A Colour and a Surge

Hangmarket / Web of Babel (dreamtime)

2012-01-19T23:49:00.005-07:00

There is a valley, or more accurately a gorge, cutting through the City. It's not completely untraversable, but the roads in and out of the gorge are narrow and zigzag up the steep walls, so naturally there have been several bridges built over the City's long history. Suspension bridges, ziplines, cable cars, rope bridges... over time, the various crossings have intersected with and reinforced each other. There are knots now - places where you can move from one bridge to another, and at some points people have built small shops to take advantage of the traffic. The densest areas at the centre of the gorge are permanently inhabited, and the people there have developed a certain sense of insularity.

Of course, I end up in this neighbourhood, looking for someone or something. The guy I'm talking to is trying to make me uncomfortable, deliberately leading me across the flimsiest and least stable paths he can find. I grit my teeth and avoid looking down. I've got a nasty suspicion that someone's picked my pocket, but luckily most of my money and other essentials (including my knife if things get really hairy) are in my bag under my cloak. Which is, admittedly, flapping around rather a lot in the wind and is not doing anything for my balance as a result.

"So can you help me or not? I've got money and information, but not a hell of a lot of time, so how about you quit dicking me around and we negotiate like civilized people, arright?"

There follows a lengthy period of muttered conversations between my guide and various other, equally shady, characters in this weird bridge creole that I'm clearly not expected to understand. I don't, much, but I can decipher enough to know that someone was here earlier, poisoning the well. Explains a lot, really.

There's a tense standoff that feels like several minutes, then the guy nods and does the universal hand sign for money. I slowly reach for my bag and pull out my main bargaining chip, and the situation immediately turns into a complete Mongolian clusterfuck when the stock "twitchy little weasel-faced guy" mistakes a data crystal for a weapon and knocks it out of my hand, over the edge of the bridge. Yelling ensues. The interesting thing was the device itself. I was probably only holding it for about 30 seconds, tops, but dream-me knew that the crystal was some manner of data-storage device - optical, like a DVD or CD, but instead of the data being stored in a spiral, two-dimensional pattern, it was stored in short segments in a lattice structure within the crystal. Basically, the thing looked like a polished chunk of rutilated quartz, with the internal striations indicating data clusters.

Stay Indoors (dreamtime)

2011-12-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

Dreamed about the school last night - it's the last day of classes and everyone is rushing around to cram sessions in cramped little study areas wedged in under staircases and down little-used hallways, or to exams halfway across campus, or to the bus terminal so they can get the hell out of dodge. Typical local weather - piles of dirty, melting snow turning the massive quad into churned mud slush. I'm trying to make my way through the school without going outside, which takes me through the attached grade school. The smaller kids watch me pass with kind of awed looks, and I admire the decor in this area - lots of bright primary colours and hands-on models and comfortable furniture with rounded corners. Evidently Lego has ponied up a fair bit of sponsorship cash, because there are Lego displays everywhere. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Beats hell out of Pepsi, anyway.

The grade school is connected to the disused library via a weirdly-angled corridor and two half-staircases, and the door at the end is only about five feet high. The library itself is largely gutted at this point - the floors are covered with pieces of ceiling tile, dust, and torn bits of cheap paperback books. There are lots of exposed pipes and wires, and only about half of the lights are working. On the way through, I can't resist snagging a few bits of literary detritus, even though I know they're unlikely to be complete. Somebody needs to save them.

The library leads into the art building, and I stop in at the dance studio to get my grade for Oriental Dance 30-something. The instructor sneers at me because I took the course as an elective and didn't sign up for the year-end performance. I sneer back and bait the hell out of her by insinuating that really, calling dance an academic program is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? Onwards through the drama department, where my route cuts through the backstage area of a massive theatre. I wave to someone I appear to know (although she doesn't look like anyone I recognize in waking life) who's rooting through a box full of ratty-looking wigs.

Honestly, I have no idea how big this place actually is. It's kind of like the TARDIS, in that it seems to occupy only a few blocks from the outside, but once on campus it's a huge disorganized patchwork of every single educational institution I've ever spent more than a few hours in.

Oddly enough, the washrooms are without exception old, decrepit, and absolutely filthy. I have no idea what this means.

Unique English Sentences...

2009-08-03T23:17:00.000-06:00

... and other dubious perks of parenthood:

1. "No, sweetie - you can't use the dinosaur to mop up pee."

2. "Kitty doesn't like it when you put raisins in her ears."

3. "There aren't any YouTube videos with Elmo and R2D2."

4. "I know your cousins are smaller than you and can't walk, but they're not kitties."

5. "Do you want another laundry hamper ride?"

6. The discovery that mommy's fancy soap isn't nearly as tasty as it smells.

7. "You can't go to Oma's house if you're naked."

8. "I don't think there are any videos with pandas and Yoda either."

9. "Don't stand in front of Daddy when he's trying to pee."

10. "Patzla."
"What?"
"Patzla!" (Tugs open kitchen drawer and gropes around inside)
"Ohh... spatula?"
"Patzla!"
(Lengthy session of handing him several spatulas of various materials, all of which he rejects with increasingly loud expressions of frustration and displeasure, until he throws himself to the floor and screams like an angry howler monkey after I try giving him a wooden spoon. Then I give him a black sort-of cross between a spatula and a slotted spoon.)
{delighted} "Patzla!"
(Does a little stompy dance, then toddles out to the living room where he drops the spatula five minutes later after rediscovering a jingly cat toy under the sofa.)

War is Hell (but you get chicken afterwards)

2009-07-17T19:15:00.002-06:00

Our house seems to lie in the DMZ between the territories of two outdoor tomcats. There hasn't been a huge catfight in our front yard in a couple of years, and The Black Bastard (hereafter known as BB) is generally courteous enough to stay on the sidewalk when he's raiding The Orange Bastard's (OB's) turf. However, OB still wanders through our front and back yards with impunity, which drives our indoor cat (Hobbes, a.k.a. MY Bastard) crazy with territorial rage. (Alice appears to be content to let Hobbes do the snarling and tail-puffing, or, more likely, simply hasn't noticed there are other cats outside. She's kind of dim, is our Alice.)

So for the past several weeks, OB has been skulking around under the hedge, in the back yard, and occasionally even lurking in the front flowerbeds just under the window. Hobbes has been beside himself with rage, and I haven't been particularly happy about it either, partly because Hobbes is unhappy, partly because I don't want to find a bunch of cat crap in the flowerbed next spring when I plant a bunch of flowers. Unfortunately, I decided on this occasion to give OB a bit of a scare, wrenched open the front door, and hissed at him. Meanwhile, Hobbes launches himself out the front door at OB, chasing him into the neighbours' yard where there is a tense, yowling standoff of several minutes before Hobbes attacks again and OB flees up the street.

Hobbes went and hid out under the hedge until I finally coaxed him out with promises of cat treats and chicken. When I got him inside, he was limping slightly. He had a few minor scratches, but I think the main problem was that he's getting to be an old cat and he probably pulled something during the fight. So for the last few days I've been making a big fuss over him and giving him treats, carrying him to bed with me, and so on. S. points out that this is probably giving him the idea that getting into fights is a good idea.

On the upside, OB hasn't shown his face around here for over a week now.

Underground Market (dreamtime)

2009-05-05T12:16:00.000-06:00

I'm on an elevated train passing over an old, decaying neighbourhood on the cusp of gentrification. Most of the original houses still standing are in poor repair, with broken windows, peeling paint, and sagging porches. The surrounding areas have been leveled or are in the process of being excavated for new foundations. I get off the train at the border between this area and one that is still resisting redevelopment. I'm supposed to be meeting someone at a local tea shop, but I've got a fair bit of time to kill, so I wander into an isolated corner store with heavy grilles over the windows and Christmas lights strung around the window and door frames.

Inside, there are the standard items - small, overpriced grocery staples, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and snacks. There is also a wall dedicated to various posters looking for or advertising apartments, jobs, and goods of dubious provenance. The shopkeeper is a short man in a faded tie-dyed t-shirt, a scruffy beard, and small round glasses. He suggests that I check out the local market down the block. "It's quite a sight, even if you're not looking for anything in particular." I've got a fairly heavy bag, but he offers to look after it while I'm at the market. "Not like I got any plans tonight, more's the pity."

I have a few misgivings about leaving my stuff with this fellow, but then there's nothing really valuable (or interesting) in my bag, so after some dithering I hand him my backpack and wander off down the street. The entrance to the market is marked by a small grubby sign strung up over an alley between two semi-habitable brick apartment buildings. The alley runs straight for about 10 meters, then turns into an unpredictable labyrinth. The asphalt gives way to cobblestones. The houses and apartment buildings on either side lean inward, allowing only a sliver of sky in between to remain visible.

After walking for a while, I notice that the buildings appear uninhabited - they're full of stacks and piles of cloth, which spill out the windows into the street. Some of the cloth has tags attached indicating a price per meter or bolt, some of it appears to be printed with ads for various shops further along in the market. The path slopes gradually but steadily downhill, and apart from other tourists on the path, I haven't seen a single person. There are no longer any houses - the cloth (and yarn, and what looks like shredded paper) are contained in massive, transparent plastic containers, their sides bulging. These give way to plain white walls, and then I find myself in a rabbit warren of branching paths, some of which lead to private residences, some to small cafes, smoke shops, and pawnbrokers. I find myself walking through someone's backyard, then wind up in a tea shop. The woman wiping off a table tells me that the shop won't be open until after dark. I pass by a few large rooms strewn with cushions and fake-fur rugs, lit by candles and lava lamps. Hugely dilated eyes peer at me from dark corners and arms wave languidly like seaweed, beckoning me inside. I keep going.

The light becomes brighter, as if I'd been walking all night without realizing it. Now the rooms are occupied by families, still lounging around on the cushions, but eating breakfast and playing games. There's one area packed wall to wall with bicycles of various sizes and styles. I suspect they're stolen, but the fellow selling them banters pleasantly with passers-by.

When I finally come out the other side, the sun is going down, and the facade is lit up garishly. This side is obviously a tourist attraction, complete with souvenir stalls and the ubiquitous candy shop with dozens of different kinds of fudge. I have no idea where the corner store is from here, so I head towards a tour bus to ask directions.

The Last Night on Earth (dreamtime)

2009-03-25T11:15:00.006-06:00

It's the night of December 20th, 2012. I'm at a huge party in a downtown hotel in my dream city. Everyone I know is there, even people I knew in high school and haven't seen since. I spot MHZ in the crowd at several points, although as usual, he's avoiding me and / or being dragged around by the latest psycho girlfriend who's attached herself to him like a leech. I'm shocked at how badly he's aged.

Midnight is fast approaching, and although the exact time of whatever's going to happen is unknown, midnight is as good a time as any to cut loose. We spill out into the parking lot outside and see that the entire front wall of the hotel (a seamless sheet of mirrored, reinforced glass) has shattered into diamond-like cubes all over the pavement, mixing with the snow and glitter from the partygoers.

In less than 10 seconds, I've got little bits of glass in both of my shoes. In less than 20 seconds, the glass bits have put runs in both of my (outrageously expensive) stockings. I sit down on the hood of an expensive-looking sports car and shake the glass out of my shoes. The hotel employees are hanging up giant sheets of mylar (I assume it's mylar - it's got that sort of shiny quality to it) and trying to keep out a horde of people spilling over from another party in a skeevy strip club / swinger bar down the block. Some cops show up and attempt to stop the incipient orgy in the parking lot.

There's a sudden flash of light, and I think this is it, with a weird thrill of mingled anticipation and dread. But it's just the fireworks starting - starbursts of white and violet and green breaking open the sky and glittering in the windows of the skyscrapers and the broken glass on the pavement. The booming of the fireworks is drowned out by a rushing noise, and I turn to look in the direction of the river and see the water creeping up the banks and hundreds of boats floating past with people crowding the decks and waving at everyone onshore.

S. grabs my hand and grins at me.

"Here comes the flood," he says.

Down in the Valley-O (dreamtime)

2009-03-22T20:50:00.004-06:00

I'm staying in a village in an isolated valley with a group of friends. Most of them are warriors, and I haven't seen them since we arrived. I assume they're keeping busy hunting and trekking around the valley. For some reason, we can't leave - the villagers are afraid of something on the heights that they won't speak of. Every time I try to walk up the paths towards the valley walls, I get this sick feeling like something's crushing down on me, making it impossible to breathe.

The village has no contact with the outside world. They grow wheat for bread, raise sheep for milk and wool and meat, chickens for eggs, and have vegetable gardens and a small orchard. I have no idea what date it is, only the time of year. There is a small church or temple, but there are no symbols to indicate what faith these people practice, and I can't read their language, although I can speak it, or we speak the same one.

I am getting impatient - we've been stuck here for so long because I burned out all my power in a fight, but now I have recovered, and we should leave. I go to talk to one of the healers, who tells me that my friends have spent the last several weeks at his house after they tried to climb up a ridge. He says he would be happy to let them stay, but he's running out of food. I haven't been aware of any of this, and after giving him pretty much all of the rest of my money, I go off and try to get some answers from the other villagers about what the hell is going on in this valley. Predictably, they close ranks and in a few cases become openly hostile.

The POV switches to a sort of omniscient perspective at this point - I'm with a friend (nobody I recognize from waking life, but I've met her before in dreams) in a big room cluttered with old toys - action figures, Lego pieces, model vehicles of various kinds, and scenery from wargames and dismantled train layouts. I'm looking for fantasy-medieval action figures and accessories to represent my group. Unfortunately, most of the figures are mechs or based on films (Batman, Star Wars, etc.) and are therefore the wrong genre.

Just before I woke up, we were starting up a narrow path zigzagging up the valley wall, and there was a greenish tinge to the sky and a weird crackly feeling in the air like the moment before a lightning strike.

The Bang and the Clatter as an Angel Hits the Ground (Mage)

2008-12-14T23:34:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly, Rosemary is proving relatively easy to find - all Phenex has to do is follow the trail of blown speakers and stoned angelheads shouting at each other over the ringing in their ears. She's making her way towards Fata's camp, which suits Phenex fine, because he's got a nasty suspicion about who might have started all this.

* * * * * * * *
Storm's coming. It's weird seeing the clouds rushing around the sky like that like they're in some kind of almighty hurry like when Daddy said the seals would be broken and the sun the sun the sun's on fire and I really think there's something wrong with me even though I don't feel sick. Sunstroke. Maybe I've got a fever and Mama's giving me iced tea and sponging my forehead with a cool washcloth and I'm gonna wake up with two weeks' worth of homework to do and wanting to eat everything in sight horizon to horizon and that thunder's giving me a heck of a headache. There's that tree again pretty all bright and silvery with little lights but that's not where I'm supposed to be right now and here comes the lady with the cards and she's looking all worried which is awful sweet of her but you know I think I'm okay now and I try to tell her that but I don't know if I'm talking or if it's just my inside voice.

"Two spoons... it's two spoons."

Two spoons of what? Sugar sugar water in my iced tea I never did get that lemonade but the tea was pretty good even if it was kind of bitter like wormwood the water tastes of ashes and wormwood where's Median where's my mom? Cardlady puts her hands over her ears all of a sudden and I think I might have given her my headache sorry cardlady cloudlady storm's coming...

* * * * * * * *
Median and Inri catch up to Phenex as he's shouting questions at Fata, who seems to be having trouble hearing him. She's moaning and holding her head, and as they approach Median can finally make out what she's saying:

"Too soon - she's starting too soon."

Phenex is furious.

"I know it's too fucking soon! That goddamn little weasel ratshit bastard thought it would be funny to dose her up, and now she's waking up and probably giving half the fucking sensitives in this camp an aneurysm with the noise she's been generating. We're going to find her first, but after Inri's talked her down, if she manages to talk her down, I'm coming back to feed Alias his nuts."

"Sonofabitch, I should have guessed," Median mutters, "The Devil and the Moon..."

* * * * * * * *
Time stutters and surges increasingly erratically around Rosemary as she staggers aimlessly through Black Rock City, trailing a cone of psychic feedback in her wake. She's no longer even thinking in words, much less in complete sentences. The less sensitive inhabitants of various encampments attempt to entertain, soothe, or restrain her, because she's obviously on something heavy, but she always manages to slip away, moving along a wobbly spiral path towards the epicentre of the festival, The Man. The flourescent tubes and strings of twinkling LED lights start to flicker as she approaches, then explode as the storm around her overloads the circuits.

She looks up, a rabbit frozen in highbeams, as the Man becomes a fountain of sparks. Her father's voice thunders passages from Revelation in her head.

* * * * * * * *
A lot of people... well, our kind of people, anyway, never really get why I ran. Other people mostly do, especially if they've been raised religious. Anybody who's read the Bible knows why people fall on their knees when an angel comes. Nowadays it seems everyone talks about their guardian angels and has coffee mugs or tote bags with cute little babies with wings on them, and that's not what they're like. That's not it at all.

Angels are... they're huge and terrible things with wings that blot out the sun and voices like every window in the world breaking at once. When they come, you can be pretty sure that someone's going to die. Or at least wish they were dead. So I ran like hell when I saw the angel. And yeah, from the outside it was just the Man, but where I was it was also an angel, with a spire of light stabbing into the sky behind it. And the light was all around me and it just wouldn't stop or fade away, so then I fell on my knees, because I figured maybe if I stayed down it wouldn't see me.

Canadian Democracy?

2008-12-04T12:56:00.002-07:00

Well, Mr. Harper has managed to convince Her Majesty's representative, Governer General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament until January 26th, which means that we are effectively without a functional government for the next seven weeks. Way to go, Steve - instead of either trying to reach consensus with the other Members of Parliament elected by 62% of the 59% of the population of this apathetic bloody excuse for a country who bothered to vote [Note: To any suddenly rabid Tory supporters reading this who have been screaming about the coalition but didn't bother to vote, I suggest you go into the kitchen and dish yourself up a nice big bowl of "shut the fuck up".], we're stuck with a minority government who'd rather spend the better part of the next two months taking cheap shots at the opposition from behind the Queen's skirts. Nice.

I'm not saying I don't have grave misgivings about the whole notion of a coalition government, particularly one led by Stephane Dion, who's got so many daggers stuck into his back at the moment that he resembles a pincushion. However, the fact that Mr. Harper seems to feel that he can govern this country as though he'd been handed a landslide majority in the last election damn well needs to be answered with a resounding, "Hell no, you didn't." The fact that he decided to turn a plan to deal with the economic crisis into an attempt to financially eviscerate his political opponents makes him look not only like an arrogant idiot, but a mean-spirited asshole as well, particularly considering that the $30 million that the government would have saved by cutting the political party funding is basically just a drop in the bucket.

Ms. Jean's hands may well be tied by legal considerations, but this whole situation makes me inclined to join the anti-monarchist faction.

The only silver lining here might be the fact that if the public can muster sufficient outrage over this, the Tories might consider acting like adults and negotiate with the other parties.

Oh, and as far as the carrying on about the Liberals and NDs getting into bed with [OMFG] the scary treasonous separatists - when was the last time Quebec separation was seriously on the political agenda? Seriously - the Bloc hasn't said boo about it since 1995. They're basically a left-leaning regional party. You know, the way the Reform Party was a right-leaning regional party before they got sick of being ignored by Ottawa, held their noses, and got into bed with the Tories.

Signal to Noise (dreamtime)

2008-11-17T22:15:00.009-07:00

I'm flipping idly through a game module for some long out-of-print RPG - it's for an adventure in a "Forbidden City" which, by the setting blurb, sounds a lot like something Lovecraft or Chambers would have devoted pages of florid yet vague descriptive text to. The creepy thing is that the front cover of the module has been damaged, so the name of the city is obscured, as though water has been spilled on the cover and left long enough to bleed the ink down the paper. The really creepy thing is that every instance of the city's name has also been carefully excised from the book - not just crossed out or covered with white-out, but cut out neatly, so there are small holes in several of the pages.

Needless to say, I buy the module and make plans to run it using WoD rules.

The POV switches at this point to the action in the game itself. The party (including myself) is picking its way through a series of caves which turn out to be the ruins of a massive highway interchange on the outskirts of The City*

[* The City is a place I frequently end up in my dreaming life. It's huge, contains elements of every place I've ever lived and a few I've simply visualized from books, and for some reason contains large stretches of urban decay - not the dangerous, crime-riddled variety, but the wasteland that's left after even the criminals decide to move to a nicer neighbourhood with a better class of people. We're talking the Bronx during the late 1970s - early 1980s. Or maybe postwar Dresden. The Ciry also contains a huge university, a deeply confusing and arbitrary public transit system, and, inexplicably, an amusement park.]

There are five of us, and five small children. One of the kids is our guide, the others... from sketchy reports of this nameless place and what other people have told us, apparenty young children are the only people able to find their way around the city without becoming paralyzed with nausea from the bizarre geometry of the place. The unspoken reason they're with us, which I'm really not happy about, is that they can't run as fast as adults, so it's like the old joke about not having to outrun the bear, but the other person you're hiking with, only not funny at all. I've made a private resolution that this is not going to happen, no matter what sorts of godawful things we run into.

We finally reach the gates, where a bridge leading to the main entrance has been collapsed into a deep gorge separating the city from the surrounding countryside. Despite the place's reputation, there are a hell of a lot of people milling around, to the point that there's actually a lineup for the improvised cablecar visitors use to get across the gorge. I remark that for an allegedly forbidden city, there are an awful lot of damned tourists. Nobody laughs.

X. and M. wait in line. The kids go off to play with the hordes of other kids building forts out of rubble, chucking stones into the gorge, play-fighting with sticks, and other stuff kids do when left to their own devices. R., V., and I wander around to try to get some more reliable information on what exactly we're getting into here. A frail-looking blonde woman is sitting on a parapet overlooking the gorge, and she smiles at us when we approach. She's perfectly happy to talk to us, chatting about the inhabitants of the city, including her sister, who she's visiting. She says she's never heard of any monsters, and the people are no more mad than they are anywhere else. She brushes some hair away from her face, and I see a small black square on one cheek. V. stiffens and walks away without another word to her, and I make some excuse and hurry after him.

"What was that all about? She was being helpful!"

"Oh yes, very helpful. Didn't you see that mark on her face? She's starting to pixellate. We can't trust a word she says."

"It was just the one square!"

"On her face - but she was wearing long robes. For all we know, she could be nothing but static under there. I'm not willing to take the chance."

When I look more closely at the people waiting in line, I notice that the majority of them, particularly those who have been here before, have parts of their body missing - the area where the limb should be is a hole filled with grey static. Their voices, too, are occasionally obscured by the hiss of a dead radio or occasionally rise into a sharp whine of feedback. The little girl guiding us comes up and stares at me solemnly.

"It's nothing like monsters, really. Mainly it's just that when you can't see or hear anything in particular, you start to make stuff up."

Homecoming? (dreamtime)

2008-10-18T01:30:00.002-06:00

I'm on The Campus, a recurring feature of my particular oinerogeography. This is perhaps unsurprising, as I've spent over a quarter of my life to date at university. As is usual for my dream locations, it combines features of every university I've ever set foot in as well as several that only occur in my head, albeit fairly consistently. I found myself walking through corridors that looked like Thorv Hall, only more twisty, looking for a lecture hall I had, as usual, forgotten to write down or memorize. When I found it, the class was already in progress - mathematics, specifically matrices, which I haven't studied since first year and barely grasped then.

Contrary to the way these sorts of dreams typically go, there was not a test scheduled for the following day, but I did need to pass the course in order to meet the requirements to teach philosophy, despite the fact that my area of specialization was (is) primarily the philosophy of mind. After the class, I went to the food court / student centre to get something to eat, and discovered that it was undergoing extensive renovations. Went to the campus pub instead, where I met one of my former professors, K., who asked somewhat snidely if I'd been off worshipping the moon with my coven. I said that I hadn't been involved in Wicca for well over ten years, and that if he had a problem with my off-campus activities I'd be more than happy to discuss it in a meeting with him and the Dean. He backed off at that point, and I got my chicken strips and fries and went to find a quiet table somewhere.

At some point between lunch and wandering around the campus, it occurred to me that I didn't know a single person there. I realized then that I was dreaming and that all of my friends had long since graduated and left the city, even X. So I called him on my cellphone and said that I was coming home, and then I just thought the dream was too depressing and woke up.

Ash Tourist (dreamtime)

2008-10-03T14:01:00.006-06:00

I'm packing a bunch of Pooh Bear's old clothes, soap and other toiletries, and stationery supplies in an old messenger bag. I plan to leave it in a visible location in the Land Rover when we arrive at the camp - the dossier said that the locals' pride would not let them accept charity, but the aid workers have an arrangement worked out. They leave the donations in easy-to-steal bags in convenient locations, and the recipients get to tell their friends that they put one over on the foreigners.

The landscape is flat and grey and barren, with low mountains in the distance. There is a light dusting of frost or ash on the rocky ground. The sky is almost the same shade of grey, and there's a sharp, cold wind, whipping fine grit through the thin air. I don't understand what these people are doing out here. There are no cities, no rivers, and the land obviously isn't capable of supporting anything in the way of edible vegetation. Surely there must be someplace a little less inhospitable they could stay.

At this point, the dream starts to get a little strange. There are several small replicas of ancient temples dotting the plain. They are whitish-grey and appear to be made of local stone. There's a replica of the Parthenon, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, Hagia Sophia, and (of course) Stonehenge. None of them is more than about seven feet high. There is also a pair of gigantic legs straddling the road. The rest of the body is nowhere in sight.

We arrive at the aid workers' base, which appears to have been set up in an abandoned air base. The workers' tents are inside the hangars, mostly for added protection from the wind and dust. A couple of other people in the Land Rover get out and demand to know where we are, because the base was definitely south of the legs and this is west. I have no idea what direction we came from, because everything looks the same, but quibbling about directions strikes me as a bit stupid, considering that this base is the only landmark other than the temples in the area anyway.

I walk out and go to the other part of the camp. Sullen-eyed people of indeterminate ethnicity watch me from shacks made of scrap metal from the hangar and tarps and tents from the aid workers. Apparently the stones here are flammable, because that's what they're using to cook the field rations they've "stolen". They wear colourful clothes in strangely shiny iridescent fabrics. I allow one of the kids, a little girl, to pick my pocket. She takes the handful of candy back to her gang a short distance away.

I woke up shortly after this.

Debate Report Summary (reconstructed)

2008-10-02T21:18:00.005-06:00

Just finished watching the second hour of the English-language party leaders' debate on CBC.

Overall impression of the leaders:

Harper: Tired and beleaguered

Dion: Sensitive and desperate

Layton: Aggressive and smug

May: Blunt and knowledgeable

Duceppe: Just there to disturb shit

Steve Paikin (moderator): Pretty good at keeping the candidates within their time limits and preventing the debate from devolving into a shouting match.

That said - who the hell thinks 45 seconds is an adequate length of time to respond to a question? Seriously.

Layton's quote for the night: "Where's your platform? Under your sweater?"

I'm really glad someone brought up the culture question - I know a lot of people who are involved with the arts, and not one of them can afford to do it for a living, much less attend these mythical fucking galas Harper claims are going on all over the place.

Dion's quote for the night (on culture): "First, it's fun. It's bringing us beauty, emotions, a beautiful novel, a beautiful movie. We need to have more of that, certainly." I mean, it wasn't a great quote in and of itself, but it came across as disarmingly honest. Making a case for art as a purely aesthetic value in it's own right without saying how much it contributes economically or how it helps define our national identity is something I can totally get behind. And saying that your party is in favour of more fun is just plain cool.

Wow - that dude from Toronto who asked what the leaders were going to do about crime was totally and obviously a Conservative plant. Way to go Jack for calling attention to the huge rate of incarceration among young Aboriginal Canadians and what the underlying causes are (lack of education, lack of opportunities, shitty facilities on most reservations, to name a few).

Ooh - the Afghanistan question. This is one of the few policy issues I'm seriously ambivalent about. On the one hand, if we pull out and the Taliban take over again, life is going to seriously suck for half the population. On the other hand, the Canadian military don't have the money or the gear to protect our soldiers from jury-rigged roadside bombs, much less anything more substantial. Booyah to May for arguing in favour of a broader UN mission with more emphasis on humanitarian aid. And another booyah for bringing up the fact that a huge chunk of our foreign aid budget (such as it is) is being poured into Afghanistan at the expense of Africa and other seriously impoverished areas of the world.

Sealab 2021 moment: "Oh, that tears it! How many more times am I gonna have to hear the phrase 'kitchen tables' today?!"

The "building a shed" guy sounds like a plant too, but damned if I can figure out for which party. Maybe he's just making the most of his 15-odd seconds of fame among the small subset of Canadian voters watching this debate instead of the no doubt riveting trainwreck of the U.S. vice-presidential debate.

I'm really glad May brought up electoral reform, although it could be argued that it's kind of self-serving, as (sadly) it's the only way the Greens are likely to get enough seats to be taken seriously. Regardless of motivation though - hells yeah, let's get proportional representation in Parliament. I'm sick of feeling like my vote doesn't count (see earlier discussion of dressing up orangutans and running them as Conservative candidates in Alberta).

Duceppe quote of the night: "I know I won't be prime minister, and three of you won't be prime minister neither. Some of you know it, but you won't say it."

Okay - I know I've got some heavy screaming pinko lefty bias going on here, but even so it looked like May was the clear winner. She'd done her research, and unlike certain other party leaders (Jack, I'm looking at you), she wasn't constantly getting into slanging matches with Harper. Harper just looked like he had better things to do than be there. Duceppe really didn't need to be there. Layton came across as a better politician than any leader the NDP has had since Broadbent, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. That, and he was kind of acting like a dick, especially when he went after Dion for things previous Liberal governments had done. I just feel more sorry for Stephane Dion than anything. He's inherited a real basket case of a party (thanks a lot, Jean), and it's probably going to be at least two more elections before the Liberals get their shit together.

Getting What You Pay For

2008-09-28T23:45:00.002-06:00

In other news, apparently the LHC is on the fritz less than two weeks after they first fired it up. I'm picturing wild-eyed Swiss scientists standing hip-deep in rapidly evaporating liquid helium screaming "You're the reason we can't have nice things!" at each other in chipmunk voices.

In other news, I'm very easily amused.

Soft Power / Bun Fight at the OK Economy (dream)

2008-09-02T16:45:00.001-06:00

1. One of the others in the group hands me the binoculars so I can see the soldiers (?) camped in the clearing below us. We're unarmed, at least with conventional weapons. I reach into the bag at my hip and pull out a snake's skull and a cord of braided red, yellow, and black ribbons. I tie a large knot in one end and pass it through the mouth of the skull, then mutter something under my breath and whirl it around my head a few times before letting go. Everyone ducks as the thing goes whipping though the trees before swerving around and coming back, snapping at everything it comes into contact with. I'm beginning to think that the manbo was right and I probably should have tried this maneuver with a real snake first, but I duck to one side, grab the tail and then yank back hard before grabbing the braid just behind the head. It's hellishly strong, this spirit, and it's thrashing around trying to take a bite out of me before I finally pull it taut and say the words to control it. Once it's calmed down, I take out a little ziploc baggie with a small vial, two black glass beads, and a bunch of loose fangs in it. As I put the beads into the eye sockets, I tell it that I'm giving it eyes in exchange for not biting me or my friends. Then I put the fangs into the appropriate spots, exacting a promise that it won't attack any civilians or animals. I slot the vial of poison into a hollow behind the fangs and tell it that this is for taking care of the men down the hill. Then I let it go and watch as it slips into the shadowy undergrowth. There's some screaming from below, a short staccato burst of gunfire, and then silence before the forest sounds start up around us as we pick our way down the hillside.

2. We're at a con at the U of S. It's lunchtime and we're all scarfing down standard-issue overcooked cafeteria pasta like it's going out of style. Several of us are still dressed up from the last game we were in or have already changed for the next one. Conversation stops dead when Ferlak turns up in a godawful eyesore of a Hawaiian shirt and bermuda shorts. (For anyone who doesn't know him, Ferlak never dresses like this.)

"I'm playing the ugly American tourist after lunch."

"Ah."

"Ah."

"Ah."

At which point he gives me this shit-eating grin and adds, "Had to borrow this from your husband."

X. flips him off, and I throw a stale dinner roll at him, which, unsurprisingly given my aim, hits a guy dressed as a gargoyle at the next table. I suddenly feign great interest in the shaker jar of parmesan cheese on the table, but Mal's still laughing when the guy turns around. He comes over and snarls, "You want to step outside for a physical challenge?"

I woke up snickering.

Firene: Lapis Exilis

2008-08-27T12:30:00.003-06:00

[Sometime in the future]

"'Sa dingin, right? Gotcher basic kitchen sinker with a hiho moddy, but the crypto on the thing's a right bugger. Good luck tapping it if you don't know the abra. Where'd you say it came from?"

Firene glances at Treacle.

"I didn't say. My mother gave it to me for my birthday last year."

"Your mam... right. Don't suppose she spelled you the abra, hey?"

"Er... no. I don't honestly think she knew it was a dingin. My father..."

Seven cuts her off.

"Ta for the help, Vek. I owe you one, right?"

If the flowghost is offended by Seven's sudden desire to leave, he didn't show it.

"Yeah, well - if yer get any serious coin for it, I'd not say no to a new crackerjack. But I'm not holding my breath. Ask me, ye'd prolly get more for it as bijou."

* * * * * * * *

"No, but this is good, right? I mean, this must be what they wanted, so all we need to do is arrange a meeting with Arclight, give them the dingin, and they won't be after me anymore-"

Seven slams his hand down on the table.

"You still don't get it, do you? First of all, you give this to them, they're going to want the abra for it. D'you really think that they're going to believe you when you say you don't know? And d'you want to know what they're going to do to you before they finally realize you're telling the truth? 'Cos I can give you all the unpleasant details, luv, if that's what you're after. The only thing we've got now is the answer to why they want you so badly, but it's not going to do you a damn bit of good unless we can tap the bugger ourselves and see what your da put on there. I think it's fairly safe to assume that it's whatever he was working on when he got done. Assuming we can do that, then we need to figure out where who we can sell the information to who isn't going to do us over first chance they get. After that, maybe me and Treacle will retire to Colsetter Parish and you can go to Longshore. Which ought to be right around when the Black freezes over."

Firene goes white and seems to fold on on herself. Treacle clears his throat pointedly at Seven and jerks his head sharply in the direction of the door. She doesn't even look up as the two of them leave the pub.

"Taken up kicking puppies as a hobby then, have you?"

The Bellhop bites back a snarling retort, then takes a deep breath.

"Come on, Treac - we're in the business of disappearing people who don't want to be found. She still thinks she can get it all back, that this is just a sodding misunderstanding. She still doesn't believe that someone in Arclight did for her family, not really. And I'm bloody sick of trying to convince her."

"You probably have. She just doesn't want to think about it. Can you blame her, really? It's different for you, 'cos you always knew they didn't give two shits about you..."

For a second, Treacle thinks Seven is going to take a swing at him. Instead, he sighs heavily and lets his head thump back against the wall before laughing bitterly.

"Next thing, you'll have me thinking we're running a sodding charity."

"Well, let's not be hasty. One has to eat, after all."

* * * * * * * *

A man comes stumbling unsteadily out of the pub and pushes past them, quickly becoming lost in the grey mass of pedestrians trudging through the ever-present smog. Firene runs out a few seconds later. Seven catches her arm, spinning her around.

"Look - Bea... Firene. Don't run off, hey? Sorry for being so sharpish and all, I'm just trying to keep you from doing something daft, right?"

She tries to pull away, peering intently down the street before looking at him with bright eyes.

"I'm not running - that man who just came out - I think it was my father..."

Viola: Poison was the Cure

2008-05-02T23:01:00.002-06:00

"Merricat, innit?"

The young woman nods. "Yeah - Mag gave me some stuff last month for a rash. Where is she, anyways?"

"'Er sister's 'ad a nasty accident at the factory, so she's gone to look after 'er kids until she's better. I'm lookin' after things 'ere until she's back. What's the problem?"

Merricat fidgets and looks around the cluttered little apartment, avoiding Viola's gaze.

"Well... it's Derek. 'E owed some fellas money and they got tired of waiting, so they come round and give him a beating. 'E's in a bad way, so..."

"Right, right. Just let me get my kit together."

* * * * * * * *

Saying that Derek was "in a bad way" was understating the case. One kneecap was shattered, his left hand looked as though someone had crushed it in a vise, and going by the bruises on his chest and abdomen, he probably had several broken ribs and was likely bleeding inside. Still, she'd seen worse, and Mag had trained her well.

"Right... I'll need hot water - boiling if ye can manage that. Apart from that, if you lot could all just stay out of the way, I'll set them bones and then see what I can do about the insides. 'E's not coughing blood, so it's likely better than it looks."

Nobody moves for a long moment, then one of the younger girls scurries from the room. Viola glances up and notices that a lot of the girls in the room aren't in much better shape than Derek. Merricat turns away quickly, but not before Viola catches a glimpse of the other side of her face and sees the ripples of scar tissue under the heavy white makeup.

"So what's that from then?"

Merricat mutters something under her breath.

"Beg pardon?"

"Spilled some tea."

"On yer head?"

She doesn't answer. Viola shrugs. The girl comes back with a steaming bucket of relatively clean water. There are ugly bruises in the shape of a massive handprint around one stick-thin arm.

Viola pauses, looking at the girl's arm, then slowly letting her gaze slide down to the basin, over the surface of the water, to Derek's broad chest hitching laboured breaths.

"All right, you lot. Clear out. I'll manage here."

* * * * * * * * *

"Yer Miz Viola, right? Uster live in Scurt's Hutch?"

She turns around slowly. The boy in the doorway is small for his age, and with the angle of the grimy light and the cap pulled down over his eyes, she can't read his expression.

"Maybe. 'Oo wants ter know?"

"I heard you done for Big Derek. Did yer?"

She considers her options. Maybe the kid just wants a bit of dosh to keep quiet. She's gotten better at her secondary calling, more careful, but there are some lines she won't cross. She could always leave again.

"Look, laddie. I don't care what you 'eard. I done my best, but 'e was just hurt too bad. End 'o story. Now, anything else I can 'elp yer with?"

The kid shuffles his feet, looking like he'd rather be somewhere else. Then he pulls himself straight and looks her in the eyes for the first time.

"It's just... well, if ye had done for him..."

She waits. There's a dark smudge under the boy's left eye that might be dirt or something else. He looks down again, rummaging in one threadbare pocket. His voice shakes when he speaks again, and he holds out a few tarnished coins in a trembling hand.

"There's this feller my mam's been seeing, and 'e beats on 'er something fierce..."

The Night Starts Here (Alex & Felicity)

2008-03-24T23:37:00.002-06:00

The night passes in a series of stuttering flashbulb moments. The initial spark, the burning manor, is guttering into waterlogged silence when the young man in the slightly scorched tuxedo slides a tattered manila envelope across the back corner table at the Tavern Lafayette to a hatchet-faced man in biker leathers with iron-grey hair. The biker smiles broadly, his teeth a little too sharp, and passes the young man a length of bone carved with odd symbols and decorated with coloured string and glossy black feathers. He holds it carefully, nodding with deep respect to the older man, then leaves abruptly, his beer untouched. The biker shrugs and drinks it, then steps outside to make a few calls.

* * * * * * * *

"Omar."

"Alexander."

"Are you sure you want this? I mean, even with the new arrangement with the fuzziwuzzies, you're going to have a huge-ass 'Stake me' sign on your back for the next several years."

"Dear boy... there's nothing like the prospect of iminent death to give one a surge of youthful vigour. Besides, I think you overestimate the capabilites of the barbarians at our gates. They may have numbers but their tactics..."

He pulls out his fan, snaps it open, and flutters it dismissively.

"Well... guess this is it. Thanks for the lessons in realpolitik. Don't do anyone I wouldn't do, hey?"

Omar pouts.

"I say, don't you think you're being a bit unreasonable? Considering, as you say, I'll be facing the prospect of death nightly, I deserve a little indulgence, n'est-ce pas?"

"Omar... you seem to have me confused with someone with a sense of moderation. Salut, mon frere."

* * * * * * * *

Omar's 'Vette roars through the dead suburban streets of Kanata. The cheery cherry-red paint job sticks out like a moving bylaw violation against the pastel stucco condominiums. The pursuing Mercedes, on the other hand, resemble mechanical sharks, and they're closing in, mainly because Alex hasn't driven a stick in close to eight years. He curses at length in an eloquent mixture of Quebecois gutter French and English as the transmission jerks and shudders, thumps the dashboard, then thumps it again when the tape deck starts blasting Roxy Music unbidden.

She's sitting in the passenger seat, looking out the window with interest - she's never been in this part of town before. When Alex barely misses slamming into a fire hydrant, she turns to face him slowly.

This is unconcerning.

"Glad you think so," he mutters. There's a sharp bang and the driver's side mirror shatters, confirming Alex's suspicions that the fucking Tremere are packing heat.

She unfolds a map of the city and traces a path - not direct by any means - towards the highway. He feels her slide in easily behind his eyes, directing his movements. She's looking out the window, using his knowledge of the city to follow the map, but another portion of her attention is outside the car. One of the Mercs skitters sideways into the path of the other two, and there's a cacophony of squealing brakes and mangling metal behind them.

We may leave now.

* * * * * * * *

It's a few minutes before sunrise on a deserted stretch of highway north of Lake Superior. The young man gets out of a red Corvette with heavily tinted windows and walks around to the other side. He opens the door and helps out a young woman in a tattered wedding dress streaked with soot and browning blood. They embrace, and then he leads her around to the back of the car. He opens the trunk and helps her into it, tucking several heavy blankets around her and kissing her once more before closing it again. He throws the carved bone into the woods, gets back into the car, and drives away.

Seconds to the drop but it feels like hours...

2007-11-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

Nothing to report. The current tenant is not demonstrating any particular haste to vacate the premises, despite nigh-constant bitching about the lack of space.

I am very tired.

FAQs and Other Crap I'm Sick of Dealing With

2007-09-14T16:18:00.000-06:00

1. Due date is November 23. Order may be delayed due to imprecise dating methods, first-time jitters, or congenital tardiness inherited from both parents.

2. No, we don't know what gender it is, and at this point in history it shouldn't make a damn bit of difference. So STOP ASKING.

3. No, we don't have a name picked out yet. The naming office is not accepting any additional submissions at this time.

4. Just because I'm eagerly awaiting the birth of my own child doesn't mean I'm interested in hearing about / seeing pictures of / making stupid noises at someone else's, particularly if I don't know them and I've got work to do.

5. Just because my body is currently slightly preoccupied with growing another human being doesn't mean I'm incapable of carrying on a conversation about some other topic.

6. If you don't know me, don't even think about touching my belly if you want to keep that hand.

7. The Alien reference was funny the first half-dozen times. Now? Not so much.

8. Thank you - I wouldn't have noticed I was "as big as a house" unless you pointed it out. Placenta brain, you know. And no, it's not twins. I think the ultrasound would have picked that up pretty early.

Walked Through the Fire With a Ten-Headed Lion (Mage)

2007-07-13T15:48:00.000-06:00

The tea was strong like whoa, but it was icy-cold so I just knocked it back. The guy stood there grinning at me, so I finally got a little ticked off about it and asked him what the heck his problem was.

"How are you feeling?"

"I dunno. Less thirsty. A little cooler. Why?"

"Oh... just wait. You'll see."

Then he just wandered off. I was starting to think that while Median and Fata and most of their crew were okay, this guy was kind of a jackass.

* * * * * * * *

"Fuck me."

Median glances at Phenex quizzically.

"What, right now?"

"No... shit. Something's happening. Where's Rosemary?"

"Went to get a drink at Lemonhead's... Phenex, what the fuck, man?"

He's on his feet and heading towards the lemonade vendor.

"Something's wrong. She's starting to spike, but it's all fucked up. Did you give her anything?"

Median steps back at the sudden fury in his voice.

"No... I wasn't even going to bring it up until tomorrow night when they light the Man up. Phenex, what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know. Get Inri."

He staggers off, trying not to grit his teeth. Rosemary's broadcasting static, but there's a steadily rising shriek of psychic feedback underneath.

* * * * * * * *

Sunset sure looks pretty tonight - it never looks that good in pictures. And the clouds look like big poufs of cotton candy like they used to have at the church fair.

I sure hope my dad doesn't find me.

Don't want to think about that. Think about something else. Go watch the stilt-walkers. That was fun.

"IAO! EVOHE!"

What?

Why are all these people staring at me? Guy comes up to me, dancing kind of jerky like a puppet. He's wearing black tights with glittery skeleton bones painted on it. The glitter shows up nice in the redgold sunset light.

"Glory to thee from gilded tomb!"

That was weird. Is it just me or are people generally acting really weird tonight?

Maybe it's me. Everything's starting to look kind of wobbly, like it's underwater. Hope I don't have heatstroke. Maybe I should go back to the van and have some water - I don't think that tea's sitting right with me.

Crackle from someone's huge sound system makes her jump, and the noise creates faultlines that radiate outwards from the point of origin. The landscape holds for a moment in a brittle mosaic of hairline fractures, and then

everything

shatters.

"Glory to thee from waiting womb!"

The lady (?) is bright green - ivy waving up her arms and legs and she's wearing a toga-looking thing, only I can't see her face properly. Her belly is glowing bright pink and fading dark to bright like a heartbeat.

"How do you do that?"

Funny looks again. That didn't sound right. Maybe I should sit down.

How Much Reality Can You Take? (Mage)

2007-06-05T12:27:00.001-06:00

Inri finds her just after sunset, poking idly at the cooling embers of someone's abandoned campfire.

"Hey - haven't seen you much today."

"Yeah... I've kind of been staying away from camp. I've been thinking about a bunch of things.

"Want to talk about it?"

"I dunno that I can. It's all just so weird. I just needed a little time to figure out what I thought about it, you know?"

"Sort of. I mean, I imagine that a lot of this..." Inri waves her hand vaguely in the direction of the loudest noise at the moment, "seems... wrong? Is that it?"

"No! Well, sort of. Not quite though. It's more like... ever since my mom left, I've been wondering whether she left to get away from Dad, or whether she was trying to get to someplace that felt better for her. I mean, I don't really want to just get married to some guy and have a whole pile of kids, but that's just what you *do* in Gerberville."

"And this almost feels like too many possibilities."

"Yeah. I mean, I ain't going back, but I don't know where I do want to go or what I want to do when I get there. I don't wanna keep you all from doing whatever it was you were going to do after this, but... I got nowhere else to go. And I feel like I'm running out of time, like something's going to happen and I won't have any choice at all once it does. Does that sound totally crazy?"

"Actually, no. No it doesn't. And I don't really know what to tell you, because I don't want to be someone else telling you what you should do. But the fact that you're thinking about it, instead of just trying to avoid it, is probably a good sign. And we're not going to just leave you here or drop you off somewhere in California, because aside from the fact that it would be a really shitty thing to do, we like you. Our plans are open-ended enough that you're not going to be in the way, however long you decide to stick around, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks, Inri."

"Hey, no problem. You want to head back and cook up some cheese dogs on the fire?"

"Sure. That sounds great."

* * * * * * * *

So after that I felt a little better, even though I still didn't know what I wanted to do. And the big thing, when it happened, just opened things up even more.

But that was later on. We went back and the boys looked relieved to see us, so I guess they did like me, at least enough to worry. And everything looked better after a couple of cheese dogs and a whole mess of s'mores. I felt kind of goopy though, so I got some change out of my purse and went to grab a drink from the lemon-head guy. When I was standing there, though, one of the guys from Fata's camp came up and started talking to me.

"Getting some lemonade, hey?"

Which was kind of a stupid question, since that's all Lemon-head sold, but I suppose he was just making small talk.

"Want some tea instead? Not like hot tea - cold. Like what you had at Fata's the other night."

And all of a sudden that was all I wanted.

[TBC]

General Announcement

2007-05-25T14:01:00.000-06:00

This message has been brought to you by Electric Maenad's current inhabitant and the Office of Memes in Questionable Taste.

And No One Forces Down Our Eyes (Mage)

2007-05-01T12:39:00.001-06:00

Over half-burnt, half-raw cheese biscuits and poisonously strong coffee the next morning, Phenex studies Median closely. They've known each other since they were kids in Pine Heights in Austin, and he recognizes that look of barely-controlled manic glee. It's the same look he had the night Phenex Awakened, even though at the time he had no idea what the hell Median was grinning about, considering Phenex had just had the shit beaten out of him by a couple of homophobic redneck assholes. Of course, after he saw the state said assholes were in, he felt a little better. And after last night, he's inclined to agree that it's a matter of days, if that, before Rosemary Awakens.

Her aura's already started sparking with the earliest warning signs of psychic nova. He's tried to keep his observations fairly surreptitious - he doesn't want her to catch him staring at her, especially when she doesn't know what he's looking for. She's been watching him cautiously, in that way that white suburbanite kids always seem to watch guys like him. Still, she hasn't been overtly hostile, and considering her relatively narrow reality tunnel to date, she's been handling the whole Burning Man experience pretty well. He's still hoping that Median and Inri find something to distract her this afternoon. Even a lot of the regulars find the Sundance a little grisly.

* * * * * * * *

On the third morning, I went with Inri to a big open space where a crowd of people were doing Tai Ch'i. I found it a little hard at first, mainly because it was so slow and I kept losing my balance, but once I figured out where exactly to put my feet it was a lot easier. Even though it was really slow, it still made my arms and legs ache. After that, we went to the sunshowers - it was real nice to have a cool shower, although I had to trade my favorite pair of earrings. Afterwards, she said she was going to go for a walk. I was already hot again, so I went back to the camp, but Phenex was gone and Median was busy fiddling around with a bunch of computer parts and kept grunting whenever I tried to talk to him. I decided that not moving was making me hotter than walking was, so I wandered off to see if I could find Inri.

I was starting to find it a little easier to get around the place, because there were a lot of really big sculptures or tent complexes that you could use as landmarks, and of course the Man stood right in the middle of it all, so if you could remember which way he was facing from the place you needed to be, all you had to do was walk in a straight line. After a while, I decided to pick a direction and just see how much stuff there was before you ran out of camp and got into the bare desert again.

The people on the outside parts seemed to be a little less sociable than the ones in the middle. They didn't tell me to go away or anything, but they made it pretty clear they weren't really into talking. And then, just before it looked like there wasn't anything else to see, I spotted a tall pole just past a low ridge. I almost missed it with the air all wavy, but I thought I'd have a look see anyway.

It was about the size of a telephone pole and it had a bunch of ropes coming down from the top. There were a bunch of guys dancing around it, holding onto a couple of ropes apiece. A few other guys were pounding on drums and doing this high, wailing chant. They mainly looked like Indians, although they weren't wearing traditional costumes. Matter of fact, they weren't wearing much period.

I saw Phenex about the same time that I realized the guys weren't holding onto the ropes - the ropes were tied to sticks that were stuck right into their chests, and they were all bleeding and still dancing around the pole. Every once in a while, one of them would pull just a little too hard and the sticks would come out and the other guys would all cheer and pour water over the cuts and then rub in some sort of black paste before putting bandages over top. All most of them seemed to want to do afterwards was just lie on the ground - going by the amount of blood all around the pole and all over the dancers, they looked like they'd been going for a while.

I didn't know what to think of that, so I slowly started wandering back to camp. Inri was still gone, and Median was sleeping, so I just sat there doodling in the dirt with a stick. Phenex came back about half an hour after I did, all bandaged up and sweaty.

"Doesn't that hurt?"

He looked down at his chest and then looked at me.

"'Course it hurts. That's why we do it."

A Foreign Feeling in a Country to Match (Mage)

2007-03-20T09:38:00.001-06:00

By the second day at Black Rock City I'd managed to train myself to stop staring, although I'd still look at things/people just as intently. Everyone was an artist and a lunatic and a mad scientist all at once. The first night we all headed down to the central area together, and I got my first good look at the Man. Up close, he looked more like an electrical tower than a person, because you couldn't really see the head from the bottom. He was covered in neon tubing, little twinkling LEDs, ribbons of reflective fabric, and luminous paint. When they lit him up after sundown, he looked like a giant carnival ride, although Median said he wasn't going to move until the last night, just before they burned him down.

After staring at the Man for a while, we wandered around some more. There was always something going on - we saw a group of girls in mylar ballet costumes dancing to what I eventually recognized as the Sugar Plum Fairy dance number from The Nutcracker, sped up and almost obscured by booming drums. Later on, Median took us to a smaller tower that looked like a silver tree and introduced us to some people he knew from a website in California. I found out that after Burning Man he was going to the University of California at Berkeley to study computer science. I was impressed - I'd always found math hard, only Median said it wasn't really like math, but more like speaking another language or a secret code. Inri and Phenex were also going to Berkeley; she was going to be taking Peace and Conflict Studies, and Phenex was planning to study Rhetoric. That kind of surprised me, because Phenex didn't really talk much, although he was always giving you looks that made you think he'd said something anyway.

Median's friends were kind of cool, although my father would have disapproved because a lot of them said they were witches, although the way they said it sounded like "witches", if that makes any sense. Like they were just calling themselves that, but it wasn't really the right word because the right word hadn't been invented yet. Fata Morgana, a tiny woman with black hair and henna tattoos all over her face and hands, took me into her tent and gave me a tarot reading. I felt a little uneasy, because fortune-telling was a sin, but she was being so nice I didn't want to say no. Her (huge!) tent was draped with black velvet inside so no light and very little noise could get in from outside, and she had small lanterns with bulbs inside that changed colour hanging at each corner. There was incense burning in a small brass pot hanging from the ceiling - it smelled like violets and cloves and made my eyes sting a little. She poured some cold, mint-flavoured tea into tiny glasses, then we sat down in the middle of the floor on big, soft pillows, and she laid the cards out on a bright yellow scarf.

In a triangle pointing towards me, Fata put down "The Heirophant," (upside-down), "The Chariot", and "The Ace of Swords". In another triangle facing herself, she put down "The Star," "The Sun," and "Judgment," which looked a lot like how Dad said the Rapture would be. She frowned and said that I'd just liberated myself from an oppressive authority figure through an act of will (which was true, although I wouldn't have gotten all that far if Median hadn't picked me up), and that I would be "Awakening to my inner light." I wasn't sure what she meant, and the incense was really starting to make my eyes sting, so I just nodded and thanked her and went back outside. I didn't notice Median go into her tent, but about fifteen minutes later he came out and as soon as he saw me he gave me another one of those big lopsided grins of his and two thumbs up.

Ain't Got no Money and I Ain't Got no Hair

2007-03-19T11:10:00.000-06:00

So... in a potentially regrettable burst of enthusiasm / lapse of judgment, I decided to sign up for U of C's HeadShave 2007 for cancer research / awareness. Ever since then, I've been pulling my hair back and trying to see if there's any sort of weird bumps on the less-visible portions of my skull and hoping to all the gods that I'll end up looking more like Natalie Portman in _V for Vendetta_ and less like Britney Spears in rehab / the loony bin. In either case, I'm somewhat curious to see what it'll look like growing out, as I haven't seen my natural hair colour since 1990.

I've also been amusing myself with various outrageous lies in response to the inevitable question of why I shaved my head. I mean, the cancer fundraising answer is certainly worthy and reasonable, but I also like some of the following:

1. (on a day I'm wearing my tricorn hat) "Arr... to get rid of th' lice!"

2. "I've converted to Buddhism." (which, for those of you familiar with my dilatory and meandering search for Truth (TM) is alarmingly plausible, at least until you factor in how snarly I get on a vegetarian diet)

3. "I needed to prepare for my upcoming trepanation."

4. "I had to sell my hair to pay my gambling debts."

5. "Lost a bet. Don't want to talk about it."

6. "I've joined the Hare Krishnas. Want to buy a flower?"

7. "I didn't - it just all fell out last night. Damnedest thing."

8. "Tried giving myself a haircut. Don't want to talk about it."

9. "Got attacked by a trichophage. Don't want to talk about it."

And See Ye Not Yon Bonny Road? (Mage)

2007-03-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

Phenex rubs his jaw, then rakes his fingers impatiently through his dreads.

"Could warn a brother, Median. You know that shit makes my teeth ache."

Median grins at him, looking not at all contrite.

"Sorry 'bout that."

"Mind filling me in? Inri might be willing to take in strays for no reason, but considering she's a sleeper and underage, I've got a suspicion there's another reason we're keeping the kid."

The other man stares out the window, his eyes briefly turning the colour of a funnel cloud.

"It's highly likely that she's going to awaken. Best guess would be sometime in the next week, give or take a couple of days. Somehow I don't think Child Services is equipped to deal with that."

"Shit. So why not tell Inri?"

"Because I'm going to do something that'll make it a virtual certainty, and I know she won't approve."

* * * * * * * *

I don't know what I was expecting. Although really, even if I'd been expecting something, it wouldn't have been what I was expecting, if that makes any sense.

Around two on the second day of driving, we turned off the main highway onto a dusty side road. For another hour, there was nothing to see except cracked, sun-baked ground and the occasional piece of bleached wood, bone, or a tumbleweed spinning along. Then I saw something glittering in the distance.

"What's that?"

"Wait."

The others were all grinning. Inri looked like she was about to start bouncing up and down like a little kid. So I squinted out the front window for the next half hour, watching the gleam ahead spread out and upwards, although the heat shimmering up from the sand still kept me from making out exactly what it was. Once, I saw a man zoom across the road on what looked like an easy chair slung between two motorcycles, trailing multicoloured streamers behind him.

Finally, I could see RVs, buses, geodesic domes, tents, antennae, and the huge skeletal steel form of a man towering above everything else. Median turned to me and grinned wildly, his spiky blond hair seemingly standing on end with excitement.

"Welcome to Burning Man."

* * * * * * * *

For the first couple of hours after we'd found a spot to park the van and set up the tents and camp beds, I just wandered around aimlessly. I made sure to note the landmarks along my route, so that I could find my way back to the others if I got lost. It was still overwhelming though. I'd never been to a place like this or seen people like these before - it kind of reminded me of pictures in old National Geographic magazines of tribespeople in Africa, except instead of bones and feathers and cowhide the people here were done up in fiber optic cable and bubble wrap and computer parts. They were all really friendly though - even more so when they found out it was the first time I'd been there. And it wasn't the skeevy sort of friendly that guys at the bar put on when they're trying to get me to go home with them either - I don't think most of the people I met had any ulterior motives besides making sure that I was having a good time.

The Lady Vanishes (Mage)

2007-03-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

"So where are we going again?"

Median gave me a lopsided grin over his hamburger.

"Black Rock City, Nevada."

"Yeah, but it's not on the road map..."

"That's because it's only there sometimes. When the stars are right..."

The weedy black guy called Phenex snickered, then tried to cover it up with a theatrical show of choking on a french fry. Inri, a classic hippie type with long blonde hair and a huge duffel bag full of floaty tie-dyed clothes, smiled absently and looked out the window.

"Seriously, though - it'll be fun. And it's not like you had any other plans, right?"

"Well, no -"

Inri's gaze snapped back to me, pinning me to the sticky vinyl seat.

"I'd like to hear more about how you came to be on the highway in such a state. I know; you said you're running away from your dad, but there's more, isn't there? I mean, you don't even have another change of clothes with you. What, specifically, happened to make you leave?"

And for some reason I told them. Everything I could remember, anyway - even the stuff that seemed like a bizarre nightmare. And they just sat there, not even touching their food, and nobody laughed or interrupted or said I was crazy. At the end, Phenex swore under his breath and drained his now-cold cup of coffee. Inri nodded slowly and reached across the table to rest her hand on my arm.

"Rosemary... has your father behaved strangely before this? Have he or his deacons ever harrassed people for no reason or committed other violent acts?"

"Well, he beat up this one guy in Lubbock because he said the guy had some sort of mark on him. I thought maybe it was a Satanic tattoo or something, but he'd never done anything like that before Mom left..."

"What kind of mark was it? Do you remember exactly what he said?"

"Some kind of tower... an iron tower?"

Median looked at Inri, and I got the impression that they wanted me to leave, so I went to the ladies' room for a few minutes and read the graffiti on the walls.

* * * * * * * *

"We're fucked," Median mutters.

"Not necessarily," Phenex replies. "The van's warded, so her trail will have gone cold where we picked her up."

"And by the sounds of it, his little cabal is fairly isolated. They're dangerous in their own territory, but beyond that they probably don't have contact with other, more organized Banisher groups. From what Rosemary told us, it sounds like he's an Obrimos, which means that unless he's figured out how to cultivate other arcana, he doesn't have access to anything that might lead him to her. Or us." Inri smiles at him reassuringly.

Median pulls out his calculator and starts punching in numbers furiously. There's a faint, high-pitched whine that could be mistaken by a casual observer for some mechanical problem with the air conditioner. After a few moments, he relaxes, his shoulders dropping.

"Okay. Okay - you're right. The odds are - I won't say infinitesimal, but acceptably low that he'll be able to track her. And once we hit Black Rock, there's going to be so much background noise that she'd have to be broadcasting like a goddamn radio tower to attract any sort of attention at all. And even then, it's our kind of people there."

"We're cool then?"

"Yeah, we're cool."

"I'd better go fetch her from the bathroom then."

Let's Drive Into the Brave New World... (Mage)

2007-02-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Dustin McTavish (a.k.a. Median) has the worst hangover of his entire life, which is saying something, considering the sort of crowd he hangs with. It might have been all right if he'd been able to sleep in this morning, but they'd agreed to get on the road by 9:00 in order to make the most of the day. And did the sun have to be so godawful bright and... sunny? He aims a reproachful look at Inri, lounging across most of the other side of the booth in the full sunlight like a big hippie cat. Not that she's to blame for the sunshine, or his hangover. That's entirely his fault, so he puts on his darkest shades, knocks back a couple of ibuprofen with the biggest glass of OJ the pancake house can provide, and decides to be a man and suck it up. Chalk it up to a "learning experience" - the lesson being to avoid volunteering for the first driving shift if he planned to get ripped the day before a road trip.

After a couple of hours on the road, the thumping in his head has relocated to the stereo, where it blends nicely into Phenex's Underworld remix he's been working on all week. Reptile boy's joined Inri in the back of the Machina Mysterium where, by the sound of things, they're both cheerfully sleeping off the aftereffects of the party. Damned if he knows how a skinny-ass guy like Phenex can snore like that.

He's just thinking how fragging dull most of Texas outside of Austin is when he narrowly misses running down the girl standing halfway off the shoulder. She doesn't stick out her thumb or anything, but he stops about 50 feet ahead of her and backs up anyway. She's still standing there when Dustin walks up to her. She doesn't look injured, but she doesn't react until he's standing right in front of her, his shadow falling across her vacant, unseeing eyes.

* * * * * * * *

I started walking. Managed to make the coffee last until it started to get light, then started in on the donuts, stopping briefly at another gas station to use the bathroom, buy a bottle of water, and wash up. By the time the sun was completely up, I had blisters on both feet and was wishing I'd bought two bottles. Or maybe some sunscreen.

I thought about trying to hitch a ride, but Mom had told me to be careful. I'd heard just enough urban legends and cautionary tales to know that girls who hitchhiked were just asking for whatever horrible fate ended up befalling them in the stories. There were all kinds of godless perverts and murderers out there, and...

About then it finally sunk in that my father and his deacons had probably killed Wayne. My dad was a murderer. And I didn't even know how or why he did it. It was starting to get hazy - I just remembered him reading the Bible and blood dripping down Wayne's face, but the rest of it... I started to wonder if I'd just had a bad dream, sleeping in front of the TV at Vivian's house. Maybe I was still dreaming.

And suddenly, it got dark, and I felt hands on my shoulders, shaking me slightly.

"Hey... hey kid, are you okay?"

He didn't look much like a godless pervert or serial killer, especially not once he took off the dark sunglasses. As soon as I looked up at him he let go of my shoulders and stepped back carefully, giving me a small, unthreatening smile.

"You look like you could do with a bit of shade and a more efficient means of transport. Want a lift? We can take you as far as Frisco if you don't mind spending a couple of weeks in Nevada first. Swear to gods we're not freaky UFO hunters..."

And for a moment everything got really quiet, like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting to see what I'd do. It was kind of scary, and when I opened my mouth to take a deep breath I breathed in some road dust and started coughing so hard I nearly fell over. His pale grey eyes narrowed in concern and he started thumping my back until I finally recovered.

"That sounds like a better idea than anything I've come up with all night," I finally wheezed out, and he grinned and helped me into the back of the van.

They Were All in Love With Dying (Mage)

2007-02-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

I saw flames without heat, and animals that swirled and passed through each other like smoke, and blood creeping along the concrete floor towards the door. I heard howls and snarls and above it my father's voice, chanting passages from the Bible and something else in a language I didn't recognize, in a voice that shook the ground under my feet like thunder. There was the smell of smoke, and dead skunk, and something sharp like air scorched by lightning. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and along my arms, prickling through my t-shirt.

I think he saw me. Not my dad - Wayne. He looked up and sort of smiled, even with the blood running down his face from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

That's when I started running. Ran to the car and turned the key and drove off without the faintest idea where I was going other than away. Drove until fatigue started edging into the fear, pulled into a truck stop, bought coffee and food and a packet of caffeine pills, and was about to leave again when I realized that if I had his car, he could find me. That, and I still didn't know where I was going, but I couldn't go back after that. I still don't know if anyone in town found out what had happened. Even the Coombes. Maybe Vivian and her parents woke up the next morning and forgot they even had a brother or a son. Or if they did, maybe Dad would have just said that the demon left Wayne, but the process of driving it out killed him. I really didn't know.

Black, White, Red

2007-02-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

I think I had someone else's dreams last night. Nobody I recognized was in them, and the general thematic content, while sharing a few features with my usual fare, (there's almost always a war or revolution going on, for example) was sufficiently different that it just felt like I was along for the ride instead of being an active participant.

1. Setting: The dream starts run-down loft apartment in a large, anonymous city, or possibly The City, near some elevated train tracks. The main room is long, but not particularly wide, with floor-to-ceiling windows along the longest wall, streaked with grime, soot, and a fair amount of pigeon shit. There are pizza boxes and half-empty pop bottles littering the floor and the dumpster-grade furniture. There is a table in the middle of the room consisting of a door laid across stacked-up milk crates - on the table are a couple of overflowing ashtrays, a ziploc baggie full of dried mushrooms, and, incongruously, an opened velvet pouch with rubies spilling out onto the table.

Features: The reason I know they're rubies is that everything else is in black and white, but the stones are blood red. I don't know what I look like, as there are no mirrors and the windows aren't reflecting enough light to see myself in them. I seem to be a fair bit taller though. As this is not a lucid dream, it doesn't occur to me to look at my hands.

Events: There is a young man here. I don't recognize him. At first he's got darkish skin and a severe buzz-cut, but then he sort of reaches up to peel off his face and it's a guy with blond hair and trendy sunglasses. He gives me this knowing smirk and says something, but I can't hear him over the train and the rising sound of shouting, gunfire, and breaking glass from the street below. I get the impression that we need to leave relatively quickly though. His sister is in the other room, so I go to get her.

This is where it gets significantly creepier. The room's a lot bigger than you'd expect from the layout of the apartment, but what really ices the cake is the fact that the room is full of dead, dying, or panicked livestock of various species. The sister is sitting on the back of a large cow that she's just stabbed in the neck with a scalpel. She's covered in blood (again, the only colour in the scene) and so is the floor. She's wearing a long, old-fashioned white nightgown and her hair is all frizzy and wild like she just got out of bed. She looks crazy, and I don't know how I'm going to get her out of here without her taking a swipe at me with the scalpel. That, and I think I'm going to be sick from the noise and the smell, not to mention the sight of all these animals. She hasn't been doing a particularly good job killing them, so they're mostly just slowly bleeding to death.

[CUTS TO]

2. Setting: It's late at night in the countryside - fields and a windbreak of trees on the other side of a ditch. There's a wrecked car in the ditch with an emergency crew clustered around it. I'm approaching another car which looks relatively unharmed. There's a girl huddled in the back seat (not the sister in the first scene).

Features: I appear to be a cop in this one, or at least I just got out of a police car and have on a uniform and an assortment of standard police accoutrements hanging from my belt. I have no idea what the hell is going on or why I'm here though.

Events: When I open the back door of the car, the girl screams that she's been abducted. For a second the point of view changes so that I'm her, and I know I'm lying, but not why. Then the perspective switches back and I help her out of the car and over to an ambulance, where the paramedics are waiting with a blanket and a styrofoam cup of coffee. She's wearing a baggy blue jumpsuit, which almost looks like standard convict wear. She doesn't have any shoes, and that and the fact that the jumpsuit is way too big for her makes me think she's probably telling the truth.

[CUT TO]

Damn it. I've forgotten most of the rest. I remember the third part took place in an old-fashioned prison, almost like what I suspect the inside of the Tower of London probably looked like when it was still being used as a prison. I was locked up with a bunch of other people, apparently indefinitely as we were considered some manner of threat to society. The girl from the second part was supposed to be helping to break us out, but I'm not sure what the plan was. Damn.

Sad Eyes, Crooked Crosses (Mage)

2007-02-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

The summer I turned 16, we moved to a no-account little town called Gerberville about an hour outside of Lubbock. Dad had been offered a job with an evangelical Christian show which broadcast out of a surprisingly sophisticated studio in an even more lavishly-appointed church which was the dominant feature (and primary employer) of the town. The steeple was visible from 30 miles away on a clear day, and at sunrise the glass roof shone like a sheet of holy fire, which I'm sure was the intended effect. Gold Key Ministries also ran Gerberville's only school and the town library, which effectively meant that my junior year science class was a complete waste of time.

Honestly, it was comfortable, and because GKM was focused on encouraging donations as well as saving souls, Dad had to tone down the threats of hell a fair bit for his live sermons. I could have easily just let the 24/7 indoctrination wash over me, gone to a community college to acquire the skills I'd need to be a suitable "helpmeet" for the nice Aryan seminary student I'd end up marrying and having a pile of children for. You think I'm being facetious, but I assure you that had the seriously bad shit not happened, that's exactly what I'd have done, and probably been completely content doing it, in a not-thinking-about-it-much, cowlike sort of way.

A few weeks before I was due to start senior year, one of the local parishoners called and asked Dad to come out to do a "healing". Mr. Coombe was a well-regarded member of the community and a generous contributor to the ministry, so of course Dad agreed to pay a visit. I went along because I was friends (in that superficial way that high-school kids in a Stepford-esque community are friends) with their daughter, Vivian. When we arrived, though, it was pretty obvious that this wasn't just Mrs. Coombe's arthritis acting up. Mr. Coombe looked like he hadn't slept, and Mrs. Coombe and Viv both had red, puffy eyes like they'd been crying for a long time.

I didn't even know Viv had a brother, but I guess Wayne was going to school at U of T in Austin and had just come home for the weekend. He was acting really weird and scary when he came back, so Mr. Coombe thought he had a demon. Honestly, I don't believe in demons - I figured he was probably on drugs or something. But when Dad went into Wayne's bedroom, he was making these weird animal noises, and it smelled like the time we went on vacation to Yellowstone and Dad accidentally hit a skunk with the camper. He was only in there for a few minutes with Wayne, and when he came out he wouldn't say anything to the Coombes; he just went downstairs and made a few calls, and about half an hour later a bunch of the deacons from Gold Key showed up, looking all grim and severe. Dad asked Mr. Coombe if they could use the garage because he didn't know how long the healing would take, and he didn't want to keep people awake.

The Coombes invited me to stay with them for dinner, and I don't think anyone said more than a dozen words for the next couple of hours. Mrs. Coombe took some sleeping pills and went to bed, and Viv and I stayed up watching TV while her dad pretended to read the Bible, even though he never turned a page from the time he opened it until he went to bed. Then Vivian said she was going to bed, and I was left just sitting by myself in front of the TV. I thought it was kind of strange that none of them acted like they even wanted to go out to the garage to see how things were going, but then maybe they figured that Dad needed privacy to do the Lord's work. Curiosity was just eating me up though, so I turned off all the lights and snuck over to the garage to look in the window.

Sleeping is Giving In (Mage)

2007-02-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

I've decided to dispense with the fiction that I'm talking to anyone other than myself. If I'm going crazy anyway, I'm not going to sweat the minor detail of pretending that this is of interest or concern to anyone else, but... honestly, this shit is affecting my work. And I've got to think that's bad, because it's not like this job really requires much in the way of brainpower or even really paying attention. Hell, I've been smiling and pretending everything is just... swell for as long as I can remember, so it's almost second nature by now. Or you'd think so.

The last thing she said to me as I left for school that day was, "Be careful." Maybe I took it a little too much to heart. Maybe I think too much. He always said, "Idle hands are the Devil's playground," and with the smile I always thought it was another homily for the straying members of the flock. But he could have been serious, and maybe the problem isn't the idle hands, but the active mind that tends to start spinning its wheels when it isn't focused on the hands.

After she left... Matt became a caricature of himself. He lettered in three sports, maintained a respectable B average, became one of the high-school elite. He got into trouble, but it was appropriate trouble, like cruising around with his football buddies and knocking over mailboxes, or stealing a chunk of sodium from the chemistry lab and dropping it into one of the toilets in the boys' washroom. Boys-will-be-boys sort of shit. We barely spoke, and when we did it was about trivial things - small talk and gossip.

Dad just started acting... freaky. Like, he didn't get upset or seem to miss her, but sometimes I'd see him in his car after I got off school, watching me and my friends when we were at the mall or hanging around Starbucks. At home it would be this bizarre Norman Rockwell scene for a couple of hours, but late at night I'd come downstairs for a snack if I was studying for a test and he'd be standing in the kitchen with the lights off, staring out the window at something in the yard. And his sermons at church started to get really weird - he'd talk about angels hunting down sinners and evildoers. He started getting obsessed with witches and "devil worshippers", and he got arrested for getting out of his car at a red light one time and beating the hell out of some poor clueless yuppie walking down the sidewalk because he said he could see "the mark of the Iron Tower" on him.

In God's Country (Mage)

2007-02-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

The one question I know you're dying to ask, because it's the same question most people ask me within five minutes of meeting me, is what a nice girl like me is doing in a place like this. "This" referring to Japan in general, or the bar or this shitty little closet of an apartment in particular. So I'm going to tell you, because whatever answer I formulate for the idly curious or the fatuously flirtatious is generally nothing more than the first glib response that pops into my head. Can't tell people the truth here, after all. That's the first thing I learned, and I'm eternally grateful to the person who told me that, because if I hadn't learned that one thing, I'd be in a damn sight more trouble than I already might be. If I'm not just crazy, anyways.

Since I bought you at a stationery shop here, you've never been to Lubbock. You aren't missing much - it's (if you'll forgive my crudeness) kind of the asshole of Texas. Too small to be interesting, too big to be picturesque, and home to Lubbock Christian University. That's where my father works, and that's why I'm here (Japan, that is), which is about as far away as you can get physically and culturally and still get pizza delivered.

I'm not saying I had a bad childhood or anything, but... Okay. No - you know what? It was pretty bad; I just didn't realize it until after the fact. My dad was a preacher. When I tell people that, a lot of them assume that I'm a total slut, but I was the stereotypical "good little girl". Until I was fourteen, I really believed that my dad talked to God on a regular basis, and he always told me that his sermons full of brimstone and the wages of sin were for the people in the congregation - the sinful ones who would not serve a God they didn't fear. People like us - our family - were already in a state of grace and needed no goad of hellfire or promise of reward to do the Lord's work.

My mother left when I was fourteen. We - my father and brother and I - never discussed it. She was there, quiet and patient and deferential, and then... gone. At first I thought she'd just had enough of always putting his wishes, his life, before hers. And maybe she had, but with what I know now I'm not sure she just up and left. Anyway, that was when things started to get weird.

And Her Hallway Moves (Felicity)

2007-02-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

She spends a lot of time motionless. It creeps most people out - even elders, who eat atrocities for what passes for breakfast at their age, are a little... bothered by the girl who sits behind and slightly to the right of the prince, supported by the yellowing lace confection of an ancient wedding dress, staring at them with kryptonite eyes. She really could not care less what they think though, because she's brushed across the same thoughts too many times to count in the last hundred-odd years.

It's just that every time she moves the susurration of a million sleepwalking minds abrades her own consciousness to the point where the more she moves, the less she can think. She feels like the wall of a sea-cliff, slowly wearing away under the constant thoughtless pressure of inside voices. And sometimes a chunk of the wall just collapses. The results, while spectacular, are never pleasant for anyone in the immediate vicinity when it happens.

Far easier to let Richard command her movements, shuddering with marionette gracelessness as she follows him from the hushed oak-panelled chamber. Never mind that she can feel his own walls crumbling under a different kind of force when he speaks to her. It's not really her place to mention it, and Richard has a nasty habit of confusing the message with the messenger.

Sometimes, when she's looking at a petitioner or a new arrival or a possible spy, she'll let a little of what she's experiencing through. Sometimes people look into her eyes and drop to their knees, gasping for air they no longer breathe. It feels as though they're drowning.

Too Much Contact, No More Feeling (Alex)

2007-01-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

September 1989

He saunters into Manhattan Project at about quarter to midnight, just ahead of the crowds spilling out of the bars across the river. As he approaches his usual table, a gaggle of suspiciously young-looking girls in identical Goth-face makeup shriek "Alex!" He smirks in greeting, tossing his creaking-new black leather jacket over the back of the booth before sliding in next to... Annabelle? Anaconda? Whatever the hell her name is. The waitress deposits a snakebite and black in front of him moments later, and he gives her a more sincerely appreciative smile. It's been a long week - since Parliament has been in session, he's actually been expected to do some *work* at the office, which has been seriously eating into his sleep time as a result. He might actually go home before Manhattan closes tonight.

In the meantime though, the DJ's just put on The Sisters, and the entire bar surges towards the dancefloor like an oilslick wave. The bass thunders through the floor, jacked up almost to the point of overloading the speakers, but not quite. Alex loses the tie and takes a drag off Julia's (Jocasta?) clove cigarette, letting the alcohol and the noise numb his senses.

Although maybe that's not quite what he's looking for tonight.

He shakes his head angrily and shrugs off a black-taloned hand, heading for the bathroom. A thin boy with a shock of lime-green hair is bent over the counter, inhaling lines. He notices Alex watching.

"Want some?"

Alex thinks about it, his mind shying away from the image of his mother with bloodshot eyes and a smear of white under her nose.

"How much?"

"Ten a line?"

"Is it good shit?"

The kid laughs shakily.

"Yeah, I'd say so."

"Okay."

He hands over a twenty, then rolls up another as the kid arranges two lines on the counter with practiced ease despite the trembling in his hands.

* * * * * * * *

Five minutes later Alex is back on the dancefloor, feeling like God almighty. Instead of feeling numb, his senses are heightened to an almost painful degree. Colours are brighter, shadows are darker, and even with feedback and ambient noise, he can hear each note in the harsh industrial track and appreciate the way they fail to harmonize. It's almost too much - he retreats to the table and impresses the girls with tales of Montreal and hobnobbing with foreign diplomats. It's mostly complete bullshit, of course, but he's always had a talent for bullshit.

* * * * * * * *

The DJ's just put on the new Nine Inch Nails track when there's a buzz of conversation audible even over the wash of bass. Through the darkened (and rather grubby) front window he can see the outline of a white stretch limousine. Then the door opens and a guy in a long, white leather coat comes sweeping in like he owns the place, followed by an entourage of about seven or eight people, all of whom are dressed in such a way that makes everyone else in the club look like preschool kids playing dress-up.

"Who the fuck is that?"

He thought he'd said it to himself, but Cleo (Christine?) says, "That's Omar. Haven't you ever seen him before? They go to a different bar every night - I don't know what he does for a living, but he must be super rich..."

Alex's sense of tact disappeared after the third snakebite. He blurts out, "But he's so old - he must be at least forty!"

... just as the song fades and there's a sudden inconvenient lull in the conversation. Omar looks over sharply, takes in his rumpled work clothes and smudged eyeliner, and smiles beatifically at him. Feeling like a complete asshole now, Alex quickly knocks back the rest of his drink and lurches unsteadily to his feet. A hand rests lightly on his forearm, holding him steady. One of the girls from Omar's crew is standing there with a flute glass full of something milky green.

"Mr. Ravenhurst wishes to know if you would care to join him at his table."

More Research

2007-01-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

So C. is starting up his _Mage_ campaign again, and by way of research I've dug out all the vaguely Japanese-related literature I've got and have also checked out Murasaki Shikibu's _The Tale of Genji_ from the university library. I found it pretty heavy slogging the last time I took a run at it - for someone who has to see someone a good half-dozen times before I remember their name (unless they do or say something particularly awe- or outrage-inspiring), a thousand-page novel with several dozen characters, each with four or five poetic sobriquets or official titles on top of their regular name - well, you can certainly understand my confusion. Fortunately, the library also had a study guide available - sort of like a more erudite version of _Coles' Notes_.

[Honestly, I'd really like to see the people at Coles take a run at summarizing the _Tale of Genji_. Although given how fragging lazy the average student is, it'd still probably be too long for some people. It leads to the interesting question of just how much you can dumb something down before it becomes a reductio ad absurdum: "The _Tale of Genji_ is about a Japanese guy named Genji who writes a lot of poetry and has sex with a lot of women. He dies about halfway through the book though, so the title really isn't all that accurate."]

Anyway, I ploughed through most of the study guide last night, and so far the thing that's got me the most intrigued is the fact that the entire story takes place before what most Westerners consider classical Japanese culture, what with the katanas and the Zen buddhism and the samurai bushido ethic and so forth. Honestly, imperial court life in Heian Japan sounds, on first reading, a lot like the French aristocracy centred around Versailles in the 16th and 17th centuries. The courtiers at Heian-Kyo, much like those at Versailles, spent most of their time and energy trying to outdo each other in sartorial splendour, gossiping, seducing people related to or favoured by the Emperor, and various other games of one-upmanship.

I've got the oldest English translation of the text, done by Arthur Waley between 1921 and 1933. Apparently it's less of a direct translation and more of a paraphrase, although having had a look at the first couple of chapters it's certainly very accessible. Two later translations, one from 1976 and one from 2002 are supposed to be more accurate, so perhaps I'll check out one or both of them just to see how pronounced the differences are.

It's interesting comparing _Genji_ with _Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai_ by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, which admittedly is more of a primer for young samurai than a novel. Still, the difference in tone within the space of just a few centuries is striking, especially when Tsunetomo spends a fair bit of time in _Hagakure_ complaining about how decadent samurai have become since the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate and the end of a long period of civil war. I can only imagine what Tsunetomo might have thought of the poetry-writing, wisteria-viewing, romance-addicted aristocracy of the Heian court.

18/1/07 - Added a link to an online copy of _Genji_, if anyone's interested. (It's linked on the post title, because apparently with the latest system upgrade Blogger no longer automatically makes links a different colour.)

AFK

2007-01-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today is my first day back at work after Christmas holidays, and I'm probably feeling better today than I have since about the 20th of December. X. and I have both been wretchedly ill during the Yuletide season, a condition apparently shared by just about everyone we know. I don't know if it's the flu, but there does seem to be something extraordinarily nasty going around right now. Fortunately, X. is between jobs and I've had since the 22nd off, so at least we didn't have to haul our diseased carcasses in to work, but I suspect we've made up for it by infecting our respective families with the Damned Thing. Unfortunately, it's difficult to appreciate ten solid days of slack time when you're busy drowning in your own noxious secretions.

So here's what I've been up to, for anyone who's interested:

Dec. 22: Got to leave at noon. Watered office plants thoroughly, because dead houseplants make baby Jesus cry. Went to early Christmas Eve dinner at folks' place because my dear little sister and her beau were leaving for Spain on the 24th. Tried to avoid coughing on her, as I didn't want to spoil her holiday. Opened presents. Went home early at my mother's insistence.

Dec. 24: Christmas Eve at X.'s folks. Learned a great deal about the eating habits of various ruminant species from X.'s dad, who evidently misses lecturing. Opened more presents. Went home early due to hellacious stomach cramps.

Dec. 25: Christmas Day at my folks' with my aunt, uncle, and two of my three cousins. Wore a great deal of makeup to disguise sickly complexion for obligatory family photography session. Went home early after hacking germs all over extended family.

Dec. 26-7: Hacking, sniffling, and watching _Shogun_ on DVD.

Dec. 28: Birthday. X. was feeling a bit better, so he made me breakfast. Went to folks' place for dinner (chicken cordon bleu - my favourite) and profiteroles in lieu of cake. X. earned my undying gratitude for erasing the picture my mother insisted on taking to mark the momentous occasion of my turning 35. Like I really want to immortalize the moment when I look and feel as though I've been run over by the "Bust Loose" party bus

Dec. 30: More or less alive. Went with X. to a D&D session at TFG's apartment although only as a spectator.

Dec. 31: Went to a smallish soiree at Strixy and Franca's apartment and got rather drunk. Felt considerably better. Decided to consume more alcohol next time I get sick.

A Hundred Years of Rain [Dream]

2006-12-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

The sky is in that state of extended twilight you only get with heavy cloud cover - the grey has steadily darkened, but it's not dark enough yet for the sodium lights to come on and make everything that surreal shade of orange. I'm in my dream city - a gothic metropolis that combines elements of all the places I've lived as well as a few places I've only seen in this parallel life. Or in games. A lot of it looks like how I'd imagine Metropolis would look in _Kult_, only without all the aforementioned inside-out monsters, and because of the rain it feels a lot like The City in _A/State_. Huge, glittering skyscrapers of glass and steel and black marble are standing right next to disintegrating brick warehouses. The streets are a foot deep in water, and at the right angle you can see swirls of oilslick drifting across the surface.

I'm wading down an alley with six people. I don't know them, because we're all wearing helmets with mirrored faceplates and heavy rubber suits. I suspect the rain might be the reason for all the protective gear. There's nobody else outside, but I can see a few people looking out of darkened windows or moving behind lit ones. We're carrying long metal staffs with flashing lights on them. They seem to be something between a weapon and a metal detector, because the one the guy (?) at the front of the line is carrying starts strobing, and we all stop. Someone else turns on a light attached to her (?) helmet and shines it down through the water. There's a trap door in the middle of the street. It has a lock holding it in place, but when I poke at the lock with my staff it crumbles. I reach down and grab the edge of the door, but it's heavy and the hinges aren't in the best of shape. So we stand there and pound on the thing with the staffs. Each time they connect, sparks briefly flash under the greasy water.

When it finally breaks, all the water in the street rushes to fill the hole. One of the others gets swept over the edge, but the rest of us brace our feet and manage to stay upright. The person with the light cautiously looks into the hole. Apart from the guy lying at the bottom and the water we let in, the shaft is pristine - the walls are white tile and the floor of the tunnel at the bottom looks like brushed steel. It's really brightly lit, too, although the water broke all the light fixtures in the shaft itself, we can see the tunnel clearly. The guy at the bottom struggles to his feet and beckons for the rest of us to come down. There's a ladder attached to the wall opposite the broken light fixtures. So we go down.

Dramatis Personae

2006-12-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

So... I'm working on a batch of pre-gen characters for a Kult/WoD crossover one-(and possibly more)-off I'd like to run sometime when one of our regular Thursday night crew is at his monthly writers' circle whatsit. After a good long think, I decided to pretty much run with the WoD mechanics system, because I know it reasonably well, all the players know it probably more than reasonably well, and I simply can't be arsed to memorize the Kult system or keep looking things up every time someone picks a fight. In any case, on the rare occasions I actually run games, I tend to play pretty loosely around the rules anyway, because a lot of times rules get in the way of a good story.

The main changes are going to be that I'll be bringing back nature and demeanour from the old WoD system in addition to the new virtue/vice pair. Virtue and vice will still be used for regaining willpower, but I think nature and demeanour are much more useful for describing what a character is actually like as a person. I'm also turfing morality in favour of the mental balance system from Kult. Think of it this way - in this game, a mental balance of zero is roughly equivalent to a standard morality of seven. A lower mental balance generally goes with a lower morality, but it's possible to have a pretty low mental balance and not actually do anything to anyone else. Having a twisted, fucked-up soul doesn't necessarily entail acting like a fucking psycho, but it does mean that your motivations for even straightforward acts are increasingly less comprehensible to "normal" people the further the balance drops. Positive mental balance works the same way, although it takes a proportionately higher mental balance before the character is no longer able to pass as "normal". Even so, just because someone has a high mental balance, it doesn't mean they're necessarily a more compassionate or charitable person. They might just be so detached from the muck and filth of "the world" that they can witness atrocities with supreme detachment. I think it's a little more interesting and considerable less limiting than just having a straight ten-point scale based on conventional western moral/legal codes. Realistically though, unless someone makes a concentrated effort (yeah, Mal, I'm looking at you) to tip themselves over the edge one way or the other, I don't see characters going any farther from zero than plus or minus 10. At least not in the first session, anyway.

I'm also going to be borrowing heavily from the magic system in Kult, although again, I don't see this being relevant in the first session. Everyone's going to start off as just regular people, because in order to practice magic in Kult, you have to be pretty fucked in the head to start with, and in order to learn the techniques you have to a) find, and b) interact with people who are even crazier than you. This isn't just waking up to something that was there all along - this is deliberately becoming something more (or frequently less) than human.

One of the things I'm going to seriously tone down from the Kult material is all the multiple-legged, organs-on-the-outside, asymmetrical monstrosities populating the supplementary materials. I think the monsters kind of detract from the central theme of Kult, which is that every single person has the potential to become a god or a demon. Considering the heights (and depths) of himan behaviour in real life, holding out this possibility of godhood and then dumping in a bunch of drooling things with claws and mandibles seems to be seriously missing the point. So no goddamn monsters. Or at least not many, and if there are monsters, they're there because some human was evil enough (or stupid and unlucky enough) to attract their attention.

So... on with the character descriptions. You'll note that there are no stats provided. I want players to choose their character based entirely on the persona they want to play, rather than considering strategic advantages like skill in firearms, strength, ass-kicking ability and so on. You should know by now that I don't like killing characters. Think of it as Feng Shui (no, you don't get Gun Fu) - it'd be a pretty crap movie if the protagonists got ganked. Unless they did something outrageously stupid that would require a karmic boot-fucking by way of bloody violent death. Nice thing about Kult is, even if you die, you're not necessarily our of the game.

The Psychiatrist

Virtue: Justice
Vice: Lust
Nature: Autocrat
Demeanor: Caregiver
[Mechanism: Denial]
Mental Balance = -6

This isn't the sort of therapist you'd want to see if you had serious mental health problems. Or any sort of mental health problems. Doesn't provide therapy so much as exhaust his clients over a period of months or years, then gives them a prescription for mood stabilizers so they don't notice that their underlying non-chemical problems are still there. Has recurring nightmares about his reflection coming out of the mirror and eviscerating him, but thinks it indicates he's got some unresolved issues with his mother. Is romantically involved with a former patient. Despite being seriously fucked in the head, he's got a very good professional reputation, mainly for his expertise in treating "difficult" adolescents.

The Artist

Virtue: Charity
Vice: Sloth
Nature: Visionary
Demeanor: Gallant
[Mechanism: Sublimation]
Mental Balance = +6

The Artist has gained local (and to some extent, national) fame/notoreity for his paintings, which have been compared to the works of Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, and Attila Richard Lukacs, generally followed by "only creepier". Most people whose first exposure to him is through his art are terribly surprised at how generally decent and well-adjusted he turns out to be in person. In fact, he attracts would-be lovers of both sexes like honey attracts flies, but most end up being put off by his lifestyle, which allows time for very little other than painting and as little promotion as his agent lets him get away with. Reportedly only sleeps four hours a night.

The Priest

Virtue: Faith (surprise!)
Vice: Pride
Nature: Martyr
Demeanor: Pedagogue
[Mechanism: Confrontation]
Mental Balance = +6

If his friends (see other characters) are to be believed, the Priest has not raised his voice since he was 14. Ministers to the few regular parishoners at a once-beautiful stone church in the downtown core, but mainly keeps it open at night for the local homeless population. Is currently in the third year of his novitiate to the S.J. The Priest is honest, honourable, decent, and the sort of guy who (were he not celibate) you'd want to take home to meet the folks. For all that, he's constantly surprised, in light of past events, that he doesn't burst into flames from the inside whenever he takes communion. Quite probably the only priest in Calgary who has the exorcism rite memorized.

The Criminal

Virtue: Fortitude
Vice: Envy
Nature: Penitent
Demeanor: Competitor
[Mechanism: Denial]
Mental Balance = -7

Apart from the nightmares about co-workers suddenly metamorphosing into Kafkaesque insect entites, he's fine. Really. And that accounting glitch last month? He's talked to IT about that several times now and they always swear they've got it straightened out. He'll look into it ASAP. Thinks he's a lot better adjusted than his former classmates, who keep talking about that thing they did one summer like it was some sort of sanity-shattering thing. It was just a stupid game, right?

That's Just Sad...

2006-11-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

When X. let Hobbes (one of our cats) out into the yard for a wander on Saturday, he got into a scuffle with a squirrel and lost. X. claimed it was more of a draw, as both parties eventually fled in opposite directions, but I'm inclined to agree with Mal's assessment of the situation.

"You've got a predator, you've got a prey animal. Only one of them should be running away, and not the one with the sharp teeth and claws."

I'm just glad he's never been afforded the opportunity to chase after one of the local rabbits, which are even bigger and probably a lot nastier.

Ah, it is to laugh...

2006-11-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Man... the things you miss when battling the Western Mongolian Hacking Death. I only just heard about this yesterday - to think I could have been basking in the warm fuzzy glow of some major schadenfreude all week. Still, better late than never.

Let me be clear - I am well aware that university is the last place where you can indulge in serious binge drinking without suffering any more significant consequences than the simultaneous precipitous decline of your GPA and your bank balance. I majored in philosophy, after all. But philosophers, engineers, political science majors, and nurses (just to name a few faculties infamous for party-animal tendencies) generally don't engage in this sort of behaviour at a $300.00/night hotel where you're supposed to dress up for dinner. Considering these people have to wear suits to class, you'd think they could be relied upon to behave a little more decorously in public.

Mind you, given what I've seen of the private sector (especially anyone involved in sales, and especially during Stampede), I suppose I shouldn't really be all that surprised. I'm sure a lot of business deals are negotiated in favour of whichever party is better able to hold their liquor. Honestly, the people I feel most sorry for are the police, who really have better things to do than chase down a bunch of drunken idiots; the other hotel guests, who were probably having a nice quiet mountain holiday before the management students showed up; and the hotel staff, who are in all likelihood still cleaning vomit out of the carpet and steaming pot smoke out of the drapes.

And then people wonder why the service sector is chronically understaffed?

Lesser of Two Evils

2006-11-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or does anyone else think there's something fundamentally (no pun intended) fucked about the fact that Ted Haggard (president of the U.S. National Association of Evangelicals) would prefer to have people think he's a tweaker than think he's gay?

American Ex-Virgin

2006-10-23T10:32:00.000-06:00

X. has started collecting comics again - mainly superhero stuff, specifically the DC Universe Infinite Crisis series and its aftermath. He also picked up a rather odd little comic called American Virgin which follows the story of a young(early 20s, I'd guess), charismatic evangelical preacher who tours the country encouraging high school kids to sign pledge cards saying they'll wait until marriage to have sex. Then his girlfriend, a missionary in Africa, is murdered. Needless to say, our protagonist has a bit of a nervous breakdown and heads off to Africa (in defiance of his parents' wishes) with his sister, who's the family black sheep and is also on the run from some scary characters for reasons which have not yet been explained. The artwork is very stark, with heavy lines, rather hallucinatory colouring, and deep black shadows. The story itself reminded me of the big "chastity talk" that I got at two different high schools, and the amusing factoid that kids who sign virginity pledges are more likely to have premarital sex than those who don't.

I never signed one of the pledges, mainly because for a girl geek in high school, the possibility of actually having sex anytime in the foreseeable future seemed pretty remote. If any of the dozen or so boys I'd had crushes on during that period had shown any interest, I'd have divested myself of my virginity like an old coat. A year later, when the much-anticipated event occurred in my first year of university, I recall it being uncomfortable and much less of an earth-shaking experience than my school friends' dog-eared "bodice-ripper" romance novels had led me to expect.

See, this is where the abstinence advocates are going wrong. They're telling kids, "Don't have sex because it makes baby Jesus cry," or "Don't have sex because you'll catch AIDS or get pregnant and end up on welfare and doing drugs and if you're lucky on Jerry Springer as a throwaway cautionary tale about why people your age shouldn't have sex." Kids aren't that dumb. Considering the lack of crispy-fried people and pillars of salt standing around, I think most of them realize it's a safe bet that Jesus has better things to do than worry about their chastity or lack thereof. And the incidence of disease and pregnancy among teenagers would probably be reduced a lot more effectively if parents / educators would get off their goddamn high horses, get over their idiotic squeamishness, and provide the kids with birth control and thorough instructions on how to use it.

Personally, I don't think high school kids should be having sex for the following reasons:

1. There's a fair bit of evidence that adolescence is the neurological equivalent of an overly-optimistic home renovation project. If you're already coming unhinged at the urging of your hormones, the last thing you need is the additional emotional weirdness that often accompanies sex with (and here's the real kicker) someone just as f**ked-up as you are.

2. The younger you are when you have sex, the less likely it is either of you will have any idea what you're doing, and the more likely it is that the experience will suck for one or both parties.

So let's just drop the hysteria then, shall we? When I have kids, they'll get the basic mechanics of it as soon as they start asking questions, and as soon as they're 13 they get a (tasteful) manual and a (not horribly lurid) gender-appropriate toy and a suggestion that they might want to wait a few years to figure out what they're into before attempting it with another person. Oh, and a curfew.

Firene: Precipitation

2006-10-18T11:09:00.000-06:00

"It'll be all right, 'Rine. I'll look after you."

His mother smiles at her in a manner which is probably meant to be supportive but just looks strained. She's barely spoken five words since they discharged her from the hospital.

"You're welcome in our house, Firene. Valeri has told us so much about you. Is there anything we can do to help?"

She frowns slightly. Her gaze sharpens and focuses on Mrs. Oslawski's face.

"I want to go to Longshore University."

* * * * * * *

"Omberwell? As in Drake Omberwell's daughter?"

She nods, startled by the old herrprofessor's sudden show of interest.

"Well, this does cast things in a different light, does it not? Your father was something of a celebrity among chemists. Almost an alchemist, one might say, hmm?"

Firene has no idea what he's talking about, and it evidently shows on her face.

"From the last few articles he submitted and the preliminary results he shared with some of our mutual colleagues... Drake Omberwell was on the verge of doing some truly spectacular things with metals. I cannot, you understand, share many details with you... walls having ears and so forth, you know... But then perhaps you could tell me what it was he was doing better than I could tell you anyway."

"No, Herrprofessor. I regret that my education was somewhat curtailed by events beyond my control. I have some knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy, but I was not privy to..."

She trails off, blinking hard and biting down on her tongue to keep from crying.

"A pity, a pity. Truly. Still, if you'd managed to salvage any of his research notes, anything at all... You'd find yourself in quite an advantageous position. And I would be more than willing to act as a broker so you would not be forced to deal with... unsavoury characters who might think to put undue pressure on you in your current delicate state."

She stares at him blankly again.

"Forgive me, my dear. Allow me to speak more plainly. According to corporate protocol, your father's research materials, had they survived the fire, would revert to Arclight. And I am certain that if you assisted them, Arclight would make sure you, as Drake Omberwell's only surviving heir, would be well looked after. They might even be willing to pay your tuition at Longshore. But there might be other parties who would be willing to offer more. Gorunna, for instance..."

She stands suddenly.

"Sir, if I were in possession of my father's notes, which I assure you I am not, there would be no question whatsoever regarding their disposal. I would not dream to betray The Company and my father's memory by selling his work to the highest bidder. But this is a futile discussion, because as I have already stated, I do not have them."

"Ah. Well, then, do forgive my indelicacy, Miss Omberwell. I am sure that the Registrar will be able to assist you with the application process and payment of tuition. Perhaps I shall see you in some of my classes. Good day."

* * * * * * *

"You must be joking."

"What? Why?"

"Your application is in order, and you passed the entrance exams, which - no disrespect intended - somewhat surprised me, considering your lack of formal education. In fact, you scored higher than many applicants who have attended school. But you appear to be unable to afford even a single semester's tuition."

"That can't be right. Please, check again."

He types in the codes on the filthy banknotes with exaggerated care.

"Nothing. In fact, your parents appear to be in a spot of trouble with their bank - the account is overdrawn for a significant amount."

Firene makes a conscious effort to slow her breathing.

"All right. I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding. Would you be so good as to provide me with directions to the bank, sir?"

* * * * * * *

"Ooh - innit pretty?"

A painfully thin boy steps out of the alley to her left, and when she turns to face him she hears scuffling behind her. The edge of his rusty knife is the only thing that shines.

"You lost or somefing, sweetmeat? Or you looking for someone, eh?"

She feels something behind her catch at her skirts, hears fabric tearing.

"Sweetmeat's slumming, Chaz! And she brung prezzies, see?"

Hands snatch at the jewelry box. She pulls back sharply and trips over the torn edges of her skirts.

"Well well well... Prezzies first, or playtime? Whatchu think, lads?"

He lowers the knife and pretends to be lost in thought. He's somewhat surprised when Firene screams, kicks him in the shins, and starts running. But only for a moment.

"Ey - no fair! We din't call a hunt!"

She keeps running and tosses a couple of the now-worthless banknotes behind her to distract them. A couple of them stop, but the remainder, including Chaz, seem to find the pursuit much more entertaining. Still, she's better fed and healthier than they are, so she manages to outdistance them. Then she rounds a corner into another alley and finds the other end choked with debris. She hears shouts and catcalls and the pounding of their feet as they approach, and then decides to try to climb the pile of rubbish at the end of the alley.

She tumbles down a few seconds later, opens her mouth to scream...

And realizes she can't hear anything.

In a way, the silence is almost more terrifying. She turns around and sees a man standing in the alley mouth. He's taller than the young toughs were, thin, but wiry-looking. He's covered in blood. She releases her breath, which comes out as a startled but disappointingly decorous shriek.

"Five on one. Tha's hardly a fair go, especially when you're just a little thing."

She stares at him, frozen in shock.

"You should go have y'self a drink. Steady your nerves, like."

He turns to walk away, clearly not expecting any thanks.

"Be seeing you."

"Wait!"

He stops and stares at her as she stumbles over.

"Please... will you help me?"

She opens the charred box. Her mother's jewels glitter in the dim light. He looks at them, then looks back at her, appraisingly.

"Reckon we ought to talk about this somewhere a little more private. And you still look like you could stand a drink. Come on, then."

Firene: Crucible

2006-10-13T11:19:00.000-06:00

"'Rine! Over here!"

She looks around carefully. Shasta and Valeri and a few other people she vaguely remembers from the Palova are waving wildly at her from a small table at one of the crowded floating cafes clustered by the canal bank. She lifts her skirts delicately and steps onto the barge to join them, a rare smile crossing her solemn face.

"Here, try some of this."

"What is it?"

"Edge. Just try it, you'll like it."

* * * * * * *

She's never realized how colourful the city was at night. There's just the faintest whisper of a breeze up here on the observation platform, and the surrounding buildings are all lit up, each with slightly different-coloured lights, bathing her and Valeri in a hazy glow. It's been the sort of night that Firene's only experienced second-hand in vidstories - her friends surrounding her, the brilliant, witty conversation, and Valeri...

As they walk along the canal, he brushes a strand of hair away from her face and kisses her.

Her father is waiting at the door. She notices the grey streaking his black hair and the lines etched into his face on either side of his mouth, and then the sterile whiteness of his work clothes washes over her, stealing the colour from her surroundings. Dimly, she notices that Valeri's dropped her hand and beat a hasty retreat.

* * * * * * *

"Where the blaze were you?" Shasta hisses.

"Sorry," Firene mutters, dumping her dogskin cape in the back of the water taxi and struggling out of her heavy overdress. The boatman studiously prentends not to notice.

"Your da shutter you again or something?"

"More or less. I'm still shuttered from that business tennight ago with Val, but that's not what he was on a fury about this time. Teddy, bless his dim little head, decided that tonight was the time to tell Da he wanted to be a Brigadier. You can just vis how well that went."

Shasta covers her mouth with a gloved hand. "Oh Builder. How long did he crash on for?"

Firene balances a row of small pots across her knees, daubing metallic dust along her cheekbones and at the corners of her eyes before smearing purple waxstick across her lips. "About an hour. Or felt like, anyway. After that he piped about three or four though, so he was walled out by the time I left."

"Want some Escape?"

"Hah. Does the rain fall black in Dreamingspires?"

* * * * * * *

The klaxon cuts through the landscape of her dreams. The twinking lights slowly resolve into flashing emergency beacons and the flickering glow of flames. Her house is on fire.

Her house is on fire.

Firene stumbles forward in the wake of a team of Clearwater Emergency Personnel carrying a battering ram. The heat barely registers on her consciousness, although her father's lab and the library are completely ablaze. The remainder of the house seems relatively intact, albeit filling up with acrid smoke. She walks upstairs like a sleepwalker, idly noting Ester's bloody corpse in the hallway. She turns in slow motion and sees Tedwin huddled in the space between his bed and the small worktable their father built for his birthday this year. Then she sees the awkward way his head is twisted around.

She's still screaming when the fire crew hauls her downstairs.

* * * * * * *

"Miss."

She stares at the wall. The medic clears his throat awkwardly.

"Miss Omberwell."

He shifts, opens his mouth, closes it again. She stopped screaming when they administered the sedative, but this leaden silence is almost worse.

"Miss Omberwell... the fire... your father was storing several volatile chemicals in your house. Shortly after we found you, the place blew up. We were able to save these..."

He places a handful of sooty banknotes and her mother's jewelry box on the table.

"Im sorry for your trouble."

Firene: Calcification

2006-10-10T10:13:00.000-06:00

Firene shuts off the mini-telly and pushes it back into its niche in the wall above her bed. The clock on the small nightstand reads 00:17, but she can't sleep. Something's missing, or something's out of place. She sighs heavily and stares at the ceiling. She looks at the clock again - it's now 00:21.

Down the hall, she hears the rustle of Matron's skirts along the stone floor as she makes her way through the long first-year dormitory. There's a sudden startled shriek as Matron catches someone not sleeping, immediately follwed by a series of sharp snaps. Matron rustles past Firene's door but doesn't enter. There's the muffled sound of sobbing coming from the dormitory.

Firene curls up on her side and drops easily into slumber, a faint smile on her lips.

* * * * * * *

Tedwin leans against the doorframe, waiting for his sister to acknowledge his presence. She sits at her writing desk, her dark, severe clothing a sharp contrast to the pale colours of her bedroom and the misty light coming through the domed lightwell.

"Fireeeeeene..."

She looks up sharply from her dingin.

"Do you need help with your schoolwork again, Tedwin?"

"No... I mean, if you can check it later that would be good, but I think I figured it out after you explained how to do it last time. But... 'Rine... I don't like school."

"You're not supposed to like it, little one. I certainly didn't."

"No, but... you know, Da says I have to do good at school so I can go to Longshore and be a metallurgist like him, and I don't want to go to university."

"Do well at school, dear. And why don't you want to go to university?"

"'Cos I want to be in the Brigade of Light. Byron's older brother is in the Brigade - he showed me a picture of him in the Tentenel armour. I want to do that - then I could defend The Company against those dogs from Hirplakker..."

Firene takes as deep a breath as her stays allow, closes her eyes, and does not say all of the twenty things she immediately thinks of saying to her brother. He's just a baby, after all.

"Well, maybe you should wait until you're older before you tell Da you want to join the Brigade. In the meantime, it can't hurt to keep going to school. And I'll help you with your work if you need me to, all right?"

"All right... M'sorry, Firene. Mama said you liked school."

He shuffles back to his own bedroom. Firene still hasn't opened her eyes.

* * * * * * *

She stares at a point somewhere past her reflection in the dressing mirror as Ester fusses with her hair, braiding silver wire and tiny lights into the longer sections and sprinkling her exposed skin with a fine metallic powder. Her mother beams at her.

"Oh Firene - isn't it exciting? The Grand Palova is the biggest social event of the year, and our little girl was invited!"

"Well, at least all those dancing lessons won't go to waste..."

"Now, dear... I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time. Several of your friends are going, after all. This is a great opportunity for you to meet suitable young men your own age."

"Who will coincidentally be the sons of families in a position to assist Father in attaining his political ambitions within The Company?"

Ester senses a change in the atmosphere and hurries off to perform her regular duties. Beatrice observes her daughter for a moment.

"Firene... that may well be your father's hope for you. Mine is considerably less far-reaching. I would like to see you happy and secure, preferably with a husband whose goals are less lofty and hence less hazardous."

Firene looks up sharply. Her mother looks tired, possibly even a little haggard.

"Mother?"

Beatrice smiles wryly.

"Nevermind, my dear. I speak more than I think. You look radiant. Here..."

She steps forward and wraps her thin, pale arms around her daughter's shoulders for a moment. When she pulls back a heavy, ornate locket hangs around Firene's neck on a thick ribbon of some iridescent material.

"Make us proud, my darling."

I'm not Antisocial, I Just Wish You'd Stop Talking

2006-10-06T09:45:00.000-06:00

Says it all, really. Link nicked from Sofy's blog (see R. column).

[LATER]

Wow. Another really good link, courtesy of Sofy. It appears to be a morning for startling revelations:

Five Geek Social Fallacies

I can positively say that I've got a severe case of GSF4, with a bit of GSF1 & 2 thrown in. I think I need to start compartmentalizing my social life a little more. Maybe make a little Venn diagram of people I know who can safely socialize with each other. Or something.

Strange Charm

2006-10-05T11:18:00.000-06:00

I've been doing some research on Victorian society for Scuba's upcoming _A/State_ game as well as for a _Vampire_ character I plan to play in X's WoD crossover game. I've come to the conclusion that it probably wasn't all that nice a place to visit and I definitely wouldn't want to live there, but there are certain aspects of the culture which hold a certain nostalgic appeal. It's kind of like being in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Nobody joins up so that they can play a serf, get scurvy / lice / tapeworms / tortured by the Inquisition, and sleep in a grubby hut with six other people and a whole mess of rats. People join up so they can play a knight, dress up, get ratted on homebrewed mead, whallop the bejeezus out of each other with duct-taped weapons, and have an excuse to fool around with a relative stranger after handing them an orange with cloves all over it on the dancefloor.

Similarly, I'm guessing that most Victoriana aficionados aren't really interested in how the vast majority of the English populace lived, which was under horrific conditions of grinding Dickensian poverty, only without the drippy sentimental happy ending Dickens tended to tack on at the end of a lot of his works. (_A Christmas Carol_, anyone?) We like the elaborate clothes, the high tea, the genteel conversation, but I doubt many people, especially women, really want to go back to the weird position that women ("ladies") held in Victorian society.

Personally, I always thought the primary charm of the Goth subculture at its high point (roughly the late 1980s) was the emulation of the nicer aspects of Victorian society, particularly in matters of dress and manners. I'm especially enamoured with the detailed symbology surrounding the use of flowers in courtship (the "language of flowers") and to a lesser extent the use of fans as semaphore in flirting. It's all very complicated and strategic and charming, which is how I like it. I'm a huge fan of subtext, and it's always nice to get the impression that the other party is also aware of and appreciates the subtext under a good conversation about something completely innocuous. Beats the hell out of some nitwit sending you a picture of his dick on MSN by way of a social introduction.

Firene: Sublimation

2006-09-29T10:41:00.000-06:00

The girl stomps into the library, flinging herself into a chair and scowling at her mother. Beatrice refuses to rise to her bait. She continues to prune the dead flowers from the massive climbing plant that clings to the window frame.

"And how are you liking your new tutor, my dear?"

"I don't know why you and father hired a tutor for me, mother. She refuses to talk about anything interesting - all she seems to want to teach me is useless frippery like music and art and other 'domestic arts', as she calls them. I don't think she has any knowledge whatsoever of mathematics or science."

Beatrice sighs and closes her eyes.

"Firene, sweet... she's not meant to teach you mathematics or science. To tell you true, you probably won't find anyone to teach you something you don't already know about those subjects until you're old enough to go to Longshore. Your father and I merely felt that there were certain... gaps in your education which we were ill-equipped to fill."

"But why must I learn these things at all?"

"By knowing a little about art and music, you mark yourself as a person of culture and refinement. And it is important when you are in the company of others to know how to comport yourself as befits your station. Don't you want to make us proud of you?"

Firene looks at her feet.

"Yes, mother."

"Good girl. Now, go wash up - your father will be home soon."

* * * * * * *

"This is hardly a laughing matter, Beatrice."

His wife stifles a giggle.

"I'm sorry dear; of course it isn't. But honestly, you should have seen the look on her face--"

"Damn it, Bea - that's the third one this year! It's not as though the city possesses an inexhaustible supply of governesses of suitable breeding and background. The agency is beginning to ask questions, and I suspect others are starting to talk. Jecks asked how my 'little spitfire' was the other day, and I'm assuming he wasn't referring to you. If her behaviour becomes common knowledge among our circle, there won't be a single appropriate family willing to let their sons be seen in her company, much less marry her."

"Drake, she's only twelve..."

"And if we wish to reinforce our position in The Company, we must cement our existsing alliances while building new ones. Tedwin will be starting school in just a few years, and by then I'd prefer to see Firene betrothed. I don't want him to live in his sister's shadow."

"Especially when she showed such aptitude for the work..."

"Enough! I have been considering alternatives to our current situation, and Jecks rather casually mentioned a school which might provide the discipline our daughter apparently requires."

He walks briskly to the library door and throws it open.

"Firene! Your mother and I would like a word with you!"

* * * * * * *

Drake watches Firene climb the long flight of stairs from the canal to the heavy iron doors of Miss Markham's School for the Education of Young Ladies. She doesn't look back and doesn't look up, so she fails to see the words carved deeply into the otherwise featureless stone walls.

SILENCE

GRACIOUSNESS

DEFERENCE

POISE

DECORUM

MODESTY

OBEDIENCE

This will do nicely, he thinks, then taps the cabbie on the shoulder when the doors clang shut behind his daughter.

* * * * * * *

Firene stands at attention at the end of her bunk while Matron performs the morning inspection. Unlike most of the others, she doesn't try to whisper or make gestures while Matron's back is turned. Keeping quiet has never been a problem for her. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for poor Teresa Brannart, who has just been caught mouthing something to Alice Govanade. Alice is smart enough to stare straight ahead and not give any indication that she's even aware that Teresa was trying to get her attention, so the Matron turns the full force of her scorn on Teresa.

"Is there something you wish to say, Miss Brannart?"

"No, Matron."

"I see. So you are, what, merely exercising your mouth?"

Don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh...

"Yes, Matron."

"Don't you think it gets quite enough exercise, Miss Brannart?"

Teresa looks at the floor. She knows what's coming.

"I believe you might benefit by a few hours of wearing the brank. However, since I am not convinced that you were not alone in your crime... Miss Govanade!"

Alice flinches involuntarily.

"Yes, Matron?"

"Was it you Miss Brannart was attempting to communicate with?"

"No, Matron!"

"Very well - then you may choose the severity of her punishment."

"Oh, please, Matron - not too severe. I'm sure she's sorry..."

"I'm sure you both will be. You shall both wear the gossip's cage - Miss Brannart for speaking out of turn, and you for lying. Spikes down."

Teresa whimpers slightly. Alice opens her mouth as if to protest, then seems to think better of it.

"The rest of you may leave for breakfast."

Firene: Alloyed Dynasty

2006-09-28T11:05:00.000-06:00

A man paces and smokes a long, ornate silver pipe filled with nembelweed. He tries to ignore the gnawing in his gut with every agonized scream that filters through the tightly-closed door to the bedroom. Sometime after he smokes himself into a wall-eyed daze and collapses in a chair, the nurse comes bustling into the room, her skirts making a noise like paper falling off a desk.

"Ser?"

He turns to look at her lazily, watching the colours of his wife's much-loved plants smear across the hazy yellow light streaking the far wall.

"Ser, it's finished. You've a healthy wee girl now. Madam Beatrice is asking for ye."

She fidgets uncomfortably as his brain starts working with an almost audible grinding of gears. He sits up carefully and looks at her more closely.

"Did you say a girl?"

"Aye, ser. Madam Beatrice wishes to name her Firene, but she waits to hear your thoughts on the matter."

"Damnation."

He slumps back in the chair and starts filling the pipe again.

"Beg pardon ser?"

"Tell her she can name it whatever she likes."

* * * * * * *

A small child with curly silver-blonde hair kneels on top of a stack of heavy textbooks, which are in turn precariously balanced on top of a chair. Even with the added height, she can barely see over the edge of the workbench, but she still watches her father in rapt fascination as he carefully explains the composition of the alloy he's been developing for The Company. He says it like that too - both words capitalized, infused with meaning beyond the merely generic identification they should denote.

"Drake, do you not think she's a bit young to understand such things? Even I can scarcely comrehend your work at times, and you've been telling me about it since we were courting."

"Nonsense, Beatrice. Our Firene is going to be a fine metallurgist when she comes of age. See how she plays with the molecular models I bought for her?"

The woman smiles indulgently at her daughter. Firene has stood up on the chair and is putting together a complicated arrangement of metal rods and plastisteel balls in various colours.

"Be sure you don't give her real chemicals until she's not in danger of burning our house down."

* * * * * * *

This time, the man is more relaxed, although the sterile Arclight medical wing is considerably less comfortable than the Omberwell home. He still smokes nebelweed, but only puffs on the pipe idly - his concentration is largely focused on a technical document one of his subordinates has prepared for a conference at Longshore University. Firene is in another chair, her gaze directed with equal intensity at a maths problem in her schoolwork.

A junior doctor marches over and stands at attention.

"Yes?"

"Sir, I am happy to report that your wife has given birth to a viable and apprently healthy son."

"Really? Well... that's... that's wonderful news. Truly. May I see them now?"

"Of course, sir. If you'll just follow me..."

The clockwork doctor marches off again. Drake Omberwell turns to his daughter.

"You don't have to come in if you'd rather not."

If she notices the sudden distance in his voice, she doesn't show it. She nods absently and continues working, occasionally using a small hand-held dingin for particularly difficult calculations.

When he's gone, she looks down the corridor, a speculative expression drifting across her face.

A Huge Ever-Growing Brain that Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld

2006-09-13T09:50:00.000-06:00

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words "Don't Panic" inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Let's be honest - even though large parts of it are fairly clearly written by academics, or at the very least interested amateurs with considerable knowledge of their chosen area of expertise (however weird or picayune it may be), the fact that Wikipedia is open source means that there's always some chance that the best-researched, most thoughtfully-written article can be completely buggered up (even if temporarily) by some asshat vandal with nothing better to do. That's the best-case scenario for topics which are sufficiently arcane or dull to avoid attracting sustained attention by the hoi polloi. For current topics or anything having to do with the standard hot-button issues of race, sex, politics, religion, drug use/abuse, or U.S. foreign policy (or lack thereof) it's a real struggle to even write about such subjects from a neutral perspective in the first place, to say nothing of keeping the article from being rewritten, "corrected" or just plain defaced every half hour.

If I were a university professor, I'd probably look a bit askance at any student paper citing Wikipedia as a primary source, although for a lot of articles the bibliographical information at the end provides a slew of references to books, journal articles, or more heavily moderated online works which are perfectly fine sources.

For all its failings, though, I could spend hours on the Wikipedia site, just jumping from article to article. I love the fact that in nearly every article, there are links to at least a dozen articles on issues which are either related to the original topic or explore side topics in greater detail. The main reason I love the Wikipedia, though, is for the stuff it covers that no standard reference work would even consider worthy of attention - the massive quantity of subcultural in-jokes, endemic memes, and pop-culture references that comprise the current cultural zeitgeist.

Any kind of information, once it's "frozen" in some form (paper, CD, DVD, etc.) becomes history. History is useful, certainly, but the threat of posterity tends to make one selective in what one writes. Wikipedia is a new kind of creature - the possibility of perpetual flux (even if in practice substantial chunks of it remain more-or-less stable after being uploaded), of being a snapshot of the sum of human knowledge (or at least what the people who write it are interested in) right now. And while accuracy and depth may suffer to some extent (at least in the short term), the breadth of information contributed is, as far as I'm concerned, a fair trade.