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Flash rule: the moon is gone 2,496 words Amver is five when she finds her first edge. She and Cam are knee-deep in the drift. Cam is sulking and Amver is working. Amver is a good girl, very good at colours, and Dad has told her to look for “vermilion.” She plucks another reddish piece from the drift. It’s easy to pick colours on clear days like this, with the moon a gleaming hand-shape spread over half the sky, and- Her red piece is missing a side. Amver stares. Cam jumps up. “Gimme it-!” “Dad!” screams Amver. “Dad! I found an edge!” Mum scrambles over through the drifts of pieces, and stares at the thing in Amver’s grasp. Her hands fly to her mouth. “It’s an edge!” And then the whole family is cheering and laughing and they have Amver up on their shoulders in a great noisy procession winding all the way to the depot. Their neighbors stand and cheer. The Gentlemen watch silently. Cam tantrums. Dad slides Amver’s edge over the Ward’s desk, without a word. The Ward raises his eyebrows and nods. That night the whole family gets #4 rations, and there is a special drink for the grownups. Amver falls asleep with a fully belly and a big smile. *** Amver is eight when she learns what letters are for. She sits up on her bed, which is a heap of brown-and-green clothing laid over the drift. There are a trillion pieces to the Puzzle and at least one of them was sticking in her back all last night. “Ward’s giving decent rates for grass-green this week,” announces Dad, over the usual breakfast of #2 rations. He points with his chin at a flatter stretch of land beyond the Fence. “Grass. It’s that colour. Lock it in.” Dad’s sister nods. This woman is Amver’s absolute favorite aunt. Even though she is Cam’s mother. “Over at the depot,” says Aunt, “they reckon they’ve almost finished the bottom-left corner!” “They say a lot of things over there,” grunts Dad. But he’s nodding while he says it. Amver sits, fingers flicking at the drift. She plucks green bits. She watches for a legendary corner piece, any of which would buy #6 rations for life. A pair of Gentlemen whirr overhead. Amver has a fistful of softly pointed grey-backed cardboard. Her fingers flick as she sorts the clutch into six cardinal categories. There’s an Alt, a Leaner, an Alt again, then a Single, and a Split. And then she does it again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And- “Ooh, I just remembered,” squeaks Aunt. “You’ll never believe what I heard about Sharice!” Dad grimaces and stomps away through the drifts. Aunt sticks her tongue out at his back. She keeps on sorting, as does Amver. But she traces out a shape in the drifts with her toe. “That’s a capital A,” says Amver promptly. “Good,” nods her Aunt. “Now for a tricky one.” She sweeps her foot over the symbol, and traces out another. Pieces shift and rustle. “Number 3,” says Amver instantly. This earns a quiet smile. “Now.” Aunt’s voice is low and her lips barely move. “Take a peek at those Gentlemen over by the Fence.” Amver shivers and flicks her eyes over the distant hovering disc-shapes. The machines have a real name of course; it starts with “dr-” and rhymes with “lone.” But no one likes to say it out loud, in case it calls them… Amver gasps and Aunt nods. The Gentlemen have those same shapes upon their skins. Each has a different pattern. She will be able to tell the Gentlemen apart. This is what letters are for. *** Amver is ten when she asks the wrong question. Her family is hauling 138,000 bits of sky-blue. They’re part of a long procession winding through the drifts towards the depot. The Fence is a painful purple glow in the distance. Amver has the sack of Splits, those pieces with two Outs on opposite sides. Robb has the Singles, and Cam two handfuls of Alts. Dad has the sack of All-Outs, which are believed to be the heaviest. The weight of four out-facing fingers of cardboard per piece adds up! Or so Dad says. “So,” begins Amver, “we sort the pieces, right?” “Us and three thousand others,” says Cousin Robb. “It’s honest work,” grunts Dad. He is staring out the very corner of his eye at one of the Gentlemen. The one labelled 27-VG-00509. “And then,” continues Amver, “we trade the pieces to the Wards for Rations and things? And the Wards take them up the Fitters, who slot the pieces in? And for each piece the Gentlemen give Rations to the Fitters, who give them to the Wards, who give them to us?” “There’s more to it than that,” says Dad eventually, “but yes. That’s how The Economy works.” “Wouldn’t it be easier,” begins Amver, “if we Sorters just put the pieces in ourselves and got rations direct, and cut out the-” She glances at Dad. His face is reddening. Oops. “Um, I didn’t mean-” Cam chuckles. “Well, actually-” Cam goes on for some time. He uses words like “trickle-down” and “market forces.” Amver plods on, lets her mind drift, shifts her sack from one shoulder to another. Like every other bit of fabric in the world, it’s green splotched with brown… The boy’s still talking. Robb rolls his eyes and grins at Amver. She walks on, over drifts of grey-backed cardboard, and thinks of food. *** Amver is twelve when she first sees someone killed. Not someone die. That happens all the time. The Gentlemen bring lots of things from the moon, but never medicine for births or old men’s joints or lungs that’ve inhaled five decades of grey puzzle dust… “Here goes,” drawls Danton. He and Amver and the others are huddled behind a steep drift of pieces, away from the crowds. Bo’s brought rations and Jil’s brought her smile. The sky is empty but for the grey fibrous tumor of the moon; there are no Gentlemen close by. And no shouting, prying parents. Danton leans forwards and raises a dark green Split with a splash of ocher. Danton is just that little bit taller and louder than everyone else. He’s grinning broadly as always, but there’s a hint of sweat-sheen on his forehead. “Here goes,” he repeats. And he snaps the piece in half. Or at least tries to. It seems to be offering a lot more resistance than a small piece of cardboard really should. “Indestructible,” sniffs Danton, “of course. Still-” “Give it,” laughs Bo. He punches Danton’s shoulder and takes the piece. He shrugs and bites down on it, hard, and Gentleman 12-CV-00994 rises silently over the drift. Bo stares stricken, for half a second. Danton screams. Then Bo explodes into lumpy wet rags and a red mist. The Gentleman’s weapons fold back under its shell. Amver makes a terrible noise and scrambles back, shrieking… Later, mum sighs as she scrubs red from skin and hair and clothes. “Better to get it out of the way when you’re young, I suppose.” Another sigh; she frowns and flicks something gristly from Amver’s hair. The girl flinches. “Did you see what colour the piece was? The Ward’s offering Ration #3 for rose-pink.” *** Amver is eighteen when she goes to hear the Words. It happens to everyone. Her older friends have told her all about it. It’s a break from work, at least. Her parents lead her on with proud tears in their eyes. Amver is shown a tent, and ushered into musty darkness. She sniffs the distinctive farts of a Ration #2-heavy diet and raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Hear now the words of the Ancient One, last of the First People,” booms the tall Helper. “I’m not ancient,” growls a hunched grey figure. “I’m seventy-three.” “Hear now the-” “Ahh, shut up.” The ancient one gives a cough like dust and gravel and sits up on his bed. Eyes glint in the murk. “Great. Another kid! Maybe this one’ll actually listen, yeah?” “My name is Amver, if that helps,” offers Amver. The man gives a brief toothless grin, and begins: “So. You’re old enough now to know: we weren’t always as we are now.” She takes a step back. “Like, worse, or-” “There were billions of humans once,” rasps the elder, “swarming across this whole planet. It was ours! Just people, living normal lives, with no Gentlemen and no Fence and no Rations and no Pieces. And! We could wear clothes other than surplus camo.” Amver shivers. There is a red light burning in the old man's eyes now and his dusty words keep tumbling on. “But there was a bad war, and it wouldn’t stop. So: our side built a fortress on the Moon. The proper Moon, I mean. Not this blistered monster smeared over half the sky we’ve got now.” Amver’s eyes flick up involuntarily. “The base had fusion generators and an AI core and drone factories, and little Von Neumanns that could breath in moondust and breath out computers. And it went wrong. Of course it went wrong! That’s what AI does, right? It won the War with its nukes and its drones, and then, I don’t know, some programmer must’ve put a game on there for funzies and the damaged AI got the game mixed up with its primary directives...” Amver shivers. Something like knowledge elbows its weigh into her brain. “...and so the AI corralled the surviving humans into a laser-fenced prison to have them assemble a trillion-piece jigsaw. And then, the Wards-” “Here endeth the word of the ancient one,” calls the short Helper. “Hang on, I’m not done yet-” “Here! Endeth!!” booms the tall Helper. And the pair usher Amver from the tent, explaining matters as they go. “-a metaphor, you see, for how pride is the root of-” “-learn that obedience and the duty of-” “-not to be understood literally-” And Amver finds herself back outside, in the sunlight and fresh air, surrounded by the usual crowds and mounds of cardboard. There used to be a ceremonial feast at this point, her parents mumble, but times are hard and rations are short. So it’s handshakes all round. Amver glances up at the sky, at the grey tumor of the Moon, at the landing lights of the Gentlemen as they ferry crates of Rations and tools and medicines and green-brown clothes from the sky-factories down to the world. She looks at the Fence. She looks at the colours and shapes beyond the Fence, too. -we weren’t always as we are now- *** Amver is twenty-five when she loses her job. “I mean, they want more pieces than ever,” notes Cousin Robb, staring up at the stockade, “but the rates seem a whole lot lower than when we were kids…?” They watch the grey crowd picking its way through the drift. They try to ignore the gnawing pinch of hunger. “They should let more people be sorters,” says Amver, “instead of working the ones they have on triple-shifts.” “We could try being unauthorised sorters,” grins Robb. Amver glances at the spitting glow of the Fence, and the little pile of ash that marks a smuggler caught and subjected to Due Process by the Wards. “Maybe I’ll talk to mum about it,” she mutters. Robb smiles unhappily. Mum and Dad are old now. So Amver sighs and goes to Cam, the son of her dad’s sister. Cam became a junior sub-Ward late last year; his sorting days are over. Now he eats Ration #4 every night. “Do you remember all our happy times together as kids?” lies Amver, having ambushed Cam at the depot. “What I remember,” says Cam stoutly, “is you stealing my first edge piece from me when we were five.” “That’s not-” But Cam shakes his head. He begins to explain matters. The words stream past Amver: she catches “economy” and “freedom” and “margins” and the general gist, she realises eventually, is that it would be perversely wrong for Cam to assist in any way whatsoever; and by being so ignorant as to describe the situation as “please help” she has demonstrated precisely why Cam is a sub-Ward while Amver is an ex-Sorter with a chunky cough and one bad eye and knuckles that crunch like a quick walk on gravel. Quite by coincidence, a Gentleman hovers silent nearby. It is 08-JJ-00139, and it can shoot fire. The words wind down after a while. Amver blinks and wanders away without much of a fight. You can't argue with the Economy. A month later, gnawing the tail of a rat, she will regret giving in so easily. *** And Amver is thirty-seven when she finds her second edge. She's seen a long decade of scrounging and whispering. She has starved almost to death. She has silently studied the Gentlemen. She carries a decade of memories; she swears in a low vicious monotone when pictures flash in her brain. She remembers families thrown to the searing Fence. She remembers ambushing an Over-Ward, plump with #7 Rations, and having her gang pluck pieces of truth from him. She remembers the blank gaze of the Gentlemen, watching waves of rag-clad starving sorters running up and over the stockade… And now here they are. The stockade burns. Wards too. Sorters and ex-sorters rip at great mounds of hoarded Rations. And the Gentlemen glide along their usual paths. Amver and her friends gape at the near-finished Puzzle: it is a rectangle of bright cardboard three kilometres wide, and one kilometre across. There are reefs and outcrops of shining pigment. Amver wonders what proportion of the pieces are hers. She has the last piece in her hand: an In-Out-In edge. It is black, shading to very dark brown. The Over-Wards had been saving it, apparently, for three years... Amver walks for an hour. The sun flashes out and flattens the colours of the puzzle into a vast grid of Outs and Ins. Amver reaches a stretch of darker pieces along the edge. “No!” shrieks Cam, scrambling towards her. His uniform is shredded. His bloodied feet slip. But Amver smiles. Cam staggers and takes in a sobbing breath: “It'll be bad for the economy!” Amver just bends, and slots the last piece home. -click- The Gentlemen scan this addition. Cam sinks screaming to the ground, drumming his fat fists on the puzzle. It’s finished. The Gentlemen go dark and their guns fold away. The drones clatter to the ground. And the Fence flicks off and the horizon opens up, and then, and then… Over the following months, from forest clearings and mountain peaks, the humans watch as the Moon slowly tucks itself away into almost nothing. The jungle nights are darker now, but not quiet. The sun is un-eclipsed... “Still,” Amver laughs, “it’s kind of a minor change. I mean, compared with everything else that’s happening!”
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Jan 3, 2021 05:06
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IP: New Years' Resolutions Gone Wrong. 344 words When I was nineteen years Standard, I went to Mercury. There I polished mirrors and scanned for leaks and was not allowed near fusion coils. I tried Zoroastrianism, and got the kind of sunburn that makes you glow in the dark. Mercurian years are 88 Standard Days long. I made and kept small and sensible Resolutions. When I was twenty-two years Standard, I went to Venus. There I tended dirigible cells and hunted Graspers. I embraced anarcho-capitalism, until I ran out of money. Venus has a year longer than its day: I failed every resolution. I didn't learn French, twice. When I was twenty-five, I went to Mars. There I programmed survey drones and adopted a form of Shinto that did not require me to do very much. I got frostbite and decompression sickness. The Martian year is almost exactly twice as long as Earth’s year, so to balance things out I made my Resolutions twice as easy. But I made them too achievable and I forgot them all. When I was thirty-two, I went to Jupiter, to a low-orbit vertigo factory. I adopted a new creed every morning based on the roll of a dice, although Kenneth messed with my D20 so I kept getting “Nudism.” Jovian years are twelve times longer than Earth years, so my Resolutions were twelve times grander. But I ran afoul of the Atmospheric Committee and had to take a sneaky shuttle out, fast. When I was forty, I went to Saturn, to a dome on icy Titan. There I knit, fixed fusion coils, and tamed Ice-Worms. I gave Zoroastrianism another shot. I told kids about sunburn. (I was not believed.) The Titanic year is twelve Standard days long. I made several small, pleasant and eminently achievable Resolutions involving acts of kindness to myself and others, or adjustments to my metabolism. I am fifty-eight. I am on Pluto. Soon my drones will close the lid of my Icebox. I shall become a citizen of the HiberNation. And a quarter of a millennium from now, I shall wake, and make my Resolution.
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Jan 5, 2021 02:59
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I'm going to regret this, but IN. Flash and trope, please and thankyou
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Jan 6, 2021 23:45
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Bridge Party, 1500 words K-drama, "silly succession // Iconic landmark, emotional tone swing, new in town, overbearing parent, love triangle" The Sydney Harbour Bridge is the greatest building in the greatest city in the world. And in a few hours, I would inherit it. Or at least, part of it. I mean, my girlfriend would. Well, if everything went perfectly... “Right, idiot,” continued my Beloved, “let’s review: I’ll do the talking. Youstand there and look great.” “Are you saying you won’t look great?” She froze a moment, then flashed one of her lightning-fast smiles. Mercifully. The arthritic lift opened with an off-key “ding!” and a wheeze of pulleys. We stepped out into a long squalid corridor. My Beloved shot out a hand and laid a finger across my lips. “Withhold judgement,” she said, “until you’ve beheld The Room.” “Pffffft,” I replied. “And watch for Sing,” she growled. “And Harrow. And Harrow’s dreadful hippy girlfriend. And Rogers, a tall fake blond. He’s rich, but evil. But rich.” “But evil?” “But rich.” We came to a very solid-looking door. My Beloved smoothed non-existent stray hairs, brushed theoretical lint from one shoulder, straightened a jacket that’d already been put on with the aid of a spirit level. She was a glossy impossible ink-haired goddess, and I adored her. She glanced at me and frowned, minutely. She opened the door and stepped through. I shrugged and followed. And- I gaped. I stared. I drifted through the crowd as though it was not there, and pressed my nose against the window. I saw sunset-gold and iron-grey. The geometric magic of the Bridge arch soared away into space. Skyscrapers rose around us, blazing with a last splash of sunlight. Far below sparkled the Harbour, ringed with beaches, coves and little forests; thronged with ships, liners, ferries, yachts… My Beloved came and stood by my side. “If I am very, very lucky,” she murmured, “I will inherit the Key tonight. And this place- this miraculous Room atop the south pylon of the Bridge- will be mine.” “Ours.” “Of course. But… oh, noooo-” My Beloved’s mother emerged from the swarm, teeth bared, eyes agleam. She clutched a phone. “Come,” hissed Mother, “and see our photos! From our cruise!” “I-” “There was a buffet!” And with a despairing look and a drowning-DiCaprio flail of the arm, my Beloved was dragged away. “Have fun, sweetie!” I called. And I turned and stood and stared, enraptured, at the Harbour’s golden grandeur. “Tourist,” sniffed a passing vulture. Sigh. Back to work… I scanned the room. It was a bit alarming. Half the crowd had the Family’s signature inky hair. Eyes of venom-green and icy blue glinted over the rims of cocktail glasses. Those glares flashed a code, conveying one message: outta my way, suckaaas! There was a man close by. He looked tall and fit and had a calm, open expression. And magnificent sun-bleached hair. “Nice view, hey?” I ventured. “Aha,” he smiled. “You’re not one of Them, are you?” “Nah. I’m here with-” And the friendly open face shut right down. I received a double eyeful of withering disdain and the man strode away. “Uh, toodles,” I ventured. There was laughter; I saw that my Beloved had kneed a particularly insistent drunken uncle in the balls. I smiled beatifically to myself. My Beloved was good at kneeing people in the balls, even people who did not in fact possess balls to knee. Ball-kneeing was, for her, a way of life. A philosophy. I wound my way through the deafening crowd to check on her. “Keep circulating, moron,” she hissed. “Grandfather’s nearly here. Keep your pretty mouth shut and your stupid ears open.” I mentally flagged this as the best compliment I was likely to receive that night, and waded back into the scrum. The volume was unbearable. I eased my way into a conversation about investment properties, and immediately slipped into a coma. “Hey! You’re new!” came another voice. I turned and beheld a smiling tanned face framed with golden hair that did, you know, that proper wavy thing. My peripheral vision reported a pretty floral dress and primal tattoos. “Ah, yes. I’m here with-” I scanned for my Beloved, failed, frowned. “Someone...” “Likewise,” said the honey-coloured lady. She scratched her nose. “Or. I was. But, you know. After witnessing all of-” (a wave of the hand) “-the Family’s genetic effluvia in one place… nah. I’m out.” I scanned the crowd of aspiring Bond villains. “Uhhh… I get it.” She gave me a smile I found very hard to read. “You know that corner of your brain,” she said eventually, “that ponders which people will be worth having around? When climate change kills civilisation?” “Half my family farm wheat and barley,” I hazarded. The honey-coloured lady nodded thoughtfully, doing an excellent impression of a reasonable person. I felt oddly relieved. “So,” she said, poking me in the sternum, “before I bail: you seem nice. So why are you here? With one of Them?” I stared for a moment, searching her face for mockery. Zip. “When I look in my girlfriend’s eyes,” I said slowly, “I see 100% of a person looking back. That’s rare.” “You want a girl with a mind like a diamond,” sang the honey-lady. “You want a girl who knows what’s best…” I winced. “I once assumed that I’d end up with someone who, you know, wrote poems and knew how to milk things. And now-” “I write poems,” smiled the woman, and I blushed like a teenager. “Mostly about bees and geese.” “D’you knit?” “Of course!” She rolled her eyes. “And I make supremely crappy jewelry.” She waved a bulky home-made ring. Bits of it fell off under the strain. “Here, look! Careful, it’ll cut your finger.” “Ow! Thanks,” I said, and then, a shade desperately, “how’d these guys get this place, anyway?” “Well! Funny you should ask that!” Another figure stepped up, and I had to suppress a flash of annoyance. This man was terribly thin, with a long narrow face and a mop of inky hair. Basically an animate paintbrush. “It’s fascinating,” he droned. “The Room began as a solvent storage facility for Bridge painters. In September 1933, following a fatal seagull-and-turpentine-related incident, the state government’s Department of Bureaus, or possibly Bureau of Departments, ceded the Room to our family as compensation...” “Truly.” (The honey-lady was backing away, grinning. I made an anguished sound.) “…and with the passing of the fourth Keeper, it now falls to Grandfather to examine the relevant documentation and determine a successor…” “Amazing,” I mumbled. With a guilty twinge I peered about for my Beloved. But I couldn’t spot her among so many inky heads and flashing eyes. Perhaps I could track her by the screams. “…interestingly, foremost of these codicils-” Silence fell, quite suddenly. The room grew still. Grandfather had arrived. He was one of those bone-thin, red-eyed, corpse-pale old men. He looked quite ready to splutter things like “this is highly unorthodox.” He swept the room with a glare, like a judgmental lighthouse, and raised a trembling hand. “I,” croaked grandfather, “have consulted the relevant texts, codicils, regulations and addenda.” The crowd stirred. “I have thusly determined,” continued Grandfather, with a tortoise blink, “that the next Keeper of the Key shall be- hyou!” And grandfather thrust a skinny finger straight at my Beloved. A sigh rippled around the room. “Objection!” hooted a reddening Aunt. “Objection! Under Paragraph 34, an unmarried female green-eyed Pisces cannot be Keeper!” “Welp!” quoth I. I strode towards my beloved. I knelt. Every eye was upon me. I brandished the honey-lady’s ring. “Marry me!” I shouted. … My Beloved stared. She stared and shook her head. “Th-that isn’t the plan-” “Marry me!” I whispered urgently, feeling something drop away. “And the Room’ll be yours! And, you’ll get me, too!” “But, but-” “Or,” came a second voice, “marry me!” “Rogers!” gasped my Beloved. “You-?” It was the tall ash-blond man. The one with the two-phase face. “Ignore this peasant,” sneered he. “Marry me, and you gain the Room. And much more! Riches. Skiing holidays. Dachshunds. Everything!” My Beloved paused. She actually paused. She glanced around the room, lips pursed. “I would need assurances-” she began. I dropped the ring. I turned, silently, and stumbled away. Murmurs and giggles followed me. The back of my neck twitched under the lash of three dozen stares. I collapsed outside the Room, in the dank hallway. I couldn’t even call a taxi; I’d left my phone at home on a certain person’s instructions. I sat and wept. The twin eels of rage and regret turned their cold and slimy cartwheels in my stomach… And then I heard footsteps. And something like hope stirred. And I looked up- “As I was saying,” said paintbrush guy peevishly, “foremost of these codicils-” I sobbed, terribly quietly. I wobbled over to the elevator. I slammed the button. Head down, I stepped in. The door wheezed closed- And someone else squeezed in, just in time. “Hey,” grinned honey-lady. She thrust her chunky homemade ring back at me. “D’you wanna hear a poem about geese?”
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Jan 10, 2021 11:21
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Thanks for the really helpful crits, judges! And now I'd better go see if the ThunderDoc can re-attach my leg.
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Jan 12, 2021 08:54
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I'm in. The good thing about the DM -> Loss trajectory is that there's nowhere to go but up, right!?
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Jan 13, 2021 05:14
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Horse spines are not the shape I thought they were.
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Jan 15, 2021 21:36
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The Three Steps of the Giant // 890 words Rob was seventeen, but still remembered when the big drought broke. The same rainclouds that had saved the district also shredded one lonely farm with hailstones. The giants, Rob thought, were a lot like that. The giant that had ruined Rob’s life was yellow and fist-shaped and one thousand metres tall. Rob watched it move (mountain-slow) through his family’s fields, pulverising crops and topsoil. He felt a luminous tightness in his chest, like when summer lightning hit too close. That moment between flash and bang. Rob raised his phone for a photo. Maybe a selfie? For scale, obviously. He would’ve streamed it, but the giants killed phone signal, everyone knew that- The monster’s droning boom grew truck-loud, thunder-loud, gun-loud. Crows rocketed away and Rob’s teeth buzzed. His phone screen splintered. Rob stared. “I just paid for that-!” And then he was laughing and couldn’t stop. The giant had wandered closer over the long months. Randomly, according to the researchers. Dad had watched the projections, and tilled and planted with all a farmer’s hopeless hope. Still: every giant trailed a mob of soldiers, scientists, reporters and tourists. Like flies after sick sheep. These were people who dripped money; so- Rob conceded- the giant was good for the town! Even if his own home was now smeared across the bottom of a huge footprint. Rob glared at the vehicles massed on the horizon. Clouds and hailstorms... Well. He couldn’t complain. He’d hidden during the evac, and the giant had come to him. For regular people, giants existed solely on screens, or as distant unclear shapes. But Rob had been clever. Now he stood all of two hundred metres away from the giant’s left front foot, a hinged and pitted mass of metal the size of Rob’s school hall. He watched the foot drift from the earth, a mobile slice of horizon, and felt his stomach execute a slow barrel roll. He suspected seasickness might feel like this. The foot descended and the ground heaved. Rob fell to ripped soil. And he’d lost his hat. He got up and watched greasy mist curl round the giant’s foot: crops smashed to vapour under the trillion-tonne beast. The ground had been compressed to something like concrete; nothing would grow there again. Rob scratched his chin. The footprint could store water, maybe, or make foundations for a house… The noise was shatteringly loud now. Like sticking your head inside a truck engine. Rob craned all the way back, staring at the six-legged moving mountain. For some reason, he couldn’t help thinking of cattle. Big brown beasts, swishing their tails as little birds hopped around their backs pecking pests away. Chewing and waiting. Rob watched the giant and his instincts whispered: herbivore. Sudden movement caught his eye. A military drone. Close. Rob ran for the trees on jelly legs, ducked behind an ironbark. He waited, breathing sun-warmed eucalyptus vapours. A line of meat-ants rushed frantic past his nose. The ear-slaughtering wail of the giant continued. The army drone zipped away and Rob stepped out again, with a glare. He’d been raised on tales of Our Brave Lads’ Heroic Etc. and felt that plastic quad-copters were cheating, somehow, compared with the old photos of smiling Diggers, grasping helmets and rifles and marching off to die- It had taken a full minute for the giant to complete one step. Rob saw, for the second time, a foot going down. Rob prepared to jump the shockwave, but a blast of oily heated air caught him first and flicked him clean over. The ground buckled. It was not meant to do that! Rob stopped screaming and got to his knees. He stared at the orange-yellow foot as it sank into the soil. It billowed with steam and dust. Rob staggered forwards. The noise hammered on at ribs and lungs and eyeballs. And the smell: oil, hot metal, the sweet rain-scent of turned earth. Mud, rust, batteries… For the third time: a foot, descending. Ponderously slow, it drove one-two-three-more metres right into the ground. All that displaced soil and air rammed outwards and folded Rob flat on the ground. The giant stopped. It vented steam. Little lightnings flicked along its spine. The big dumb bovine head, a kilometre over the plain, began to lower. And kept coming. The drones and distant vehicles were going frantic: giants aren’t meant to do this sort of thing! Rob realised in a distracted sort of way that was screaming and screaming. The giant’s metal head came to rest upon the dirt, just a dozen metres away. A rhythmic pulse kept thumping out, five octaves high. Like breathing. Rob wiped his streaming eyes with a trembling hand. He stared at the Giant’s face. He remembered a word his sister had tried once to explain: fractal. Something about looking at a thing, and seeing detail, and looking at that detail and seeing more detail, unfolding forever... Metal slid aside, high on the head. A doorway. A ramp wound out. A robot monster from Somewhere Else was inviting Rob in. Maybe it wanted a friend. Or a pilot, or an owner, or prisoner, or doctor. What if it wanted an oxpecker, a quick little creature to kill giant-scale ticks…? Rob was seventeen. He didn’t even have to think about it. He went in.
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Jan 16, 2021 13:20
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As the proud(?) possessor of one of the worst entry-to-loss/dm ratios in all of Thunderdome: In!
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Jan 21, 2021 04:37
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The Story of Erik Blue-Tooth 654 words Erik opened his eyes. It did not make any difference. He waved a hand in front of his face. His own body was brightly lit, as if by the noon sun. But there was no sun. Erik tried to sit up, and couldn’t. He lay a hand on his chest and felt split wet bone. He stared into the void for a while. “I am dead,” he announced. “Oohhh, you’re clever one!” came a cheerful female voice. “I’m Sigrid! I’ll be processing you today.” Erik turned his head and saw a woman walk from the darkness. She was beautiful, having all her teeth. Her clothing was woven of some impossibly fine material, but it was coloured the dull grey of the winter sea. Erik stared. “If I am dead, you must be a Valkyrie.” “Nope!” smiled Sigrid, “and also: yep. Y’see, in the year 2007-” “Valkyries soar on wings of song,” said Erik stubbornly. “Also, they are lusty, and high-spirited.” This earned an eye-roll. Sigrid fiddled with a black shiny rectangle in her hand. The sound of extremely small horns, drums and singers could be heard. “Wagner,” she declared. “YouTube...” Erik frowned. “There also is much feasting in the Halls of-” “Now as I was saying in 2007, IKEA gained- that, is, will gain- a majority of shares in Valhalla,” continued Sigrid. “We made this acquisition through eight hundred and eighty-eight equinoctial sacrifices on a FLËDHÖBEN flat-pack stone altar.” “I see,” rumbled Erik, methodically counting the bits of rib sticking out of his chest. “What is IKEA?” Sigrid coughed. “Northmen are famed as warriors, explorers and traders, yes?” “Yes.” “Well, a thousand years after your time, we give up on the first two. But! We get real good at the last one.” Erik shrugged and nodded. Bones crackled. “I’ll wrap up the paperwork, and then our transportation contractors will convey your soul to Valhalla, where there is-” she waved a hand dismissively- “feasting and song.” Erik winced a bit. “But…” Sigrid knelt by Erik. “There is… another option…” Erik slowly shook his head. “Death is the end of options, Valkyrie.” “Friend, we can send you back to fight,” whispered Sigrid. “Not with these wounds, you can’t,” said Erik. He hinged his sternum to demonstrate. “Aaa, gross!” “Ha. Ha. Ha.” “Listen,” urged Sigrid, standing again. “You’re needed on another battlefield. Glory can be yours.” “I like glory; but I like my lungs even more-” “It is a new frontier, where old powers are fast falling,” said the Valkyrie, as though reciting something memorised. “There are raids and thefts and treachery; there are uncountable riches and unimaginable terrors. The innocent must be protected, and the vile and guilty destroyed. You will fight with cunning and boldness and lightning will be yours to command.” “Your words are a fog,” rumbled Erik, “concealing…?” “Erik, we wanna re-incarnate you as a computer program.” “What.” “We’ll transmute your soul into- well, you’d call it lightning. You’ll protect our servers. You’ll kill viruses, mangle hackers, stand fast in data breaches. We need souls that know what it means to be cunning, fast, brave and brutal.” Erik stared into the void for a long while. He scratched at his beard. "Come on, Erik! It'll be great. I guarantee you'd get sick of Feasting after, like, the third week anyway. Come fight for us." “Will there be other warriors,” Erik said at last, “so I can test my skill, display my bravery, and boast of my mighty deeds?” “Thousands,” said Sigrid, rolling her eyes. “You dead viking guys make for amazing software. Dead hoplites are useless, they keep quoting the Phaedo and-” “Song. Will there be song?” “There’s millions of ‘em online.” “And will there be wenches?” “It’s the internet,” smirked Sigrid. “It’s about eighty percent wenches.” Erik considered this. "Thirty day trial period, right?" "Naturally." “I have fallen,” announced Erik. “But I will get up again.” Sigrid smiled. “Not up, Erik. Uploaded.”
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Jan 25, 2021 01:09
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:14 |
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Ooh, dragons! In and flash, thanks.
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Mar 30, 2021 02:57
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