Katharine Osborne: Story-a-Day

How I protect my work

2012-05-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

A reader on Twitter just asked me how I protect my work, and the answer is too long for a tweet. Actually it's not, because the short answer is that I don't really do anything. There is an implied copyright just by posting to a blog (anything you post originally online) and while it's weak, it's fine for me right now.

In the past I have had an article I wrote reposted somewhere else without my permission although the byline was intact. I was furious at first, but then it was an article that helped people understand science (the difference between theory, hypotheses, and laws), AND it was being reposted in a place that was more accessible for school children AND I was no longer getting royalties anyway, so I came to the conclusion of 'meh'.

When I worked in non-fiction publishing, occasionally some of our more popular ebooks would come up on the black market in countries that had poor access to book distribution (I'm looking at you India). We were well aware of it, but we had absolutely not recourse other than a sternly worded email perhaps, and certainly not the funds to try to shut the pirates down. It was just something that was accepted as a loss. It happens.

As an indie writer though (and where so much of my stuff is available gratis), I'm not particularly concerned about it. If something I've written pops up somewhere it shouldn't be, I'll be writing sternly worded emails. If someone writes something derivative from something I've written (i.e. fanfiction), I'll probably just do the Snoopy dance and consume a celebratory hot chocolate, because to me, that's a fantastic milestone on the way to being a 'real author' *in the voice of Disney's Pinocchio* (I already am a real author, I swear. I'm traditionally pubbed in non-fiction. Also, I'm listed on IMDB. I've got street cred. Not much, but I've got it. And besides, indie authorship is real authorship...I'm not being neurotic).

The only thing that would really bother me is if someone passed off my work as their own. Since the market for short stories is astoundingly terrible, I doubt anyone would bother to do this. But if they somehow succeeded, I'd resort to a sternly worded email. If that fails, I will hunt down their mailing address and send them as many mail order catalogs and unpaid magazine subscriptions as I can find until I reach a satisfying level of catharsis. And then I'll send them a few more.

Seriously though, I have used the WGA to register stuff in the past (mainly screenplays I was trying and failing miserably to get agented--they will only accept stuff that is registered by the WGA). It's relatively cheap, and I'd be willing to do it again for any longer length stuff (including novels). Another option is using a notary, but registration is actually easier because it's all done digitally online.

Macbook issues resolved

2012-02-16T01:44:00.001-08:00

I finally got my Macbook debricked, although the hard drive is still rather suspect. So that means I need to get back into the groove of writing stories! (Scroll down for 205, which I just posted). In other news, I entered a short story contest for the first time. I expect a rejection (I really have no idea what to expect actually). I've never formally competed before. Wish me luck!

296/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Le chant des coquelicots" by Amelie-les-crayons

2012-02-14T03:18:00.001-08:00

You can get it over the counter now. It comes in a red box with stylized poppies on it as if it's whispering to you that what you'll experience is equivalent to striding carefree through a springtime field. The last time I went in to get some, the clerk at the checkout counter touched my hand as I slid the box over to her to scan.

"I can help you with that," she said. She was mousey with big eyes and the downtrodden look of someone who's worked retail for too long. She may have been flirting with me, I don't know. It wasn't on my mind. Plus she was short. And a woman. Not like any of that stuff matters now.

I spend a lot of time gazing at the ceiling with my arm over my chest. It's not that it puts you into a stupor, my thoughts are always as clear and prolific as any other time...they are just more focused, more neutral. When I'm on it, I feel like my neurons are rearranging themselves into circuits.

"You've been coming in early," said my boss one day at work when I first started taking it. He's a tall man (not that I'm into that) with wide shoulders and carefully combed hair. I'm not sure how smart he actually is--he delegates well, which means either he has no clue what goes on in the office, or he's an excellent sluggard and should have my admiration, but he's too bland an individual for me to bestow that honor to him.

"Is that a problem?" I said.

"No. No. You're just seem to be working harder."

"Can I get a raise?" He walked right into that one. Minus one for the intelligence.

He laughed nervously before fistbumping the wall of my cubicle and shuffling off and I thought about maybe reapplying my new found focus to pursuits other than work.

I took up painting. I had the free time now, so what the hell. At first I tried to copy famous works, but everything I made was objectively awful. I learned though. I spent about six hours everyday painting, so I learned quickly. Canvases were expensive so I painted over earlier things. I even bought a few atrocious paintings from the secondhand store--the sorts of things that depicted sad clowns and barns lit by sunsets--and painted over those since they were cheaper than fresh canvases. I really should have just done everything digitally, but I think I needed the physicality of it. The smell. The presence of the canvases piling up around my apartment and sort of filling in the spaces.

When it got to the point where I had paths between the piles, and I was taking one red box of pills a day, I stopped painting. I was just completely calm and incapable of boredom. I no longer needed to amuse myself. What started as a way to drown out the sorrow, mask it, morphed into a occupation with stillness in every sense of the word. Sitting still, laying still and staring at the ceiling, not even counting the bumps and divots and imperfections, and feeling how my mind was still. Apparently people used to meditate for decades to achieve that within you/without you nirvana.

It wasn't fun though, not that fun mattered.

I sold all the paintings online, in efficient, concise auctions--not that I made back the money I put into just the paints but that wasn't the point. The piles needed to go. They got in the way of the stillness. Then I sold my furniture, everything except the mattress. For awhile I had the urge to rip up the carpet and sell that too but I was afraid of the unfinished flooring underneath and how it would affect my stillness.

And then one day when it was raining hard and I was laying face down on the mattress just listening, I realized the stillness was the sorrow. There had been no real escape after all.

So I called.

"I'm sorry," I said into my cell phone.

There was a silence.

"Where have you been?" came the reply.

"At home. At work," I said. Then I added, "with some frequent trips to the pharmacy."

There was a sigh. She knew what I was hinting at.

"You've got to get off that stuff. There's been some studies in Sweden and--"

"Yes, I know. It should be banned."

"Is this why you've been--"

"No," I interrupted. "I was just...guilty."

"Are you on it now?"

"Yes," I said.

"I'm sorry you had to go through all that, all the aftermath," she said. "But you have to know I don't forgive you for what you did."

"I know."

"I guess that's it then," she said after a pause. "That's all I ever wanted to say."

"Okay," I said.

We hung up. I sat and stared at the empty red box beside me as the rain quelled to a quiet drizzle and the need for stillness didn't seem so urgent.

295/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse

2012-02-13T05:28:00.070-08:00

"I can't stop," said the girl with green eyes.

"Guards!" screamed Eva.

The room was plushly furnished, with stacks of priceless paintings piled in the corners, and lit with a roaring fire to fend off the winter night. The girl and the woman faced off, both terrified. The girl cradled a machine gun in one hand and a grenade in the other with the pin pulled; her thumb held down the lever.

"They can't hear you," said the girl, shaking.

"Who are you?" asked Eva, clutching the back of an overstuffed leather chair.

"I am the eyes of millions," said the girl.

"Wha..."

The girl took another step forward.

"I keep dying," said the girl. "Over and over and over and then there is black and then I start over and live again...the same life, played out a little differently each time, and each time I remember the lives before...and my deaths."

"I don't understand!" Eva cried.

"I remember. I remember!" screamed the girl. She calmed herself. "There were times that I survived the gas chamber, times that I lived in America and saw things you will never get the chance to see...marvellous things, times where I lived to a hundred or more, but I always died again no matter what. And mostly I died here in this war, naked behind barbed wire, in the mud, in the cold, in this winter. And there were always the memories of the people who died here with me at the hands of people like you. At the hands of your..." The girl couldn't speak the words caught in her throat.

Eva launched herself at the girl but the girl was quick and swung the gun around, squeezing out a single round that hit Eva in the stomach. Eva slumped, groaning, and sank to her knees. The girl stood over her.

"It took me several tries to figure out how to escape from the ghetto. The first problem was that I had to wait until my body was old enough to move around on my own. And then I had to find you, to get to you. I tried killing him, but it wasn't satisfying. It didn't matter in the end, because he was merely removed, freed from feeling anything, and it all just started over again. But if I kill you, it will hurt him in a way that his own death couldn't. If I torture you, he might feel it."

"He doesn't feel anything...ever," sobbed Eva. "Not what you want him to feel."

"Everyone feels sadness," said the girl, "when something close to them is ripped away."

"Not him," said Eva, falling to the carpet. Her sweater was beginning to soak through with blood.

"Well, we'll see."

"What about you? This won't relieve your own sadness. This will do nothing."

"I haven't been sad for a long time. For many lives. There is only anger left. Maybe when that goes, and there is nothing left, maybe then I'll finally die. But probably not. As I said, I'm the eyes of millions...but I'm incapable of just watching."

The girl kneeled down next to Eva, put down the gun and stroked the hair on her head. Then she lifted her thumb from the lever.

294/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "SambaDa Batucada" by SambaDa

2012-02-12T04:20:00.304-08:00

It was an honor to live inside the temple of Gidebato. Cynric, tall and lean, wore the mantelletta of a third year acolyte, which was always getting in the way of climbing ladders and crawling through tight corridors as he made repairs to the infrastructure of the temple. It was said to be, in ancient times, a luminous place and a conductor of thoughts, but now the lights were constantly winking in and out as the wires leading to them rusted away with the constant flow of drip water from the humidity trapped inside. But as much as the endless chore of repairing wires annoyed him, Cynric found the solitude, the gentle patter of water droplets, and the too frequent mild electrical shocks, to be a salve from the regular business of the temple: the singing, the praying, the kneeling, the reading, and most of all, having to listen to the abbots in their constant high-pitched debates over doctrine.

"Thank you for coming, brother Cynric," said Bishop Tristan.

They were in Tristan's office, a small, sparsely decorated space walled with the same dull metal that made up the infrastructure in the underbelly of the temple. The bishop sat behind a black desk and Cynric kneeled on a raised cushion. Cynric hadn't had much personal dealings with him, but the bishop seemed to be the sort of man who made himself feel familiar to anyone in his company. Cynric thought him to be a transparent, functional bureaucrat.

Cynric bowed his head in deference to the higher ranked man.

"I have news to tell you, though you'll wonder why," said Tristan smiling curtly. "We have a new donative, from among our number of agapetae. Does that interest you?"

"That's usually where they come from," said Cynric.

"And indeed, there is nothing unusual in that. But our records show that you know her. That you have known her." The bishop tilted his head down to emphasize the forbidden nature of what he implied.

"Olympia," said Cynric.

"Does that not rouse any emotion in you?" asked Tristan. "To know that she wishes to sacrifice herself to Gidebato?"

Cynric lowered his head.

"It is her choice. Her body. Her mind. It was always ever her choice."

Tristan stood and eased his way in front of the desk. He reached out and put a hand on Tristan's shoulder.

"It is not a sin to love," said the bishop. "The sin is in the method of expression."

"Anything that you think may or may not have happened, happened before I pledged myself to the temple--"

"But not her. Not her pledge."

Tristan squeezed Cynric's shoulder then let his hand fall.

"No, not hers," said Cynric.

The bishop crossed his arms in front of himself and smiled warmly.

"She has asked for you to perform the ritual."

Cynric lost his breath and his face was a fleeting picture of torment. He leaned forward and gripped the cushion and gasped.

"Not me..." he said, his voice barely audible.

"I know this will be your first time performing the ritual. And she was your...intimate friend. But I have questioned her thoroughly, and I am convinced that she is determined to make the sacrifice out of pure love. She worked hard and has purged all negative thought from her mind. She is as ready as any donative has ever been."

Cynric nodded and straightened up.

"Perhaps," said the bishop, "it will help you if you tell me about her."

"What?" said Cynric, astonished.

"These walls are silent," chuckled the bishop, "and you do not need to go into any of the more...material details, but it might help you accept this honor if you recall who she is, to you, and why she would ask for you specifically."

"I'm not sure I can," said Cynric. His eyes were welling up. "I am lacking. I'm not sure I will ever ascend to the priesthood. The will for it is not in me. I came to the temple because I was desperate. She...she always wanted to commit herself fully to Gidebato. I was the distraction from that path. When she left me and began to pay her penance, I was lost. At least in the temple we would be under the same roof, even if we never spoke to each other again. And so you see I am weak. I do not devote myself to Gidebato. Not in the way."

"You aren't as weak as you think. It takes a strong man to confess a weakness. Why do you think that she asked for you?"

"I think you already know the answer," said Cynric.

"The answer is not important for me, it is important for you and I think you should speak it."

"The passage from life to afterlife is said to be painful," said Cynric. "Disorienting. Frightful. I suppose I might be able to bring her some calm in her passage. For her it would be a kindness."

"And for you?"

"Torture."

"And what about it will hurt you?"

Cynric looked at the ceiling, with tears beginning to stream down his face.

"She will be gone forever," said Cynric.

The bishop's face immediately hardened.

"Then you have doubts about Gidebato itself."

"I have never been sure about the nature of the afterlife." Cynric met the bishop's hard gaze with equal intensity. "We have old books and ancient documents and manuals on how to operate Gidebato, but none of it ever quite made sense to me. In the most ancient sources, those closest to the origin of Gidebato, there is description of sacrifice, but the experience of the donatives in afterlife is never mentioned, and we have no idea they actually live on!"

"That is faith brother," said Tristan sternly. "You are correct, in a sense. You will not ascend to the priesthood until you are able to purge these doubts. But it is not a sin to have them. You must work to develop your faith." He stood to his full height. "I think it will benefit your journey to faith to perform the ritual. And you will do so."

Cynric was dismissed and he spent the next few hours curled up in a wet access corridor several stories below the bishop's chamber. He stared at the streams of water snaking down the walls and felt cold inside.

At the hour of the sacrifice, Cynric was dressed by several attendants in heavy ceremonial robes, in a small room off the main nave of Gidebato. Several hundred agapetae began to pound metal drums to work up the passion of the congregation. That was Olympia's cue to enter the nave. Cynric felt his throat go instantly dry. The drums stopped and the congregation errupted in deafening cheers. That was his cue. Cynric donned the mozzetta and put up the hood.

The doors into the nave were opened and the cheering subsided. Cynric looked at the carpet before him, away from the leering attention of the crowds, and most especially any sight of Olympia at the altar. The priests began to chant. Cynric allowed his feet to move him forward, and after an infinitesimally short minute he arrived at the altar. The priests finished their chant and Cynric pushed back his hood and looked up.

There she was, standing in diaphanous white robes in front of the terminus, smiling at him. She held her hands out towards him. He accepted her hands, cool and soft, and somehow already devoid of the life he remembered there being in them. She pulled him up onto the dais. He glanced at the menacing terminus, an erect torus that he always thought looked like a judging, all-seeing eye.

"I am ready," she said.

"I am not," whispered Cynric. "Please do not do this."

Olympia smiled deeply but furrowed her brow.

"You must help me," she said. "Yours is the last face I want to see. I want to take that with me into Gidebato."

Cynric whimpered slightly.

"No, please, it's not me. I would do this for another, but not you." It was a lie. He would not do it for anyone but he thought the wording might convince her that she was special. That her life was still worth living.

Olympia's smile faded.

"In this moment, let us not fight. The matter has been decided."

She put his hands on her shoulders and drew him closer to the terminus. Two agapetae attendants rose to the dais and positioned her precisely in the terminus.

"I can't," said Cynric. He felt the sense of feeling leave his fingertips and then his hands.

"Do not be afraid," said Olympia. "It has been my life's desire to guide our people through the stars. To plot courses, and to think in numbers. In this act you will help me achieve all that I've ever wanted. So push."

The attendants left the dais and Cynric with breath shallow, stood alone in front of Olympia. He wanted to run, to leave, to be the coward and the outcast, but there was a spark of anger growing in him and there was no room for it to go.

He pushed.

The terminus accepted her head. He heard her skull crack as the needle went in and he watched the life leave her eyes. The terminus revved up, and he could feel the hairs on his arm raise up with the electricity in the air. She smiled one last time and the congregation began to sing a hymn.

"She is still with us," said Bishop Tristan. It was a week after the ritual and he and Cynric met again, but this time it was in Cynric's cell which was filled with documents and sundry tools, and the walls were plastered with wiring diagrams. Cynric laid on his back in his cot and Tristan leaned against the door.

"Do you really think that?" asked Cynric. His voice was raspy. He had refused to eat or drink more than a few grams each day. It was just enough to give him a taste, a taunt, and not enough to keep him on his feet.

"I do," said Tristan. "But more than that, I know. She is all around us now." He put his hand against the wall. "She is infused in Gidebato, in these very walls."

Cynric narrowed his eyes at Tristan.

"And by what mechanism does that happen? How can a person exist in a wall? I mean, if you really want to think about it."

"You are angry," said Tristan.

"It is not a sin to be angry," said Cynric.

"No, it is not. But be careful how you express it." Tristan looked at the different walls in the room. "It is written that the world itself is a vessel. It is a container for all living things. When an organism dies, it goes back to that container and becomes a part of it. And people are special. Through the terminus we may preserve our minds and become one with the mind of the world, and become more than just material for the container--"

"You know, it's just words to me at this point. It doesn't have any meaning and I'm no closer to approaching faith than I ever was, and now I no longer care."

Tristan sat down on the cot next to Cynric's feet. He folded his hands atop his knees.

"This will pass," said Tristan. "This anger."

"The anger in me will never pass," said Cynric. "Maybe there's a chance I could go back to the routine of just repairing things. Maybe I can recede from all other duties. But the anger will always be there. I hate myself for ever having loved."

"It is when we are at our most vulnerable. To give love. There is faith in that."

"It most certainly wasn't towards Gidebato! How is it faith?"

"Not all faith is religious."

Cynric glared at Tristan then turned on his side and faced the wall. Tristan patted Cynric's feet then stood. He opened the door and stood in the frame.

"I will leave you here to make your decision: to keep your commitment to your order or to leave." Cynric didn't respond and the bishop looked down at his feet before leaving Cynric alone.

Cynric pressed his hand against the wall and felt its cold solidity and wondered if, just maybe, Olympia was in there somewhere, somehow.

293/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Let Forever Be" by The Chemical Brothers

2012-02-11T05:05:00.109-08:00

The two technicians rolled a large table into the sampling room, the walls of which were completely covered in loudly ticking clocks. On the table was a massive rectangular slab, which was frozen and giving off vapors into the higher temperature room. The larger of the two technicians, who was called Larger, wore a white pillbox hat with a ring of black brocade, but otherwise they were dressed the same in black lab coats and black overalls. Their faces were sallow, oblong, and dusty white. Their eyes were small, round, and beady black and they wore thick cylindrical goggles on their foreheads.

"The scanner said this one had a type three occlusion," said the smaller technician, who was called Smaller.

"Ooh, that must be bad for him," said Larger. "People with type three occlusions never have happy lives, do they...We'll have to perform at least three samplings to locate the occlusion."

"Won't that increase the risk of memory loss?"

"Only in his later life, Smaller. Now help me prep the saw."

Smaller tapped its foot on the floor and a hatch opened up. A large circular saw zoomed up from the cavity under the floor and flew to Smaller's hand.

"Very good technique!" admired Larger.

Smaller handed over the saw and Larger showed Smaller how to start it by pulling on a cord. The device roared to life.

"Now the trick," said Larger, shouting over the noise of the saw, "is to cut precisely perpendicular to the life block. If you get it at a slight angle, then when the ends are fused back together their memories will get a bit scrambled."

Smaller nodded that he understood.

"You should practice this on animals when you get a chance and when the sampling room is free of course. Now put my goggles down, will you?"

Smaller put Larger's goggles down, then their own. Larger carefully pressed the saw to the block and guided it through. The table was hollowed out in the middle so the saw could cut cleanly through blocks. Larger finished the cut and withdrew the saw. Smaller separated the split blocks.

"Now this is the really hard part of sampling," said Larger. "This is a fine art! The slice must be as narrow as possible, one unit wide, although two units is acceptable if you are not taking many samples from the same block. The slice must not also fail to be less than one unit in any part. It must be uniformly one unit wide, or as I said, two units wide, but uniformly so. Otherwise you will have a problem when refusing the ends. Do you understand?"

Smaller nodded.

"Good. That's good. Now I will take the slice."

Larger carefully sliced off a segment precisely one unit wide and Smaller marvelled at the handiwork. Then Larger repeated the whole process two more times, taking two more slices from different areas of the block. Larger powered down the saw and handed it back to Smaller who popped it back into the floor.

Then Larger gave Smaller the first slice.

"Hold it up to the light now," said Larger, and Smaller did.

The rectangle showed a human man brushing his teeth in a mirror. Smaller tilted the slice this way and that to catch all the detail in the image.

"What do you think?" asked Larger.

"It looks normal to me. I can't find any obvious anomalies."

"Very good Smaller! You have a keen eye."

Larger took the first slice and handed Smaller the second.

"Now what do you see?" asked Larger.

The man cowered on his bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. He was looking over to the corner of the room where a long hooked object floated in mid air.

"He looks very unhappy," said Smaller.

"That's usually a good indication that an occlusion is present. What else?"

"There's something in the air there...could that be the occlusion?"

"Yes, indeed it is...now what is it?"

"It...it looks like a human arm."

"Correct! You've done very well Smaller!"

"Do we need to check the third slice?" asked Smaller.

"We have located the occlusion, and since occlusions are usually just foreign objects that have been twisted sideways they do not last longer than they are wide, so it is unlikely that the occlusion will show up in more than one sample slice. However it's always a good practice check all slices."

"And sometimes the occlusion does not show up in any slice and you have to resample."

"Yes! Correct again Smaller. But remember that the subject's behavior in the slices will indicated whether the subject has previously encountered the occlusion, and you can narrow down the resampling zone from there."

Larger handed Smaller the last slice, and Smaller looked through it.

"Oh, the poor man. He is old and near the end of his life. He is begging on the street. He's laying in a gutter with dirty clothes and his hand is up seeking free compensation."

"Yes. This is a classic case of long-term human reaction to an occlusion. Very sad."

Larger took the slice from Smaller and laid it back down on the others.

"Oh, you are free to save these if you wish since they can't be reincorporated during the fusing process. They have a tendency to slip and that's no good at all. So yes, you can take the slices home. Sometimes they are very pretty and make excellent wall art if you install a lamp behind them. Now we must perform the extraction."

Larger tapped the floor and up shot the extractor tool. It had a laser and a targeted matter magnet. The floor resealed and Larger rolled the extractor tool over the segment of the life block with the occlusion. Larger adjusted the height and turned on the laser. The segment lit up in a violent multitude of colors.

"Always remember to leave your goggles on for this part of the process as well," reminded Larger. "Now get in there and move the guide laser around until the output dims. This will show the extractor where exactly to aim."

Smaller crouched down and moved the laser as Larger directed. Smaller made small movements and monitored the change in colors. When they were dullest, Smaller locked off the guide."

"Excellent! I've seen older students unable to get a lock half so quickly. You exhibit a remarkable talent for your age Smaller!"

Smaller nodded, quietly reveling in the praise.

"Now you may turn on the extractor. Just press that button."

Smaller did so, and the matter magnet began to hum.

"It takes a moment to build up strength," said Larger. "It's important to get the guide laser precisely locked because you don't want to extract non-foreign material, which the matter magnet will attract if you are not careful. That alone can destroy the entire life block, which obviously, is not good."

Smaller nodded again, and they both waited patiently for the matter magnet. After a minute there was schwooop, and the magnet turned itself off.

"Ah see? There it is! The offending arm! I wonder who it belonged to. It must be missing from another life block somewhere. Ah well."

They both peered at the tiny arm. Larger picked it off and placed it next to the slices.

"So we fuse the blocks back together now?" asked Smaller.

"Not yet. You have skipped a step..."

"Oh! The filler. I'm so sorry Larger."

"It's quite all right."

They put the extractor back in the floor and took out a large cylinder filled with clear gel.

"This is the easiest part of the process because there is no need to be precise. The gel substrate is completely benign and will not affect the subject in any way. Well, other than rendering an otherwise noticeable hole in their space-time completely invisible."

Larger handed the cylinder to Smaller. There was a plunger on one end and a needle three units wide on the other. Smaller inserted the needle into the hole made by the arm and pressed down on the plunger. The hole filled with the clear gel and Smaller pulled it away before it was over full.

"Such admirable handiwork! Now we fuse them together. We do not need any specialized tools because the life block will naturally re-fuse once the segments are pressed together. You get on that end, and I'll stay on this end--"

They lined up the segments of the block and pressed them all together.

"Excellent! Now we just give that a few minutes to re-fuse and then we can roll it back into storage. You've done a fine job here today, Smaller."

"Thank you. I do have a question though."

"Ask away!"

"What happens to the man's life, now that the occlusion has been removed. He doesn't actually change."

"That's a very good question, Smaller, and you're right, he doesn't change. He will still think that the arm is there, but others will no longer be able to perceive it. He will still be shunned as a madman. That, as you've seen, is the story told in that life block. There is no way to alter it."

"But the matter magnet--couldn't that be employed to rearrange things in his life? So maybe he never sees the arm if other objects are constantly blocking it."

"That's an interesting hypothesis Smaller, but the time it would take to rearrange everything in a suitable manner that does not introduce more problems, well, let's just say it's not worth our time. We have more fundamental work to perform."

"I see," said Smaller, who looked suddenly downcast. "Come to think of it, I would like to take these slices home with me."

"Oh course! They will make a good souvenir of your first sampling. And now the lesson concludes."

They both put their goggles back up on their foreheads. Larger smiled broadly, and patted Smaller on the back. Smaller picked up the slices and sighed unhappily.

Bricked Macbook and Delays

2012-02-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

So...I'm already terribly behind on my stories (still stuck in November), and I bricked my Macbook two days ago (hard drive failure). I can't afford to replace it. I'm stuck to having to write stories in the middle of the night when my dad isn't on his computer (which sucks on a number of levels...not the least of which is that I'm 35 and living at home again (and get to hear about adventures with dentures)...I digress). Anyway. I intend to persevere and finish on time, but bear with me because I might be posting more flash, badly autocorrected on my iPad. *Sigh*. Stick with me readers!

292/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Sometime Around Midnight (Acoustic)" by The Airborne Toxic Event

2012-02-10T02:20:00.119-08:00

Bjarne silently stood in the middle of the living filled with chatty people half-listening to the recordings of independent and obscure musicians. His friend Kevin stood next to him, scanning the room for more interesting people to talk to. The red cup of beer Bjarne held to the center of his chest began to slip from his grip as his eyelids fluttered.

"Hey man, you alright?" asked Kevin, waving his hand in front of Bjarne's face. "Are you...are you falling asleep dude?"

"Wha..." Bjarne jerked his eyelids wide open. "No...I..."

"Dude. Seizure? Do we need to call an ambulance for you? You look confused."

"I don't have seizures. I don't think so..."

"How many beers have you had?"

Bjarne looked down at his cup.

"Just this one. I don't remember..."

"You don't remember how many beers you've had?" Kevin took the cup from him. "Gimme your keys too."

"You drove," said Bjarne.

"Oh. Yeah."

"You're the designated not-drinker."

"Yes I know. Look man, what happened to you? That was a little concerning."

"It wasn't a dream. It was like deja vu, but not the past, just...I don't know, other. Like I belong somewhere else, or I'm from somewhere else. Like not time, but space."

Kevin looked at Bjarne skeptically.

"Do you smell anything funny? Maybe you've had a stroke."

"No, I--"

Bjarne saw a woman in white with long black hair flowing down her shoulders standing across the room, staring directly at him. Kevin followed his gaze.

"Wow," said Kevin. "She is way too well dressed to have been invited to this party. Do you know her?"

"I don't know. I don't remember seeing her before, but she's familiar."

"You know, she's kind of a little creepy," said Kevin. "Like Galadriel." He took a long chug from Bjarne's beer. "It's like she's looking at you with her X-ray vision."

"She knows me--"

The woman flicked up her arm, palm towards Bjarne, and out of his navel and through his shirt shot a glowing, ephemeral chord to her hand and she wrapped it twice around her wrist and pulled it taut. Kevin's jaw dropped and the rest of the people in the room screamed or bolted up from their seats, but they didn't have much time to react before the room folded away from Bjarne and the woman on the axis the chord made, with people falling down to the walls, pretzels floated weightless, and beer and wine rained down from various cups, and then everything froze in place and faded in brilliance. The space around the pair became black. Bjarne shivered.

The woman kept coiling the chord around her arm, pulling herself quickly to Bjarne. When she was next to him she spun him around and pressed her body into his back, then wrapped the cord around the both of them.

"What are you doing?" asked Bjarne, squeaking out the words.

"Binding you to me, little rope man," she said in a voice that could have come from Lauren Bacall in 1942 while simultaneously smoking six unfiltered cigarettes.

"Okay," said Bjarne in a high voice. "Do you have...fruit? You smell very strongly of mangoes." He twitched his nose and grimaced. "You're standing really close to me."

"Zedoary."

"What?"

"You're smelling zedoary. Not mangoes."

"I don't know what that is, but okay."

"How are you doing," she said.

"Fine?" Bjarne struggled against the cord windings.

"I don't think you are," she said. "I've been looking for you."

"You have?"

"You've seen things you want to forget. Something recent."

"Yes." Bjarne blanched. "What's going on?"

"I created you little rope man. A long time ago and again and again. But I'm lazy and I cut corners and now those corners are showing and I'm here to fix you."

Bjarne blinked several times trying to form a coherent response but nothing managed to coalesce inside his mind.

"Don't worry," she said, and kissed his neck. "Just tell me what you think you saw...what you want to forget."

Bjarne swallowed hard and closed his eyes.

"It was a beast, muscular like a bull, with skin made of shiny onyx. It's eyes were milky white and I think it might have been blind because it was sniffing me out, snorting in hot breaths. And it had a wide mouth that went from ear-to-ear and it had multiple rows of teeth like a shark."

The woman sighed.

"Anything else?"

"It was as if the world had been torn apart. I mean the world was normal before that, though I wasn't who I am now, but similar. I was me, but I could have been some other person somewhere else. It's strange. And then the sky fell. There's no other way to say that. And people panicked and ran and screamed as those beasts chewed their way up from the ground."

He twisted his head around to face her.

"It's real isn't it? Wasn't it, I mean. After what you did here in the room, that has to be real too. Right?"

She leaned her chin on his shoulder.

"Yes," she said sadly. "I keep fixing the world, and it keeps falling apart. I don't think it has much longer. It lived a long life, but it will be done soon, as all things come to an end."

Bjarne pressed his cheek to her head.

"Don't fix me," he said. "I'd rather know the truth."

"But you're a rope man. You don't have the capacity to understand. The knowledge will tear you apart. All the little fibers will come untwisted!"

Bjarne wriggled and freed a hand. He wrapped his fingers around the glowing cord, pulled, and wrapped a length of it around his own wrist.

"No they won't," he said. "I'm sure of it. And you seem like you could use some help."

The woman hugged him tightly and let out a small plaintive moan.

"No one's ever offered to help me before," she said. "I thank you."

"Maybe if you told everybody, maybe we could all help."

She put her hand on the side of his face and looked deeply into his eyes.

"It's not your burden. It's mine alone. For eternity. Even when the world is dust, it's my duty to try to sweep it together."

"I'm sorry," said Bjarne.

She kissed him and his insides began to boil; he felt dizzy.

"You okay?" asked Kevin.

Bjarne put a hand over his mouth, suppressing the urge to retch. The burning in his abdomen started to subside. Kevin walked back to him and put his arm over his shoulder.

"You all right buddy?" he asked again.

Bjarne nodded. He stood up straight and looked around. They were standing under a streetlight next to a parking meter in the city. He couldn't remember how he got there.

"Yeah, it's like...I feel like I was ripped in two. Something's gone. No, that's just bullshit. I don't know what I'm saying. I'm okay. I think I had too much to drink."

"Sure, well let's get you home then," said Kevin. "If you need to puke though, let me know. I just had the car detailed."

They walked towards Kevin's car and when Bjarne was waiting for Kevin to unlock the doors, he looked up at the sky and wondered if the stars could ever fall.

291/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

2012-02-09T15:40:00.051-08:00

Do you remember when we first met? I was small and you were happy. You hugged me and patted my fur and scratched my ears and I licked your face. I like the way you tasted. You don't taste like that anymore, not for awhile.

Please wake up.

You're fingers taste like my old food bowl. Do you remember that? You're mom used to feed me. And she used to yell at me, and you would yell back at her for me because I was too scared to. Because she fed me. And I like food.

Please wake up.

Do you remember when your face would get wet? And you would slam doors? And then you would hug me and I would lick the salt from your face. And then I would lick your feet and you would laugh and hug me more.

Please wake up.

Do you remember when we ran away together? The grass was wet and there were worms out but you wouldn't let me stop to sniff them you would just pull on the rope and hiss at me. And we slept next to each other in the open night in the alley where the big dog peed. And you kept me warm and I kept you warm and we weren't scared because we were together.

Please wake up.

And then we went to that house with the other people. There were so many smells. They yelled at you but you didn't yell back and so I yelled at them but then they hit me and your face got wet and we hid in the basement with the spiders for awhile. I was happy when we left that place and it was a sunny day and everything smelled nice.

Please wake up.

Do you remember when we started to follow the road? The cars were big and scared me and they ran fast, faster than we could ever run. But you could stop them, and then we would get in. And there were different people in each of the cars and they had strange smells and some of them talked to me nicely and some of them ignored me, but I tried to be nice to everyone because you wanted me to be nice and I love you.

Please wake up.

But now you are here in a car that ran too fast and the people driving fell asleep and you were asleep, and I was asleep for awhile but you won't wake up. And your face is wet but it tastes like my old food bowl, not like just salt. I've yelled and yelled but my throat hurts now, and why won't you answer me? I promise you I'll keep following you because I love you. Please don't ignore me.

Please wake up.

290/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Relator" by Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson

2012-02-08T14:31:00.129-08:00

She shook in her cage when she saw him enter the kitchen accompanied by a flick of the light switch. She hid her eyes from the light--her pupils were unable to dilate closed.

"Hhnnnnnnngrrrrr," she growled, then slammed her back into the top of the cage.

Wynn dropped the plastic bag he was holding on the floor. He pulled out one of the wooden kitchen chairs from the table and sat down. He pulled off his muddy boots and sat for a moment listening to the chug-chug-chug of the generator outside. He thought about where he might acquire some solar panels.

"Rrrunnnnnnthh," she grunted.

He turned his attention back to her. She was the neighbor's teenage daughter. Her head was shaved. She was originally in jeans and a shirt but those were too difficult to get on and off when she soiled them, so he dressed her in his dead mother's old nightgowns. She was still clean tonight.

"Grrrrreunnnnn," she moaned. She sniffed at the air.

"Yes, I've brought you some dinner. It's dead though, I'm sorry."

He got up and went into the living room and found his slippers. He put them on. He went into the downstairs bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at an array of leather belts and straps hanging from the shower curtain rod. He checked to see which ones were dry. He pulled down three, and twisted and folded them back and forth to make them more pliable. He turned off the light and went back to the kitchen.

He laid the straps over the cage, and she shook it from side to side.

"Yes, I know you're hungry. Hold on."

He picked up the bag and opened it out onto the table. Out slide a dead badger, its foot a bloody mangled mess.

"Poor thing," he said. "I need to get more live traps. Those leg traps are a little inhumane."

He pulled out the chair closest to the badger, then crouched down to her cage and unlocked the door. She skidded to the back and bared her broken teeth. He took a leather strap in his hands then opened the door.

"Come on," he said. "You want to eat, don't you?"

She lowered her head and crawled towards him. He snatched her wrists and pulled her out. She pulled back but she was too small to resist, even with her strength. She tried to bite his arm but couldn't get through the two layers of leather coat he wore at all times. She leveraged herself off the cage, pushing him off balance. They fell squirming to the floor, but he managed to put his weight on her and quickly bound her arms behind her with the leather strap. She growled but lost her resistance and went limp. He took up a second strap and bound her feet.

He picked her up and maneuvered her into the chair. She immediately dove her face in the badger and chewed at the hair. He sat down heavily in the chair opposite her and held down the badger's head so she would have some purchase on the body. He watched her tear into the skin then start sucking out the organs.

"You know, you've turned me into a vegetarian," he said. He smiled weakly and let his thoughts roam for a few moments. "You know," he continued, "when I first met you, I didn't know what to do. You were practically frozen in the snow. Too small to survive among the others, but still a danger to me. But you were just a child..."

She started cracking apart the spinal column of the badger. The sounds reverberated throughout the kitchen. Wynn looked at the clock on the wall with its stopped hands, and then the wall phone he hadn't touched in half a year. he looked at the cans of food he'd stockpiled in one corner of the room, and which were also stacked up between the counter and the cupboards, in the cupboards, and out in the back of the garage.

"Maybe I could last a decade," he said. "I'm just not sure it's fair to keep you here, just so I can have someone to talk to. To talk at."

He sighed deeply and put his head down on the table. She stopped eating and looked at him, then stretched her head to his hands. She licked his fingers, then resumed chewing on a kidney. He looked up. Her eyes darted to him then back to the badger.

Soon she was done with the badger, only bits of hair and the teeth remained. She had no problems with the bones, but she was always picky about eating teeth. She sat slumped in the chair. Wynn cleared away the bits from the table, then he stood over her. She looked up briefly and furrowed her brow. He untied her arms and they fell loosely to her sides. Then he knelt down and untied her ankles. He brushed his hands over the sore spots. Then he stood again, and was a little surprised that she stayed so motionless.

He took her elbow and pulled her to her feet and made her stand. She was a little unsteady, she was not used to standing, but gained her footing after a few moments. She looked down at his hand that held her arm.

He pulled her towards the kitchen door. He opened it, then the screen door. It was already dark from the overcast and rain, but would be also be night soon. The dimness comforted her eyes. He let go, and she walked out. He closed the door behind her and watched her run for the tree-line at the back of the yard. She disappeared into the darkness.

Wynn didn't see her again until a few weeks later when he was collecting firewood in the forest. In the summer heat he was sweating profusely under his coats and he hypothesized that the smell must have attracted her. She stood next to a tree several meters away, now naked, just watching him. He smiled at her and just observed her for a minute. Then he resumed chopping at a small tree. He swung his axe once, then glanced up in her direction. And she was gone.

289/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Lucas with the Lid Off" by Lucas

2012-02-07T04:04:00.212-08:00

The room was hot and stale despite the breeze that waved the lace curtains in auntie Mimi's parlor. Pauline sat rigidly in the lumpy old armchair opposite her aunt who was slumping into the sofa and into her starched high black lace collar, with the elderly persian cat purring away in her lap like one of those new electric can-openers. Pauline took a sip of the hot sweet tea then clinked the cup back into its saucer.

"Careful girl!" admonished her aunt, stirring from a light slumber by the sound.

"Sorry," said Pauline.

She sighed with boredom. Mimi fanned her face with limp fingers.

"Sure is a hot one," said Mimi. "It's a good thing it's a Sunday. Should I continue reading?" She patted the Bible resting open on the arm of the sofa and readjusted her eyeglasses, squinting at the print.

"Oh, auntie, you should rest your eyes awhile longer," said Pauline.

"Oh, you're so considerate. You'll make a good Christian wife and mother someday."

"Undoubtedly."

Then through the window they both heard a man whistling, then the latch on the front gate unfastening.

"Who could that be?" asked Mimi.

Pauline stood up and set her tea aside. She walked to the window and peeked out from behind the curtain. She smiled, and the young man on the walk winked back at her without breaking his tune. He hopped up the steps and,

DINGDONG

Pauline hopped out of the parlor to the foyer and answered the door.

"If it's one of them salesmen, tell them I don't need any of what they're selling!" yelled Mimi. At the sound of her voice the cat dug its claws into the ample layers of her dress but there was no risk he would ever damage flesh, her nakedness was so insulated from any prying male eyes. "I go to Barton's department store for all my needs! We don't need any travelling riffraff in this neighborhood."

"It's not a salesman," said Pauline, leading the young man, dressed in a dapper striped suit into the parlor. He clutched a straw hat in his hands and bore an obsequious smile.

"Who's this then?" asked Mimi, leaning forward an inch, which made the cat protest. "Oh get down Bartholomew!" She pushed him off her lap to much mewling.

"This is Luke. You remember Luke, don't you?"

"Hello Miss Lewis," said Luke.

"Oh, you. You work at the bank, don't you. You're dressed rather boldly for a Sunday," said Mimi.

"Auntie! You're embarrassing me," whispered Pauline.

Mimi glared at her.

"Sundays are just such wonderful days I always think," said Luke. "I just feel like celebrating them, don't you? So why not wear a loud suit?"

"Hmmm. I didn't see you at church this morning," said Mimi.

"Unfortunately my mother has been ill of late, so I stayed at home to tend to her so that my sisters could attend church," he chuckled, "it really is the height of their young social lives. Quite the right place for virtuous young women, don't you think?"

"Certainly," said Mimi, a little unconvinced about Luke's character.

"I wouldn't want them going to any of those wretched jazz clubs. You know just the other day I wrote a letter to our congressman about that awful epidemic," said Luke, rotating his hat in his hand.

"Really? I can't imagine you getting a reply from that man!" said Mimi.

"Well, we have to try now, don't we?" said Luke.

"Auntie, Luke would like to take me for a walk around the neighborhood before supper." Pauline hooked her arm around Luke's elbow and giggled. "And I thought perhaps you would like to spend the rest of the afternoon in peace. I know I'm such dull company for you."

Luke suppressed a snicker, masking it as a delicate sneeze.

"Lilacs," said Luke. "This time of year they always get to me. You'll excuse me."

"Yes, I suppose you may go girl. But be back before five, and I don't want to hear that you've been to the soda counter on a Sunday."

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it auntie! Thank you!" She bounced with glee and kissed her aunt on the forehead.

Pauline pulled Luke out of the door and into the blistering sunshine. They walked quickly down the sidewalk, past white picket fences and well-groomed gardens, and into the more industrial side of town, their hands occasionally grazing each other's. At the first proper alley, Luke ducked in and pulled Pauline towards him. They kissed deeply and he shoved her against the brick wall, slipped his hand up her skirt and unsnapped a garter.

"Not here!" said Pauline slapping his hand away. "People might see."

Luke backed away grinning. She fussed with her stocking. He pulled her back out into the sunlight. They walked up to a solid metal door and he tapped twice. A slot in the door opened up.

"Yes?"

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung," said Luke in a clear metered voice.

The slot closed with a susurrous sslinkt. Pauline giggled and Luke looked over his shoulder. The door opened and they slipped into cool darkness.

"You said there would be music," said Pauline. They walk down a narrow hallway that was painted red and found their way to a large rectangular room, thick with smoke and filled with couples dancing languorously, draped over each other, to nothing more than the sound of shuffling. "What's going on here?"

"Shhh. There is music," said Luke smiling. "You just need ears."

"What?"

Luke pulled her towards a long wooden bar. A large fat man in a plaid bowtie leaned over from the other side of the bar.

"Give us a hit, will ya?" said Luke, slapping a ten dollar bill down on the wet bar. "And two glasses of gin."

"Sure," mumbled the bartender before shuffling off.

Luke opened his cigarette case and offered Pauline a thin stick of tobacco. She took one and so did he before snapping the case shut.

"You're a big spender," said Pauline. "That's a week's wages I'd figure."

"Honey, you don't know what I make. Besides. I work at the bank."

Luke struck a match and grinned as he lit up.

"Luke, no!"

"Hush now," he said. He blew smoke in Pauline's face as he lit up her cigarette.

They took a few puffs and reassessed each other. Then the bartender returned with two highball glasses filled with gin and a metal compressed gas container. A hose extended from the canister and on the other end was a rubber mask.

"What is that?" asked Pauline.

"Your ears," said Luke. He handed her the mask and turned the valve at the top of the canister. "Breath in deeply and hold it."

She took the mask and held it to her face. The gas smelled faintly of chocolate and coffee. She sucked it in, filling her lungs. It was cold and irritated her throat. She wanted to cough but she held the breath. She started to feel dizzy, and began to see that everyone moved in slow motion, and there were multiple copies of everything, overlayered on each other...

"I feel..." she said lazily, her breath wheezing out of it's own accord. Her eyes lost focus.

"It's something, ain't it?" asked Luke.

He took the mask from her and sucked in his own lungful.

"Yeah," nodded Pauline. She leaned back against the bar. The dim light in the room started to increase until there were dazzling stars dripping down from the ceiling. Pauline gazed around slowly, agog. The couples were waltzing around the room, leaving copies of themselves in different colors. Then each color copy burst into a separate sound. One woman in a white dress produced the plaintive wail of a banshee violin. Her partner was a saxophone. Pauline looked at her fingers, wiggling them, and each finger copy became the sound of a piano key. She held up her other hand and easily tapped out the melody to a hymn her aunt Mimi made her practice every morning.

"Drink up," said Luke. His words hung in the air, written out in a curlicued hand.

"You're fancy," said Pauline, grinning at the writing.

Luke handed her the glass of gin and Pauline took it, and saw that it was swimming with fireflies.

"I can't drink that," she said. "I'll kill them."

"They'll just make you feel good from the inside out."

"All right then," she said. She poured the liquid down into her mouth. It was warm and wriggly and the music in the room got louder and clearer. She put her arms around Luke's shoulders. He put his hands around her waist and drew her out towards the dance floor. She felt static and magnetism where their bodies touched and she pulled herself closer into him.

"You've brought me to paradise," she said, watch her words dissolve into the air letter by letter.

"Didn't I always say I would?" he said.

"I thought it would be by other means."

"There'll be that too," he snickered.

"How could the squares be against dancing and music?"

"They want us to be productive members of society, don't they?"

"I guess societies don't run on fun but young people sure do."

"Hush now honey. Just dance. Just listen."

"Mmmmm," said Pauline, tapping her fingers on Luke's shoulder, with each tap leaving a dot in the air that dissolved into a note.

--
You've got to check out the music video for this song, which was directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and is a total piece of genius. All the special effects are practical. The entire thing is one shot. And if I remember correctly, they got it on the first take after some rehearsal:

Oh, and the speakeasy pass code is a quote from Voltaire.

288/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Lisztomania (Alex Metric Remix)" by Phoenix

2012-02-06T04:16:00.177-08:00

The Earth was ripped open to make way for a massive, thinking artwork. Layers of trees and loam, rock and gravel, even fossils, were torn up and pushed aside; drills bore down three kilometers and recirculating water pipes were installed to capture the heat product of Earth's mildly fusive core that would power the device. The workers were mostly volunteers, encamped in the scar they'd made, and enamoured by the designer of the project more than attracted to the project itself.

Remi Savidge arrived late in the afternoon by helicopter. The workers stopped and looked up into the biting downdraft that abraded their faces with rock dust from the quarry end of the site. He smiled back at them from behind the comfort of the plexi-glass window. He wore a shock of black hair swept to one side, a simple but tailored suit with a wide pink tie, and a large signet ring modeled ironically after the Pope's. His number two, which was what Remi called him, although his real name was Smith, a young but competent and quiet man, sat next to him, going over a mental checklist to make sure everything went on schedule. The helicopter landed.

"Showtime," said Remi, grinning.

He opened the door and leapt out with the grace and power of a fox pouncing on prey. Smith climbed down by first sitting on the floor of the cabin compartment and swing his legs down. Remi strode towards the nearest astonished worker and grabbed up his hand, shook it firmly, and patted him on the shoulder, said a few effusive words and moved on to repeat the process with the next nearest worker.

He worked his way around the immediate area around the helicopter until he came to a bulldozer. With a node he dismissed the operator and took the seat himself, scooped up a load of gravel and deposited it a waiting truck. He then turned off the machine, stood with arms and legs wide like an X within the yellow painted framework of the door, and motioned for the nearby workers to come closer.

"Don't worry," he said chuckling, "this isn't an inspection." And the crowd laughed obediently. "I just wanted to come here, personally, to thank you for helping me with this project. What you do here, will be remembered, for centuries, if not--"

"We love you Remi!" screamed a woman in the crowd.

"Why thank you!" he replied, and everyone beamed, their mutual love shared. Behind him, Smith discreetly stepped away to take a phone call.

"What is it?" he asked, with his fingers pressed to his other ear to drown out Remi's booming speech. "No. This isn't a good time...what do you mean?"

He listened intently, and although he listened intently to everything, the conversation really did merit the attention.

"All right. I'll cut this short and tell him. Thank you for bringing this to my attention."

He hung up and moved back to the bulldozer and Remi's side.

"--and our lives will change! Well, maybe not my life," Remi grinned even wider, and his efforts were rewarded by an outburst of applause," but definitely yours. What you do here, is not just for you and your children, not just society and civilization, but life itself."

He caught sight of Smith and nodded.

"I've got to go now," he said.

He waved to the crowd as they clapped and cheered, and he jumped down from the bulldozer and jogged dramatically back to the helicopter looking like an especially athletic Richard Nixon on his farewell from the White House. Back in the helicopter, as they were taking off again he became completely serious.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"There's been an anomaly in the simulations," said Smith.

"Those simulations are inherently inaccurate," scoffed Remi.

"Exactly. We don't know what will happen when we turn it on."

"That's precisely the same argument people used about the Large Hadron Collider. Ooh, ooh, it's going to make a tiny black hole that will consume the Earth in minutes--"

"--Remi, this is serious--"

"--that didn't happen, did it? That's because we had a damn good idea what was going to happen--"

"--but we don't--"

"--oh yeah, we do. And besides," said Remi dismissively, "there's no chance we're going to create a black hole."

Smith narrowed his eyes at Remi.

"Do you even want to hear what the anomaly is? Before you get all defensive about the entire project?"

"Fine," said Remi folding his arms across his chest.

"You know, you designed the simulations as well. You shouldn't be complain--"

"Just--what is it? What's the anomaly?"

"It's very low probability, one out of trillions, but the optimizer itself disappears from...existence."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, the purpose of the optimizer is to find and choose the best possible parallel world to navigate to and collapse the other--"

"Yeah, I know this part," said Remi wryly.

"The simulation group thought that it might, I emphasize 'might', be that the optimizer, instead of navigating the whole universe, is just navigating itself to the best possible world. It physically disconnects. It violates the law of conservation of energy though."

Remi unfolded his arms and pressed his palms into the top of his knees.

"Actually no," said Remi. "If the optimizer moves to a different world, it still exists. The energy that makes it up, still exists, even if we no longer have access to it. I mean, the whole principal of parallel world computation rests on physics functioning that way. It's how we extract information from other worlds, and how the optimizer can even work in the first place," he began speaking faster and faster, "the prototypes all worked, do work, it's just the navigation that hasn't been tested. Hmm."

He looked out the window at the blue sky with scrapings of cirrus clouds.

"One in trillions?" he asked. Smith nodded.

"Given that there are an infinite number of parallel worlds, those are pretty high odds." He sat up completely straight. "Shut it down then."

"What?" asked Smith, his eyes uncharacteristically wide.

"At full operation, the optimizer will have a staff of over three thousand. I'm not willingly going to put those people in harm's way. The simulation suggests that the optimizer will simply disappear, pop over to another world, but what does that mean in reality? The simulation was not built to give us that level of description. This isn't exactly the phantom black holes of the LHC, but moving a whole universe means that all the information remains intact, but what does that mean for a fractional portion..." he trailed off and looked squinting in the distance, moving his lips silently.

"Remi?" asked Smith after a few minutes.

"What?!" blurted Remi. Smith was unfazed.

"You wanted to shut down the project? Completely?"

"Yes, that's what I told you to do."

"But we've poured billions into--"

"--doesn't matter. I have billions more, and more importantly, more ideas. Shut it down!" he declared gleefully, clapping his hands together. "Let no one suffer on my behalf."

Smith smiled warmly and nodded. "Yes sir."

287/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Green Light (feat. Andre 3000)" by John Legend

2012-02-05T04:43:00.001-08:00

The Virago sat in a nondescript pink stucco building at the forgotten end of Pico Boulevard. A Corona sign beckoned in the noonday alcoholics. A muscular man in a black wool suit and carrying a metal briefcase stopped in front of the entrance and double-checked the location on his Blackberry. A seagull landed on top of a lamppost across the street and stared down at the man, who turned around to meet it's gaze.

"You can watch me all you like, but you can't stop me," said the man under his breath. The seagull screeched but didn't move from its perch.

The man opened the door to the bar and walked in. The interior was lit with green neon. Two pool balls cracked together in the far corner. An old woman was smoking at a booth, even though there was an ordinance against it. The man looked around and noticed that all the inhabitants of the bar were women. He walked to the bar and took a seat on a stool covered in cracked ancient leather. He placed the briefcase on the bar top.

"Get that off my counter," said the bartender. She slowly walked toward him from the other end of the bar. She was hunched over, not out of any visibile disability, but her stringy hair hung over her face, covering scars that ran down her hairline, in front of her ears, and under her chin. Her face itself expressed remarkable beauty, but she kept her eyes generally downcast, avoiding the gaze of others. The man knew he was in the right place.

"It's for you," he said.

The bartender stopped in front of the man and his case. She pushed it back towards him.

"Get it off my counter," she repeated. "And you can buy a drink or you can go back to Venice Beach."

"Don't you remember me?" he asked.

"I don't usually bother to look at people's faces," she said, hardly able to get the words out before they faded into a pained sigh.

"That was my fault," he said.

"You," she said, glaring at him from the corner of her eye. "Never thought I'd see the day. I thought you went up the mountain."

"No. I was. But not any longer. The mountain...it's gone now. Faded from the hearts of men."

"I'm not surprised." She ran her hand over the surface of the briefcase. "You know, I gave up being angry at you. You took my source of power, you twisted it, abused it for your own uses--"

"--I was given a mission--"

"--following orders. Yes. I'ver heard that one a lot over the millennia. Generals throughout human history owe a lot to you. How they lionized you. Before they forgot you." The bartender grinned.

"And not every mission is worth it in the end. I craved glory, but it didn't last."

"And so, now we let go of the childish emotions we clutched onto for so long. Us both?"

"That's right," said the man. He pressed his thumbs to the locks on the briefcase, and the tumblers spun, then the latches disengaged. The lid opened of it's own accord.

When the bartender saw what was inside she gasped.

"It really is it, just as I remember. You removed it from Aegis," she whispered.

"He gave up a fight," he said.

"He always does, but you've proved yourself a champion again."

The man smiled with a slight embarrassment.

"Take it," he said.

"You should look away," she said, and he did so.

"What about the others?"

"They won't notice," she said. "They've already forgotten us, remember? Our powers are gone from this world."

She reached into the box and drew out her old face. It was a shimmering and transparent gold. It was ringed with golden snakes that writhed and hissed. She pressed the face to her head and it immediately fused. Blood ran into it and filled it with healthy pink flesh. The snakes dove into and under her skin, and remained, in the form of faint tattoos.

"I am whole again," she said. "My heart is full that you would perform this kindness for me."

She looked up but the man in the black suit was already gone.

"Thank you," she said. Then she started to wipe down the bar, her posture straight, and with a contented smile.

---
Note: I detest this song (got it from one of those free Starbucks/iTunes giveaways), mainly for the phrase "I are", used only to rhyme a line with "bar". Grrr.

286/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "O.P.P." by Naughty by Nature

2012-02-04T02:41:00.100-08:00

"And we call this specimen 'Skip'," said Uda motioning towards the enclosure behind her. Next to the window on the other side stood a naked man with a bushy beard and a spear glaring back at the assembled group of school children who were receiving a tour of the historical zoo from Uda. "He is a Homo Sapiens, which is two full species from us. He's also from the historical breeding group, which is contiguous in human ancestry, so he has not been reconstructed from our DNA like the Neanderthals we just saw in the last display."

Uda smiled broadly and crossed her arms around her abdomen to signal that she would receive questions. A girl in the front with yellow eyes and pale green photosensitive skin took a step forward. Uda bowed her head slightly and closed her eyes briefly.

"Why's he so angry?" asked the girl.

"That's an excellent question," said Uda. "Homo Sapiens, or wise man, is an adgenusic animal. Unlike us, it needs to form close family groups. This strategy is employed by many other mammal species as well, but it has proved especially crucial to the early success of Homo Sapiens. This species is unusually frail, slow-moving, and weak compared to other animals. Working as a group was essential, and those groups were formed through both kinship and partnership bonds. Males and females tended to pair off to create offspring they were tightly bonded with, but they also had ties to the greater group, and these ties often conflicted with their partnerships as individuals jockeyed for status and partners that could confer more superior genes to their offspring. Skip here, has just lost his partner to the alpha male over there," she pointed to a large man lounging on a flat rock at the top of the habitat, surrounded by several beta males and most of the females, "we call him 'Dagwood'," she chuckled, "and since then, Skip has been in bad spirits."

Uda smiled again and crossed her arms. The girl stepped backward into the file of children. Skip lunged forward and pressed his body against the window. He stared wild-eyed at the children. Some of them started to giggle. Uda lost her smile and turned around to look at him. He pounded at the window with his fist.

"Can he get out?" asked one of the children.

"Oh no," said Uda. "The glass is unbreakable, and even if he were to escape, say at feeding time, like all our animals, he has a sensor implanted in his body. If he leaves the enclosure without authorization he will immediately fall unconscious."

"No, I meant, can't you let him out? That seems to be what he wants." Uda looked at the child, a rather plain looking one with red and blue striped skin and dark eyes. Something about him looked familiar and she wondered haltingly if he was related to her.

"Of course not," Uda dismissed. "We have to protect this breeding population. It's part of a wider experiment in comparative natural evolution that's taking place at several other zoos as well. We can't just pluck out an unsuccessful specimen. What would we do with it, use it as a pet?"

Uda and some of the older children laughed.

Skip pounded on the window again.

"Let me out!" he screamed, spattering saliva against the glass. "Please!"

"And as you can clearly hear," said Uda, "they are capable of speech. In fact, our language is derived from their last dominant language before we diverged ourselves from natural evolution. We owe a lot to our ancestors. Let's move along to see Homo Artifex, our most recent ancestor. And then it will be time for the midday meal!"

The children walked along obediently.

"Please!" cried Skip.

285/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Plainsong" by The Cure

2012-02-03T02:19:00.189-08:00

The red sun refracted through the ancient glass bottle, transforming it into a stellated jewel. Zephyr ignored her old bones and laid on her stomach, across the wind worn stone and plastic gravel; she steadied her arm and aimed the matter gun. The glass bowed inward, the jewel flexed, and then was replaced by a gray smoking pop.

Zephyr sighed and rolled over onto her back. The pink sky enveloped her completely and she felt as if she would fall away into the endless void above. And then there was a thunderclap.

She inched herself up, looked around, saw nothing, no clouds in the sky, no 'truders on the horizon. No beasts roaming. She looked down into the entrance to her underground, hollowed-out home. Perhaps something fell off a shelf--another crack. Zephyr snapped to a crouch and sniffed the air delicately. It was definitely from above.

A large drop of water splashed onto her nose and then there were more, big gobs of water, buckets, thrashing down in weighty blows, as if the parched earth, now centuries without rainfall, was willing it from the atmosphere itself through sheer spite. Zephyr cowered, then scrambled for the safety of the hollow, climbed down the ladder and shut the hatch. She looked up through the window, finally becoming clean and clear. There was still no cloud, no source, just pink and the edge of the red sun.

And in a minute it was done.

"I'll be damned," she whispered to herself, since there was no one else there, and even if there were, those 'truders, they didn't understand her language.

Suddenly a shadow passed over the hatch and Zephyr screamed. There was a knock on the plastic hatch.

"Zephyr Alameda Smith?" asked the shadow.

Zephyr bit her lower lip and readied the matter gun.

"I gots you in my sights!" she screamed, her voice a shrill, menacing rasp.

The shadow backed away from the hatch.

"Well, there's no need for that," said the shadow.

"You a 'truder? You know what I do with 'truders?"

"I'm not sure. I don't think so? What do you think?"

Zephyr thought for a minute, blinking her veiny brown eyes. Her weapon hand started shaking. Her palsy was acting up.

"I uh..." she struggled in reaching a conclusion. Her memory of her previous life, before coming to the hollow, was hazy at best. It had been over three hundred years. "You don't speak like a 'truder. I hates their noises. All squeaks and squeals and retching. Isn't normal."

"Then I must not be a 'truder," said the shadow.

Zephyr squinted her eyes, doubtful.

"Maybe you're a different kind of 'truder. Maybe you're a 'truder like me."

"Look, you are Zephyr Alameda Smith, aren't you?"

"Um...what's it to you?"

"If you are, then I'm here to tell you that your sentence is commuted. I'm here to collect you as well. Open the hatch and we can talk about this."

Zephyr mashed her lips together and pulled at her thin hair and struggled to remember more. Her mind flashed back to snatches of the trial: the feel of the cuffs on her wrists, the judge's weeping nose and cold-affected voice, the wasp that was buzzing at the corner of the window.

She lowered the matter gun and climbed the ladder back up to the hatch, unscrewing and opening it. She poked her head up like a prairie dog. There was a tall, fit figure standing in front of her, dressed in flowing black robes. He or she looked to be genderneutral, but it was hard to tell. Behind he or she, about twenty feet, was a black obelisk, floating five feet from the ground. Zigzag stairs descended down. There was no movement.

"Who are you?" asked Zephyr.

"Your new lawyer," said the shadow. "My name is Asaph Roko. Esquire."

"Never heard of you."

"No, you wouldn't have. I'm from your former future. I was born about four thousand years after your incarceration. I wrote my thesis on your case, and discovered a discrepancy in the original evidence submitted for trial. Turns out you were innocent."

Zephyr scowled. She climbed up and out of the hollow entrance, and aimed the matter gun at several pebbles and removed them from existence. The shadow lawyer held up his or her hands.

"Been here over three hundred years!" screamed Zephyr. "Don't actually know how many because the counter down there gave out some time ago! Got started being afraid the other gadgets would go out too! I'd be left here to fend for myself against the mercy of the 'truders and the sun and the unending dry! And don't even get me started about not being able to talk to another single creature!"

"I'm sorry that--"

"What are you?!"

"Excuse me--"

"Are you a man or a woman?"

"Oh. Oh yes, in your time gender was still a big deal. I'm currently a man. I've been a woman in the past, and a hermaphrodite in college," the lawyer chuckled, "but I was born a neutral. Does that bother you?"

"No. Four thousand years huh?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you come here when I was first incarcerated? Why'd you wait three hundred years?"

The lawyer sighed, then sat down cross-legged on the gravel.

"If you recall, there were multiple charges against you. I was only able to clear the mass murder charge. Your sentence for conspiracy, hacking, and theft of government weaponry, still stands. Three hundred years covers the minimum time. I still believe you're innocent of all charges, but there wasn't anything I could work with."

Zephyr eyed the lawyer and then stowed the matter gun in her hip pouch.

"You're going to tell me I'm lucky to have you," said Zephyr.

"No, of course not. I have a lot of admiration for you. I wouldn't be so crass. This may sound empty, but the penal code that's stood for thousands of years is incredibly unjust, and you've been a victim of it. To be shipped off to the end of the Earth, in the centuries preceding the sun's nova, with nothing more than a self-sustaining shelter buried in the ground is bad enough, but to have immortality forced upon you, against your basic human rights and your will--well, it's barbaric."

"Yeah. Whatever. I don't care at this point."

The lawyer blushed and looked at his folded feet.

"I understand how you must feel--"

"No you don't. You have no idea," said Zephyr with a growling bite in her voice. The lawyer nodded.

"You're going to take me back to four thousand years in my old future, aren't you?"

"Yes. If you want to come. There's a fund set up for you already and you will have a place to live while you adjust and reintegrate."

"Hmmm. But the immortality can't be reversed."

"Unfortunately, no."

"So I'll end up here again someday."

"We have star travel now. It was developed from the temporal displacement research. You don't have to stay on Earth."

"I was hoping that damn star would blow! Any day now!"

"Not for another four hundred years, actually. And you'd have to spend most of that down in your habitat."

"Do you know how cruel it is to sentence someone to a place like this, for an eternity mind you, and remove all ability to commit suicide? I tried, so hard, to have an accidental death, but that mind programming--holy hell that programming! I'd like to give the inventor of that a piece of my mind. He's probably dead and happy."

"I don't know who that is specifically--"

"Dead. And. Happy."

The lawyer looked at her and tried to read the expression on her face, but it was not one he'd ever encountered before.

"Really, you can't possibly want to stay here?" he asked.

Her face relaxed. She scanned the horizon, then looked back at the lawyer.

"You brought water to the desert," she said finally.

"What--yes. Well that's the from the atmospheric disturbance caused by the temporal displacement--"

"I know what it is. Physically. But I consider it an omen." She looked at him sternly. "I will return with you. To the past. To my future. To your present. But I will not thank you."

The lawyer nodded then stood quickly.

"I understand," he said. "Are there any belongs that you'd like to collect before--"

"Nope. I have some crap I scavenged from the last dregs of humanity's trash, but I can part with it. I'd like to leave immediately if it's all the same to you."

"Yes of course," said the lawyer, smiling.

"I'm happy to be rid of the 'truders. Hate the 'truders. Bane of my existence."

They walked up the zigzag stairs and disappeared into the face of the black obelisk. When they left, it rained in that spot for half an hour.

284/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Ottoman" by Vampire Weekend

2012-02-02T01:29:00.001-08:00

They usually came via Fedex, and the delivery person would eye the box and then eye Roger, because there were biohazard labels on the box. After Roger would scribble his angular signature they'd scurry off, glad to be away from whatever harm those boxes potentially possessed.

Roger had a dolly set by the door. When he first started his collection he pulled a muscle in his back and couldn't finish the piece he was working on. The box stank up the hallway as the contents rotted, liberated from it's complement of dry ice. The county hassled him with paperwork to dispose of it. So he had the dolly. The paint on the handle was worn away after hundreds of boxes passed through the threshold of his mansion.

"Are you going to show these to anyone, ever?" Roger's friend from college, Kenyon Curtis was over. He was a slightly vagrant sort, got away with calling himself a 'free spirit' when in actuality he couched surfed himself across the world, using his intelligence, tolerance, and pleasant banter to charm even the surliest folk into letting him use their houses for lengthy intervals. Kenyon had been with Roger for a month when he asked the question.

"No," Roger replied as he shoved on thick pink gloves. He started mixing an epoxy in a large bucket.

They were in a long hall in the middle of the mansion, which served as both a gallery and Roger's workspace. There were fans set up to evacuate the fumes but the area was so voluminous that it probably didn't matter. There were several metal tables on castors strewn about, with pieces in various states of completion.

"Come on, they're interesting! Other people should see these." Kenyon slurped at the mug of hot coffee he clutched between his hands.

Roger paused, mid pour, then resumed, working quickly to combine the two chemicals.

"Other people will judge," said Roger.

"Yes, of course, everyone judges absolutely everything, but it's not like you killed these people here. They willingly gave their bodies to science. They don't care."

"They gave their bodies to science," said Roger, "not me. I don't think they wanted to be made into art."

"Eh. There's this museum in Chicago that has a sliced up man lining a staircase. Each slice is in a frame that sticks out from the wall, perpendicular, and you don't really know what you're looking at until you've gone up or down a flight. That guy donated his body for science, it said so right on the plaque."

Roger stirred the mix with a large dowel and ignored Kenyon, who in turn watched Roger lazily. Roger was loathe to show his collection to him when he first arrived, but he took it in with a blasé sort of appreciation after discovering it the morning after he arrived when he was trying to find the kitchen. Roger happened upon him, staring at a deconstructed skull set into a plush velvet background and mounted across four feet of wall. The skull belonged to a woman who died in a skiing accident. Kenyon nodded as Roger nervously related the story of her death and the artistic statement of the piece while he glanced furtively at the other pieces in the gallery. The skiing skull at that time was perhaps the simplest piece in the collection, devoid of flesh, and the least resembling any human. Kenyon listened patiently, always staring at the piece, then when Roger was finished, Kenyon asked the way to the kitchen, begging for caffeine. Roger realized that the person would judge him the most was himself.

It was only a few days later when Kenyon watched him mix epoxy for one of his more ambitious pieces.

"Could you hold this arm?" asked Roger, shoving a man's long arm in Kenyon's direction. It was stiff and unclothed with a steel rod poking out the shoulder end--ready to be added.

Kenyon grimaced, but laid his mug on the carpet and took the arm.

"It's light!" he exclaimed. "How is it that light?" He hefted the arm up and down in the air.

"Careful," said Roger. "The end is not sealed. Something might fall off."

Kenyon's face paled slightly.

"Oh."

"It's desiccated. Sort of like what the ancient Egyptian embalmers did, but a better process."

"It looks perfect."

"Thanks." Roger dipped a gloved hand into the epoxy, and drew out a snotty cord of it. He reached up and slathered it on the rod. "Put it in there," he said, pointing at a hole in the base of the piece, which was made of two entwined women, one light skinned and one dark, cut off below the thighs and above the breasts. Kenyon tentatively slid the rod in the hole, then backed away. Roger twisted the arm into the position he wanted, palm up, and pressed a block of wood against it so that it wouldn't move under its own wait and would set.

"So what's the statement here? Some sort of anti-feminist rant? Or a feminist one? I can never sort the sadism from the masochism. They've lost their heads, or been liberated by them, one the fault of themselves, and one the fault of the oppressive patriarchals. Isn't that how these things are supposed to be interpreted?" asked Kenyon. He looked at his hands and them rubbed them against his shirt, slightly and suddenly disgusted.

"They're just celebrating." Roger stood and retrieved another prepared arm from an adjacent table.

"They're headless and legless. How can they celebrate?"

"It's symbolic. Metaphorical. Though I assume you're not serious."

"No. I aced you in art history. And I don't mind taking this chance to regurgitate that fact."

Roger sighed.

"People are so disconnected from the idea of their bodies as material things. And yes, the mind is integral to the human experience. The body is useless without it, even if the mind can carry on if its physically disconnected from the body. So we elevate the mind over the body."

"Well," interrupted Kenyon, picking up his mug again, "all of it is just a vehicle to cart around the DNA in our cells. Neither the body or the mind should be elevated."

"Sure, but most people don't think about that stuff. Or they try not to." Roger set another arm in the piece. "But this isn't about that. This is just a moment where these bodies, that are ultimately and forever disconnected from their minds, are enjoying physical pleasure, on their own. It's a sort of freedom. I think there's something pure in that."

Roger started working on a third arm, which was shorter than the previous two. Kenyon observed him with slitted eyes.

"What are you afraid of?" asked Kenyon.

"What?"

"You don't want to show your gallery publicly, and you say it's because 'people judge'."

"They do. There's a history of people who've done this for fun also, but in less than savory circumstances, under the guise of war or science. It's an atrocious hobby to have, and I wouldn't have it if I weren't born into wealth."

"Ha! You'd probably be a serial killer, and get you're own bodies the good old-fashioned way."

"I would," said Roger, straightening up.

Kenyon spat coffee back into the mug, then stared at Roger.

"You're shitting me," he scoffed.

"No." Roger looked stern and absolutely serious. Kenyon wiggled against the wall he was leaning on. "But don't worry, I'm not. Killing doesn't interest me in itself, but I'm...addicted to doing this. If I didn't have the means to buy the bodies, yes, I would obtain them by less expensive means."

"Yeah," said Kenyon after an uncomfortable length of time. "Look, maybe I'm being indulgent, but can I tell people about you and your artwork? You know, not like writing up articles on you, but just telling anecdotes of my time here. Glueing arms onto different bodies."

"You might not be believed," said Roger.

"That would be part of the fun of it. It would be passed along until it grew into an urban myth. You wouldn't have to expose yourself to the world, yet your ideas here would be passed along, discussed, and debated. Because that's what you really want, isn't it?"

Roger stuck in another arm, which ringed the torsos completely. Kenyon briefly thought about stuffing one dollar bills in the hands.

"That's what I fear, right there," said Roger. "What if I put the ideas out there, and no one discusses them? What if no one, like you apparently, is offended? Ideas should have life and be able to breathe, to be transformed and translated. What if this is dismissed as a curiosity? Interesting, but not worthy of any sort of extended thought?"

"It's possible," said Kenyon. "But if you don't let them out at all, they definitely will not live." He looked into the depths of his mug, and thought of things yet undone in his own life. "I need more coffee. Want anything?"

"No," said Roger resignedly. He still had to coat the piece with epoxy and it was setting rapidly in its bucket. Kenyon padded off down the hall, past half a woman, a man without his eyes, and a single heart that lay on their own carts, and past the hundreds of finished pieces mounted on the walls, big and small, deconstructed, reconstructed, recombined, simple, complex, clear, and enigmatic.

283/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Love/Building On Fire"

2012-02-01T21:50:00.095-08:00

Have you ever opened a hundred year old book? Two hundred years old? Older? Often they're in better condition than than books only fifty years old. The twentieth century was all about mass consumerism. Books were often printed as cheaply as possible without them actually disintegrating in your hands the moment you purchased them. They was slightly more care in their manufacture than nitrate film stock.

"Do you know why you're here?"

The question was asked by a man somewhere in middle age, of average height, undetermined mixed ethnicity, and by all that I could see, extremely bland in personality and intelligence.

"I lit a fire," I said.

It was sort of true. There were flames involved. The man clenched his teeth slightly. I could feel him thinking I was some sort of serial killer. I haven't killed anybody in my life. I might in the future, no promises. Things are different now.

"Is that a confession?" asked the man.

"You tell me," I said.

The man let out a rapid little breath he tried to hide.

"Are you going to read me my Miranda rights?"

"That hasn't been relevant in decades," said the man, completely seriously.

"They still do it on cop shows, or do you not watch them?"

"Of course I--"

The man trails off and squints his eyes at me. He pauses then looks at his watch.

"I'm going to interrogate you now," I said.

The man looks up at me sharply and opens his mouth, about to speak. I cut him off.

"You don't participate," I said. "You've opted out. You like green growing things, fresh air, and your own, unadulterated thoughts--"

"What are you insinuating?" he asked.

"You're a functionary. Silent in your opposition, just because you don't want trouble. You've chosen to be a police officer, or some sort of detective or investigator--I can't keep track these days, there are so many layers of security--so that means you want order, but the type of order that exists, the order that you've found yourself enforcing, is not an order you agree with, and you don't know how to rebel against it--"

He cracked me against the jaw with his arm. I fell to the floor. I was expecting it. It's seditious to accuse someone of not participating. He had to defend himself. There were cameras in the corners of the room. There would be questions, and if he was fortunate, his boss would be like him--law and order people who didn't believe in the law and order they upheld.

The cement was cold and somewhat soothing. I was at a literal low point. Defenseless except for my words. My thoughts. There was freedom in being stripped of all power, and then of course there was the act that put me here. The one that confounded them and terrified them.

"Get up," said the man.

I did not.

He walked around the table and pulled me up by the shirt, then righted the chair and sat me back down. He plucked up my cuffed hands and placed them back on the table where he could see them. I looked at him during this. I looked into his eyes as much as I could, to see if he would avert his eyes, and he did.

"You are an archivist, are you not?" asked the man.

I nodded.

"Why did you do this?" he asked.

I smiled and said nothing.

"Why would an archivist destroy an archive? The very thing you work to preserve?"

"Nostalgia," I said.

He crinkled his brow at me.

"You'll need to explain that to me."

"We have passed into an age of noise. You know this, even if you haven't yet articulated your thoughts on it."

"You're very presumptuous about what goes on in the privacy of my mind."

"You say that, and yet you don't deny what I say."

I looked pointedly at the cameras in three of the corners. The man is visibly uncomfortable and tries again to hide it. He rushes on.

"Do you admit to materially destroying the Selector?"

"Absolutely I do. But you still want to know why. You need a motive, and I'm the least likely suspect. Maybe I'm covering for someone else."

The man folded his arms across his chest.

"Yes, a motive would be helpful. And if you did destroy it, I can't see you wanting to hide the details."

"No. I determined that the Selector abuses human imagination, not to mention history. Our art stream is generated by algorithms now, pieced together from previous works. It's amazingly entertaining, dazzling and enthralling, and all classes and countries consume from the same cultural, homogenizing source, but art is now cut off from humanity. It is designed to evolve, to sweep people and culture along with it off into the sunny future, and maybe it does do that, to some degree."

"But why didn't you directly attack the computers that generate art?"

"Access. The Selector samples the art stream, polling for popular themes, and extracting them for permanent preservation. That's my end of things. But that information gets fed back into the algorithms that power the art stream. I broke that loop."

The man looked down at his feet.

"There are redundancies."

"I am aware."

"So your act of sabotage was ultimately futile."

"The message was heard."

He looked up at me.

"You're alone you know. This is your crusade. You don't have followers. You will not be remembered. Your act will be forgotten."

"But for a moment, it registered, and the stream was interrupted."

"You inconvenienced a few people, and destroyed a building. You haven't gained anything."

"Yes, I have."

"What?" he asked. He looked tired. Bored in his blandness.

"I don't have to hide my lack of participation, my lack of consumption. I've earned my own freedom."

"That's nice," he said, rolling his eyes.

He signaled for the door to be opened.

"Maybe someday you will too," I said.

282/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "The Plot" by White Rabbits

2012-01-31T23:48:00.000-08:00

Joey, wrapped in black bedsheets, stared up that ceiling, his mouth dripping saliva. The bedside alarm clock had been buzzing for the last hour and finally gave it's last shriek before shutting itself off. He blinked and tried to move his fingers, but the sheets weighed down on him as if they were made of lead.

"No," whispered Nox, and the sheets tightened. Joey groaned and closed his eyes. The darkness was irresistible. "You owe me your soul," continued Nox. "You wronged me and I demand recompense."

"I can't stay here," said Joey, speaking in his head and into the darkness. "You can have my nights, all of them, for the rest of my life."

"I will not bargain with you again," said Nox. His eye's lit up in the darkness, gleaming from a non-existent light source.

"I will die..."

"That's not my concern," said Nox. "You had one thing to do, and you couldn't do it."

"No," said Joey meekly. "You asked too much of me."

"You should not have agreed!" screamed Nox. "Humans! What are you? Mere creatures of the flesh. You are a slave to your bodily functions. You let them rule you. I offered you a way out of that stinking mass that walks you around--"

"You are horribly wrong about us," said Joey. "We are not less because of our flesh, just different."

Nox burst into a bright blinding light and Joey felt instantly cold. Then Joey found himself sitting in the crook of an elm tree. Below him were the roots of the tree which floated free of the Earth, above a main sequence yellow star. Its plasma roiled and spat. Joey clung tightly to the tree and breathed in slowly while his heart raced.

"You could do this, anytime you wanted to," said Nox. He was hovering behind the tree as a point of pink-tinged light.

"Nights are enough for me," said Joey.

"You don't understand," said Nox in a condescending voice. "What you can do in your dreams is bound by the flesh of your brain. You are limited."

"Then why do you want to be one of so badly?"

Nox brightened then faded again to darkness.

"Immortality," said Nox. "I want to experience what it's like to die. Just once."

"And my body, the body I pledged to you when you took away my nightmares, is the body you want to do that to. And I will never get it back. That price is too much."

The star was eaten by a sudden shadow and the elm tree dissolved to sparkly dust. Joey slowly floated, and was pulled down towards a flat gray surface that he concentrated to form.

"You're skills have improved," said Nox.

"You are the master of imagination," said Joey, ignoring the compliment. "Why don't you build your own mortal life?"

"It is hollow. Devoid of real experience. I've tried."

"And if you achieve this, taking over the body of a human, what will you do in the time before you die?"

Nox was silent for a long time and Joey wondered if he had gone off and sulked.

"I will unlock the portal from here, then I will open it on your side."

"The wha--?"

"There is a veil between your kind and the higher kinds that live in the universe. I will remove it, and all will know."

Joey laughed heartily.

"You really don't know humans! They may see with their eyes, but they don't always believe facts."

They were both silent again.

"Trade with me," said Nox.

"Why should I? Tell me something other than what it will do for you."

Nox hesitated and hemmed and hawed.

"You will see everything. The universe exploding, the stars forming, and planets spinning. And you would know the whole history of your kind. You will intermingle here with the other higher kinds, because, at that point, you will be a higher being. You will understand things beyond beauty, and you will learn how the human story ends."

"That's not enough for me."

"Then please..." said Nox trailing off. "I beg you."

Joey considered these last words for a moment.

"We have something that you don't," said Joey. "An end. Closure. History. You would throw your infinite imagination away just for that. Without the end, there is no whole."

Nox growled and threw off sparks like a roman candle.

"And you've been reduced to pleading with me, and by starving my material body of food and water." Joey paused and searched his own feelings, to see how committed he was to the decision he would utter next. "Then do it. My death will only make you more envious."

There was a moment of pitch black and silence, then Nox let out a rattling scream and burst into purple flames. The sound and the light slowly faded, then Joey found himself in control of his body again. He woke to a room dimly lit with daylight filtered through thick curtains. He sat up and flexed his fingers and toes, and wondered if he would ever again have a restful night's sleep.

281/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Yes I'm Cold" by Chris Bathgate

2012-01-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

It was early spring when he died numbly in his sleep, on a mountain pass during a blizzard. He had a broken femur and the layers of fur, reeds, and skins didn't deter the onset of hypothermia.

He was unearthed from a melting glacier five thousand years later, his thin frame still intact. Careful hands thawed and preserved him. He was scanned with electrons and his form was stored in a database. His sweat could be smelled once again, briefly, during this process. One hand once caressed his hair back. He was stored in the dark and cold, occasionally rolled out for sample taking and other study.

He remained in his vault for five centuries, until he was bought by a collector. He was removed and vacuum packed and placed on a bed of packing peanuts. He was shipped to Mars and displayed in a glass sarcophagus filled with helium. He passed another century quietly although many bodies in vivid colors danced around him, and at the close of one night his silence was interrupted when a man crashed through the glass membrane and died gurgling his blood upon the furs.

A rescue was mounted by some concerned scientists, and he was purchased again, his damage repaired by careful gloves, and packed away again in cold and dark. Three hundred and twenty six years later he was exchanged again, and shipped forty three lightyears away and displayed in a museum of terran antiquities, several feet away from a faded Van Gogh. Many generations of human children shuffled by and gazed at him with glazed boredom. He was carted away and stored in coldness and a sealed helium chamber for several thousand years, completely forgotten.

The museum fell to ruin, with no humans to care for it. The chamber remained sealed, and became covered in many layers of sediment. An earthquake uprighted the chamber, and he stood for the first time in many millennia.

A laser from a satellite mapped the ruins, and the chamber was discovered. A hole was bored down to it, and the chamber was extracted. It was shipped off-planet and stored again for another decade. Then it was carefully opened by the non-corporeal descendants of humans who lived as minds in a ship that was a solid quantum computer.

His DNA was sequenced. The femur was repaired. His furs were removed. His body was slowly hydrated. An engineered fungus was applied that repaired the muscles and organs and killed off hostile microbes. The brain was regrown based on a model that was stored at the beginning of ancient memory. The structure they used was endowed with the skills he would need to survive. When the brain was complete, it was given a shock in the brainstem.

He finally awoke in a alpine meadow.

"You are the only human," said the descendants, in one voice, in the language they implanted into the man.

"I am," said the man.

"Go forth and live, and do no harm," said the descendants, for they wanted to see if he deviated from their recorded model of their ancestors' behavior. "This world is yours."

"And who are you to tell me this?" asked the man, sitting up, slightly dizzy with his ears ringing.

The descendants hesitated.

"We are your creator--" there was a pause for there was an argument about this, if 'and your children' should be added, but it was resolved, almost instantly, that it would remain unsaid so as not to confuse the man, as simple an organism as he was. There was a further discussion about how to keep him healthy during the experiment. "And obey my command and you will be well."

"You are one...and many?" asked the man, furrowing his brow.

There was another flurry of thought then, "um, yes. We are one and many," for they thought it was of grammatical irrelevance.

"Oh," said the man, his mind heaving. "And you are everywhere and nowhere at the same time?"

"Yes," said the descendants.

The man sighed, breathed in the scent of the meadow, and gazed at the brilliant star light in the sky, grinning.

"I don't think he understands," said some of the descendants collectively to themselves.

"Lets let this play out," responded some others. "Maybe we'll need to make him some companions eventually."

There was a long silence as the man explored his immediate surroundings.

"This is so much faster when we model it," said one of the descendants.

"Agreed," said some more. "But else were we going to do with the body?"

280/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "TRON Legacy (End Titles)" by Daft Punk

2012-01-29T04:46:00.015-08:00

It was cold and there was frost on the bars of the cast iron gates that led into the mill. Martha adjusted her scarf and breathed on her fingers to warm them. The steam stacks billowed and puffed--the boilers were always kept heated during the night even though the mill was not in use those hours. The mill workers shuffled around her, mostly silent, hungry, and cold. There was a lot of coughing. The city had not been spared from the consumption, and the lower classes bore the brunt of its affliction. Martha instinctively pressed her chin down to her throat and buried her mouth and nose in the wool of her scarf. She was far removed now, in her sheep's clothing, from the stately drawing rooms and careful diction of her class. There was no afternoon tea in the ranks of the mill workers, no idle hours spent drawing or stitching or practicing Mozart on the pianoforte. The appearance, smell, and words of the workers filled her with unease even though she empathized with their tribulations. But she was not here for them.

The steam whistle blew. The foreman loped out towards them from the warmth of the front office, keys jangling. The mill workers stood up a little bit straighter, anxious to get out of the cold and looking forward to getting the day over with for it was payday, and in twelve hours the pubs would be filling over, animated with hubbub, chatter, bawdy songs, and joy. Or at least that's how paydays usually went. Martha inhaled a quick icy breath as the foreman attended to the lock on the gate. They flooded in, men and women, marching in to their stations by chomping looms and spinning spools, stacks of bolted cloth, wooden pallets, and the locomotive that owned the only steam engine in the mill that was heated with scarce wood. None of these areas were Martha's destination, and she veered off, when she could out of sight of the foreman, towards the steam generators. The axe under her skirts chafed against her leg.

The boiler room that housed the steam generators was a massive open space. The ground floor opened up immediately to a catwalk, and the air was filled with metal tanks and tubing, leather belts that carried their work off to the loom and spinning rooms, and an oppressive, sulphuric humidity. Martha ripped off her scarf and stuffed it into her coat pocket. There were no men here. The process was completely automated. How sickeningly efficient, she thought. The space continued down two stories into the ground. Martha walked briskly down the catwalk, unbuttoning her overcoat at the same time. She found the metal staircase down to the lower levels. The iron handrails were hot to the touch, so she employed her scarf as protection.

And then she was down on their level, for the first time. There were seven of them, one for each boiler, of the hardy species Mulciber Scotorum. She felt suddenly small and unimportant, the self-important value she placed on her activism newly dwarfed by the creatures who dwelt there, enslaved to progress.

They were an unnatural ashy gray, and skin and bones. Their tails, wings, and claws were removed. Their eyelids were sewn shut, and they wallowed in their own slimy black feces. They were cradled, clamped, and held in place by tined grates and heavy cast iron yokes about their necks. Metal tubes came out of their nostrils, connected to hoppers above filled with a slurry of grains and water that slid down into their stomachs by gravity. It was not anywhere near their natural diet. And their mouths were forced permanently open with a steel brace. A rod moved back and forth via clockworks above that stimulated the ignis organum at the back of their throats, which in turn caused the dragons to release their flames in regular intervals thirty seconds apart. And that kept the boilers hot twenty-four hours a day.

Martha began to shake with rage. The smell was nothing, the heat was nothing. The sight, their pain was everything. Martha lifted her skirts and unbuckled the axe. She held it high, with both hands, elbows out, and it vibrated with her anger. She approached the nearest dragon, dragging her skirts through six inches of muck. Her foot slipped and slid, but her direction did not waver. The dragon did not sense her. She aimed for neck and the jugular, swung, and barely scratched the tough hide. The animal moaned loudly and tried to face her, but could only move a foot or two it was so tightly caged. The other dragons took notice and started grunting. Martha swung again, this time with all her might, and managed to embed the axe between two scales. The dragon screeched before involuntarily belching out a flame. Thick blood oozed around the axe and Martha tried hard to pull it free so she could finish the dragon off, but it would not budge. The other dragons were screeching now too. There were shouts and footsteps echoing down from the catwalk. She put her foot up against the dragon's shoulder for leverage and pulled again. The axe came free and Martha stumbled into the apparatus that braced the dragon's mouth. Her weight fell onto the rod and fire shot out towards her, engulfing the clothes of her right arm. She did not scream, but pulled on the rod, trying to break it away, but instead she was grabbed from behind and pushed to the ground. The flames were extinguished, her axe was confiscated, and she was take to the foreman's office.

In the office she was forced into a chair by two of the workers who saved her. The foreman stood scowling at her from behind his desk. Then the door opened in a blast of cold and another man walked in. He was tall and a little gaunt, with eyes sunken from worry and sleepless nights. He suit was clean and new, but plain and functional.

"Leave us," he said in a steady voice.

The other men quickly and obediently left the room, closing the door behind them. The man lingered near the potbelly stove that burned cotton trimmings soaked in whale fat, warming his hands. He did not look at Martha, and the hesitation towards conversation bothered her. Finally he sauntered to the desk, and sat down in the chair on the other side. He stared at her for a good minute, and she glared back.

"I could have you hanged for this," he said.

Martha blinked and mashed her teeth together. She said nothing.

"The dragon, thankfully, will live, but the veterinarian says we'll be down a boiler for the next week as it recovers." He folded his hands together on the table. "You are Martha Borden, are you not?"

"Yes," said Martha curtly.

"I have seen your brochures. I hear you hand them out to the workers as they leave the pubs, trying to ply them to your ridiculous cause."

"It is not ridiculous!" Martha exclaimed. She leaned forward and blurted out her words. "The cruelty here is appalling, what is done in the name of profit and progress--"

"The workers only care that the beasts continue to live so that they may earn a living and put bread on their table and clothes on their backs--"

"That may be true, I have seen and heard their apathy, which is why I took action." Her demeanor turned from anger to pleading. "Your employer must know the dire cost of his business. When you see those poor creatures reduced to that state, how can it not break your heart? Do not blindly work for this man that would turn an elegant, lordly creature into a mere cog."

"They are beasts of burden, to be exploited as we see fit, as all animals come under the dominion of man. It is kindness enough to allow them to exist at all after the centuries of predation they imposed upon our species. We have tamed our enemy and put it to useful work. Is it not better to live as we do now, without fear of being eaten in the night, or having our houses burned down?"

"You are blinded by the narcissism of men!" Martha bellowed.

"And you are just blind!" he bellowed back. "You would kill the animal to save it!"

"It is unspeakable cruelty to live in such a way that would be shocking to a sewer rat!"

"You are an idealist who doesn't understand the true workings of the world!"

"Yes, I am an idealist! I'll fight for a more just world where the workings of it reflect the morals that are spoken in church on Sundays!"

The man slammed his fist onto the desk. Martha recoiled and cowered for the briefest instant.

"Do you know who I am?!"

Martha glared at him, trying to keep her breathing steady.

"I confess I do not," she said finally.

"I am Augustus Pelt, the owner of this mill. You have destroyed my property, slowed the mill for a week, and you offend every fiber of my being."

Martha's cheeks grew pink.

"Then you are the man responsible for this situation--"

"That situation is called industry, and I am not responsible. Dragons are used in mines and smelting, glassworks, metalworks, clayworks, and all manner of other factories. They are indispensable."

"They are not."

"This is nonsense--"

"Do we need all those things that the factories produce in mass quantities? Did society not get along without all these things for centuries? Could we not be happy in our agrarian past?"

"Your mind dwells in a pastoral fantasy!" scoffed Augustus.

"It is not fantasy but possibility! How can we live with ourselves with the way we are willing to treat God's creatures?"

Augustus exhaled noisily.

"Do not attempt to spout scripture to me! I know who you are Martha Borden, the daughter of a country parson. You were meant to be a lady, raised with gentle ways, but here you are, dressed as the lowliest, crudest worker in my mill, your sleeve charred and your hem soiled, and sweaty as a rutting pig, and you have the gall to tell me that my business should not exist because I defy God's will! I shall have you sent back to your father in this state and I will tell him that you are intimately familiar with all of God's thoughts and concerns and you will see how your father takes to that!"

"I am not afraid of my father and I am certainly not afraid of you, for I am right, whether God endorses me or not!"

"And who is the narcissist now?" He said this quietly and without expression. There was silence between them. He looked down at his hands. "I do not...I don't wish to shame a lady. Punishing you...or any lady, is not something I would take pleasure in. You must understand...I am a practical man. I must keep this mill running. I have five hundred and thirty eight workers just in this one, and each of them have more mouths to feed at home. If this mill goes down, if my other mills were to all cease operating, this city would starve. You must see that I am not in a position to be swayed. I must defend my business, even if indeed you are the one who is morally correct."

Martha sagged slightly in her chair, not knowing how to formulate a response.

"I will call a carriage for you," he said, rising from his seat.

"There must be some compromise," she blurted out.

"And what would you suggest?"

"The filth they lay in. Have it cleaned out each day. It would be a small start."

"I would have to hire several workers. We are barely profitable as it is--"

"It is the right thing to do," she said adamantly, "and there are always more people in this city who could do with work."

Augustus nodded.

"I will see to it."

He held out his hand to her. She took it in her own and felt the warmth of it. He helped her up in the most gentlemanly and polite fashion. Their fingers parted.

"I wish to apologize," she said, "for my canvassing, my sabotage, and my harsh words. I intended to inflict my rage against an amorphous edifice, but here you are, just a man."

"And a very forgiving one at that."

They both smiled shyly, and he led her out into the winter air and to the carriage that would convey her home.

---

Okay so I cribbed a bit from the 1855 novel North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (nothing verbatim of course, and there are no dragons in that). It's a decent read but a little tedious (it was originally a 22 part serial). The 2004 BBC adaptation is really cracking though, if you are into period dramas. This was also inspired by PETA videos, but I wouldn't recommend those unless you are already vegan and avoid leather like you have an allergy to it.

279/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "O Children" by Nick Cave

2012-01-28T13:01:00.001-08:00

He walked halfway down the bowling lane in mismatched sneakers--one shoe belonged to his Amazonian older sister and the other he found on the road next to a burnt-out car. He carried a sparkly pink bowling ball in one grimy hand and a handgun in the other. He stopped and dropped the ball. He gave it a push towards the pins with his foot. It obliged to roll a few feet on the leaf-strewn lane then dropped down into the gutter.

"Fuck," he whined.

"Slade, you suck at bowling," said Brittany. She was a rough-looking sixteen year-old with a grating laugh and a long, well-practiced list of generic insults. She was playing cat's cradle with a girl around the same age named Sylvia who had Down Syndrome. They sat in the plastic moulded chairs at the front of the lanes, surrounded by a litter of empty chip bags and soda cans.

"I suck at many things," he said, swiveling around on his heels. He winked at Brittany but she ignored him.

The pigeons roosting in the rafters suddenly decided to take flight and made their way out through a hole in the roof, leaving behind a gentle rain of old feathers and dust that nearly sparkled in the ray of sunlight that came down from the hole. Slade walked into it and looked up to watch the departing birds.

"That's pretty," he said. "We'll be eating them soon."

"I'm not eating pigeons. Pigeons are dirty," said Sylvia.

"We're dirty," said Slade.

Sylvia looked up at him, dropping the cat's cradle to her lap.

"We're people," she said. "People don't eat people."

Slade stared at her with heavy-lidded eyes for a moment, then he grinned.

"Depends on your definition," he said.

"You have a bad mind," said Sylvia, returning her attention to the cat's cradle. Brittany made her next move in the game.

"He already knows that," said Brittany.

Slade smirked then flopped down onto the hard floor of the lane. He laid on his back and stared up at the blue sky through the hole. He sighed deeply then thumped his sneakers rhythmically against the floor.

"Who knew the end of the world was going to be so long and dull," he said. "I thought there would be more running and stuff."

"There was running," said Brittany. "You forget it on purpose because you're an idiot and you like to hear yourself talking about it."

"Why did I have to be young and athletic?" he asked the hole in the ceiling. "All the slow old people got taken out."

"I rode my bike," said Sylvia.

"Yeah, you're pretty good on that thing."

"It's my favorite thing to do," said Sylvia.

"They were the lucky ones," Slade continued.

He rolled over onto his stomach, facing the pins. He aimed the handgun at the one in the middle and squeezed off a shot.

"What that hell?!" said Brittany, jumping to her feet.

"That's loud you idiot!" said Sylvia, her hands clamped against her ears.

"Dumb-ass! You're going to attract the you-know-what with that noise!" hissed Brittany.

Slade shot at the pins again until he emptied the clip. All the shots missed. He sat up and threw the gun down the lane. It came to a rest a few millimeters in front of the middle pin. Brittany burst into her braying laughter. Slade pressed his forehead into the floor.

Sylvia stood and walked stiffly down the lane, her fists tight, stepping over Slade, then the rest of the way to the pins. She kicked them all down with her foot and sending them clattering.

"This is how you bowl!" she exclaimed, then stamped her way across several lanes until she reached the far wall against which rested her bike. She rolled it towards the front door of the bowling alley. She peeked out the door, then opened it wide to let her bike through. "I'm going home," she said loudly. Then she was gone.

"She'll outlast us all," said Slade.

278/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "El Arbol" by Ersi Arvizu"

2012-01-27T13:39:00.001-08:00

THWAK

Dirt and wood splinters sprayed up with the axe.

"We shouldn't be doing this," whispered Francesca. "We'll get caught."

The full moon shone from her dark eyes. Vanessa smirked at her as she readied the axe for another blow against the coffin lid. The wood came apart easily, which was not a surprise since the coffin was the cheapest available. The sisters were poor and took the least expense in burying their father. They worked another half hour to drag his body up to the surface. Both women filled in the grave, then they started their long walk with their father curled up in a wheelbarrow.

"Someone's going to see us," fretted Francesca as they passed through the cobbled streets of their tiny town.

"If you keep talking, that's exactly what will happen," said Vanessa.

"Oh, the forest is dark and dangerous at night," said Francesca as they approached the dirt path into the trees.

"Only a little more so than the day, sister. Now hush."

They walked for three hours, past the blood owls and their saucer eyes, past the moss wolves that lurked in pools of fetid water alongside the path watching with their snouts and eyes just above the surface, and past the arboreal panthers that looked down at them from above. Nothing attacked because the creatures knew that the sisters were protected by their offering.

Finally they arrived at the black tree at the heart of the forest. It was once an oak, charred by fire yet still growing. It was restless, swaying and cracking even though there was no wind. Its charcoal bark crawled with shiny, segmented, black centipedes as thick in girth as a baby's arm. The branches were decked not with leaves but with purple veined black flowers. The petals were thick and waxy, with edges frilled with velvety hairs. The stigmas of the flowers were large and red, and were surrounded by a coterie of dusty white anthers. The flowers smelled of decay and methane and a heady spice that was somewhere between fresh tobacco and nutmeg. Francesca covered her mouth with her scarf but Vanessa breathed in the aroma with pleasure.

"What do we do now?" asked Francesca, cowering slightly, with the branches of the tree inching closer to their heads.

"What have you brought me," bellowed the tree in a voice that sounded of steel guitar strings scraped across slate.

Francesca immediately prostrated herself and quivered. Vanessa straightened her hair and smoothed down the front of her dress. She put on her most alluring smile.

"We have brought...you...an offering," she said, gracefully gesturing towards the body in the wheelbarrow.

"He is your father," said the tree.

"He was," said Vanessa. "He is dead now."

"Did you kill him?" asked the tree.

"No."

"A shame."

"He died of cancer--"

"Cancer! Cancer you say?" asked the tree eagerly.

"Yes," said Vanessa expanding her smile.

"Was it removed?"

"No. It could not be."

"Ah, you have brought me a treasure!" exclaimed the tree.

Several branches reached down and caressed the edges of the wheelbarrow.

"Not yet," Vanessa cautioned.

She moved herself between the tree and the body. The tree withdrew it's branches.

"I suppose you want something," said the tree slowly.

"I do," said Vanessa.

"The things one two legs always want something."

"That's true," said Vanessa. "People spend a lot of time wanting things. Few make the effort to get them."

"What you think you want, you might not."

"That's for me to decide," said Vanessa.

"What are you doing?" whispered Francesca. "Let's get this over with!"

"As payment for our offering, we would like a flower for each of us," said Vanessa.

The tree was silent and motionless for a moment.

"My flowers are very potent. Very dangerous. What will you use them for?"

"I want to be young and beautiful forever," said Vanessa.

"Ah. Such a preparation can be made from the juice of the petals that will grant you enduring long life."

"And I, uh, want a house of my own," said Francesca, peeking up at the tree. "With servants."

"What?" asked the tree.

"We are poor you see," said Vanessa. "Our father left us with nothing but debts. We do not blame him for leaving us this burden, but he led his life in an unfortunate way."

"That is of the vaguest interest to me," said the tree. "What I am curious about is how you will use my flower as a house."

Francesca snorted into the leaf litter.

"I will sell it of course," she said.

"I see," said the tree. "And you do not want immortality for yourself?"

"What good is it if you are poor? Besides, life is misery. Who wants more than there fair portion of it?"

"Ah, I love misery...it invigorates my roots," said the tree wistfully.

"So...do we have a deal?" asked Vanessa.

"Your offering is delectable," said the tree, poking a branch against Vanessa's shoulder to push her away from the wheelbarrow. "It is a deal."

The tree bowed down a branch that was thickly laden with flowers. The sisters each plucked a flower, then they dumped the body of their father out onto the loam in front of the tree's trunks. The roots of the tree creaked and moved up through the soil, then snatched the body, pulling it down into the dark earth by the face and chest. His bare feet were the last of him to disappear.

"Be gone now, and leave me in peace," croaked the tree.

"Thank you," said Vanessa. Francesca bowed low. They turned and ran back down the path, hand in hand and laughing, past the arboreal panthers, the moss wolves, and the blood owls that were all now sleepy from the dawning day.

277/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Mystery Zone" by Spoon

2012-01-26T07:04:00.099-08:00

"You have to be the wife," said Ted. He was my second cousin--one of the pitfalls of living deep-rooted in a small town, you can never quite avoid the relatives--and slicked his hair back with gel and he always touches it to make sure it's thoroughly adhered to itself. Every time he does that I want to smack his hands. We were in his basement, which was finished, but still had that dank basement smell--which also happens to be the same odor that happens in cars when you go to the beach and leave your bathing suit in the back seat for a week.

"Why?" I asked. "What's the point?"

Ted squinted at me, then tapped his temple with his finger.

"Because you're a woman," he said. Man, he could be clueless. At first I was shocked that he could hatch a plan as complex as what he was trying to get us to execute, with thinking that primitive.

"So? These are avatars? Who the hell will care?"

"Yeah, why?" asked Caroline. She was our third. In real life she wore thick glasses and thicker sweaters, even in summer, claiming to be perpetually cold 'inside'. She worked with Ted for a few months at a gas station until it was robbed and then they both quit the next day. They won't tell me what happened, but they must have bonded over the experience because they sure spend a lot of time together as platonic friends. As far as I knew, neither of us was related to her.

"There has to be a wife! That's the game. You make a family and play it. There's always a man, a wife, and kids. Me, you, and her." He pointed to himself then us.

"Why is it man and wife?" asked Caroline. I grinned.

"I just said that's the--"

"No, I mean, why not 'husband and wife' or 'man and woman'?" said Caroline.

"Well--"

"She's right, that is weird," I piled on.

"And you could be the wife, if you want to play it that way," said Caroline.

"I don't know how to be a wife!" said Ted. His cheeks were getting a bit red. He swiveled around in his chair to face the screen which showed a slowly spinning avatar that looked a lot like Andy Garcia but I assume Ted was actually trying to create a reasonable facsimile of himself instead.

"We could all be kids," I said.

"Kids are hard to control in-game," said Ted. "We have to build up these characters fast. We need to be adults that can hold down jobs and generate income."

"Oh, this is going to be soooo boring!" I flopped down on the sofa and picked up my laptop and laid it on my stomach. "Why would anybody play a game where they have to work for the man? In real time?"

"There's no unemployment in-game," said Caroline. "You can change jobs if you don't like what you're doing. And it's not like you're doing any actual work."

"Oh that's great. Isn't there a cheat code or something?"

"No," said Caroline.

"Fantastic."

"Can you just stop complaining? I mean I'm in charge. I'm paying you to do this! If you don't like it, I'll get someone else." Ted glared at me.

"You're not going to find anyone to do this for you. No one is going to want to waste their time for you. I'm only doing it as a favor." Actually I was doing it because I had nothing better to do for the next month. "This is a crime Ted, you know that? You're not going to find a lot of willing accomplices."

"It's not a crime!" cried Ted.

"I don't know, it could be," said Caroline.

"There's no way! How is it a crime? I'm not murdering anyone. I'm not stealing anything. I'm not robbing money. It's completely harmless."

"You're going to blow up Ashley's virtual mansion, with her in it," said Caroline. Ashley was Ted's girlfriend until he found out she was also his brother's girlfriend. I met her once at a barbecue. She seemed nice, if a little blank.

"It's virtual!" Ted threw his hands into the air.

"We're going to weasel into her circle of virtual friends, plant a bomb in her bathroom and boom," said Caroline flatly. "Sounds a bit crimey to me."

"It's part of the game." He rustled around on his desk and found the box the game came in, then shoved it in Caroline's face. "Look what it says--'Mayhem is part of the fun!' There's no way this is a crime."

"God the game is lame," I said. "It comes in a box."

Ted threw the box back onto his desk, sighed, then folded his arms across his chest.

"You two are taking all the fun out of this," he said.

"If Ashley finds out we're stalking her, can't she put a restraining order on you or something?"

"It's not stalking! It's all virtual!" He gestured his hands in a circle, as if that somehow denoted the concept of 'virtual'.

Caroline and I looked at him blankly. Ted stared back at us in turn, then bowed his head and rolled his chair closer to his desk.

"I don't want to be a kid," said Caroline.

"I'm not going to be the wife," I said.

276/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Making Me Nervous" by Brad Sucks

2012-01-25T06:07:00.001-08:00

The floor was white, vast, and gridded, the ceiling was black, suspended just seven feet or so from the floor, and the space was studded by low walls of ancient humming, reeling, chattering computers.

"What is this?" The man who asked the question was an androgynous looking twenty-year-old mathematician from somewhere deep eastern Europe by the name of Matvey Genadiev.

"Did you sign the non-disclosure agreement? Did he sign the non-disclosure agreement? Yes, let me see that, okay. That looks good. That's great." The second man, named Mr. Black was fidgety, always playing with a pen cap or a stress toy or his watch. He was short, pudgy, and pushing forty-seven. With them was a woman who kept her face expressionless except when it was time for her to leave her shift at the facility. She held a clipboard with the signed non-disclosure agreement. Her name was Magenta.

"What do you do here with all this?" asked Matvey.

"Ah yes," sighed Mr. Black as if working up his courage. "I have to get to it, don't I?" He chuckled nervously. "Well, this will blow your mind, Matvey. Can I call you Matvey? May I..."

"Yuh. Sure," said Matvey, squinting his eyes at the little man. "What is wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Okay so, this is called the Predictor Room. We usually capitalized that, although we don't usually write it down, ha! Yeah. Yeah."

"So? Why the old reel to reel computers? This junk must be from the seventies. Maybe late sixties?"

Matvey slowly walked forward, inspecting the old equipment.

"Yeah, well, it is. Don't touch it. You'll be able to, but just not now."

Mr. Black mopped his brow with the back of his hand. Magenta walked up to Matvey, put her arm around his shoulder, then turned him to face Mr. Black.

"Focus," she said quietly. Matvey shivered.

"Yes, thank you, Magenta."

"What do you do here? Can you explain?" asked Matvey.

"Well, as you might guess, the Predictor Room makes predictions, and has been doing so since 1972. It is extremely accurate."

"What kind of predictions? Financial analysis?"

"A little bit of that, yes," said Mr. Black, nodding.

"Why won't you upgrade the equipment? Surely this would be better--"

"No!" shouted Mr. Black a little too loudly. "I mean no. This is, this untouchable. It is finely calibrated. It is...haha...in tune with the universe you could say."

Matvey blinked at him several times.

"Nonsense," he said finally. "Superstition."

"No, no it's not," said Magenta.

"I know that might seem ridiculous, but this room can predict anything."

"Then you can predict my answer to your offer of employment."

"Why do you think I'm sweating so much!?" yelled Mr. Black.

Matvey stepped back into Magenta's strong hands. He looked up at her.

"We knew what you would think," said Magenta calmly. "But we would hardly need to make a formal prediction about it. You are a man of science. A rational being, are you not?"

"Yes," said Matvey, shrugging out of her grip.

"We need you," said Mr. Black, wringing his hands.

"Why?"

"The Predictor Room is only accurate for a six month window. Completely, amazingly accurate. Predictions beyond that are complete gibberish," said Mr. Black waving his hands.

"We've looked into your work on fractals and we think you might be able to help us extend that window," said Magenta. "Actually, we know you will be able to extend that window."

Matvey looked at her with disdain.

"There's something different about you, isn't there? You're not like Mr. Black here, are you."

"No," said Magenta.

"You read the predictions," said Matvey, shaking his finger at her.

"That is correct," she said. "I use my discretion on whether or not to reveal the answers. Foreknowledge can be dangerous."

"Why is not dangerous to you?" asked Matvey.

"Because I don't care about anything. I am a nihilist."

"Really?" asked matvey, his hands on his hips. "Isn't that more of an affectation that angry teenagers assume?"

Magenta looked at him impassively.

"You can't insult her," said Mr. Black. "I mean, not that she finds it rude or anything, well it is, but insults just don't register with her."

"You are both ludicrous," said Matvey. "I need a cigarette."

"This is a non-smoking facility," said Magenta.

"I'm not quitting," said Matvey.

"Then you'll consider working on our problem?" asked Mr. Black.

"It will take less than six months to solve," said Matvey. "Isn't that right? I can waste six months of my life on this. Apply the rational to the irrational."

"Excellent!" said Mr. Black beaming and clapping once.

"The issue I have with this though, is whether it's the right thing to do, to extend this prediction window you talk about. What do you do with the predictions, anyway?"

Mr. Black looked down at his shoes.

"You've already agreed to help us," said Magenta.

"And I can't back out?" asked Matvey. "Have I no free will?"

"What do you think?" she said.

Matvey looked over her face, searching for any indication of emotion, any tell.

"Well, that's an interesting question..." Matvey smiled.

275/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Requiem for a Tower" by Escala

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

The dog didn't bark as Thanh unlocked the door with the stolen keycard. She slipped into the dark with a bag slung over her shoulder. The dog slapped its tail against the hardword floor. Thanh pressed her finger to her lips but the dog did not recognize the gesture and only wagged harder. Thanh rolled her eyes and walked quietly past. The dog got up and padded along.

She found the bedroom, with clothes strewn on the floor, and a man, about seventy, sprawled in the middle of a king-sized bed, snoring. Thanh placed the bag on the floor and the dog sat next to it, watching her eagerly. She pulled out a small dart gun, armed it, then shot the man in the chest. He woke up, grunting and disoriented, then screamed when he saw Thanh at the foot of his bed. The dog ran around to the side of the bed, hopped up onto the man and started licking his face with concern. The man struggled to get up, but quickly became quiet.

"I have given you a muscle relaxant," said Thanh. "You will be awake for the next five minutes or so. Then you will sleep deeply. You will remember that I was here, but you will not be able to find me."

"Hurnnng," gurgled the man.

"It will be best if you keep quiet. Because I have a story to tell you."

Thanh pulled the dog down from the bed, then sat next to the man and pulled the dart from his chest. He was starting to slobber from the medication.

"Shall I begin?" she asked. "Yes I will. This has taken thirty years of my life. You do not know this. It is not revenge, precisely. I merely want you to know what I saw. What you did and you probably don't even remember. Not the specifics anyway. Do you remember Can Tho? March 2023. You were there, in spirit. I was there, all of me. I was six years of age. I was playing by myself in a grassy field next to our house. The metal men fell from the sky, all curled up in their boxed form. They had red parachutes. They were like flower petals. It was beautiful. Then my grandmother screamed for me from the other side of the field. She ran towards me and her hat fell to her back. She had lived through the Vietnam war when she was herself a girl. I didn't know what she was screaming at me for.

"Then the metal men began to land, and the ground shook. They unfolded, and stood on all fours, their backs bristling with guns. They targeted my grandmother because she was moving. She was cut in half by the bullets. I did not know what was happening, even though I could see it plainly. Then they converged on her, with their flamethrowers and burned the ground around her."

The man in the bed began to cry silently. Thanh wiped away his tears with a gloved hand.

"Yes. You have correctly surmised that you were the controller for one of those metal men. There is more to tell you. One of the metal men ran to me. Its cameras looked at me; examined me up and down. The guns pointed at me. I was frozen, but I could see. I saw the worn edges of the armor--the signs of the metal man's previous use, in what I later found out to be eighteen incursions. Drug busts. Insurgent captures. Crowd control. I did not know this at the time. I also saw a stenciled image. A white dove, with its wings outstretched. To me it looked like it was dead and pinned down, but that's not what you intended, was it?

"No. You painted that stencil, not as an ironic statement of the futility of seeking peace with a weapon of war, but as a genuine statement of how you saw yourself. A peaceable man. An officer of the peace. You believed yourself to be good. At that is why, behind the metal man, behind the signal, behind your distant bunker on an aircraft carrier out to sea, you decided to not shoot me. You turned and ran off, and left me in the field as you helped your fellow soldiers burn my house down, and then the houses of my neighbors, in an effort to smoke out a drug lord. But what you didn't know, or didn't care to acknowledge, is that you sought out a drug lord who didn't even exist. You burned our town for nothing."

Thanh shifted her weight and turned away from the man. She bent down and patted the dog.

"I lost everything I loved. My grandmother, my parents, my siblings, my friends. Even my school teacher. All because you were given some bad data."

Thanh stood and looked down at the man. He was breathing evenly, but his eyes were wrinkled up in fright.

"To have revenge," she continued, "I would have to destroy all that you love. This ridiculously large house perhaps. That fat car outside. Your dog here. Maybe your two ex-wives and the child who hates you and only calls you on Christmas. Yes I know all that. I do my research. You are the last of the metal men I have visited. The others got revenge."

She walked to the foot of the bed and picked up her bag, then went to the doorway.

"You however, will not get that. I wouldn't call it a reprieve though."

Thanh left the room and closed the door behind her. The man gasped, then fell into a tormented sleep.