyra rolls her eyes, shrugs her shoulders, flicks her hair, slouches her shoulders and generally exhausts herself in exaggerated pantomime. “We’ve been out here for an hour and I’m already tired.”

“We have. I am. A queen enunciates fully.” Nox replies.

“I won’t judge your betrothed too harshly.”

Nox turns away so Lyra won’t win this minor victory seeing him smirk. They’re standing on the parapet watching the Royal Guard train before the castle gates. Not entirely correct; they’re watching Arrian train the Royal Guard and gossiping.

“If another governess gets tired of you we maybe we can hire a Tuurinum to deal with your... recalcitrance.”

“Stop using big words, brother. You know I know what you mean.”

“The princess so trained in statecraft, and at such an age!” Nox feigns a bow, though his eyes don’t leave the field.

Lyra rolls her eyes, again. And rests her forearms on the parapet even though she needs to stand on tiptoe to do so.

The Vinatian Royal Castle stands on a plateau with full sight of their main port - one of the few accessible sea entries to their land - broadsided by a mountain range towards sunrise and a river towards sunset. The earliest military texts (written by braggarts, Nox notes) spoke of its defense against invasion. To reach the fertile plateau of the many obnoxious and bickering duchies who invested in Nox his position, an invasion would need to breach their bay defense, overtake their port, and siege the castle without opportunity to raze its farmland which lay Northwards and contained its own loyal retinues. This would require full encirclement by an opposing force. Asymmetrically impossible given siege engineers within their camp - their camp? - using trebuchets to block the ravine pass leading to -

Lyra is looking at him. “The Tuurinum’s?”

“Potential allies.”

“They’re late, you know.”

Nox grunts. Arrian is laughing in the training field. A younger recruit has been easily disarmed and knocked down by a riposte by the second prince. Rather than mimic the fatal blow, Arrian stabs his sword into the mud and yanks the trainee to their feet. The veteran guard in a circle around the two laugh harder and begin to applaud. Arrian embraces the rookie and claps his back. Whatever words of encouragement he whispers are not caught on the wind and hang between the fighters. When the recruit rejoins the circle of those waiting to spar, his shoulders straighten. Arrian spots his older brother on the castle wall and gives a mocking salute.

Nox returns the gesture. “Shouldn’t some instruction in weaving or knitting or grammar delay you, sister?”

“Should not.” Lyra says. “And you didn’t even notice.”

Nox turns towards the princess. “Notice what?”

Lyra points at Arrian. “So good at reading the landscape, so poor at reading its people. I will,” Lyra mocks a royal affect, “consult you upon my upcoming book on the meaning of rocks.”

Lyra, princess of Vinatia, runs away, the dressmaker’s art ruined by the constant stains of dirt on its hem and her royal demeanor disrupted by the devilish smirk as she looks back. She points at Arrian before disappearing down a stairwell.

Nox returns his attention to the training field. Arrian is using his favored weapon: a wicked hand-and-a-half sword (blunted, obviously), the second prince’s left hand within a full plate glove. He dances left from an overhand swing from his sparring opponent. Continuing the motion, Arrian circles the confused guardsman. Arrian pirouettes and effortlessly grasps his sword with his mantled hand, twisting the blade so that the flat of the blade catches the right calf of his opponent. Arrian’s cloak flares out for a second. Inside the cloak-pin on his right shoulder, Nox realizes, a single honey-gold feather has been sown.

Nox turns again to hide his smile. Later, much later, he would remember someone else had been watching on the parapet and barely within earshot.

_____

The Turrinum are not a kind people. They subsist on raiding and tribute. Those who refuse subjugation are without exception an enemy. We assess their contact as a means of evaluation. They are expected in no less than two weeks of this letter. - Tristan’s letter to Vinatia, two weeks prior.

Tristan looks sick. He looks worse than sick. His eyes are slack and even at an officially unofficial diplomatic dinner his two fellows seem unhappy to be there.

“As you know,” Nox hopes he has here inherited the diplomacy of his father, “the Turranum will arrive shortly. Behind schedule. Has there been a change in the current?”

“No, prince.” An adjunct whispers, “We do not know the reason for the delay.”

“I am to believe that you have lost track of the first diplomatic envoy sent to this island since the ocean has quieted.”

“No, prince.”

“Have you any tract of the envoy?”

“Its heading was -”

“Have you seen it.”

“No, prince.”

Nox hates this. He hates having to be the monster. Arrian can cave in a man’s breastplate during training and grab them from the mud and the two can play drinking games the same day. Lyra can visit every prank on her governess and still act the angel. The crown prince, the next in line to the throne whose responsibility is the stability of every arguing count and whose morning repast is census reports, must revisit every threat.

“Tristan,” Nox begins, “repeat your estimate of the Tuurinam envoy.”

“Eight rowing ships, Prince. Containing no more than sixty fighting men.”

“Was there any siege equipment during your reconnaissance?”

“No, sire.”

“Did you witness any transformations? Can the Tuurinam change form?”

Tristan looks forlorn. “They do not need to.”

“Explain.”

Tristan has been cut until his bleeding edge. Furrows are against his eyes. His cheeks have sunk even below the normal thinness of his race. “The Tuurinam,” Tristan begins, “are not here to parley.”

“You have traveled with them.”

“Prince Nox, I have not. I shadowed the route only during my flight. Their ships were prepared once their navigators were satisfied that the route was quieted.”

“How would they have known of the ocean's quiet?”

“I am yet to determine this answer, prince.” Tristan responds.

This is a week past the expected arrival, Nox thinks. This is another month of withholding grain to the lowlands, another month of stockpiling in Castle Vinatia, another month of call to arms lazily answered by his supposed duchies and counties to raise troops. Nox is suddenly nauseous.

“Tristan,” Nox stifles his stomach, “you have not been forthright.”

“Sire?”

“Only sixty fighting men.”

“Yes, sire.”

“Why is it I have called this meeting, then?”

Tristan opens his mouth as if to answer but remains quiet for a moment. “The delay.”

“And what do you make of the delay, Tristan?”

Tristan looks into the eyes of the first prince of Vinatia. Nox knows, briefly, how it is to be captured in the fire-like honey of his eyes, to be skewered by their brilliance and misery.

__________

Nox stands at the parapet. The guards change shift in the training ground, a signal fire still unlit. A second sits on a hill towards the setting sun. Another at the bay entrance. But the sky.... The sky is perfect stars alert in their brilliance. Nox wants to call his sister in. He wants to tell her something he can’t articulate. Nox wants Arrian to see it. If Arrian could see what the prince sees then he would slap the stars’ shoulders and commit them to his cause like they were training with play swords in a foolish garden.

Nox gives himself a moment to consider a feather gathered underneath the cloak of his brother. The crown prince of Vinatia cannot offer comfort or support.

#KalynHaze #Unity&Sacrifice #lovedrops

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junketsonasadplanet · 5 years ago

Text

Unity & Sacrifice: Synod of Witches - 1

The western border of Vinatia is wave and foam brushing, gently, against the cliffs which time and salt have painted bone white. Rising the height of a hundred men; perilous and beautiful; the cliffs had inspired generations of poets (Arrian faintly remembered learning about them) and lovers. The lovers would wait for a sign of return from their sailor husbands and sons. Each seabird now catching anchovies in the wave-crash deep below was supposed to contain the soul of a widow who had consigned herself to no more sunsets without her drowned betrothed and jumped into the horizon and - quickly after - the sea.

Arrian was trying his hand at his own poem for a certain annoying diplomat and scowling angrily at every bird that seemed it might be taking an interest in his parchment. Tristan was two days late for his scheduled return. The autumn sun had started crossing into the horizon rendering Arrian’s handwriting more illegible. The romance of this location had not unlocked him from the “Concerns of State". Diplomacy ill-suited the prince of Vinatia. His royal cuirass was inflexible and completely unfit for combat, he tripped on his cloak where Nox _glided_, and his meant-to-be complimentary words to dignitaries and nobility had created in one unfortunate misunderstanding the insinuation that the Duke’s wife was a woman of less than exemplary repute.

All the more reason for a vagabond to flap in, Arrian thought. Tristan’s tutelage was strict. The Avian’s eyes upon the page of heraldry Arrian was supposed to digest, Tristan’s molten eyes catching his across the table when Arrian used the wrong fork on the wrong meal, Tristan unconsciously pulling his velveteen black hair behind his ear as he explains some point of court to Arrian, Tristan’s so often terse and official voice becoming excited to explain a scholastic point -

Arrian stands and composes himself. The sky is now a bruise. The sun has sunk til a single chapter remains. Nox is chief adjunct of the newly founded diplomatic service. Lyra is, to Arrian’s constant annoyance, Lyra still. The new state of Vinatia is one of diplomacy after centuries of the waves’ protection. As adjunct to the adjunct of diplomacy, Arrian was again seconded. Consigned to wait and suffer under a damned bird who can’t keep time, he thought.

Still, he would give more than he wished to see languorous wings of a certain person. Someone described in his poem as “dawn to a new sea.”

“I’ve hardly kept up on Strathoyclis, you know,” Arrian mutters to sunset. “And my Vinatian heraldry is... you’ve seen it. No improvement.”

The waves move underneath nonetheless. From far above they sound like whispers. Arrian spares a glance to his mount which stoically also watches the sun fall in-between casual grazing on the sparse grass. Long ago an ancestor of Arrian threw himself off this cliff. Cymbriam the Third. He thought he would be reborn as a god. The prince unceremoniously throws his attempt at poetry past the cliff-edge for judgment to his ancestor and lays against his camp pack. Sleep comes.

______________________

Peck peck peck peck.

“Off me, damned bi-”

The golden-hued bird, whose midnight wing-tips Arrian recognizes, catches the prince’s words in his throat. Two - no, three - days of waiting and its arrival is pecking his ankle.

“I see my arrival has been expected,” Tristan croaks from his slender avian throat. “Now, please, face the other direction.”

Arrian complies. Soft rustling behind the prince. “My clothes, please.” Tristan asks. The prince rustles through his backpack and passes it to his tutor. The moonlight brings forward Tristan’s tanned skin when Arrian turns to hand the parcel over. Tristan’s back is the same dark honey as his eyes in the moon’s view. The Avian’s wing’s have not yet full retracted; a single feather falls as they merge with the delicate bones of his shoulders. Fully dressed in his leather leggings and pale shirt, Tristan looks over his shoulder.

“You have been kept waiting. I apologize, Prince Arrian.”

“No apology is necessary, diplomat.”

Tristan rubs the bridge of his nose in what has become a regular ritual.

“You are a prince. You are second in line to the throne of Vinatia. You do not excuse or accept apologies.”

“My studies have been lax due to a certain abs-”

“And you do not need to call me ‘diplomat’,” Tristan interrupts. Barely a minute in and Arrian is already regretting his wait.

Tristan walks to the cliff edge and sits with his legs dangling. Arrian cautiously joins. In the moonlight, the fall is greater than the day. Without wings you would fall forever. The reflection of the reflection of the sun is only far below on crests of waves. Otherwise, the world is paralyzed on vapor light. All of it held frozen like a sleepwalker in a dream.

They sit for a minute. Tristan relaxed on the cliff, Arrian’s knuckles slowly relaxes their grip on the turf. Tristan breaks the silence.

“The envoy was successful. Tuurinum will send a fleet regarding the newly opened trade opportunities.”

“Were you delayed?” Arrian asks.

“There were...complications.” Tristan replies. “Vinatia has long favor with the sea. The journey is two fortnights by flight.”

“And by sea?”

“Three fortnights, give or take a day or so. Nox should expect them by the new moon.”

Arrian tries to hide his annoyance at his brother being primary in this exchange. Tristan laughs.

“I thought you were utterly indisposed to your new duties.”

“The prince of Vinatia is not so easily outdone, no matter the duel.”

Tristan stays customarily silent through Arrian’s silent celebration of rare wit. Tristan’s hand is idly pulling on the cliff side grass, his long uncalloused fingers pulling blades out and letting them fall to the wind and over the cliff. Seabirds still screech below.

Tristan breaks the moment, “I see my instruction has not been entirely in vain.”

“At least I know what those paintings of our enemies’ shields means.”

Tristan laughs. It is rare to see this moment of happiness, Arrian thinks, and thinks further on what unguarded secrets his instructor holds.

Further silence. The waves crashing on the cliff. Over a millennia, over dynasties, this place has been slowly carved. A place for suicide and lovers and aspirant deities.

“Sir Tristan?”

“You don’t need to use that accolade.”

“Do the Tuurinum have avians?”

“They don’t need to change to become beasts.”

Tristan is facing the wind over the ocean. His hand shivers and Arrian covers it with his own before he realizes the action. Startled, Tristan looks over and smiles.

“I heard,” Tristan says, “from a traveler that in the far west some turn into foxes when they desire.”

“Foxes?”

“Yes. Foxes. And further to our north where magic allows they can become wolves or badgers or bears.”

“Where can they become lions?” Arrian asks.

Tristan laughs but does not withdraw his hand from Arrian’s grasp. “Perhaps further west still.”

The moon is full. The ocean, the fall, should be terrifying to Arrian. Arrian always hated heights and deep water but Tristan seems an anchor as long as they watch it together.

Tristan begins again. His voice is lower; Arrian does not recognize this aspect of his friend. It is something spoken as much to him as to the seabirds below containing the souls of suicides.

“The traveler I met described where magic was still strong enough to change. To Avian, to Fulcine, to all manner. He spoke of an island.

There the Witches hold eternal Sabbat. They change into sea-forms, krakens and daemons without description or classification. Waiting in the ocean darkness they sink ships. At the bottom of the sea, they tempt the souls of the dead with redemption.

It was a terrible story. I’m sorry it came to my mind, Prince, when such pertinent manners should exceed.”

“It’s okay,” Arrian said. His hand still enclosing Tristan’s.

Tristan pulls away at last. “I see you’ve only brought one mount and I’m tired from the flight. Our comfort in the night preceding court tomorrow is tested.”

Arrian and Tristan ride towards the capital. Tristan is warm against Arrian as the Avian lays comatose against the prince through the hour long travel.

That night Arrian dreams.

______________________

Arrian dreams he is drowning from a great distance. He can breathe in his dream but sees a silver light above him. Tristan is screaming his name, moonlit. A long arm comes from the sea-darkness behind him, pulling him into the black. He sees Tristan’s face distorted above the water, begging he rise, an unbearable expression of fear, his amber eyes adding their tears to the uncaring sea.

The prince wakes.

#KalynHaze Unity&Sacrifice LoveDrops fanfic

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