Word

Pretty: Pies

2008-04-07T09:01:00.002-05:00

The Doctor looked perplexed. "No dreams at all, Leah? That's a ... ", he consulted his notes, flipped back a few sheets of onionskin, " ... first. I think. Unless I forgot it. Or it happened before my time. But still, at least rare." He looked at Leah, trying to tell if she was lying or telling the truth. Despite his years of association with her and his intensive training, he could never tell when she lied. Or if: it could be that she just never lied. One could not rule out such strange behaviors simply because they were unlikely. Sane people lied all the time, little lies usually, but still. Only the insane told the truth all the time.

"Why don't we switch it around then, Doctor? You tell me about your dreams, and I'll listen instead?"

Subject shows interest in the thoughts of another person. This, too, was rare, and noted.

"You know, I don't dream much. Last night, I think I dreamed about my grandmother. Let me see if I can remember what happened."

Leah sat forward in her chair, propped her chin on her hands, her elbows on her knees. The Doctor was worried he might fall into her eyes for a second, that she might swallow him whole. He banished that thought, but it returned the other way around. She already knows my name, and I don't. What will she take next?

"I'm not a young man, Leah. And my Grandmother was old when I was born; I was ten when she died. But I remember her vividly. She was born before the Change, back before the Sun hadn't forgot its place in the sky. She had lived on a farm, a little thing out in the country. I think they called it Georgia. What a strange name. The farm, that is. My grandmother was named Luann."

"Grandma Luann had a huge collection of fruits that she had put into jars somehow, from before the Change. After, of course, we couldn't really grow fruits anymore, and by the time I was born people had pretty much forgotten what it was like back then. But not Grandma Luann. Every year, at Yule, she would open up one of those jars she had left and make a pie. She'd take the fruit and drain it, and bake it into the strangest pastry. She said that the crusts were better back in the day, but I never even worried about that. Fruit! Can you imagine that? It was so sweet, I was like to die from happiness. Every year, she made a pie."

"Ten yules after I was born, ten pies I tasted, ten times we went down to visit her in the Blocks. Of course, I don't remember all ten pies, but I do remember a few. Ten pies after I was born, she ran out of jars. Those pies had kept her going, in all the long, dark times. She was one of the last people born before the Change to die, and she didn't die until she made every last pie she could. That was my Grandma."

"Last night, I dreamed about her, that's right. I remember it now. She told me a story about her childhood. I don't know if the story is true, I don't know if she ever told me such a tale when she was alive, or if it's all just a figment. But I'll tell you the story I dreamed last night, if you can help me remember it."

Leah smiled and said, "I'll do my best." She reached out and touched the Doctor's forehead with one finger.

Pretty: Stars

2008-03-31T08:58:00.004-05:00

Jack looked at the night sky. Now he knew he was dreaming. Stars.

Stars! So many stars! So much beauty! He stood there, neck craned, staring. He lost track of time, lost track of everything. He'd never seen stars before, nor had anyone really. Maybe some of the really ancient ones, the people who were alive before the Change. But not Jack. He'd heard stories, but they did no justice to what he saw.

There was motion out of the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around, fast enough to give him a stinger up the right side of his neck. His ear throbbed warmly. Nothing was there.

But wait. Something was different. He'd stopped moving when he saw the stars, stopped walking at least. But now he was farther along the path. There was some kind of wall ahead of him, stretching out to the left and right into the darkness. Where the wall crossed the path, an archway. Above the arch, a sign: words.

Jack couldn't see the sign well enough to read it, but he walked ahead, under the arch.

He entered a courtyard. The walls on either side of him seemed to curve in just a tiny bit before disappearing. He was in a huge circular courtyard, he knew. He wasn't certain how he knew, but he knew. The path led him forward.

He walked slowly, in a daze. He barely looked down from the sky as he stared in helpless wonder at the galaxies and planets whirling by overhead. His feet moved of their own accord.

Eventually, something rose up out of the darkness. It covered part of the sky well before Jack could see what it was. An endless parade of footsteps, one after another, as he got closer and closer to the center of the courtyard, and the tree.

It was a tree, its branches skeletal and leafless, hundreds of meters tall. Impossibly huge, a full ten meters across at the base. It stood there, in the courtyard, beckoning Jack.

He tried to speak, to hear, to do something. His lips were rebellious, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. His ears might have been filled up, for he couldn't even hear the sound of his own footsteps on the flagstone.

Dreams follow their own peculiar internal logic. Jack had been brought here to the tree, he knew he had to climb it.

Next

Pretty: Hangover

2008-03-04T21:18:00.004-05:00

Jack walked in a cold, dark place. Broad flagstones made a path that stretched before him. He looked back and saw more of the same. He knew, somehow, that there were walls not too far on either side of him, but he could not see them. His vision faded into inky blackness after a mere three meters.

"Okay, it's cold. That's normal. Dark, not so strange either."

Jack wasn't normally much of a mutterer, but sometimes you had to get some ideas out in the air. Operational security in his line of work meant that you never said anything you didn't need to say. But still, he had said her name, hadn't he? Right before he...

...

Wait, where was he? Jack looked around. He remembered going to sleep on the couch. Well, to be honest, he had passed out. But that was the last thing he remembered. Here he was, wearing the same clothes he'd passed out in, standing on some kind of path in the dark. He couldn't even see where the light was coming from. He just knew that he could see what was near him, but there didn't seem to be any kind of torch or glowbe. Strange.

"I could be dreaming, I suppose. But, usually when I dream, there are more pretty ladies around, right? And I don't smell so ... funky."

This was a lie. When Jack dreamed, or at least when he remembered his dreams, they were terrible, filled with staring and accusing faces. He drank so he wouldn't dream, and he drank so he could forget his dreams, forget the reason why he drank. A lie, but he can be allowed a lie every now and again. Jack had been through a lot, and he didn't entirely deserve his nightmares. Not entirely. His hands had been tied through most of that unpleasantness.

"So, what? Am I awake or asleep? HALLOOOOO!"

The darkness around him had a way of eating sound. There were no echoes whatsoever. Maybe the walls weren't as close as he thought. He looked up.

The sky was starlit and filled with beauty.

Next

Pretty: Enclosure

2008-02-28T11:02:00.004-05:00

Leah knew something was wrong. She was missing something, something fundamental.

There she was, in her room. She could see her bed, she could see her walls, with the tile inlay that she loved to stare at. But there was something wrong, something not there that should be.

It was like a tiny voice in the back of her head was trying to talk to her, but it was speaking a language she did not understand. She laid down on her bed, closed her eyes, let her mind drift. It was no good. The voice was still there, and she could hear the words it said, but she forgot them as soon as they were spoken.

Without a map, she didn't even know what she was missing. Something was forgotten, but this was no simple thing. In the course of the day, she might forget, for example, whether or not she'd had lunch yet, but she did remember that there was such a thing as lunch. Here, it was as if she'd forgotten that lunch existed altogether, and was wondering why she felt so empty inside.

Empty inside. That was it. She was empty inside.

What was missing?

She must have managed to fall asleep, because when they came for her in the morning, she didn't see them come in. For the first time that she could remember, she did not dream.

She wondered what she'd tell the doctor this time.

Next

Pretty: Continuum

2008-02-18T09:10:00.005-05:00

Inessa blinked. "She?"

This was the first time that she had reacted to any of David's pronouncements. Everything that he had said before had simply been said. Whether or not Inessa processed his words, spoke them again, wrote them down, or simply unsaid them was beyond the scope of David's experience. David wasn't even quite sure what the job of an observer was. Each of the readers in the room had at least one. Some of the mumbling prophets had more than one. It was the job of readers like David to develop the information that was latent in these pages, and it was the job of observers like Inessa to know that information. David was fairly sure that she would eventually report something to the Followers of Memory that seemed to be running the place, but he really didn't know.

For a moment, as David contemplated the effect his revelation had on Inessa, he forgot what he was doing. Instead, he considered must have to happen next: somehow, this information would travel through lines of power and authority to someone who was actually interested in what went on in this room. It might be possible to find out what or who was behind the operation, if he constructed the proper informational probe, but ...

"She?" Inessa repeated herself, bringing David out of his reverie.

"She. Her name is not here, but ..." David gestured at the scraps of paper that covered his table. " ... that she is a She is clear. I do not know why you are looking for her, but I can say for certain that you must find her."

((Editorial note: This is, obviously, the first post in a year. As such, I'm a bit rusty and worried about breaking continuity. So I might retro-edit it in a day or two if I realize I broke something horribly. But as they say, you've gotta keep dancing - the steps will take care of themselves. More to come.))

NEXT

Pretty: Backing

2007-02-19T10:42:00.001-05:00

David twirled the paper in front of him. It was necessary to spin the paper as he read it, because the words were twisted in a spiral. Actually, calling them "words" might have been an overstatement. They might have been some sort of code, or perhaps a language that David had never seen; they were at least groupings of letters that were separated by spaces. He twisted the paper clockwise and counterclockwise, trying to gain some insight into the arrangement.

"Where do you people even get these things?" He didn't even bother to look up, he could feel Inessa's stare on the top of his head.

"Here and there. Garbage, street prophets, crazies. Books stolen and restolen. Everywhere. It doesn't matter, the story is everywhere. The world trembles with it, it is hard to contain. All you need to do is learn to read the story. You're making progress, I have been told."

The words of encouragement were his first, ever, from Inessa. They emboldened him to speak truth about what he saw in the random scraps of paper he was handling. David looked up, met Inessa's eyes stare for stare.

"She is in hiding. She is surrounded by protectors, and will not emerge. She is afraid."

Inessa blinked.

Next

Pretty: Insulated

2007-01-17T13:10:00.000-05:00

David's head hurt. He'd had a headache all day. He blamed it on the lump that was on his forehead, acquired during last night's attempt at a skrying. The papers in front of him didn't help at all. He stared at them, shifted them around on the table. One piece of hemp-paper was a solid column of names and numbers. It was pretty clearly a page from a ledger, with debits and credits showing in different-colored ink. Only one page, though, and the names on the page did not have anything in common with the names on the other pages he had in front of him. Another was a single page from someone's diary, describing a purely mundane day in the life of a purely mundane person.

When he started working in the room, he tried to make eye contact with Inessa, but had quickly given up on that. There was something about her intent stare, the way she didn't blink enough, that made him look at her chin whenever he spoke to her. David turned and looked at Inessa's chin. "If you'd tell me more about what you're looking for, I'd be better able to help you."

"It's not that I'm holding something back, David. I do not know any more than you do about your task. The information you refine must be untainted by expectation, unshaded by perception. The people to whom I report know little more than I do, and I don't ask. Information can only flow one way here, and doing that is very challenging. Trust me, we've learned our lessons the hard way when it comes to ensuring a single direction."

Next

Metapost: Delays

2007-01-03T11:26:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the delays, folks. I had a combination of writer's block, laziness, and lack of time. Back on track again, and should be back in the 2-per-week schedule that I'd like to be in.

Pretty: Latent

2007-01-03T11:10:00.000-05:00

After his shift was over, David returned to his quarters. They were sparse, but comfortable enough. Even now, he was not really certain about his status. He wasn't precisely a prisoner, but neither was he free to leave. "Guest" was how Inessa put it. She was his guide and keeper; the only person in the whole compound who would actually speak with him. Others might speak at David, "go here", "sit", "eat this", but only Inessa made any responses to him. He would have broken down long ago if it weren't for her.

Since arriving here, David had started speaking to himself, the walls, his bed. "I thought I'd be important here", he said. "They told me I was special, that I had a gift that could be trained. But all they do is make me stare at nonsense words on a page all day. Where are my prizes? Where is the reward and prestige that should be my due?" He sighed.

David went to his sink and stopped it up with a plug. He let the water run until it was half-full. This was something new he was just starting to learn how to harness. He stared at the water, bringing his head down until it was even with the lip of the sink. He could see reflections in the water, tiny ripples. He held his breath.

Every word spoken in Londinium vibrated the city just slightly. Every footstep, every door opening and closing. Those vibrations went everywhere, from the tops of the towers down to the geothermal power plants and farms below the city. They even went out and contributed to the ocean's waves, ever so slightly. Anybody could look at a pool of water and watch it tremble. It took an Infomancer to extract meaning from the pool. David was not an Infomancer. Not yet, at least.

David focused his awareness through a series of mental exercises Inessa taught him. She didn't have the gift, but she knew enough about it to help him learn to use his gift. His perception shifted. He no longer saw the vibration in the water as just water, but as a cacophony of sound and a kaleidoscope of colors. His head felt like it would split open, from the pain and overload of the sensation.

He found himself lying on the floor of his quarters, with a bump forming on his forehead. He must have blacked out. The thump would, no doubt, contribute to the trembling of all the other pools in all of the city. David stood again, stared at his sink. This time, nothing happened. Still, he was encouraged that he was able to pull something out of the water the first time. Sooner or later, he'd get it.

Next

Pretty: Prophet

2006-10-31T13:09:00.000-05:00

(The beginning of Chapter Two: David's Song)

The old man was mumbling again. Every time that happened, a much younger man would signal the room by raising his hand in the air. The noise in the room fell off to near silence, only the slight hiss of the gaslights that lit the windowless space. David waited for the young man to lower his hand. He had learned when to keep quiet. As he waited, he glanced around the room.

The room was spacious, housing about twenty people, all seated at round tables in pairs and trios. David was seated in front of a stack of papers, each of which was covered with a morass of numbers and letters, some neat, some scribbled, some written in what seemed to be direct confrontation with the natural order of linear ordering of words on the page. It was his job to make some sense of the pages, although he was not to write anything down. Everything he learned was simply spoken aloud. His watchdog, a young woman named Inessa, would listen to what he said and later do something with it. It wasn't David's job to know or ask what Inessa did with the information he extracted, he had learned not to ask.

The old man stopped his mumbling. David turned back to the paper when Inessa put her hand on his arm. Startled at this touch, he looked at her.

"Good news, David. The detective Lucy hired did the smart thing. He or she broke contact when he found out we were involved. We'll keep an eye on Lucy, of course, but it looks like she's resigned to waiting for your safe return." Inessa's cold blue eyes, nearly emotionless, were a stark contrast to the warmth of her voice. Did she really care about Lucy and David? David wasn't sure, but needed to hope that this all still might end well.

Next

Metapost: Londinium

2006-10-24T14:11:00.000-05:00

First of all, new post is here, don't miss it just because this metapost sat on top of it. But second of all....

Okay, so I feel a little weak naming the city where the action occurs "Londinium". I had some issues with the name, as I have issues with all names. The fundamental image I was trying to convey is: It's a Major City, It's different from Cities we know, It's largely western european but with other influences (Konichiwa, Mitsunori-san). Any other suggestions? I've got a chapter-thingy that I'm planning on centering in Shanghai (or the like), also.

Pretty: Interlude

2006-10-24T10:13:00.000-05:00

Interlude: Watching the Watchers

The tower was truly out of place in a modern world; it looked as if it had been constructed by peasants in some long-gone era. The stonework was rough, but solid, and there were slits in the walls starting at twenty feet above the ground, spiralling up the tower until it reached its apex at two hundred feet in height. The very top of the tower sported defensive crenelations, but they were probably for show, what kind of military action against an invading army would require cover at that height?

Regardless of the seeming anachronism, or perhaps in deference to it, the tower top also housed the makings for a giant bonfire. There was a wooden roof that was designed to both protect the fire logs from the weather and go up in flames as well, should the watchers decide that the lighting of the fire was necessary. There was a guard with a torch lit at all times, he could throw the torch onto the pile and have it blaze up in a matter of moments. What would come next was a mystery, because in the fifty years of the tower's existence, the bonfire had never been lit. There had never even been a readiness drill.

Of all the watchers, Jake Chen was the only one who really enjoyed Torch Duty. Of all the watchers, Jake Chen was probably the only one who took his job seriously. Every day, he would bundle up against the vicious cold that blanketed the land and walk out to the top of the tower. From his vantage point, he could see the warm, pulsing metropolis of Londinium to the south, the blocklike, windowless aboveground structures built after the Cold, and the old-fashioned buildings (some of which even had glass windows!) dating from before. East and west of Londinium were the suburban towers that housed nearly all the human population left in this region of the world. They huddled together just like sheep in a storm, using each others' waste heat to keep themselves alive. To the north, Jake saw only ocean, frozen and otherwise.

Jake could spend hours staring out at the world, sometimes his mind would soar over the ocean waves to the north, as if he had taken the body of a falcon instead of his own flesh, which was leaden with cold. Over the waves his mind would fly, as the torch in his hand slowly burned down, marking the time of his shift on top of the tower. As the torch began to gutter out, he would walk back to the trap door which allowed access back down into the tower. Another watcher would be waiting there, but he would not actually do much watching. He'd stay up near the top of the tower, but inside. He might glance out the functionally useless arrowslits that lined the staircase, but he'd never, ever go to the very top. The wind and the cold saw to that.

Perhaps if there had been more like Jake, the watch would have been kept. But then again, not even Jake knew why the watch was kept, not any more. For the watchers, it was just a job. Stand near the top of the tower, torch in hand. Every week, lug up a new batch of wood to construct a potential pyre. Never actually light the pyre. None really remembered the reason why the tower had been build, a mere four and fifty years ago. None of the watchers even recalled their full name, the Watchers against Nightfall. None remembered the great failure that led to the Cold. Memory in these days, history, was dusty and forgotten. These young men (always young men, never married) watched, but through a profound failure to remember, they forgot why they were watching, and for what.

Next

Pretty: Link

2006-10-20T15:41:00.000-05:00

How many drinks had he had so far? Jack looked at the bottle: it was half-empty. Did he remember opening a fresh one when he came back from visiting Mitsunori? He wasn't sure, but that very level of uncertainty meant that he was certainly doing the right thing with his drinking. He poured another.

Jack looked around the room that served as his office, and frequently his flop. Not very spacious, but big enough to house his desk, a few wooden chairs, and a sofa off to the side of the room where he spent the night more often than not. He got back to his real apartment once in a while, when he really needed a shower, for example. He wasn't a bum, no sir. He might have a thing for the bottle, and perhaps rambling on now and again, but he kept himself clean. Mostly.

Sitting on the sofa was the package he had received this morning, or whatever time it was when he woke up. Still empty, still mysterious, still information-free. Jack poured himself another drink and got the old neurons good and lubricated. Given his line of work, and considering his past, a mysterious empty box shouldn't be just ignored. He cogitated. Then he thought. Then he drank a little, followed by some rumination. He had gone through the mulling phase and was in a full-on contemplate when his skittering thoughts hit on something Mitsunori had said earlier. He was being pulled in to a big, information-dense case. Someone had made contact, but he couldn't tell who or how. The box must have been the contact. He had a drink to celebrate that little breakthrough.

If someone were going to contact Jack in such a way, it would be to bypass Infomancer snooping. The package itself was very information-neutral. It had little inherent meaning or content, especially to a third party. There would be no hidden compartment or invisible ink, that kind of dodge wouldn't fool the little birds. No, this would be a straight up empty box, whose only purpose in life was to get Jack thinking and drinking enough to cast his memory back to the whole reason why he had started drinking in the first place. The reason he was in this dump, living a half-baked, half-boiled, and wholly empty life.

His scotch bottle was empty, but that was okay with him. He didn't feel like drinking anymore. He laid down on the sofa, uttered a single word and drifted off into an oblivion he was thankful for.

"Leah"

(the end of chapter one: introductions and excitement)

Next

Pretty: Cogitating

2006-10-17T09:44:00.000-05:00

Back in his office, Jack poured himself a glass of scotch. Today was a good day; he wasn't drinking it straight from the bottle. He swirled it around and stared at it, deep in thought.

Item: People have not had any real privacy for at least fifty years. There aren't all that many Infomancers, but there are enough and the Infomancers can use their their ripple pools and their little rainclouds to figure out who is doing what to whom anywhere in Londinium or on the planet for that matter, if they put their minds to it.

Jack took another drink from his glass.

Item: For the most part, the Infomancers don't care who is doing what to whom. They could care less about assignations and assassinations, unless either (a) it interfered with their business, or (b) there was some money or personal gain in it for them somehow.

Corollary: If you have enough juice, either money or political power, or preferably both, you can make sure that if you're the "whom" in that above situation, you can make sure an Infomancer will keep track of who is doing what to you.

Item: Jack's clients sometimes ran afoul of people of the above type. In either the white market or the black, capitalists were capitalists, and were ruthless whether they dealt in natural gas or drugs. Both had money and power to burn, and if they had had scruples in the first place, they wouldn't have gotten either money or power.

Slurp.

Issue: It was likely that David Eddington was involved with people who were of that type. He was a fairly high-level cog in a very important financial institution, and was last seen in the company of a high-level cog in a very important criminal institution. Both stripes of suit were going to be watching after not just David Eddington, but looking for people asking questions about David Eddington.

Solution: By forcefully completely severing his ties with Lucy Eddington, returning her payment, and leaving her dissolved in tears, Jack had likely removed himself from David Eddington's informational halo. Jack was no longer a who doing any sort of what to anyone associated with David's whom. Mitsunori had confirmed that he was outside of David's halo.

Item: Jack was now somewhat free to make discreet inquiries into the whereabouts of David Eddington without the little ripples of information he generated in his wake entering into to the pools of any Infomancers keeping an eye on David. Unless Jack actually contacted David or Lucy, and unless the snoops were actually focusing their attention on Jack and his bottle of Scotch (gulp), Jack probably wouldn't show up in David's halo for some time.

Question: Should Jack try and find out what had happened to David, or play it safe and stay away?

Jack poured himself another drink.

Next

Pretty: Expected

2006-10-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

"I said, whaddya want? What're you doin' there, walkin' around lookin' like that? You're askin' for trouble, aren't ya?" The tattooed man grabbed her upper arm. Leah could make out his scent, cigarettes mainly, but with the sour, sweaty undercurrent that comes from too many hours in the same clothes with no bathing. The other man spoke as he moved behind her, she was surrounded.

"You look cold, girl. Why don't you come in with us? We can warm you up. We can warm you up good."

Tattoo reached up to touch her face, brush her hair back from her cheek. "Yeah, we can take care of you, pretty girl."

The touch of the tattooed arm on her face shocked Leah into clarity. These men were real, this was not a dream, and she was in grave danger. She looked at the tattoo. Munin. This man had a tattoo of Munin on his arm. Had she seen that before, somewhere?

What followed afterward was entirely unexpected for Ryan. He would remember the pain for the rest of his life, both minutes of it. They found One-Pill later, still sitting dumbly in the slowly freezing pool of Ryan's blood. The blood on One-Pill's hands and the drugs in his pockets were enough for the police to convince themselves that he had maybe taken some really potent bad mojo and gone apeshit enough to tear Ryan apart the way he did. One-Pill was never able to coherently talk about what had happened, or what he had done to the rest of Ryan's body, the parts they didn't find, but then again, he was a mojo addict.

Next

Pretty: Changes

2006-10-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

All of that changed one morning in his nineteenth year, when Ryan woke up with a tattoo on his arm. This wasn't some late-night drunken tattoo that he had hazy memories of getting, no way. No tattoo artist with an ounce of self-preservation would even think about inking someone with the tattoo Ryan had. Back in the day, before people knew what the Followers were about, people might have done it. But some serious shit went down, and now nobody would think of faking one of those tattoos. Wouldn't matter no-how if they did, anyway, since the higher-ups could always spot a fake, and then you'd be in pretty bad trouble. Couple of old guys with no arms still floating around the blocks to remind people about that.

Ryan had been marked with the sign of Munin, and that meant that he was, for some reason, about to begin his rise within the Followers of Memory, or as they called themselves secretly, Muninites. He gained some responsibility, and was still learning the ropes of being a lieutenant in the organization instead of a grunt when his life was changed again by a chance encounter with a pretty girl. He had been hassling a dealer, One-Pill, that the higher-ups thought might be running a side scam with the clients. This kind of thing needed real finesse, you couldn't just go and break One-Pill's face, you had to find out what he was doing and with who. Trace it back, and it'd sure be the Chasers. But whatever, One-Pill might be Ryan's track to his first real trophy, a Chaser with his guard down.

A chick like that shows up, smokin' hot, in her pajamas and barefoot, smelling clean and clearly in an altered mental state, that just blew a hole in the way Ryan had learned to think. Suddenly he was fourteen again, a project reject, never gonna get a girl the right way, the soft way, only the strong wrong way. He made a grab for Leah.

Next

Pretty: Block

2006-10-03T09:10:00.000-05:00

Itsjustadreamitsjustadreamitsjustadreamitsjustadream. Running through her head, uncontrollably. Leah couldn't move, couldn't talk, couldn't even think straight. She stared down at the cobbles in the street, fascinated by the way her shadow wavered in the gaslight.

The tattooed man was named Ryan. Ryan had grown up in one of the cold public housing blocks that covered most of what used to be the suburbs. After the Cold, people who could afford it moved into the centers of the cities, where the Tubes were being built. In a mass tide, they displaced the poor from their traditional center-city homes and pushed them out, out away from the still-warm centers of population to the fringes. Like sheep huddling together during a winter storm, back when there were still sheep, the ones in the middle stayed the warmest.

Most people, living in the blocks, turned to crime out of sheer disgust with the system. If the Law told them to do one thing, they'd do the other, just because the Law was why they were stuck in those hastily-constructed poor houses that got most of their warmth from the city's composting piles. Massive amounts of organic matter, decaying and giving off precious warmth and oppressive stench. Save the gas heat for the rich, the poor get shit heat. So they flaunted the Law, taunted the Law, and did whatever they wanted. As long as the crime in the blocks stayed in the blocks, the Law didn't care. It had bigger problems.

Ryan was a prime product of the blocks. By the time he was ten, he had already learned hard lessons. He had been savagely beaten not once, but twice, both over some trifling violation of the protocol of the street. He had beaten others for similar offenses. He had killed a man for a sum of money that would not even pay for the lunch of one of the rich slicks that lived in the Tubes. By the time he was fourteen, he had fallen in with the Followers of Memory. It was a fruity name, he thought, but they gave him structure, a family. They gave him a job and a purpose and someone to call enemy. He went to the gatherings like he was supposed to, listened to the hooded and robed weirdoes talk about the All-Father and shit like that, but he didn't really care. He became a fairly proficient mover of illicit substances. He would take deliveries of whatever highs the crank spellers were cooking up from someone whose face he never saw, and he would distribute them to the street sellers. He never dealt in money, that was somebody else's job, but he did get to deal in discipline sometimes. If he thought the seller was getting into the supply, he'd break something to drive home the point. If he knew the seller was getting into it, he'd do more than just break something.

Next

Metapost: Pink!

2006-10-03T08:25:00.000-05:00

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I'm part of the crowd, so I will turn my website pink during october as well. Pink Power!

Pretty: Parable

2006-09-28T08:41:00.000-05:00

"So? It's happened before, and it will happen again. The how of it is interesting, but not terribly important, since Leah is free to leave whenever she wants. She's not a prisoner here, you know."

"I know, Director Sugolinski, but if I am going to help Leah, I need to know more about her and where she goes and why she leaves us. Why did you tell me to not ask her?"

"Doctor, I have a question for you, and I understand that you may think that I am changing the subject, but it is the kind of thing that if I just came out and stated, you wouldn't understand. So instead, I have a question for you that might shed some light on just how dangerous and special our patient is."

"Okay, if you insist on making this into a parable."

"What is the name of your patient?"

"Leah."

"Correct, your patient's name is Leah. Good. Do you think there's anything unusual about her name, or that she has a name?"

"That she has a … no. Her name is Leah, although her last name is not in the records I have access to, but I assume she has a last name as well."

"Now, what is my name?"

"You are Eileen Sugolinski, Director of the facility where I work; my job is to evaluate and assist patient Leah, last name unknown, as she struggles with profound personality and cognitive dysfunction." The Doctor was already tired of this line of questioning, so he got a little flippant in his response.

"Well, then, Doctor. We have established that the people you interact with on a regular basis have names and that having a name is normal and reasonable. Now, my last question is, What is your name?"

The Doctor had no answer for Eileen Sugolinski's question.

Next

Pretty: Veils

2006-09-25T11:11:00.000-05:00

This time, Leah knew she was dreaming. That happened only some of the time. She was walking through a city in her dream, barefoot and dressed in her nightgown. She knew that she was dreaming because in that circumstance she should be cold, it was dark and a soft snow was falling on the sidewalks, but she felt no chill at all. People should stare at her, a half-dressed, barefoot wraith wandering the city streets as it snowed, but nobody looked at her at all.

Because it was a dream, and because she knew it was a dream, she decided to have a little fun. She turned down an alley on her right and got out of the flow of people walking on the main sidewalk. Skipping up the alley, she saw two men standing in a darkened alcove, a doorway leading into the alley that was open with two men standing in it. They were arguing over something. Feeling safe in her invisible dream, Leah drifted closer to the men. She thought she might give one of them bunny ears. Both men were tall and rough-looking. One had a tattoo of a raven on his right forearm, he had rolled up his sleeve to show it to the other man.
As soon as she got within a few feet of the men, both stopped talking and looked at her. The man with the tattoo leered at her and asked, "What do you want, pretty little girl?"

Suddenly, Leah felt the cold.

Next

Pretty: Remove

2006-09-21T08:33:00.000-05:00

Hanging from the racks in the preparation room were a variety of outfits that the Doctor could wear for sessions with Leah. Today, he was going to wear hospital-green scrubs with a white lab coat. He had just finished tying the drawstring in his pants when the Director entered the room.

"Good morning, Doctor. What's this I hear about you needing to see me?" Eileen Sugolinski was a direct person, taking the lead in most conversations. Somehow when she was speaking to you, she not only managed to seem taller than her five feet of height, she managed to make you feel as if you were a child again, caught stealing sweets from her kitchen.

"Good morning, Director Sugolinski. Come to check up on me?" The Doctor tried to regain the initiative.

"Not precisely, but while I am here, I should tell you: take the greengrocer's pen again this session. Leah seemed to enjoy that one."

"I noticed that, and noted it in my report." The Doctor's tone was businesslike, bordering on cold. He did not appreciate the constraints under which he worked or the 'suggestions' that he was offered by his superior.

"Ah, good then. I apologize that my secretary was unable to schedule you a time, but I am free now." Eileen gestured toward the chairs next to the shoe rack. Not precisely comfortable, but easier than looking down at her all the time, the Doctor was nearly a foot and a half taller than Eileen. He sat.

"I'm all yours for the next", she glanced at her watch, "five minutes."

"Leah went out again last night, Director Sugolinski. She went out and came back and no one, not the nurses, not the orderlies, nobody saw her."

Next

Pretty: Muddy

2006-09-05T09:19:00.000-05:00

"One problem with the situation I'm in", began Mitsunori, "is the problem of information consumption. You never know just who is listening to you, and for that matter, who isn't. But that little trick I did with the water glass should work in your favor. That and the carvings. There's new ones out there today, did you see them?"

"No, I can never tell what's new and what isn't, unless I go away for a long time."

Mitsunori smiled. "That's the point. Anyway, as far as I can tell from looking and listening, you're off the case. There's no information flow between you and Mrs. Eddington anymore. Now it's up to you to decide: are you still going to look for David or not?"

"Not sure yet. Thanks for the help." Jack put enough money on the bar to pay for ten beers and started to get up. Mitsunori grabbed his hand.

"One thing yet, old friend, or maybe two."

"Yeah?"

"First is: do what you can for David Eddington. Even if it amounts to nothing, it will be good for you. You look more down than ever before. Second is: there's someone new in your halo. Are you working another case?"

"Nope, just the Eddington one."

"Hmm. Well, someone has made contact with you. I cannot tell who, since it is pretty tentative, but there's definitely something there. If you don't know about it yet, that can only mean one thing: it's going to be a big deal. Information dense."

Next

Pretty: Cowardice

2006-08-31T10:35:00.000-05:00

"I'm sure you didn't come here to hear me scold you, or really even for the beer, probably. No, the fact that you're here and still sober, coupled with what you said about having had a cheeseburger earlier, tells me you're on a case and you need help."

"Actually, I'm not on a case anymore." Jack took out his notebook. "I was tracking down one David Eddington for his wife, Lucy. David is a supervising accountant for Bingham and Steed, or at least was until three days ago when he failed to return home. He had been acting somewhat erratically for the week prior to that, and then one night, poof. He disappeared. Lucy called me rather than the police because she was worried her social standing would suffer when the police found out that he was shacking up with someone from his office. Turns out that wasn't the case at all, but she still can't go to the police. Seems David was last seen in the company of a Muninite or two, eating dinner no less. Since then, zilch. As soon as I heard that he was involved with the Followers of Memory, I told poor Mrs. Lucy Eddington that I would no longer be working for her, with her, or near her. I returned the check she had given me when she hired me, and walked away. As far as she is concerned, I'm off the case."

Mitsunori's brow creased in thought as he put a beer in front of Jack. "How did she take it?"

"How did she take it?" A wild light crept into Jack's eyes. He put the beer to his lips and drained it in less than thirty seconds. "I just told her that her husband, whom she was worried was cheating on her, was not cheating after all but was faithful and probably still loved her, but had fallen into the hands of a criminal organization from which neither I nor the police would be able to extricate him. Additionally, I told her that I would not contact her again because I was, essentially, a coward. Which, I essentially am. She did not take it well."

As Jack was getting himself worked up, Mitsunori had taken the glass Jack drained and filled poured enough water in it to fill it halfway. He then rotated the glass three times clockwise and twice counterclockwise. Finally, just as Jack stopped speaking, he hit it with his hand so it spilled all along the bar away from him and Jack, who jumped away from the bar in surprise, even though he was expecting something of the sort.

Next

Metapost: Site Update

2006-08-29T09:06:00.000-05:00

I've moved the blog over to the new version of Blogger. Some nifty behind-the-scenes features, and theoretically it will quash the weird caching bug that you might not have noticed, where I have to go manually refresh my blog in my browser a few times before it gets updated to the point where other people can see my new posts. Hopefully this is painless, but if you see any problems, drop me a line, or add a comment here.

Pretty: Obligatory

2006-08-29T08:44:00.000-05:00

People who went into the tubes regularly tended to fall into two categories: those who went once a year or so, and people who went regularly. Those who went infrequently typically went to deal with some government bureaucracy, renewal of some license or another, for example, would just leave their cold-temperature clothes at one of the ubiquitous coat-check kiosks just inside the tube. Most people who regularly visited the tubes, such as the bureaucrats that the first type of people visited, invested in a warming-charm that would protect them from the cold during the usually short walk from their home just outside the tube to the shimmering curtain that held Cold at bay.

Jack had a big duffel bag he carried with him whenever he went out. It was made of a very compressible fabric and would fold down fairly small; he stored it in a big pocket sewn into the back of his jacket. Often, his business called for him to go into the tubes, and having a duffel like that meant he could take off his jacket, overpants and mukluks and carry them with him rather than leaving them with a coat check near the entrance. That way he didn't have to leave the same way he went in, and he saved on coat check fees. The duffel was considerably cheaper than a warmth charm, which wouldn't hold up to the walk from the tube to his building anyway.

Duffel in hand, Jack walked slowly past the assortment of vendors that lined the first few chambers of the tube. The signs, mostly hand-lettered, offered everything from noodle soup to charms to weapons to "active participatory massage". The storefronts themselves were never much wider than a small door, but the tunnels behind the doors might be long or short, and could lead to a single room or a many-roomed complex. Most of the time, the busy bees who used this entrance to get to work breezed right past the mob of shoppers and onlookers who came to the commerce zone just to shop a little where it was warm. Jack sauntered over to a door with the word "Yakitori" emblazoned in asian-esque lettering. Pushed it open, let the duffel lead the way.

Inside, there was a longish walk down a twisty and narrow tunnel, with alcoves every now and again so people could pass each other in either direction. Somewhere around the halfway point, carvings started to appear in the tunnel walls, first rough and then more and more complex and baroque as Jack got close to the end of the tunnel. Jack idly wondered what Mitsunori would do when he had carved straight down to the front door of his little one-man restaurant. That wouldn't happen for a while yet, at the rate the carvings were progressing.
The duffel nosed out into the soft light of the gaslamps that were everywhere in the tubes. Jack followed, walked into the small room and sat on a stool in front of the long recycled-metal bar that separated him from the cook, a gray-haired Japanese man with a tall white paper hat.

"I figured it was you, Jack. Not many people eat what I'm serving this time of day."

"Well, Mitsunori-san, I actually just had a cheeseburger not too long ago, but I could use a beer."

Mitsunori harrumphed. "It may be dark outside, but that doesn't mean that it's okay to drink beer at ten in the morning, you know."

"I stopped looking at clocks years ago, you know that. What's the point? Up is work, tired is sleep, hungry is eat, and thirsty is drink. Clinging to the old ways is just tradition. Besides, it's more efficient this way: I'm out of your hair before any real customers come by."

"I suppose so", said Mitsunori as he worked a tap on a large oaken barrel that was behind the bar, and probably the most valuable thing in the bar, given its antiquity and the scarcity of wood. "Maybe it's just that I don't like seeing you, of all people, drinking at any time of the day."

"Yeah, yeah. I know." Mitsunori was a friend from way back, back before Jack got into the snooping business, actually, back when he didn't need the drink the way he needed it now.

Next

Metapost: Names

2006-08-15T10:04:00.000-05:00

I've got a problem: there are going to be far too many people in this story. The only name I'm really happy with thus far is "Leah", but that's because the story is about Leah, and I knew her character before I had even started writing the story.

All the other names in the story have been invented on the fly, and I've already felt somewhat stretched. So, I need your help. Put as many names as you can into the comment list. First names, last names, name combinations. Make them have different flavors and everything. Then, when I use one, I can cross it off and keep track of who is doing what.

Pretty: Disappointment

2006-08-14T08:48:00.000-05:00

"The stories are vague because they're very secretive, and have some control over what gets printed in the newspaper. They've got most of the police running scared as well. Anyway, the Followers and the Chasers are rival organizations, to call them gangs would be something of an understatement. They might have been around before the Coming of the Cold, but they really surfaced shortly afterward. They're involved in all sorts of illegal activities: kidnappings, extortion, assassination. Luckily for most people, they each spend a great deal of their energy attempting to get the better of the other, rather than actually doing anything to harm middle-class, everyday people. Street people, petty criminals, and the poor, on the other hand, know plenty about what the Chasers and Followers can do."

"My goodness", said Mrs. Eddington, "Why is it that the Infomancers have not put a stop to their activities?"

"Nobody really knows. Some say it's because they prey mainly on the lower class. Some say that they've found a way to circumvent the Infomancers. Myself, I think it is a bit of both: they're handy to have around in our society, as long as they don't hurt anyone important, so the Infomancers let them stay around, perhaps even set them up with an assignment if there's something dirty that needs to be done in a way that doesn't trace back to the Infomancers. You know, the Infomancers themselves have a decent amount of infighting and power struggles, it could be that the two gangs belong to different factions in the Infomancer circles."

"What I don't understand is what this has to do with my poor David?"

"That, I'm not certain of, and I'm not sure there's much I can do for you."

"What do you mean, you can't do anything for me or David. I'm paying you, aren't I?" Lucy's face starts turning red with anger. "You tell me that the police can't help, that you can't help. What am I supposed to do?" Hysteria starts tingeing her voice, it's setting in. They might have been having marital problems, which is why Lucy hired Jack in the first place, but David did not run off with some floozy, so he might be in serious trouble.

"Look, Mrs. Eddington, the best thing to do is sit tight. David will come back, or he won't. David was last seen with a Follower. There's not much anyone can do to find out where he is or anything, unless they decide to let him go. They might contact you, even. They might call you and ask for ransom, they might let you talk to him. It's just that if I go poking into this case any further, they'll probably just kill me, and you, and David."

"I just cannot believe that. I cannot give up, David wouldn't give up if it were me that was missing. He would go out himself, with a torch and a charm against the cold, and look for me, turning over every stone until I was home safe. Now, I've paid you your retainer, you might as well get on out there and look for David."

Jack grumbled deep in his throat. "You can have your retainer back, Lucy. I can't continue working for you." He dug around in his pocket and found the cheque she had written out, entitling him to quite a bit of money, payable on demand at the Barrington Financial center. He had not gotten around to withdrawing his pay. "The best thing you can do for David, and you, is just wait and be quiet. Don't tell anyone else what happened."

She was crying as he let himself out.

Next

Pretty: Upscale

2006-08-08T09:06:00.000-05:00

After his meal, Jack bundled up and braved the Cold. It wouldn't be a long walk, his client lived in one of the condominium buildings near the Mouth. One of the nicer ones, it had a doorman making sure some people were allowed to enter and others weren't. Under normal circumstances, Jack would probably have fallen into the later category, but he had an introduction card from his client. After inspecting it, and checking against a list, the doorman gestured to an underling.

"Steve here will escort you up to the Eddington residence, stay with him."

Steve had nothing to say as he walked with Jack to the elevator and then to the floor where the Eddingtons lived. A few moments in the receiving salon, and Jack was ushered in to see Lucy Eddington, the woman who had hired him to track down her husband.

"Have you made any progress on my husband's disappearance?" Lucy was direct and to the point. Jack was hired help, so she didn't need to waste time with pleasantries.

"I think", said Jack, "that we can rule out an affair. I do not think that Mr. Eddington ran off with another woman, or man for that matter. Unfortunately, I think it might be much more serious."

"Serious?" Lucy looked worried. "Should I call in the police? If it's not an affair, I don't have to worry about the embarrassment."

"You might want to call in the police, but it is unlikely that they will help you. Your husband has gotten tangled up with some very powerful and scary criminals. Do you know anything about the Followers of Memory, or the Chasers of Thought?"

"Not much. I have heard of them, of course. I read the newspapers and all, but those stories are usually pretty vague."

Next

Metapost: Retcon

2006-08-08T09:04:00.000-05:00

Something is different. Something has changed. You look around, trying to put your finger on it, but it's hard to tell. If only you could trust your memory....

So, I had to change a little bit in the Cheeseburgers post. Just a heads up. Turns out, Jack didn't know as much about the people his Quarry were consorting with as I had planned.

Pretty: Trees

2006-08-01T08:08:00.000-05:00

"You were cold, were you? Can you tell me where you dreamt you were? Indoors or outdoors?"

"Both, I think. Or neither. It was an enclosed garden or patio, surrounded on all sides by columns, with a fountain in the center. I remember running water, maybe a fountain, but I did not look for it. I spent most of the dream trying to climb a tree."

"Was it day or night?"

"Night, I could see by moonlight and starlight, but the sun was down."

"Do you remember what kind of tree it was?" Details were important to whomever had created the Dream Record Protocol.

"The tall kind. Tall and straight, and the branches were out of my reach. Don't you want to hear about why I was climbing the tree?"

"If you think it is important, Leah." It wasn't important, on that the Protocol was clear. The features of the dream were crucial, the dreamer herself unimportant. The Doctor pretended to take notes as he struggled to remember: how many times had Leah dreamt about a tree? He couldn't remember. He would consult the Files.

Next

Sudden

2006-07-31T07:55:00.000-05:00

Not part of the storyline, gasp. I've got something else on my mind today.

Lying awake in bed, thinking about a mouse. Why did you have to choose my kitchen to live in, to poop in, to spread your diseases and chew on my walls? You could have moved somewhere else and lived a longer, happier life. You never really had a chance, did you? Once I saw that shadow out of the corner of my eye this afternoon, your fate was sealed. I set the trap, baited it with peanut butter (I think I might be growing an aversion to peanut butter, scented with the deaths of so many cute little vermin), and waited. Awoken at two in the morning by the sound of death. Snap. Cleaned and reset the trap. Helpless little thing, looks soft (don't touch it, what, do you want Hantavirus?) Wish it had picked some other house to live in. Well, I hope you were a bachelor, Mr. Mouse.

Snap.

Head back downstairs. There's another one. This one was quicker, head in the trap, reaching for that peanutty goodness. Don't forget to wash the peanut smell off of your hands.

Now I just have to worry about when the babies decide their parents aren't coming back with food and head out into my kitchen to forage. Baby mice are not as smart, they'll just wander around, lost, and not even run away from you, they're so hungry they've lost all sense of self-preservation.

Pretty: Redux

2006-07-28T10:27:00.000-05:00

Lunch came and went, at least for Leah. The Doctor rarely ate more than one meal per day. After lunch, he would return to an earlier tactic, the Empathy Protocol clearly was not going to work today.

"Okay Leah", he began. It helped to say her name somewhat forcefully, otherwise she would just sit there, staring at your hands or the paper, or the table until you got her attention, at which point you would have to repeat yourself. "Let's start with last night. Did you sleep well?"

"I did, actually. But then I seem to remember that I always sleep well."

"I would have to check the notes on that, but I agree, I cannot recall you ever telling me you did not sleep well in all our sessions together."

"All our sessions, Doctor. Do you know how many sessions we have had? I am not sure I remember."

"I don't remember either, Leah. I will check the notes. Back on track, though. Did you dream?"

"Of course I did. I always dream when I sleep. This time, I dreamt that I was cold, very cold. I shivered and tried to stay warm, but could not."

The Doctor flipped a page over on his clipboard to and noted down, 'Subject's primary characterization of dream is: cold. Question: is this a common theme? Search Files for cross-references.' There was a scrawl across the top of the Dream Record Protocol Sheet, not his handwriting: 'Do NOT ask Subject about her nightly excursions again.' The Director must have heard about what happened yesterday. Oh well, thought the Doctor, at least I gave it a shot. Too bad it turned out the way it did.
Next

Pretty: Obscured

2006-07-26T08:48:00.000-05:00

The Doctor laid a card in front of Leah. He wanted to see if she had the ability to empathize with the animals and people pictured on the card; she clearly had very little affect and he was curious how deep this went. He asked Leah, "What do you see here?"

Leah stopped staring at the Doctor's hands and looked at the card. "I see a card."

"Can you tell me anything more about it?"

"It seems to be approximately six centimeters by nine. It has rounded corners, and looks sturdy."

The Doctor annotated his file. 'Subject's spatial sense is again demonstrated to be excellent. She is able to estimate sizes and distances quite accurately.' He laid down another card. "What about this one?"

"It is another card. I would say that it is the same size as the other card".

"Good, good, now just one more." He laid down another card.

"Yes, it is another card, although this one is just a tad bigger."

"Besides the size difference, is there any difference between these three cards?" Uncertainty was creeping into the Doctor's voice. He knew there was supposed to be something more than this to the interview, but couldn't remember.

"No, they are all the same."

The Doctor made a note. 'Subject has correctly identified three cards in the empathy test, and noted that each card is approximately six by nine'. He struggled with his memory, poking it and prodding it to come up with the next step in the Protocol. His memory was silent on the matter. He had a deck of these cards, but why should he continue to show them to her if they were all the same size?

"I suggest, then, that we take a break for lunch and continue our session later."

Leah smiled at him, a rare thing. "Yes, I think I must be hungry, and enjoy eating."

He took her to the room where she ate and left her in the care of the Attendant so he could go back to his office and review his notes and put his mind in order.

Next

Pretty: Cheeseburgers

2006-07-20T08:49:00.000-05:00

"Welcome to the Chuckles Cantina! The coat check is over there, and I will find you a table while you're taking care of that. Smoking or Non?" The hostess giggled, for some reason Jack couldn't quite fathom. Perhaps it was required.

"Non-smoking, please." Jack smoked on occasion, but the man he was looking for didn't smoke, so non-smoking made more sense. After shucking off all of his cold-weather gear, he was led deeper into the restaurant.

Jack did not pay much attention to the menu, he ordered a cheeseburger. These days, of course, it wasn't really a cheeseburger, but it looked similar and almost tasted the same, and it wasn't like better restaurants had better stuff, they just cooked it differently.

"Been working here long?" He was working on the waitress, priming her, really.

"Yeah, it's a good job. Good hours, decent pay when you folks tip like you're supposed to. No real grab-asses to worry about like my last gig."

"Don't fret about the tip, I've got one for the pool and maybe a little extra just for you."

"You do, huh? That's awfully pleasant of you." Suspicion crept into her eyes.

"Don't worry, it's just a question or two. I'm trying to track down a friend of mine."

"A friend, huh? Seems to me a friend would have told you where he went. But go ahead, what's your friend look like?"

"It would have been two days ago, around eighteen-hundred. He's about a hundred-sixty cents tall, weighs maybe sixty keys or so. Green eyes, dark hair. I have an sketch of him if you want me to show you."

"Your friend, would he have been alone?"

"I'm not entirely sure, actually. He lives around here, and I know he made it as far as the Mouth on his way home from work. Sometimes he stops off for food, sometimes not."

"Show me the sketch, it was a kind of busy night."

Jack took out his notebook and flipped back a few pages. He was a pretty fair artist, and had drawn this picture with the help of the person who had hired him. He saw recognition in the eyes of the waitress.

"Yeah, I remember your friend and his associates. Not much in the way of tippers, I'd say."

Associates? Jack slid a twenty across the table. "Remember anything else?"

"Well, the other guys, they had tattoos, matching ones. Some kind of bird on their forearms."

This was probably the worst thing she could have said to Jack. "Some kind of bird? Would you say it could have been a raven? Black bird, mean-looking?"

"Yeah, that's it. Big mean looking black bird."

"One last question, were the tattoos on the guys' left arms or right?"

"Umm, right, I think. One of them signed the check, and I think he was right handed."

"Thanks a lot. You might have just saved my friend's life."

Jack's quarry, it seems, was involved with Followers. This was going to get tricky.

NEXT

Pretty: Avocation

2006-07-18T12:05:00.000-05:00

As long as Jack was awake, he decided, he might as well get some work done. He wasn't sure of the time; like many people since the coming of the Cold, he did not own a clock of any sort anymore, it was just not worth it. If he was awake, as far as he was concerned, he could work on his cases. He did not have all that many cases, but the ones he had he took seriously. They represented people who desperately needed help from someone, anyone. People who could not go through the usual channels to get help, they were too shady for the authorities to help and not shady enough to get help from the underworld.

He did not have the same kind of resources that the authorities or the gangs might have had, but it was surprising how much progress you could make toward helping people just by walking around, paying attention, and asking the right people the right questions. The Infomancers, of course, had a much easier time with it all, they could find out what you had for breakfast, or when was the last time you took a leak, all without leaving their plush, warm estates. Then again, they had to make a lot of sacrifices to be able to do that, so they deserved it, or at least they said that they deserved the luxury.

Jack bundled up as best as he could before stepping out into the cold, dark city. One reason he could afford his rent was that his building was somewhat far from the Tubes, so he got a lot more outdoor time than he really wanted. At least that way he knew anyone who showed up at his office really needed the help.

The entrance to the Tube was surrounded by a ring of commuter condominiums and their attendant commercial zone. Jack pulled out a notebook and checked his list. He had already been to four of the eateries near the Tube, there were two left. Without the notebook, it would be hard to remember which ones he had been to and which he had not. His memory was not what it used to be, and these restaurants were all the same, perky waitstaff and tchochkes, meant to reassure those eating there that their experience would be exactly the same as it would have been at any other restaurant near any other Tube.

Next

Pretty: Anamnesis

2006-07-12T07:57:00.000-05:00

Instead of a window, there was a band of tiles running around the room, at about chest height. The tiles had been painted in a way that led to a series of intricate, overlapping patterns. Leah would stare at the tiles, slowly shifting her focus so one set of squares would leap into the foreground, then another, then tighten in on a single tile, and release out to a pattern of diamonds or triangles or even larger hexagons. She could do that for hours, which was just as well, since she didn't have much else to do. At least the room was warm.

The room lacked not only a window, but a door as well. Whenever she had to leave, the Doctor would fetch her. She never went out on her own, until now she had never even thought about leaving, but something about the way the Doctor looked at her during their last session made Leah want to work out how she could get out on her own. Next time, she promised herself, next time she would pay enough attention to her comings and goings so she could re-create the doorway that must be there in order for her go to her sessions. She would try very hard to remember.

Next

Pretty: Groggy

2006-07-06T07:14:00.000-05:00

Jack woke up because a red light was shining in his eyes. Sitting up blearily, he took stock of his surroundings. He was in his office, sitting behind his desk. He had fallen asleep earlier, face down on his desk. He probably had a crease from where his cheek had laid on a pen.

It took Jack a minute or so to remember the red light, but there it was. He looked at it again. The red light on his desk meant that he either had a package or a visitor down at the front door. Jack poked the little light on his desk, extinguishing it, and stood. He walked over to the sink and mirror that took up one corner of his office. Washed his face, combed back his hair, rinsed the yuck out of his mouth. Sometimes it felt like he needed to shave the fuzz off of his tongue.

Down the rickety stairs two flights to the lobby. The front door, of course, was thick, opaque, and heavily insulated, but long ago someone had installed a peep-hole in it. The building management decided not to fix it, probably because it was useful, given the building's clientele, to be able to see who was outside before opening the door. Jack didn't bother with looking; he undid the latches and bars that held the door shut, and swung it wide open, admitting a blast of cold air.

Nobody was there anymore, but there was a small brown package on the doorstep, clearly labeled with his name. He took the package and went inside. As soon as the door was again closed and dogged, the building started to warm back up. Management might not be diligent about keeping the place looking good, but they kept the heaters running.

At one point in his life, Jack would have subjected such a suspicious and unexpected package to a thorough scrutiny before opening it. He had made enough enemies to warrant it and enough money to afford all the latest in explosive and incendiary detection. Not anymore. Nevertheless, Jack delicately opened the package, trying to keep his face from what he imagined would be the direct blast if someone had finally tracked him down and decided he had not yet suffered enough.

The package was empty.

Next

Guidelines

2006-07-03T14:08:00.000-05:00

Just in case you didn't notice, I put a link in the sidebar over there that goes to a web page that lists all the pretty entries in story order, and each entry has a link to the next one. That might come in handy if you find yourself trying to read a few entries in a row, since they go from the bottom to the top. Maybe if I could figure out how to make the page upside down. Hmm.

Pretty: Fringe

2006-07-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

Leah sighed. "Can I see your pen for just a second?"

The doctor made another note. "No, I need it right now. Maybe later, after you've told me about your shawl. What color was it, and did it have a fringe?"

"The shawl was yellow. It had a row of tassels around the bottom, each approximately one inch long, and all of the tassels were light brown. The whole thing was pastel-shaded, not bright at all, and as I said, it was not my color, but I was cold."

The Doctor-who-wouldn't-share-his-pen made another note. "Okay, today I'm going to skip the rest of the dream." For an instant, his eyes changed. Normally, even though they had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with respect to her dreams, Leah liked the Doctor. He had a kind of secret smile that he did not let touch his lips, but his eyes would show it. But now, the Doctor's eyes showed no hint of a smile; they were dead and hard, and they reached out and took hold of Leah's perceptual focus. She could not look away from his eyes. "Today I want to ask you one question, and then I will let you look at my pen. Today, my question is: Where did you go last night?"

Next

Pretty: Dream

2006-07-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

"At any rate", the Doctor-with-a-penchant-for-stealing-pens continued, "we were talking about your dreams. You were going to tell me what you dreamed about last night."

Leah had always had vivid dreams. In fact, it was not until after she reached puberty that she was told that there was a line between waking and sleep, and the things that happened in dreams were not actually real things, but fancies made by the random firings of neurons at rest. She never truly believed that.

"I dreamed that I was in a palace. No, not exactly a palace, but a large place. Hallways twenty feet wide, marble flooring. Paintings on the walls, ceilings recessed so far that you have to squint to see them, and frescoed to look like the sky. I look up, and feel like I might fall into the ceiling, indoor spaces shouldn't be that large. It is very cold, my breath condensing in front of me. I shiver and pull my shawl around me."

The Doctor interrupts, "A shawl?"

"Yes, a shawl. It is made of a thin fabric, not much help at all, actually. Perhaps a thin wool? Maybe linen. I'm not entirely sure, but I do know that it is yellow. Not my color, but my arms are goosebumpy, so I pull it tighter around me, kind of hug myself for warmth."

"Did the shawl have a fringe?" This was the kind of trick they liked to play. They ask you for extraneous details, seeing if you can remember them, or perhaps if you change your story upon repeated tellings. Leah didn't understand what motivated the Doctor to ask her these questions, she could never tell what he would be interested in. Why did he focus in on the shawl, but not ask about the paintings in her dream? Those paintings were fascinating; she could have spent hours staring at them if she weren't so cold.

Next

Pretty: Names

2006-06-30T18:13:00.000-05:00

Click. Click. Click-click. The Doctor had one of those cheap retractable ballpoint pens that usually have some kind of advertisement printed on the side. Maybe he stole it from a store clerk, or after signing for delivery. Pens like that want to be stolen, so they can spread their message around. At any rate, he was somewhat fidgety. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the pen. One click would toggle the pen into writing mode, and another click would toggle it off. It would have to be a fairly simple mechanism that made it work, otherwise people would worry more when someone walked off with their five-dollar, hand machined pen. Definitely a spring in there, the ball point was retracting up into the pen body, defying gravity. She had a few ideas about how the pen might work, but just by looking, there was no way to tell for sure. Perhaps if she could get it away, take it apart.

"Leah."

The Doctor was talking to her. That was what everyone called her, Leah. She did not really think of it as her name, but it made interactions easier, giving people a word with indexicality, to have something people can wrap their mind around. Much easier that way than thinking or saying, "That woman, with shoulder-length red hair and a heart-shaped, freckle-dusted face, who seems to always become hyper-focused on the smallest details", and so on.

"Leah, are you here now?"

"Yes, yes. I am here, sitting right in front of you. Can you see me? Perhaps you could loan me your pen while you make other observations as regards my existence?"

"It just seemed as if, your physical self notwithstanding, it seemed as if your mind was miles away." He made a brief note on his clipboard. Probably something like, Subject exhibits a sense of humor grounded in sarcasm and literal interpretations. Notes like that never have names, just numbers at the top of the page that get tied to other numbers in an arcane filing system. The observation protocol explicitly requires the observed to be referred to as "Subject". Something to do with privacy, but Leah thought it could be an indication that the problem she had with names was more widespread than a unique little feature of her own mind.

Next

Pacing

2006-06-30T18:03:00.000-05:00

Things change. Times change. This place has become stagnant. It has become stagnant in part because I have found new and exciting outlets for my creativity. So, time for a new thing.

I'm embarrassed to say, but I have been trying to write a book. I think trying might be an overstatement. Anyway, from here on up, I'm going to try and serialize stuff from the storyline I'm working on. It could be that it sucks. It is likely that I will have to change things. But it will be fun.

The working title for the book is "Pretty". So, future posts will be something like "Pretty: Word". I'm going to keep the word theme going as long as I can. Posts without the "Pretty" tag will be normal posts that don't fit in the story (for the time being at least). The posts are also going to be roughly chronological, but it is actually hard to write a book in one sequence beginning to end, so there might be chronological jumping issues. Hold on!

Limbo

2006-06-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

We're sorry, all of our customer service representatives are busy right now. Your call is important to us. Enjoy our music while you continue to hold.

Yes ma'am, enjoying your music indeed.

Sclerotic

2006-04-20T13:06:00.000-05:00

Driving along the freeway as I often do, I have found that traffic seems to clump together. Every quarter mile or so, there will be a little bunch of cars, all tooling along, slowly accumulating cars from behind as the clump moves forward at approximately 85% of the cruising velocity of most cars on the road.

Weaving through traffic (like a madman, probably), you can get out in front of that clump, and then shoot another quarter mile at a normal speed before you find another clump.

The interesting thing is that every single clump, every single time there is an inexplicable backup on the freeway, it is because of a car with a Pennsylvanial license plate doing fifty-five in the far left lane. Is there some sort of extra, hidden, curriculum in the Pennsylvania driver education system? "Do not respect the passing lane! You must Impede Traffic! Do it especially while you go to Delaware to purchase items with no sales taxes! Travel to and from your shopping expeditions in the left lane, slowly!"

I just don't get it.

Singularity

2006-03-17T08:26:00.000-05:00

You might not see them at all. They only do business on certain days, and those days follow No Fixed Schedule. It is possible that there is a pattern to when they are there and when they are not, but deciphering that pattern is likely the first challenge they give neophytes who wish to join their ranks. They are the Amish Pretzel Bakers. These people dedicate their lives to the creation of Soft Pretzels; they've given up television and all modern convenience. They have no room for vanity in their Way of the Pretzel, only humility and dedication to the Pretzel.

These people spend years training and learning the Way before they even are allowed out into the world in a sales role. Those who successfully sell The Pretzel for a number of years develop an instinctive knowledge of how to properly make The Pretzel, just by observing those who enjoy it. Once they have learned this, they give up speaking forever, for those who know do not tell, and those who tell do not know. From that moment on, they live in isolation, each day devoted to the creation of The Pretzel.

None of these Amish Pretzel Bakers has ever tasted The Pretzel. No, to do so would be vanity unto blasphemy. But you can taste The Pretzel, and believe me, when they ask you if you want butter on it, you say yes, say yes

Figures

2006-03-02T11:56:00.000-05:00

We had just signed the papers, the house was ours. On a related note, it was somewhat anticlimactic. I had expected to have to shake hands or have the lawyer say something like "by the power vested in me...", but I digress. The house was ours, and we were going to have a good shower, dangitall. The showerhead was one of those cheapo heads you can buy for four dollars, and it leaked to boot. So we went out and got a roll of teflon tape and a fancy schmancy showerhead that cost all of twenty-five dollars (we're living it up whole hog now, folks!).

The damn thing still leaks.

So I get out the wrench, and tighten away.

Still leaking.

One last tighten, this time for sure.

I turn the water on, and now the whole showerhead flies off of the pipe and lands in the tub. Oops, looks like I broke the house.

Upon investigation, I find out that the showerhead to pipe interface is (or, more properly, was) mediated by a little piece of threading that attached to the end of the shower pipe. This threading was what was leaking, and now in my zealous overtightening, I have stripped it right off of the end of the pipe.

I had the damn house for less than an hour, and I already broke it. I forgot to keep the receipt, so no returns either. Time to call a plumber, I suppose.

Embiggen

2006-02-23T10:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, on my way into the bathroom, I bumped into someone. Literally. Neither of us were really looking where we were going, and we kind of bumped into each other. We quickly apologized and went our separate ways, I was going in and he was going out.

Shortly later I realized that the guy I had bumped into was wearing the same sweater I was. Actually, he looked a lot like me. Same haircut, glasses, and sweater. He looked a bit older than me, though. I thought, "Wow, I just bumped into Future Me!"

Later, as I write this, I come to the realization that Future Me couldn't really be Future Me, because Future Me had about eight inches of height on me, and I'm done growing. Oh well.

Understated

2006-02-13T20:07:00.000-05:00

Heard on the teevee, "Now that's a nice improvement on the normal Death Spiral you see so much of nowadays." Seriously, man, what could be an improvement on a Death Spiral? Ninja Laser Death Spiral Monkeys? With a kung-fu grip? We thought we were powerful. We thought we could improve on the Death Spiral, but we were wrong. Adding monkeys to the Death Spiral was something that science should never have done. Now we have to live with our Death Spiral monkeys, sitting in on the Pairs Short Program, throwing their feces on the ice. When will science learn? Some things were never meant to be hybridized with monkeys.

Departure

2006-01-26T10:57:00.000-05:00

Today, I noticed it. A puddle of water had formed under my coffeepot. At first, I thought it was a spill. I wanted it to be a spill. I needed it to be a spill. I didn't really want to consider the alternative.

After a brief investigation, however, I discovered a fatal flaw in the coffeepot. The water reservoir had just had it. A crack had developed at the bottom, where various planes of plastic came together and were fused to form a waterproof seal. There is nothing to be done for it, I don't want epoxy residue getting into my coffee.

So, ladies and gentlemen, raise a toast to my coffeepot, which has been with me since I started graduate school (it was my first purchase, before I even bought books or anything). Some quick and rough estimates lead me to believe I've brewed about a thousand gallons of coffee in it. That's about one cubic me: a cube that has sides the length of me. So, I guess that the pot has served me well. Time to get a new one.

Reminisce

2005-12-19T11:38:00.000-05:00

You think back, recalling all the conversations you've been in today. With whom have you spoken? What did you say? Who else did you wave to as you walked down the hall? Could your fly really have been open that whole time? Wow. Better remember to check more often.

Evolution

2005-12-16T18:58:00.000-05:00

We're sitting in a train, the Blue line Metro in Washington. A woman gets on the train, sits and immediately takes off her shoes. Odd. She follows up by taking off her socks, and taking a pair of fancy shoes from her bag. Reshod, she touches up her makeup, switches around her scarf, and heads out into the cold, winter air.

Artery

2005-12-15T20:56:00.000-05:00

True story. I'm walking down the road, trying to find that happy medium between the muddy shoulder and getting run over. So one foot is muddy, and the other is four inches higher and on asphalt. The whole time, I keep thinking to myself, "Dangit, dangit, dangit". And then I wonder, why the heck am I using standins for expletives? What the heck is wrong with me, even my internal monologue is PG.

Innocence

2005-12-03T22:47:00.000-05:00

We went boldly into our new home, leaving behind the hangers and hangups of old spaces. In particular, we left behind the wire hangers we had accumulated throughout a life of collecting. "Leave them, leave them, leave them. We will get new ones in our new home." Trusting in the ubiquity of wire hangers, we left our hangers in our old space. In our new space, we are exploding with possibilities, but if we want wire hangers, we have to get something dry-cleaned, because they just don't sell wire hangers at the store.

Deprecate

2005-11-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

Two years since I've been a serious programmer. In the interim, I've done some toy programming, a little perl grease for the wheels of an otherwise working website for example. But no real programming, no real projects. Such is life when you're writing your dissertation. Anyway, I dusted off my Java IDE today, got the latest version of everything, and was ready to dive in to my latest idea.

I should have looked before I dove in. I nearly broke my neck on all the new stuff. I mean, aspects, annotations, generics, unit testing, oh my. Back when I started my graduate student career I did not understand how my advisor could become so behind the times (she has a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, and shared an office with RMS, surely she'd never let her coding skills slip, right?). But now I understand. I'm going to let myself go. This next generation of my ideas will likely be implemented by someone else, a snot-nosed know it all, I hope. One that will never understand how I could let my skills lapse.

But that's the circle of life. Right up until I eat that know it all for being a little too snide. Then it's more of, say, an ellipse of life.

Traffic

2005-11-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

I'm cruising home, along the interstate. We're all moving along at a pretty speedy clip. So I don't have time to deal with what's happening. There's a huge, enormous, beyond words large flock of birds flying over the freeway. It stretches from one edge of my windshield to the other, and goes on for the two or so minutes they're in sight before I drive under them. I want to stop the car, get out and just ogle it. It is beautiful. I don't know what kind of birds they are, they're smaller than, say ducks. But they're beautiful.

The next night, they're there again. And the next. At some point, I stopped noticing them.

Lift

2005-11-04T11:44:00.000-05:00

I jumped onto my desk. Just now. Just to prove I still could. It was a standing leap, maybe about three feet. Let's see, it seems like my desktop is just a little below hip-level on me. Not bad, not bad at all.

Lyric

2005-11-01T16:07:00.000-05:00

I have high expectations of my music. I want the words to evoke, invoke, and revoke. I want to be transported to another realm by the poetry involved in good songwriting. That's why I like Ani diFranco. She's got a good voice, but if you listen to what she's saying, it's a whole other level. "I'm going to get my feet wet until I drown", "I used to be a hero ... you are like a phonebooth that I somehow stumbled into". Seriously man, it makes me feel all inadequate that I cannot express myself so cleverly. But that's why I'm not a famous singer.

That and I cannot sing. I have been told that singing with me is great and low pressure, since you don't have to worry about the right notes. But you do have to worry about my made up, in-between notes that are neither sharp nor flat.

Number

2005-10-27T09:30:00.000-05:00

I love this time of year. Autumn, Fall, whatever you want to call it. The leaves turn colors, there's a chill in the air that puts me in mind of pumpkins, turkey, mulled cider. This time of year, I'm a sucker for themed foods. Take coffee, for example. Normally I turn my nose up at flavored coffees. Vanilla hazelnut coffee? No thank you. No thank you very much. Stuff tastes like butt. Vanilla hazelnut flavored butt, but butt nonetheless. The problem is they use lousy coffee and then add a crappy flavor to it. No surprise it tastes that way.

Anyway, even I cannot pass up the pumpkin spice flavored coffee this time of year. I buy it in cafes when it's offered, and I just bought a pound of it at the store. I love that pumpkin spice flavor, which is applied to the coffee beans in the form of an oily substance, which causes the beans to glisten in an appealing manner. It also causes the grounds to stick to the side of my grinder in an unappealing manner.

Of course, the coffee still tastes like butt. Pumpkin spice butt, mmmm, Autumn even makes butt taste good.

Ridiculous

2005-10-18T21:31:00.000-05:00

fading in, coming out of commmercial. We see a replay of the last few seconds of last week's episode.

"Stop it." There's a voice behind me, recognizable but unexpected. "You're being sophomoric. Both UD and MSU are land-grant schools, it only makes sense that they would be near agriculture. Agriculture smells bad, that's just the way it is."

I don't even need to turn around. "How the hell did you get here?"

We see DARRYL standing behind me, looking serious. He speaks.

"It isn't enough for you to move. You are still the same person you have always been. More to the point, you're still a sophomoric pissant who needs the occasional slapdown in order to stay focused. I mean, so what. You're thirty now, you going to make some big philosophical treatise about how things change but really stay the same. This whole diatribe is trite, but you know what I mean."

And then he hits me in the head with a stick. I think back to my days as an undergrad when things seemed much simpler. Or maybe that was the alcohol. Who knows. Without turning around, I say, "Maybe people do change. I won't be seeing you again." Trudging toward my office.

"You won't see me, but I will be there nonetheless."

He's such an asshole.

Fragrance

2005-09-27T08:03:00.000-05:00

It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining through the clouds, the storm seems to have washed the air clean. So, on my drive into work, I roll down my windows and try and enjoy the beauty; after all, I will be in my cinder block office with no windows for the next eight hours or so.

There's some kind of funky smell in the air. It smells like, hmm, what's that smell? Dirty diapers, that's it. The air in Newark smells just like dirty diapers. What the heck? That's not cool. So, getting out of my car, I ask someone else in the parking lot, "do you smell that funky smell?"

"Yes", she replies, "it's the smell of Lancaster county. They have mushroom farms there, and that's what they smell like. When the wind is just right, that smell wafts our way."

So wow. At Michigan State, where I was an undergrad, they had these fields they would manure every so often, you could smell that too. Two universities out of three that I have been associated with have the aura of feces occasionally pervading their space. What a coincidence.

"Stop it." There's a voice behind me, recognizable but unexpected. "You're being sophomoric. Both UD and MSU are land-grant schools, it only makes sense that they would be near agriculture. Agriculture smells bad, that's just the way it is."

I don't even need to turn around. "How the hell did you get here?"

The camera pans out and up, going just from a framing shot of my face to revealing more and more of the parking lot behind me. A figure, standing twenty yards back, is still blurry and indistinct. As he comes into focus, the scene goes dark and is replaced by the words

To be continued...

Jamming

2005-09-14T09:46:00.000-05:00

Laser hair removal commercial on the radio. "Well, if I had laser hair, I'd want it removed too. That sounds fairly alarming". Whoop whoop whoop, look out, laser hair on the loose! "chhhchrp ... and today, in Chicago, thirty people were balded when a hair laser went rogue ... chhhchrp". Some day, I will go bald. How will I react? Will I do the comb-over? Will I get a toupee? What about implants? Or will I just let it go. I know a guy with a military-style flat top (he's in the military, fancy that (but he can't fancy things, because of the whole don't fancy don't tell policy)), anyway, this flat top has a hole in the middle. Don't get me wrong, he looks fine, but he clearly isn't doing anything about his impending baldiosity. Did you know that "ericaceous" is a word? True story.

Symbols

2005-09-13T11:17:00.000-05:00

It's Tuesday. That must be why I'm wearing these weird pants. It's Tuesday, and I'm having a flashback moment. I take a surreptitious look at my wristwatch and note the date. Hmm, the fact that I'm wearing a wristwatch at all means I must be in high school. The calculator-watch stares back at me, reflecting the light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Of course the watch knows what year it is, but I do too now. By the state of my pants, it is 1993 and I am in high school again. Or still. Or whatever.

I get up, leave my books near my desk, and walk out of the classroom. My physics teacher doesn't say anything, I remember him being one of those progressive teachers who gives students freedom to do things like go to the bathroom during class. Anyway, I don't even bother with the bathroom. I go out into the hallway, and take off my wristwatch, let it drop to the floor. While I'm at it, I take off my pullover poncho and the Nirvana t-shirt that it covered. Gathering steam, off come the Chuck Taylor All Star Converse Hi-Tops (in purple), the ripped and patched Levi's 501 Jeans and the boxers. All that I am wearing now are socks, and that's because I'm in the wing of the school with tile floors. I walk slowly over to the carpeted area so I can take the socks off too.

A shout from behind me, it's some administrator or another. "What the heck is going on here?" He actually said heck.

So I turn around and say, "Isn't this one of those dreams where I'm still in high school and I'm naked and everyone is looking at me, and I'm about to wake up?".

"No, this isn't one of those dreams. You're just naked, put your clothes back on." I can see in his hands, he has collected all the items I shed back outside my physics classroom.

Talk about embarrassing.

Passage

2005-09-03T17:22:00.000-05:00

Some things really cheese me off. People who refer to one-way mirrors as two-way mirrors, for example. They're always talking about them in cop shows and other places. To me, a two-way mirror would be a piece of normal glass, something that allows light to go two ways through it. A one-way mirror would be those things they have in the police station, behind which the trembling witness can point her finger at a wrongdoer. A zero-way mirror would be your average, run of the mill, mirror.

Then again, there's no arguing with the crossword puzzle. Lasonerd is clearly not a word, so two-way mirror it is, which makes lasonerd into lastword. It's like getting a trivial pursuit card with an incorrect question on it. Just really cheeses me off. Or perhaps, should I say, yogurts me off?

No. I should not say that.

Culture

2005-08-31T10:12:00.000-05:00

I look around, I look around, and I see a lot of new faces. That means a lot of you are breaking the first two rules of yogurt club. If tonight's your first night, you have to eat. None of that nonfat kind for you, oh no. Only the real yogurt, the kind with actual fat and real fermentation instead of artificial thickeners. Emulsify this, punk.

What's that you say? The only yogurt you can find is low fat, sugar free, whitened and lecthin-ized processed milk product? Well then, have I got a yogurt for you. Well, technically, I'm not really sure what it is, but I got this bottle of organic milk at Ye Olde Organice Foode Shoppe last month, and it has been fermenting in my desk drawer ever since. Never mind the smell. Drink it! Drink it or I'll drink it for you, at you, and otherwise near you!

Yogurt is good for you, and I, for one, am sick and tired of diet yogurt. I say, never be complete, never be perfect, put down that processed food and live a little. Get some real intestinal flora, come on! When the revolution comes, are you going to be left behind because all of your lactobacilli are pathetic?

Rise up my brothers and sisters, rise up and ferment!

Royale

2005-08-31T07:01:00.000-05:00

I've moved. Three timezones to the east. The things that get to you are the little differences. I've been drinking a lot less beer, since you have to buy it at a liquor store. No grocery store beer means no impulse purchase beer, and a lot more impulse purchase potato chips. So, it's not like I'm in danger of losing weight.

Revel

2005-02-23T12:53:00.000-05:00

I looked as he opened the first seal, that which closed the bread. Reaching in, he withdrew two slices and placed them upon his plate. Then he broke the second seal, freeing the ham from its prison. Smoked ham it was, from the black forest. This ham was carefully laid upon one of the slices of bread. The third seal was then broken, and cheese was loosed upon the world. A powerful swiss cheese it was indeed. Taming the power of the cheese, he sliced it and put the slices on the ham. Then I watched as he broke the fourth seal, channeling all that was mustard unto the ages and upon the other slice, the naked slice of bread. Thus clothed in mustard, it was laid upon the cheese, upon the ham, upon the other bread. Yea, verily, a sandwich had been formed.

His work was not complete, however. He took that sandwich and placed it within his microwave, heating it for twenty seconds on high. Finally, withdrawing the now warm sandwich from the microwave, he spaketh unto all the creatures of the land, the birds of the air and the fish under the sea, "I am destined to eat this sandwich."

And eat it he did, oh yes, eat it he did.

Harangue

2005-01-17T17:15:00.000-05:00

The airplane lands, and we're taxiing to the gate. Behind me, a guy turns on his cell phone and calls somebody. Because he's somewhat loud, I can't help but listen. Plus which, they made me turn my iPod off, so I've got nothing else to do with my ears.

During this conversation my nameless fellow passenger actually refers to the person on the other end of the line as "Woman". As in, "Woman, just come and pick me up!", or angrily, "Woman, you drove my truck! I told you not to do that!" After a short discussion about where "his woman" should park to pick him up, he ends the conversation with a "love you, sweetie" in a completely different tone of voice.

Steganography

2004-05-28T11:53:00.000-05:00

It's Berkeley, so naturally there are bicyclists. And as a matter of fact, the city council has created a set of "Bicycle Boulevards", streets that are especially good to ride on. The only real difference between a bicycle boulevard and a regular street, as far as I can tell, is that these streets have the words "BIKE BLVD" stenciled on the asphalt. I saw one yesterday that had been defaced. Someone had spray-painted in extra letters so the stencil read BIKE BeLoVeD instead. Kind of made my day.

More News!

2004-05-26T13:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, that's it. Those are all the New To You Reruns from my old site. From here on in, it's all new stuff. As a matter of fact, I will try to post a new one every day or two. If I don't, feel free to hit me with a pointy stick.

Blessings

2004-05-26T13:08:00.001-05:00

I finally went to the dentist yesterday, after something like a six-year hiatus. But I figure, now that I have basic dental coverage as part of my student health insurance (thanks to the Graduate Student Union), I can go back. I tell you what, I was concerned. Six years without a checkup? I was convinced that I was going to end up with dentures and braces.

So, I had my xrays done, and the dentist takes a look at them. He chuckles and calls over the hygenist. "Look at this!" So naturally, I'm thinking 'Yikes!', but then he goes on to say, "Have you ever seen roots go that deep?" The hygenist says no and chuckles too. They're laughing about my freakish teeth. Turns out that between the deep roots and curiously strong enamel, my teeth are just fine. Long after the rest of my body has become dust, my teeth will still be in good shape. I think I am going to get back on the fitness wagon, so the rest of me can enjoy my wonderful teeth for a long time.

Simulate

2004-05-26T13:08:00.000-05:00

I'm sure it has happened to everyone. You meet someone new, and immediately think, "This person really reminds me of my old friend so-and-so." It happened just the other day to me at a party. The catch this time was that my old friend so-and-so was also at the party. So, did my new and old friends meet? Yes. Did they notice that they were cast from the same mold? I don't know, didn't ask. But consider. You've probably met someone in your life that reminded other people of you. Did you notice, or did the mirror have someone else in it? This also happened to me, late one night at the bar, drinking beers and (quite literally) talking epistemology with fellow grad students, I'm struck by the sudden strong feeling that this guy I'm talking to is really me. It can be quite disconcerting.

Surfeit

2004-05-26T13:07:00.003-05:00

One long street full of restaurants. Each with a man standing in front, ostensibly the Maitre d'Hotel. In reality, they're more like hawkers, pulling in butts to fill the seats. Places like that always stress me out. We wander to a different section of town, eating at a place called Inn t'Spinnekopke, which means "Inn of the Spider Head". House mussels in a spicy cream sauce with french fries. The Belgians invented french fries. I had my first trappist beer, a Chimay.

Apologies

2004-05-26T13:07:00.002-05:00

It's late, and I want to sleep. My bed is calling, but so is Darryl. The phone rings once, twice. I answer. "Talk about a pretentious load of crap. What the heck are you thinking? You better start explaining what you're up to before I smack you upside the head. First of all, I exist. Don't go all sophomoric philosophy on me. Phillip K. Dick could have pulled that off, but there's no way you're up to that kind of level. So cut it out, okay?"

So I have to apologize both to Darryl (for casting aspersions on his very being) and to my two readers, for inflicting that earlier Word on you. But what the heck, that's what the internet is all about, right?

Repeat

2004-05-26T13:07:00.001-05:00

Now we've made it to Brussels, and we're walking in the Grote Markt, a central plaza area, named for its size (Grote) and function (Markt). Most towns in the northern part of Belgium (called Flanders, apparently) have a Grote Markt. A dark-skinned young woman just walked up to me. Her mind is flying. She gets her eyes poinnted roughly my way and says "You are doing what you want to do" in heavily accented english. Then she mutters an obscenity and wanders off.

Exegesis

2004-05-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

I went to a party this weekend, a friend turned twenty-eight. I haven't hung out with him much recently, but we were roommates when we first moved out to Berkeley. As a matter of fact, Clint and I both lived with Darryl at the time, each answering his ad for a sublet. Little did we know that between the two of us, Clint and I were paying all but five dollars of the rent. So Darryl had it sweet.

Naturally, Darryl was there too. I see him even less than Clint, but he does pop up now and again. As usual, he's either being deep or being stoned. I can never tell.

"You know," he says, "I'm not even really here. I'm just some guy you use when you're getting all pretentious and literary. You want to push some sophomoric philosophy on your readers and don't want to take the blame. You should stand up for what you believe in, man."

I can't take that, when my own figments get out of control. "Look man, you exist. You're out there somewhere, the man himself, who stole from me and my friends and made me pay your rent while you spent your time at the flea market selling car batteries. Don't give me this crap. Just because I use you to illustrate some points doesn't lessen you or your existence in any way. As a matter of fact, it heightens it in a way. I'm making you far more agreeable and interesting than you ever really were."

"But," counters he, "my soul is at stake here. This is like voodoo or something. You're taking advantage of my generosity. I need this head space to think about important stuff, like the nature of God, and you have me all used up on my own nature. This dual existence is wearing me out. I need a break."

Tough for Darryl. He owes me one, so I will continue to use him. At least he is in good company. So he wanders off, grabs two beers and shares one with this other guy with the improbable name of Horselover Fat.

Conversation

2004-05-26T13:06:00.003-05:00

I'm on a plane to Brussels, and I can't sleep. It is supposed to be night, but my body doesn't believe it. So I'm sitting, half watching the in-flight movie (Tron, but this is the second time through). A few rows ahead of me, a man pulls a small book out of his pocket. Without looking at it, he opens to a random page and points. He starts reading from where his finger landed. Sitting there, I wonder: what is the likelihood that he would read the first or last page of his book? I've gotta get some sleep.

Paper

2004-05-26T13:06:00.002-05:00

My newspaper gets stolen every day sometime between the hours of six and ten in the morning. If I get up early to get it, fine. If I sleep in (which I can do, since I am still a student), it disappears. It always disappears, without fail, by ten. Every so often I spin a little fantasy in my head where I stake out the paper to find out who is stealing it. But I think that would make me an old coot before my time.

Affect

2004-05-26T13:06:00.001-05:00

I'm channeling Darryl again. Now we're walking down the street, he's taking me to see some guy with bargain-basement software, probably stolen. Guy's not there, but his pile of software is. About fifty copies of the some math drill software. Weird, but on to Darryl's brain.

"You ever get that feeling that you're just watchin' the movie of your life? I mean you're driving or walking or something, and really you're just controlling the screen. You get kind of detached from what's going on, you don't even feel like you're really in it any more. Happens to me all the time. It seems like a pretty good movie, but it does have some boring parts."

Depth

2004-05-26T13:06:00.000-05:00

I like art. I also like art museums, but I always seem to go through the rooms faster than my companions, and I end up sitting in some hallway, waiting. This time, I found a very large and dark photo print behind glass. Standing at just the right angle, I can stare into the picture and look at the reflection of the other people in the gallery. It looks like I'm appreciating the art, but I'm really appreciating the people behind the art. A family of four moves across my field of view, mom and dad taking their kids to get some culture.

Twelve

2004-05-26T13:05:00.002-05:00

Whoa, flashback day again. Look around, where am I, some kind of attic? Okay, here I am. It is 1987, and I am at a sleepover birthday party. There are about seven of us, in a loft above the birthday boy's garage. I am in eighth grade. I don't really know these other kids, since I am new in town, but I got invited because I share a first name with the birthday boy. We've all recently gotten into playing Dungeons and Dragons, and tonight is the first time I've ever been a Dungeon Master. One of the kids brought a bottle of Southern Comfort and is passing it around. As it reaches me, I pass it on without drinking. I've gotta keep my head, they're depending on me to be the Dungeon Master, right?

Orientation

2004-05-26T13:05:00.001-05:00

In your average men's restroom, above the urinals (am I allowed to say that online?), there are usually posters. This one was about an art show the school was putting on in a week or so. Whoever hung it up did it poorly though, and it was off center. So I'm standing there, doing my thing, reading the poster, when I realize that I've turned about fifteen degrees off kilter, and have been peeing on my shoe. Not the best way to impress people.

Sunshine

2004-05-26T13:05:00.000-05:00

Here's another piece of homework for all you readers out there. Make eye contact and smile. Personally, I do it when I'm riding my bike. People waiting for a bus, riding the other direction, or sometimes sitting in cars all get my smile now. Looking right at people can be startling sometimes. Everyone seems to avert their eyes as they walk by you. It is not sufficient to simply look at someone, though. You must smile at them. Don't be a weirdo and follow people around. Just smile. Everyone will have a better day.

Antecedent

2004-05-26T13:04:00.002-05:00

Overheard at a party: "My husband is dating a married woman. That's okay though, since her husband is dating his first wife." Interpreted one way, you've taken a roundabout way to describe a standard marriage. Interpreted another way (which had me reaching for my whiteboard), you've got an interesting story. It took a few runs through before I got it.

Evil

2004-05-26T13:04:00.001-05:00

I am the Duck of Ill Omen. Twenty feet wide am I, and fifteen long. Wise are you to fear the beat of my mighty wings, for I am the Duck of Ill Omen. Do not run toward or away from me, there is nothing left to do. It is not I that will bring bad times upon you, that task is left to others. I am merely the harbinger. I am the Duck of Ill Omen. Twenty feet wide am I, and fifteen long.

Limp

2004-05-26T13:04:00.000-05:00

I have a bad ankle. My right ankle had some critical ligament rupture about six years ago. So every so often I will turn my ankle on seemingly nothing at all. I'm just walking along, and a tiny crack in the sidewalk will make me fall over. Just this morning, a pencil on the floor in my office put me on the ground, in a great deal of pain. Shortly after, a warm flood of endorphins spread up my leg to my knee. Nothing like nature's painkillers.

Pink

2004-05-26T12:58:00.003-05:00

I couldn't sleep. So I lay there staring at the ceiling, thoughts about the day running through my head, listening to the traffic going by outside my window. Then my room became filled with the red from someone's brake lights. A door opens, slams. I hear a woman crying, yelling at whoever is left in the car. The car drives off, leaving us alone but apart. A few feet from me, but on the other side of my window, a woman's heart is breaking. I roll over and try to think about something else.

Origami

2004-05-26T12:58:00.002-05:00

My ficus tree has cranes in it now. Little paper cranes. Chrissy bought some origami paper the last time we were in Japantown, and she's been experimenting with patterns she downloaded. "Nice swan", I'd say. "It's supposed to be an armadillo!", she says. Apparently, I was holding it upside down. This morning I found a half completed seahorse on my dresser. The cranes were getting out of control, though, on the kitchen table. So now they're in the ficus. If you look even closer, you'll find a dragon and a parrot in there, but it is the nesting cranes that you'll notice first.

Middle

2004-05-26T12:58:00.001-05:00

After watching The Shipping News, I realized that I had been misled by the reviews I had read about the movie. I mentioned this to my wife, who said that most reviews only talk about the beginnings of movies. They can't really talk about the middle or end. But it is the middle that makes the movie.

Advisory

2004-05-26T12:58:00.000-05:00

She presses the operator call, geting the train driver's attention. "Stand three inches away from the microphone, you're too close." Nearby passengers all laugh that she needed so badly to tell the driver this. The next time the driver comes on to announce a station, his voice isn't nearly as distorted as it was.

Captives

2004-05-26T12:57:00.003-05:00

The telephone on the platform is locked in a yellow case. Perhaps someone is worried it will escape, because there it is, a yellow case with the word "Telephone" written on it, padlocked. Just beyond it, a couple sits on a bench waiting for a train. They're in their fifties, but they're necking like teenagers. A train goes by very slowly, while the overhead signs flash "Train won't stop". It stops anyway, to the squeal of breaks. The doors, however, don't open.

Embarassed

2004-05-26T12:57:00.002-05:00

I'm hot. Too hot to wear the jacket I have on. If I take it off, people will see where I spilled coffee earlier that day.

Capitalism

2004-05-26T12:57:00.001-05:00

Chrissy went to the Elephant Pharmacy. Brand new, billed as a "Berkeley Style, Neighborhood Anti-Walgreens Drug Store". She got a yoga mat for herself and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide for her science class. The checker asked if she liked the new store, and how much the hydrogen peroxide cost. There was no price sticker. Chrissy went back to the shelf, but there was nothing on the shelf either. The checker asked if 99 cents sounded okay, and Chrissy thought it sounded like a good deal.

Restraint

2004-05-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

This will not be a ranting space. When I started trying to write for the web, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't create Yet Another Rant Site. So I won't rant. I even thought that I would try to keep politics out of my writing entirely. I might not be able to do that. I will try to be subtle though. It just seems like there is a lot going on in the world that I would like to comment on. Wish me luck.

Isolate

2004-05-26T12:56:00.002-05:00

When I moved to the San Francisco area, I ended up in a town called Pittsburg. Not Pittsburgh, which is in Pennsylvania, but Pittsburg. Look at a BART map and follow the yellow line to the end, really it was closer to Sacramento than San Francisco, I didn't even get SF radio. It really felt like the end of the world, behind my apartment building was undeveloped sere grasslands.

Each day I would get up before sunrise and make my two hour way to my job. By the time I got home, it was dark. I spent weekends with my girlfriend, so I went two months without seeing my home in the sunlight. When I finally did, the parched brown hills behind my building had become green and verdant in the winter rain. I still haven't gotten the hang of California seasons.

Cascade

2004-05-26T12:56:00.001-05:00

A man stops in the middle of the crosswalk, waves back at someone who just called his name. He is slowed just enough that he doesn't clear the intersection until someone else jumps in, she doesn't mind walking against the light, she'll make it out of the intersection before the light goes red. Another man, waiting behind the wheel of a car, cannot turn left until all the pedestrians clear. This doesn't happen, and the opposing traffic starts up before he can go (that woman just barely made it across). Now the man in the car waits a few minutes for the lights to change, but this time he guns it right away, turning left as he gets his green, before the cars in the other direction hit their gas. They honk angrily. Everyone goes on to have a slightly worse day.

Inundate

2004-05-26T12:56:00.000-05:00

While you drive, your radio may be tuned to one station. The other stations are still broadcasting, and those waves are traveling through you as well. Imagine that, you are being washed with Pink Floyd, Madonna, and Beethoven all at the same time. Hundreds of cell phone conversations floating through your head, people making and breaking relationships right there. Maybe even people you know.

Distance

2004-05-26T12:55:00.000-05:00

Jim is a smoker. He rolls his own cigarettes, using Zig Zag papers and some pouch of tobacco I have never seen long enough to tell the brand on. When I visit him at his house, he either smokes on the front porch or sets up a fan in a window and smokes there, crouched down near the window. Sometimes he looks something like a toad, sitting there by that fan, and when he talks his voice gets crackly from the fan blade being nearby.

Originality

2004-05-26T12:54:00.002-05:00

"You think you've thought of something new, and then bam, somebody tells you it is not only old hat, but sophomoric." Darryl is pretty upset. He was really proud of that whole two hypothesis thing, but then he went and saw the movie Signs. Same idea shows up there. So he's peeved. "Funny thing is, though, we both thought of the same idea, independently. Does that mean we're on a vibe, or maybe that we've gotten something, I mean really gotten something, something fundamental, something important." He looks up from his matress on the floor, I'm standing in the doorway. "When a bunch of people all think of the same thing independently, it is either because of something ingrained in them or something ingrained in the environment. I suppose it could be a coincidence, but wouldn't it be cool if it wasn't?" I shrug and head off to my room to watch an action flick.

Fortify

2004-05-26T12:54:00.001-05:00

To adults, the space under the stairs was a place to store christmas ornaments and other seasonal stuff. It had to be kept relatively clean, because that is where the water main entered the house. Just a crawl space behind a closet with a sloping ceiling, nothing interesting at all. But to a child, it was a fort. He put down linoleum that was left over from the kitchen, hung up his father's Boy Scout paraphenalia, and put a stack of Hardy Boys mystery books next to a musty sleeping bag. There was a bare sixty watt light bulb, but this child preferred a flashlight. When they moved away from that house, the little crawlspace reverted back to storage.

Athletic

2004-05-26T12:54:00.000-05:00

I live about six miles from where I work, and I ride my bike most days. I ride home on side streets, under a canopy of trees. When I hit the right street and the right mood, I will take my hands off the handlebar, pedal hard, and pretend I am flying.