Friday, December 20, 2013

A Quick Delivery

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you in, sir."  Above me, staring down with it's ruby inlaid eyes, the sound slipped out of the gargoyle's unmoving mouth with a rasp of stone grinding against stone.  The sir part was almost assuredly part of its affectation and not any sort of respect for me.

"Look, I just need to get inside, drop off a package and get it signed for, and then I'll leave."  Most of the truth.  I could have left the brown paper sack in the gargoyle's keeping what with regulations on magical towers and their owners, but I really wanted a glimpse inside.  Maybe it was a dangerous curiosity, but getting a peep inside of the most powerful of the eastern wizard's tower would be worth the lost time.

"As per my orders, I can not let anyone into the tower without express permission from my master, who does not want to be disturbed at the moment."  I could probably rush the door and open it quickly enough to get inside before the gargoyle did anything.  That would be incredibly stupid though.  There was actually a high chance to get hurt that way, either by the gargoyle, who was watching me with a bored expression carved into its face, or by whatever was past the door with the intent to stop intruders from entering.  So if brute force was out. . .

"But the fact that this is a package specifically sent to your master, ordered by him last spring in fact, he has already given permission for this to come in."

"But he has not given permission for you to come in, sir."  Either it was smart enough to see through my ruse, or it was simpler than I would have thought.

"What if you open the door, and then I push it through, and then get you to sign for it?"  Not exactly the visit into the tower that I wanted, but it was better than seeing nothing at all.

With a low creaking it turned its head a little, as if it were thinking.  I hadn't heard that constructs could think, so maybe it was consulting something else?  "Very well."  Out of the alcove above the doorway the gargoyle's tail slithered down to wrap around the handle to push the door open.  A long dark hallway stretched out farther than I was able to see, nothing of interest besides the closed doors on either side that were spaced every few feet.  It obviously should not have been there.  The hilltop the tower stood on was maybe a hundred feet across, and not all of that flat.

A grin found its way onto my face.  It wasn't much, but it was something to tell the others around the table at night.  "Thank you very much."  It was always good to be polite.  As I stepped toward the doorway flames combusted into being from torches on the walls.  Okay, this was so worth taking a job out into the middle of nowhere.  I moved to set the bag down inside the doorway before the gargoyle's tail swung up into view, stopping me.

"You implied that you would put the package inside.  That is not inside."  Okay, that's weird.  I know for sure that constructs shouldn't be able to understand implications.  There were stories abounding about the very troubles caused because they couldn't.

"I'm not quite sure I understand?"  Entirely true.  That hallway looked very much inside, if not very possibly inside, the tower.  "Where am I supposed to put it then?"

"Walk down the hall to the third door on the right, knock, then when it opens, hand it over there.  When you get back I will sign whatever you have regarding the package."  The gargoyle had turned around, rooting around in the alcove for something.  It took a moment to get my bearings and walk in.  My grin had melted away first into a confused frown and now into the kind of face a little kid makes when they see their first snowfall.  This place was cool, no doubt about it.  The doors were all nondescript, though, just the plain wood-grain you'd see in a normal tower.  They didn't even have the stylized staining that the front door did to make it look like fire and lightning engulfed it.

I knocked.  Silence.  Just as I was about to grab the handle a slithering sound made its way through the door.  Silence.  Then it opened an inch, a long black line inside with one weird looking eyeball peering out of the darkness inside.  "Hi, I'm here to. . ."  And then the brown bag was torn from my hand and pulled back through the door as it widened a bit to accept the package.  It was grabbed by a tentacle.  Both the eye and the tentacle belonged to some sort of octopus type thing inside.  A grey colored octopus.  A grey colored octopus with about one hundred tentacles.  The door slammed shut.  Okay then.

Back at the front door, by the time I returned, the gargoyle had a well of ink in his hand and his tail wrapped around a quill.  "So, was it supposed to be grabbed by the octopus looking thing?"

"Yes, Hortence is there as the chief organizer of his great and majestic lord Phrex.  Now if you would present the paper?"  I had to dig into my brown coat-pocket to grab the folded up form I had stuffed in there on my way here.  The gargoyle made a quick flourish with his quill, a low creaking accompanying his movements.  It read: Peter Stonewing, Chief Executor of his Lord Phrex Gateway.  Way too many words for how many movements he made.  Magic quill or magic gargoyle, it was hard to tell, and it would probably be impolite to ask.

"How did you write all that so fast?"  Okay, maybe I was good at asking dumb questions.  In my defense, it was really cool.

He took his time to answer. Cocking his head to the side like he was thinking again.  "Magic, sir."  The gargoyle's features shifted into a grin, showing his stone teeth.  "And since I did not need to call some other messenger through the halls to pick up that package, you may even have the benefit of figuring it out fr yourself."  With that last remark, he tossed the quill through the air.  I almost dropped it.  Looking down at the nub, it was out of ink.  "Good day, sir."

"Good day, and thank you, Mr. Stonewing."  He's an alright chap, I think.  Now I need to get back to town to find some ink.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

On the space between and circumstances relating.

There are two ways of thinking about trans-universal travel.  The first way is about how it works, and it goes like this.  You open a door into a giant maze.  Doors fill the halls and the stairways, some clustered in twos or threes in the rooms that spring up throughout.  You can walk around the maze, sneaking around "traps" and "monsters" that might end your trip prematurely until you come at last to what you think is the right doorway.  You open it up and are sucked through.  If it was where you wanted to end up, well, that was an exceedingly lucky trip.  Most times, however, you come to the conclusion that you had in fact made a left turn somewhere where you should have had the sense to take the stairs down a level before taking a left.  Then you puzzle out how to get the door open again, because the handle on this side is missing since nobody set one up.  If you get back in, you have the choice of going back home to relative safety, or to try once more to find your way to your destination.  Either way, depending on how long you were out of the maze, you may expect subtle to drastic changes in the layout of the whole intersections of corridors, staircases, and doorways.  To go into too much detail on the subject of the perils of the maze besides the layout would take a lengthy and baffling catalog of metaphors and references, many of which would be better described in terms of the raw physics than in a roundabout fashion, at least with my personal talent with words.

That said, the other way of thinking is the immersive picture painted by actually experiencing a travel.  Unlike any metaphorical glitter that gets written on the subject, you either go with the flow or you don't.  If you do, you feel a sort of greasy wave pushing you along while soaking into you, feeling your very being invaded and replaced.  This is not to say that you are overwhelmed by it, taken over entirely.  Instead, you feel it wash over you and through you, then slosh over to your other half, leaving your solidifying self tingling.  All this happens in the blink of an eye, all right before you start to see things.  Maybe you see a particular color of yellow that draws you in, falling deeper into that before all at once you aren't just experiencing a certain shade of color, but instead are having a wordless heart-to-heart with a yellow color you instinctively call James, even though you also know clearly that it's name is Marge.  And then you're out, sitting, standing, laying, or embedded on or in a new world.

If you don't go with the flow, you have a much more painful time of things, but some say a much easier time of finding what you want.  You push up against a solid wall of nothingness, feel the slimy bits of it harden into knives, cutting you as you try to slip through them.  The same dots and colors and memories that you might see regularly are still there, but this time they run away, not content to let you slip down into them.  The harder you chase, the faster they run.  After you end up exhausted or dead, your body is pushed back into the flow to drift into whatever universe lays on its path.  Once you start out one way, it takes real mental effort to reverse your method and get to the other state of mind.  The best of us who travel can do it in an instant, less walking through the void and more swaying like a drunk all while carefully placing our destination in front of us.

These two explanations on the subject tend to say that the people who are most successful are not the fastest, the brightest, or the best equipped to enter into the gap between worlds.  It is not an ability that you hone outside of the place, at least not consciously.  The ones who walk without fear are the ones who were ripped to shreds and survived, baring their teeth to go back in again.  The ones who step unerringly are the ones who have visited countless places, more than they even remember, before they finally find their way to a place on purpose.  It is no wonder then that in societies built around commonality, those that spring up and flourish in the multiverse, there are very few places that claim allegiance with them or even bear their presence for too long.  Life as a traveler creates rifts in the same way that the first wish to separate oneself from others does at the start.

This is not to say that on the whole people who claim no one universe home are not upstanding and beneficial to society.  They only walk by their own choice to the places they go, learning from their constraint to go where they can when they want instead of hesitating behind social norms or trends.  Stories of saviors coming into being before leaving in a flash of light number many, and tales of terrors who spring up from out of the darkness to wreck havoc, never to be seen again but in nightmares, those tales match them.  Even more are the unexplainable events that find themselves as perplexing aggravations for any scientist-type who runs across them, defying all expectations of reality.

All of this would define me as some sort of classical enigma, ready to do as I please and achieve legendary status through a multitude of known worlds.  The fact that I have tripped head-first into a portal in this between-space makes it all the more embarrassing with these high expectations.  It is a common problem, that of opening doors where they were closed but moments before, sucking you towards them to steal you inside.  I was aware of these and usually avoided getting caught.  When I did, just now, I came across something even I wasn't sure actually existed.  A room with no door.  Rather, a universe that had a door in, which opened as if something were coming out, and no door out from the inside.  Perplexing doesn't even begin to cover it.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Beneath a Stone Sky (Part Four)

I wander, the tunnels now.  Each day feels empty to me.  Where once there was a reason to push out and create a system to guarantee our expanse, all I can do now is check the walls and ceilings and floors for any structural damage.  Nothing makes me smile anymore.

I have a place here, yes, but it feels futile.  Even before I was around the periphery, looking inwards on the laughter and joy.  That lure is gone now, and I without connections in am adrift.  I can't leave this place, there would be no surviving, but where I once traveled out away from the rest of them with thoughts of the well being of the community, I now seek quiet and separation.

It makes me wonder how much of a loner I really am here.  When the sky fell people were shattered apart, broken into factions.  Some of them want to leave, to expand out and recolonize somewhere safer with no constant memories.  Other would stay for the graves alone.  Each and every one of them is a group.  I fit in none of them.  Perhaps I might side with exploration if my preference was asked, but I wouldn't fit in with them.

So I walk the tunnels, farther out on the worst of days, closer in when I feel the ache of that loss of a community to really call my own.  Today I pass a broad door into an arched hall.  Inside I can tell the whole place is carved out of a huge single stone.  I never looked inside, never had a real interest in churches.  The place is empty, dusty.  Whoever came here before either died off or left for good.

Benches are carved up out of the floor, blocky with their grey-white forms thrust up into the space with a precision to detail.  Along the sides, Roman-style columns stretch up to the high ceiling, up at least fourty feet.  At the tops, small cherubic angels sit, bracing the ceiling with their backs and holding all manor of trinkets like wreaths, trumpets, or stone candles complete with stone flames.  The whole thing must have taken each and every one of the years we had been here, been started almost right after we arrived in this hole in the ground.  And now it sits empty.  Behind that a tall, large stone column is carved out, just barely worked on at all.  Probably designed to be a cross eventually.  The stillness pushes at me, moving me back and away, out the door.

The next week I find myself walking in through the doors again to stare up at the columns and the angels above, all their eyes looking down, each watching over a specific spot of the church.  It strikes me that if anyone had thought to seek refuge here, it would have been the safest place to be, when the sky fell.  All one piece carved deep into a massive boulder, a rock to hide within in time of crisis.  I don't come back for another two weeks.

This time the huge column at the center draws my eyes.  It feels unfinished, the centerpiece of the whole place just left as a flat column.  The next day I come back with a chisel and just stare at the thing.  The pure blandness soaks into my mind. all the dimensions filling me.  I'm not good enough for the task ahead, so I don't raise the chisel.  Through the next week I experiment with the chisel, learning more finesse.  I always was more comfortable with the drill, but that is not a tool of art.

When I come back to the church again, more confident, the blandness in my mind's eye melts away just a little.  I take small layers off the surface, learning the feel of the rock and shaping the column toward the curves I see in my mind.  My quests to keep the tunnels inspected and safe stops, replaced by slow and steady progress on the column.

The first thing that emerges is a leg.  A long, womanly leg that wraps around the column of stone to rest daintily on the floor.  The other three legs emerge more slowly, more difficult to carve out.  The first form's other leg holding her weight.  The bodies follow afterwards. Weeks pass as they emerge from the stone, small improvements to technique smoothing over the earlier, rougher work.  Two figures embraced, both women of grey-white stone.  The first figure exudes confidence, her wild hair framing her mischievous grin, arms wrapped around her counterpart.  The other figure with shorter, straighter hair and a shorter build looks up into the wild eyes of her sister.  The statue is not load bearing, so I cut slowly trim the topmost section into one thin arm raised by the taller woman to touch the ceiling with but one finger, holding the ceiling up for her sister, whose mild smile spreads subtly from cheek to cheek.

The elder of the two I name as wild Terra, strong and bold.  The younger, Humanity, wrapping her thin arms around the broad back of her sister.  They are finished on the anniversary of skyfall, resting on a slightly raised pedestal, the only remains of the column's original diameter.  The figures are done, but the piece is not finished.  Weeks longer I sit there, circling the pair, glancing up and down at them.

I had not gone back to the Split-Moon Chamber since I started the work.  The only change is to the holes in the ceiling.  At first they were designed to blend in with the original architecture, but they stuck out as bad imitations.  Now someone had carved into them, widened them and shaped them.  Two large suns and innumerable stars, holes filled with lanterns, hung up above.  Even with the Grim monument to death sitting in the center of the chamber, the beauty of the sky was restored to the space.  I smiled, just a bit.  The inscriptions shall read thus "Night gives way to day as day moves ever onward towards the night."

Beneath a Stone Sky (Part Three)

I was out in the outskirts, tunneling, when it rumbled.  Ground as steady as ours leaves you forgetting what it's like to have unsteady footing.  The tremor was like a low growl, deep and rising in intensity.  It hit me that the whole place was coming down, but I had nowhere to run.  Everywhere shakes and rumbles, debris echoing off the walls and floors.  Smaller bits bounced off me,bruising me through the leather.  Larger pieces cut into the ground where they fell, spraying my suit with shrapnel.

Slowly the vast expanse of the web of tunnels closed in, cutting off this particular pocket from the world.  I closed my eyes, hands over my head.  There was a procedure for cave-ins.  Keep your head safe and make yourself a smaller target.  I drew into myself, driven in by the crash of stone on stone.  Darkness, and when I open my eyes, still darkness.  Reaching blind I found my lamp.  The rumbling fades into the shadows and crevices of the room.  I can barely make out which way is back towards the city, the broken area around me alien and foreign.  It takes me two tries to close my trembling hand around the drill, moving forwards to the rubble before returning to re-position the lantern.

This is what I do, I dig.  A collapsed tunnel is fixable.  Some parts of it are even still standing, but most of it collapsed or cracked open fissures.  The batteries in the drill and lamp will last up to a week, so I shouldn't run out of those.  The meager snacks stuck in my pack won't last me that long if I'm digging out.  Speed is a priority.  The tunnels sometimes collapse behind me, aftershocks running through the area.  A sip of water, a bite of bread, more digging.

It takes me through half the water and one whole roll before I get back to the populated area of the city.  Some of the tunnels held up better than others, some are flooded with water, some are sealed shut in an almost complete collapse.  Other handiwork like my tunneling litters the area.  People who got back faster than I did.  The city is dark, small lights like stars shining out in the darkness where lanterns guide a safe path through the transformed ruins.  No quiet chatter through the halls.  Echos bounce oddly, frightening my lonely figure.

The way to the Moon Chamber has been cleared.  Passing by my apartment, little remains of the wall.  Most of it has broken down, carved stone decorations flooding into the street.  Nothing important was in my room, but broken furniture and ripped cloth poke from the wreckage reminding me of the countless others who had lives there.  Off in a shadow thrown by a massive ceiling brace, failed in its occupation, a hand sticks out of the mess.  At first I see it as a doll, white as porcelain.  The small red splotches all up and down its length to where it disappears into the rocks tell the story.  At the foot of the pile, the slowly expanding circle of red affirms it.  I couldn't recognize the hand from that alone, but like the others who must have seen it, seen the blood, heard no cries, I didn't have the strength to uncover the face.  Bravery in the face of such horror is beyond most of us.

I continue on.  More so than the first day, the silence inspired by the scene in the chamber is incredible.  Where the dome had once been almost spherical, dotted only by a few craters, it now had holes.  Somewhere up there large gashes breached the walls between the chamber and the various rooms that were positioned around it.  The sky would just be dark if not for intermittent flickering of the lights here.  Down on the floor of the chamber huge stone monoliths sat where they fell, gruesome markers like the one outside.  Then screams.  Pain, terror, loss, disbelief.  We are shattered.  Deep through the center of the chamber, a rift yawns, one large piece of stone trapped in its jaws.  It could easily fit the whole of our civilization, now just remnants left after it all.

The weeks to come are filled with burial.  The deep rift in the Moon Chamber has been hollowed out into alcoves of a mausoleum.  I dig and carve.  Three hundred names in total, all inscribed on the rock held in the rift's mouth.  It is hollow to me, but other take strength from it.  Some avoid looking at it entirely, retreating from our Moon Chamber.  A Split-Moon Chamber.  Some of the others tried to fill in the holes in the ceiling, but they show up as ugly sores to me as I look up to an unfamiliar sky.  The chamber itself disquiets me.  There is no laughter there anymore.  No friendly smiles.  All that remains of it is solemnity and death.  Little point exists in expanding the tunnels for a long while now, yet I wander the outskirts at a loss.  There was community here, an optimism to succeed in this unknown wilderness.  Now there exists only grief and sadness.  If we gained a new sky that day twelve years ago, it came falling down on us.

Beneath a Stone Sky (Part Two)

Ten years and I'm still not used to the heat.  The leather suits trap it in, soaking up the sweat and crating a film of moisture on my skin.  All the tunnelers create a stench like this, the oldest dug tunnels being the freshest smelling.  If it weren't for the bits of chipped rock skipping across the floor as I dig, I would go without the thick, leather suit, dyed in sweat.  Can't though.  Wouldn't do anything else either.  The feel of drilling out new areas in the thick rocky soil down here is tremendous.  Just the whir of the motor as it revs, all the other noises unable to penetrate the headphones.  The way it slowly melts away, leaving a new frontier, that makes the days go by so quickly.  Work all collapses into a rhythm, no thinking besides a glance down at the blueprints and plans for the rest of the tunnelers as we push out the edges of our society.

We keep growing, some of the kids never having seen the surface in their whole life.  They must think its some type of fantastical dream.  Loose earth litters the floor, every so often I take a rest and see that the way behind me is cleared, one of the younger ones on the crew would have come around and taken the waste off to the refinery.  Nothing much in the rock in this part of the outskirts, just stone and dirt and worms.  They check a load every so often anyway, and if they don't want to, they throw it out.  Somewhere there's records of each day's digging all filed away individually, but that doesn't hold my interest for long.

I have to make a sharp turn to avoid another tunnel, and with the mapping tool, it says I just got to the spot I planned to.  The tunnel had been flat going on for the past while, but I tilt downward as I carve off at a left angle.  It goes slower this way, more crouching, more breaks waiting for a cleaning crew to grab the waste-dirt.  I don't have much to do in the time between.

Time is just vague enough that we kept it, though the concept is changed down here.  We sleep when we need to, we take our shifts when we can.  Laziness means you get new work, or you find what you want to do down here.  We support the layabouts, to some extent.  Either they find something to do, or they find that boredom gets old quickly.  Three years ago, though the term means less these days, there was a huge slacking movement.  There wasn't really any enforcement, but pretty soon people realized they didn't like being cramped in with finicky temperature controls and sub-standard food.  Things shaped up quickly, and slacking too hard is a bit of a stigma since then.  It could have been much worse.  That's when we arrived on the current model for these things.  Four bosses you might call them.  They're like elected officials, but they head the guilds, as they get called.  Miners, mechanics, farmers, and keepers of the peace.  The last group always has some drama with it.  When I'm off shift, I try to listen into it, cast a voice about matters.  I get more news about the miners, what with what I do.  Sherman is head of us, he looks over the plans, tells us where to start digging, what to be doing, assigns groups for bigger projects.  Nice guy, though he's lost the last of his hairs lately.  He has us clearing out ore in certain areas, shoring up the foundations and tunnels where we can.  I'm personally on the expansion crew, stretching out the web of tunnels to the edge of our settlements in preparation for who knows how much population in the future.

We live down here, so we expand down here, growing out from around the center where the Moon Chamber is.  That hasn't been touched.  Nobody really thinks it could be improved, either for safety or style.  I make it a ways farther down, maybe ten feet or so before I head back.  The route is easy, smooth floor lit up by inset lamps.  If I didn't come out this far every day I might get lost, tunnels branching off every so often to criss-cross, merge, or split.  Back farther towards the developed area signs start popping up, carved into stone plaques that are inset like the lights, though up on the wall.

Finding my way to the baths is relatively easy, even with around a thousand people, the halls aren't crowded.  When they designed this place at the start it was for more people.  Either they were an optimist who expected more people to be around when we moved in, or they were planning ahead for a ways so that we could grow easily.  Hard to say, really.  Nobody on the original construction crew is here.  Once they had finished up the major work they left some recruiters in-charge and headed to the next dig-site.  Maybe they got another one built before they settled down, or maybe they didn't get that far.

The baths are well done, if not as impressive as the Moon Chamber.  They take on the look of a network of pipes, filled a third of the way up with warm water.  It all drains out through grates in the floor, and hanging lights and more plaques point the way to the entrance.  Even with the directions, the steam blurs the way, giving you privacy for sight, if not for sound.  Splashes in the water echo all through the area.  Back at the entrance I peel off the leather in one of the changing rooms and set my pack down beside it on a bench.

The soak is another way to let time slip by.  The place isn't deserted, it never is.  Four people glimpsed as shadows through the steam so far, their sloshing steps taking them to their own favourite nooks and corners of the baths.

I never really register the feel of my muscles tensed up while digging until it washes away in the warm water, and I look forward to the feel of relaxation immensely.  Were it not for my stomach, I would have stayed in longer, but it growls like nothing down here but our stomachs do.  I keep a change of clothes in my bag: a light, yellow dress with what would have been a scandalous and dangerous length back in the sun.  Might have even been called a sun dress way back when.

It fits the style though.  The hive of tunnels that we live in is hot, even without all the work and walking around we do.  Most of the guys don't wear shirts, and shorts are pretty much standard dress.  That's what's comfortable down here.  Some people who remember farther back than I do make jokes about the beach, bikinis and floral print are here mostly because of them.  Well, somewhat.  We can't easily bring down flowers here, so it's a comforting sight, if a bit painful if I think on it too long.  I pass a few people with one of the newer designs, stylized in the new current trend as I head toward the kitchens.

It's not far, not compared to walking in from the outskirts.  I pick up some bread, potatoes, onions.  Some other vegetables all mixed up into a salad.  Nuts too.  People still complain about the lack of meat, but I don't miss it.  Not much anyway.  Pigs would be too hard to keep down here, even if we had been able to get a hold of them.  They'd just tunnel out, and risking a collapse of some sort due to a wild pig population doesn't sound like a good risk.  Kids who get it into their heads to dig tunnels are bad enough as it is.

I load up a tray for a meal and stash some more bread for snacks in my pack, then drop it off at my house on the way to the Moon Chamber.  It isn't out of the way, it's even on ground level of the large wall of apartment-style housing that fills a long hall that acts as a main thoroughfare through town.  Nobody says anything about the smell of my work-suit that I've got stuffed half into a pocket of my pack.  Either because the steam of the baths made it smell less or because they're polite.  This area has enough people that both might be true to varying degrees, but the reactions aren't huge either way.  The street isn't teeming with people, no, but there are about thirty or so on the stretch of hall I can see, which is more than I'd see in a week out on the outskirts.

Nothing much to say about the apartment itself. I don't spend much time there.  Most people don't spend time in their housing, really.  From the moment that we entered the Moon Chamber that first day we claimed it as a place of socialization.  A plaza, a forum, the town hall.  Stepping into it now there are tents set up where people have set up carvings or drawings, either just for display or for barter.  There are a few games going, re-purposed plateaus or divots in the ground acting as makeshift fields.  I sit down on a hill near the edge and pull out my lunch.  There must be a third of everyone here, at least.  When people aren't sleeping, bathing, or working, they're usually here, and people nap and work here too.  Scattered around the area are likely a few groups of people planning and coordinating their projects, sitting in the silvery light with the rest of us.  Just a normal day.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Beneath a Stone Sky (Part One)

Every day worse than the next, that's how things were going these days.  We kept working, glancing up every so often through our heavily tinted lenses to watch the sunlight pound down harder than the last week.  If the suits, masks, window coverings, and spray-sealants weren't distributed, we'd all be dead.  Most of humanity was already.  We here, left hiding in the husks of civilization, we're not really holding on tight so much as slipping down deep into a pit of hopelessness, clawing at the sides to slow our descent.

Funny, then, that today, the day our last seed of hope sprouts, we're marching down into a pit willingly.  Literally.  The entrance looks hastily cut into the landscape, out in the country so there's less of a chance the diggers would run into any old city plumbing or something.  That and I expect they want to divorce the scene from the cities we all left.  Coming out here to see all the plants in their various states is stunning in contrast, or comparison, with our group.  Some of the plants are huge, larger than they should be.  Sunflowers as thick as my arm, twice my height, which is average, even if people tend to call me short.  Dried up moss and brittle yellow grass form the field that they spring up in.  Unlucky and unable to adapt.

You can't tell by the people's eyes, what with how their faces are covered up, but posture is informative.  The fat man at the head of the group is out of breath walking out here where the car's can't drive, but he's still holding his head up, expecting something.  He has hope.  The lady, can tell by the hips, who comes after him doesn't have that same pull upward.  She slouches, dragging her feet a bit, and every so often looking up at the sun.  It's a habit we all have,the sun-checking, but she does it with a rhythm, like a ritual for the end times.

Not like any of our glances up help, at least to solve the problem.  Maybe we need to look our scourge in the face before we flee, get a good look at the thing that almost killed us off.  May still kill us off.  Groups like this, eight hundred, nine hundred people, lots of them are doing similar things.  Digging holes and hiding.  Up at the ridge, where the plant growth hasn't had a chance to spread, we can look down into the hole.  It spirals down, like a staircase or what you would expect at an excavation, which this is, partially.

I have to step to the side to keep from being pushed down with the tide that walks forward, white suits covered in white cloaks, all walking down the spiral.  A glance back and the group dwindles, trickling on down out of the field.  Lots of postures, there.  Hunched, timid, light-footed, heavy-hearted.  Too many to find words for the small variations.  Some of them are huddled in clumps, two or three, trying not to lose each other.  A few lost looking people already have lost somebody.  Not like we have to worry about getting split up too permanently though.  Getting locked into a hole in the ground will do that.

Blue sky with a violet sun over a sea of sunflowers.  Beautiful.  I can still remember when it was more of an off-orange, back when it had just started.  I was five, playing outside without a care.  Even back then they knew something was wrong, but it was slow.  The inevitability still made it frightening.  First came the plans to stop it from changing, then the plans for adaptation, like the suits.  Now we're left to run away from it all.  The surface is lost.  With that thought I can stop staring at it; I can turn and join the stream of people walking down.

Passing a few of the slower people in similar contemplation to mine, perhaps as they stare up at the sky while moving downwards.  At the end of the spiral, down deep as a skyscraper, there's a door.  Heavy and metallic, braced to keep the earth from bursting it open.  It's not big, not even a double-door.  Seemingly inconsequential but for the fact that it alone sits at the bottom of the hole.  We all file in, one by one, walking into a faintly lit corridor that stretches out a long way ahead.

It's sloped downwards, somehow trying to say we're still not quite far enough away from the surface yet.  I can hear a few conversations bouncing around and mixing with each other, but I have nothing to talk about, or nobody to talk to.  Nothing to vocalize is the right way to say it, I guess.  We reach a split in the path, men to the left, women to the right.  The people in front, people who know where we're going to end up sat something about showers.  I vaguely listen, but my mind keeps wandering back to the sunflowers.

Be lucky enough to survive wasn't the case.  Cancer got to us and withered us like the grass up there.  Adaptation is what we're doing now.  It sounds better than saying we're fleeing.  Better to adapt to the underground than to say we're fleeing from the surface.

There are showers here, spread out in a long hallway.  The white suits are scattered on the floor, near the door, and I add mine to the pile before searching for a free space.  People are talking more, now that the suits are off.  Steam fills the room, pushing itself down either way as we collectively purge ourselves.  There is some anti-radiation something or other in the water;  don't drink it advises a sign.  Even the clothes at the entrance are soaked through, the water carrying everything malignant out, they hope.  If it were that easy, we would be on the surface, still.  It works well enough as a placebo for some people.

At the end of the hall are airlocks, lined up side by side.  Go in, get sprayed with decontaminents, then walk out the other side.  Painless, and the reward is a towel and clothes.  A nice, spring dress for me, even though it should be winter.  Seasons aren't what they used to be, though, and I'm not even sure if seasons exist at all down here.

The passage merges again, always sloping downward.  Walking takes hours, it feels like, and others complain about it on the way.  My feet are sore by the time we enter into a giant chamber.  It's spherical, roughly, with the bottom fourth filled in with patios and benches and all manor of things to make up a large common-room.  I can barely make out the entrances and exits that appear on the far walls, and on the sides around me.  People are gasping and complimenting the architecture, and I can't help but agree silently.  As I look up the lights inside bounce off the slightly irregular grey and white speckled stone that makes up the whole chamber, creating a sparkling display that feels like the night sky risen above our heads.  Cratered indents that create shadows draw in the eyes far up and away, some that must be cleverly concealing lights to illuminate the broad expanse of the dome.

"Welcome to the Moon Chamber," somebody announces through a megaphone from one of the raised platforms that dot the dipped floor or the area.  Most of us don't register the speech, picking up bits and pieces through our wonder.  In punctuation, when he finishes, a long drum-beat sounds out behind us, like the shutting of thousands of doors one after the other.  Shutting us in as it collapses.  The tunnel, the piles of old clothes, the showers, set up for that one time, all crushed.  Our new home entrances us for now, lessening the panic of being locked in, making things okay, for now.  We have a sky.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Leaving Home, Again

The way that the light switch clicked, plastic on plastic, as he switched it on was a comfort, even if the kitchen itself was dreadful.  He could see a few cockroaches in the shadows created by the table and the small indent at the base of the counter.  Tilting his head up, flickering light from the dust-covered light-bulbs assaulted his eyes with dull shades of orange.  It had been months of emptiness here, between when the last of the family moved away and when he had returned home.  It was his home, squeaking floorboards and bug-infested walls included.  

Stepping in, past the spider-web in the door frame, he came up to the refrigerator.  His hand brushed away the dust that covered the various magnets and papers that were a record of his and his brother's childhood.  Nobody had bothered to take it with them, maybe leaving it for him when, if, he came back, or more likely because the collage blended into the background as those things do.  All the rest of it was gone, packed up in boxes and driven away in a diaspora of his relatives.  The lights flickered once more, then quit, burned through wires that would rattle if you shook them.  Back to the half darkness, light shining in through the door behind him, but not much as the sun drifted lower.  He didn't need to see to know which photograph to pull out from under a magnet and stuff in his pocket, wedged between his wallet and the jeans.  

It was faded back before he had left, bleached from the sun that would shine in through the curtained window.  Three boys sitting on a pier, legs dangling down towards the water.  His brother holding a fish, sitting in the middle, grinning like it was five feet long instead of the eight inches it was.  On the left was the youngest, holding his fingers in rabbit ears, smirk plastered to his face, as it was most days.  He was staring up over the photographer, his father in the boat, up at the sky.  If he had asked his brothers, they would have said he was staring at a cloud, or lost in thought.  They wouldn't remember, wouldn't believe he had been watching it so long.  In the darkness, his fingers brushed lines of dust down the face of the refrigerator, traveling over the uneven surface with a hesitance.  Falling away in the gloom, to clench by his thigh, then pry themselves free to hang there, his fingers trembled slightly.  

Eyes closed, he turned and walked away, boots finding their way, surefooted around the creakiest boards as he strode towards the front door.  It was still half-open where he left it, and he slammed it shut as he exited, so it wouldn't jam half open.  Two steps over the porch, three down the stairs, ten to where his vehicle was parked on the dirt road.  He turned around, then, seeing less the old, wood pillars and the chipping red paint that covered the walls, more soaking in the years he had spent growing up there, the sounds of laughter, the smell of a warm, home-cooked dinner.  

When the moment passed, the sun had sunk low, almost eaten by the thick tree-line that surrounded the clearing.  He moved his hand to the door, typing in his five digit access code and then letting the cool air rush out over him.  Already humming to life, the ship's engines threw the dirt up in clouds around him before he managed to step inside.  The station would expect him back from personal leave in three hours, and the flight would take close to that if he started now.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Tinkerers workshop (VR Tidbit 2)

Piecing together a spell had a lot in common with schoolwork.  Not so much the history or literature, but the more scientific stuff, and a bit of the punctuation from writing.  It still doesn't make classes worth it though; I could have figured it out without them.  Best thing that's come out of it is the speed I get through all that work so I can get back to playing the game and tweaking my spells.

Most of the mages who I see in the game don't even make their own spells, they copy templates off other people or use the in-game spell creation tool to get something playable.  There have been very few times this has put anything dangerous in their hands.  Sure they can throw around fireballs or rays of ice, or magic shields, but the only thing that gives them any utility, or that they use for any utility is the flight spell every one of them has.  Flight also has the tendency to leave you a sitting duck with a target on your back while it guzzles away your mana to power itself.  That leaves the mages that build their own in the more hands on spell creation tool.

I'm relatively certain it was the original debug and/or creation tool that the developers used, then put in as an afterthought before they added the sleeker, more dumbed down interface.  It was horrible to learn at the start of it all.  When I transitioned from just knives and stat boosts to a magic casting version, I lost quite a few times as things backfired or didn't work quite like I expected, or just didn't work at all.  This all happening after the testing I put them through beforehand to make sure they would work.

First spell I got working correctly was the magic vision spell.  I hadn't seen it circulating around the VR forum boards before I got it working, so it was either new, or people didn't spread things like it around.  The people who I've run into who do make their own spells makes me think it's the later.

Once I got that one to run smoothly, the rate at which I managed to work them all together just kept going up.  Look at the code for the stat boosts and a spell to do something like them is easy.  Look at the rules that drown characters underwater and creating a underwater breathing spell took a week.  The glimpses I get at spell-creators shows that they either work faster than I do, or they spend half a year tweaking the way the fireball looks when they use it.  For some reason, I don't run into enough of them in matches to really pick their brains at it.

Currently, I'm piecing together a teleport spell.  Not the easiest thing.  Either it works well but uses way too much mana to be viable, or it has very glaring faults and can't be used in a tactical sense.  Somehow it needs to soak some power from somewhere other than the mana reserve, but if it does that too much it makes the whole thing too complicated to fit the targeting in and the failsafes so as not to leave me stuck in a tree.  Tricky to balance it.  Might be impossible, but there was a rumor going around about some teleporting mage a week ago.  Could have been replicas, or huge speed, but I might as well try to get it working.

It figures that this is the exact time I get kicked off for server maintenance.  Some new patch, the notes are up already.  Gamemode changes top the list.  Half of it seems like gibberish, as if the fantasy world sim got mixed in with the fantasy arena.  Forum posts seem to indicate that that is in fact what is going on.  The maps that we play on are already taken out of the world, so now they just aren't separating the servers.  More update downtimes, I guess.  People are complaining for the same reasons I would, if I were to post anything.  I don't though.  The feeling is slipping back into my toes as I wiggle them, waking up for me.  If I'm not playing I'd rather be out of bed doing something.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Circumstance

What exactly differentiates me from them is the real question, the one that keeps getting back to me.  It lies under thoughts like, how close is my smile to his when he shoots into the crowded streets, reveling in the screams, or where do I draw the line when I bring out the long barrel rifle that comes standard issue?  Who do I answer to, superiors or my conscience?  I don't know, and that feels like a probelm I am incapable of surmounting.  I saw something like it in the eyes of the old men from the last war, when they were long gone from it.  I recognized the look as I glanced in a puddle at the end of a long day of suffering through the work.  I couldn't place it then, but I feel the pressure of it now.  I'll take it to my grave if that's how it is, but I sleep by telling myself its just the look of a soldier, that they made peace with this in their years.

Yet now I can't sleep, even with my hollow promises, vague hopes for my future.  The night that slipped into my tent here is thick and suffocating.  All I see is the blackness, no starlight or moonlight making it through the thick leather overhead.  Even an inch from my face my hand is invisible to me.  I'm caught up in my head so much that I miss the first shot, or more let it slip past me in the groggy fog that folds itself around me.  The second, a reminder, and echo of the first, gets to me.  I jolt up, pulling on pants by feel, then grabbing the rifle next to where I sleep.  Not a slow reaction, but it could have been faster, I'm struggling with the tent flap as I stumble shirtless into the cold evening air.  The tent does more than you would think filtering out the chill of late summer air.  Starlight, moonlight, torchlight are shining around me.  A silvery skin by the first two with pockets of orange that shine like eyes.  Then some of the eyes grow, expanding outward.  Not torches, but tent-fires.  The night is thick with screams, from dark shapes running between the rows of tents or the inhabitants as flaming wreckage collapses on the unsuspecting within them.

Rebels.  A word I turn to in confusion.  It must have been, must be them.  More shots, clustered together.  It reminds me to load my rifle and check for the rest of my squad in the darkness.  They haven't formed yet, my commander just struggling out of his tent without pants or his gun.  He's screaming incoherently, what's left of his hair is on fire.  As I run over to him it spreads, wreathing his torso as it descends around him.  My screams to roll on the grounds don't reach him and he is used up like a short candle.  I would feel worse if he were a stranger.

I'm kneeling when a wave of them runs through, torches lit and hands filled with small grenades, filled with oil if the spread of the fires is any indication.  One of the figures lights the egg-shaped object and tosses it on my tent.  The week has been dry, the leather cold, but flammable.  I crouch lower, staying out of the path of the rebels, watching the life I was leading flare up in a pyre of sorts.  Maybe it was born of insanity, but when the last of them pass out of sight, I drag my commander's corpse to my tent.  One solid throw/push and he lands in the wreck of my tent, under the roof where I was sleeping minutes before.  Then I run for the treeline, rifle in hand.  They taught me how to use it, how to respect it.  It feels good, the metal against my skin.  I don't know the line, still, but I want to find it, I want to make peace before I return home like the last generation, something broken inside.  I have time to fix that.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Plug and Play (VR tidbit 1)

The numbness hits you immediately when you plug in.  It's cold in a way, like all of your body got flash-frozen down to the core, and then it all disappears.  No sight, no sound, no touch, smell, or taste, just an empty feeling.  Some people get phantom sensations in the few seconds it takes before loading up; I don't.  Then the senses start hooking up, sight coming in first.  You have to go through the tests: full range of motion, identify the colors, adjust the hearing.  Most of it's automatic and it doesn't take long, slipping into the skin of the avatar you loaded up on the info-screen back in the real world.  Depending on how you logged in, you get a few different views.  Some people just go right into the big game, virtual reality of one sort or another.  Other people use it for work, creating a calm environment to be bored in all day.  I warp into a ring of portals.  Twelve colors shifting through the rainbow in their circuit.  between and around them is the stone-looking arches that form the rest of the ring, and the stone floor I'm standing on.  They used to be labeled, various information on the specific arena in each, the number of people on each specific server.  Loads more than that if I looked in the menus for it.  I know where they all go though, and I know enough about the trends from day to day to know which one is populated.  I walk through the lime green portal.  Jungle arena.  A display comes up in front of my head, slowly rotating through the different models I have for combat.  I have a few there, but only one of them is up to date, the others haven't been touched in months.  It looks like a fairly normal body type: tanned skin, black hair down to the waist, just a tad short of six foot.  The knives strapped to my belt are long and sharp, both of them cost me a good dealing in winnings, but they have a few features that were worth the cost.  For clothing, the armor just covers my chest, strapped on under the green cotton shirt and pants that I have on.  Hard leather boots on my feet and a shiny silver hairband to complete the look.  On the inside, I'm packing a few spells, some physical augments, including magic-sight and improved hearing, and some extra reaction-time.  I just have the basic capacity for languages uploaded though.  Some players like to give themselves a boost by getting a few obscure ones loaded in and using code during a match.  I'm not a team player, nobody to talk to, and I usually don't need to know what exactly other people are saying to know what they mean.  Play this for five years every day and you get good at that.  You get good at the game too, which is why I'm running right as soon as it places me down in the jungle.  I get a glimpse of the rest of my team before I disappear into the bright green foliage.  There's an elf, looks like he's a soldier-type with the bow on his back and the long-sword on his belt.  He had a tabbard on too, but I didn't catch the insignia on it.  Standing next to him were two halflings.  One of them sported a big fancy hat and robes; obviously a wizard.  Cringeworthy even, since a hat that big was just a target.  The other one was dressed similarly to me, but the way he was looking around made it seem like he was new, probably invited by his friend in the hat.  Over on the right had been a dwarf, very typical with the axe and the beard.  Dwarves didn't generally do that well in jungle arenas, but from the way he had some smaller hand axes on his belt and the relative lightness of his armor for a dwarf it looked like he might do alright.  Last, and directly in front of me was another human.  I had to squeeze past him and the elf on my way out.  He had a long, thin staff with what looked like wings at the top.  Cleric, likely, or maybe another mage.  Either way, he was dressed light, pants and a shirt instead of the typical robes.  That was a good sign.  One of them shouted after me, probably the elf.  Something about tactics, but I wasn't much interested.  The first one to the moonwell had the advantage after all, and with the magic-sight I had going, it was easy to lock onto the glowing blob that stood half a mile off in the distance behind a stretch of forest.  Dodge that tree, jump over this rotting log, don't step on the green snake on that rock.  Easy.  Every little obstacle had a subtle clue if you looked for it.  The pit trap coming up went fifteen feet down into spikes designed to take you out for a few minutes while the healing kicked in, but the pattern of plants and the big openness of the clearing it sat in the middle of gave it away.  I cleared it, leaping to the other side and rolling out of the landing.  Maybe it would have been hard if I hadn't been augmenting my legs with more strength, speed, and reaction.  Even then, skirting the edge wouldn't have taken long.  Not that I would go without those augments on a normal basis.  They cost so little in points, mostly because they didn't do anything flashy or dangerous to any armor, but they gave me way more mobility than people usually expected.  Most people who matched me in speed had some sort of elemental casing around their legs, going for the coolest or most damaging effect they could.  That or they left them normal and relied on other means of quick-travel.  I bet that cleric back there had some sort of flight readied to cast when he needed it.  The others would cope one way or another, but all of them were too slow reacting at all that it barely mattered.  They were back there "planning" and I just broke the treeline into the moonwell glade.  It sloped down into the ground, green grass unusually short on the hillside of a jungle, and unusually pure of other plants.  Even in five years they hadn't been improving the realism of these virtual reality games that much.  Still I was only picky because I hadn't gotten into the action yet.  Just five long strides before I jumped, clearing the last ten feet and splashing into the water.  There was a tingle on my skin as it got everything on me wet.  Not like the numbness, more of the opposite if anything.  Then I was sinking to the bottom, soaking in the magical energies that were infused into the water.  This is when I activated the first spell I had prepared.  Underwater breathing.  Meant I could stay under here and the other team, and my team, would be none the wiser, at least for a little while.  I dove for the bottom, pulling myself down onto the smooth, stone basin before flipping over with my feet under me, touching the water.  I had enough magic stored up by then to cast the second spell, a variation on clairvoyance that let me see what was going on in the clearing above without having to re-surface.  Usually the enemy would assume it was some enemy scrying from outside of the clearing and lower their guard.  Then I waited, storing up magic for the next step.  It was about a minute later before the next person entered, some Elf I didn't recognize.  He was floating, scanning the opposite edge of the clearing as he drifted out toward the water.  Mages like that spent points on giving themselves a starting magic reserve, and he must have meditated a bit to get it up high enough.  He was followed by another elf, similarly outfitted as the one on my team, but with a crossbow instead of the normal recurve.  Both of them approached the pool.  This was time for spell number three, which was a five second burst of physical power.  It was two seconds longer than it needed to be, this time.  I was rocketing out of the water just as they reached the edge.  One action to slit the floating one's throat and the other to fall feet first into the warrior's chest and slit his with my other dagger.  Two down, four to go.  Then I was up and running off to the side between where I had made my entrance and they had.  That sort of trick only worked once. At least against anyone competent, and I couldn't risk the rest of them being competent and making me pay for that.  It would be another two or three days before people started checking the bottom of the pool before strolling into the clearing, so the first use was safe enough, what with it being out of the common tactics these days.  I curved right, parallel to the route the other team must have taken to get to the pool.  My magic reserves were brimming, and I was confident about my chances if I ran into them four on one.  A blip of magic appeared on my radar, and I heard two voices talking in some dialect I couldn't make out as they closed in on the well.  I gave them a little room and then headed farther back, looking for the stragglers.  One halfling in full plate armor, slowly pushing through the undergrowth.  Spell number four gave me a boost to my knives sharpness.  Activating that and the third spell gave me a strike powerful enough to stab through the helmet and quick enough to stop him from attempting to parry me as I came up from his side.  Three left.  Then an arrow went whistling past my head.  Frosty, pulling snowflakes in its wake that burned as they touched my cheek.  It was a dwarf with an absurdly big bow that had been trailing even farther behind.  He grinned as he started to draw it back for the second time.  I didn't have enough magic left to pull the same stunt again, so I just ran at him.  The reflex augment helped me dodge the next arrow at a safe enough distance that the frost-burn didn't hit me again.  The pain on my face might have been a little distracting i I hadn't been used to it.  A third arrow, and it was even farther off than the last two.  The dwarf's grin had faded, a straight line of pursed lips in the middle of his red, bearded face.  It stood out quite nicely against the green and brown of the forest.  He started drawing his own dagger too late, somehow stupid enough to underestimate my speed even after the stunt he saw me pull on the halfling.  Then he was down, knife to the throat.  I turned back toward the last two that had been going towards the moonwell just in time to see my teammates ambush them.  An arrow from the elf, a lightning bolt from the halfling mage, and the other two keeping track of the rest of the area as they walked down towards the pool to inspect the two elves that were already dead.  Ther looked like they were still expecting a fight, but the return started and the whole area faded out, transporting me back to the circle of portals.  A score screen floated in front of me, tallying the points I earned.  Not that many, but that had been an easy match.  The matching algorithms must have been off, but I wasn't about to complain.  Maybe they would have been more of a threat if they had been given time to get up to speed.  Next to the score screen, a message box popped up.  I didn't recognise the name, at first, but it appeared somewhere on the scorelist too.  Probably some angry asshole upset about getting his ass handed to him.  I deleted it.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Crack

Consider it a blessing.  Even in the last throes of its existence the building made for a spectacular show, each window exploding outward in showers of twinkling glass to the streets below.  From the street it looked as if someone had tossed buckets of water out them, falling in a very liquid pattern.  Inside the collapse had started, each floor smashing itself down upon the one below, downwards into the basements and sub-basements.  Ruined support pillars that should have prevented such an event had been torn up by the blast, falling inwards to be flattened under the load.

The only piece that didn't seem to fit was the silence, oppressive in its nature.  It should have been loud, cacophonous even as the debris mashed together, smaller bits and dust flooding out into the street and above the pile of stone and wood and metal.  The blast before, the boom of it all left all ears within a few blocks deafened, effecting a silent, beautiful collapse.  The eardrums would be healed in a few weeks, perhaps.

Now begins the panic, mouths opened in mute screams, wide eyes and wild gestures.  Each playing a part in each other's silent movie, devoid of subtitles.  If they stopped to think for a moment some might have even found the humour of the phenomena.  As it is, bits of building raining down cut out any levity that could spark and scared people dash for cover.  Most make it, bruises and cuts and a thin covering of dust for their skin.  Some stumble, fall, hit by larger pieces.  Others just get the coating of dust, having reacted more quickly, been more lucky.

Unlike the silence, the movement doesn't shut off as completely as the sound did.  The building is still, some of the people are still, but others are walking around as the dust settles gently.  People are shocked, slow.  Somewhere deep under the pile of rubble is a stirring.  Most of the surface is braced together, so the movement alters nobody present of the street.  Still, down below an entity stretches its limbs.  The set up had taken time, precious time when the building had been empty.  Each of the three cases before, days, months, weeks ago had been scrapped as people returned to the building.  It had succeeded this time, been faster, been given more time.  With a wriggle, the entity started to worm its way through the spaces, upwards, out of the mess that had at one time been considered a prison of sorts.  The surface began shifting after a while, little bits moved as the entity climbed and squeezed and pushed.  The street didn't notice, either because there was no telltale noise or because of the inconsequential nature a few shifting rocks meant to them.  That they thought was inconsequential.  Still, the entity was spotted as it surfaced, crimson snout first as it pushed away a chunk of concrete.  Teeth like knives lined up in its smile, the rest of its vaguely anthropomorphic lizard body.  And then it screamed.

In the same way as before, the windows around shattered first, supports and walls crumbling in the echo that was unheard.  The wind of it still hit them, though.  People fell down if they weren't lying on the ground already, some confused and more frightened at the continued explosions, not seeing the entity.

Then it was gone, escaped, leaping over the broken and breaking streets towards the edge of town.  Its captors would return in minutes, curse, and begin the chase.  Perhaps this one would be considered a terrorist bombing or a generator explosion.  The people there would be silenced themselves, by money, fear, or patriotism.  Those on the outside would believe it, perhaps.  Conspiracy theories had been raised before, some even on the right track, so this was nothing new.  Still, next time the entity would be locked up a bit tighter.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Dialogue of a boring nature.

Honestly, can you really say you have never tried?

Never?

Not even once?

Nope.

Weird.

It isn't really.

It so is.  Everybody does it.

I don't.

But it's so easy.  I almost do it on accident sometimes.

I don't want to.

Come on, please?

It's a waste of time.

But it's fun!

Sure, and so are other things, like reading.

Yeah, but you can do that any old time.

And I am.  Right now.

Just do it once.

It's juvenile.

It's awesome, you just don't think you can do it.

It's not hard, just dumb.

So everyone is dumb.

Guess so.

What if I take your book away?

Then I whack you on the head, get it back, and keep reading.

But what if I hide it?

You won't get far enough to hide it.

Throw it out the window then.

I toss you out to fetch it, simple.

It's two stories down though!

Eh, you could limp back up, just don't land on your head.

Fine, fine.

. . .

Please?

No, go away, you're distracting me.

I'll stop if you do it.

No.

So I keep distracting you then?

Beware of my vengeance if you do?

You'll throw me out the window?

Only if you take my book.

Then what?

I'm not telling, it will be a surprise.

Not even a hint?

Nope.

You're bluffing.

Might be, or I might have a devious plan cooked up for this very situation, now shush.

No, you gotta do it.  This is for your own good as a person.

. . .

Really, it's like, a facet of our generation.

. . .

Defines us as a culture these days.

. . .

Stop ignoring me, and being stubborn and stuff.

. . .

You are no fun at all.

. . .

I can see that smile, it doesn't mean you won.

. . .

Yeah, whatever, I'll go play on my own.  Worst big sister ever.

Toodles.

. . .

Books are so much better than that silly virtual reality thing he's got going anyway, annoying little brat.

I heard that!

. . .

. . .

Friday, November 8, 2013

Space Krakken for the Space Ships.

Parking a squid is hard, doubly so if the station is not prepared in the slightest to accommodate it.  He liked to wrap tentacles around the place, sticking to the windows and polished siding while waiting for me to get back.  It's not as if he'd go anywhere on his own, it just freaks out the authorities enough that you come back to a "situation" as they tend to call it.  It was my second time at this particular space station though, so I hoped that things would go smoother than normal.  I eased off on the gravity well I'd been using to make him fall towards the station, reducing speed a bit with one positioned behind us.  We came in mouth first so I had to rely on cameras.  Only jostled it a bit though.  He grabbed out with his tentacles, better than normal docking clamps, as I unstrapped and floated down to the hatch down at his mouth.  The walls were getting a bit dryer, less wet than they had been at the start of the voyage so I put water on my list of chores as I made my way to the airlock.  It was fastened into place with the station, so I didn't have to suit up to get through, just go through two sets: mine and theirs.  Aupaula station was a spindle.  It wasn't like the giant donut types that spun around with a stationary dock at the center, and it wasn't a sphere that relied on internal gravitation fields to create a livable surface.  It was a long, thin needle that had docks on the outer shell and a second layer inside for the working and living quarters.  It orbited a moon, small and on edge of most normal trade routes.  This area had been colonized a while back because of a big gallium deposit that they found, back when those things were valuable.  It gets along half on the black market and half on the local resources of the moons in the area, but not enough that there is a full-time crew.  As a non-artificial gravity location, it couldn't act as a habitat anyway, crew having to rotate every few months anyway.  I didn't recognize the man in the suit that was pulling himself down the hall towards me, so I guessed I hadn't run into any of the same crew that was here 3 years back.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to explain your vessel."

"It's a techno-organic space vessel."

He doesn't seem to register what I said, either because he heard it before or doesn't understand what I meant.  I'd bet on the later.  "Once again, I'd like you to explain your vessel, and why it is latched onto my hull."

"If you go back through the reccords, I came here with it three years back. . ."

"That was before the reformation of the trade regulations, before the ship classification requirements for systems."  He was referring to the stipulations that popped up from the new political power recently.  Trade Proctorate.

"Well, if we're getting into the very technical applications, I and my large friend came here in a semi-assisted suit-less flight which under regulations means. . ."

"That we are obligated to receive you in and offer medical assistance if possible with limited risk to my crew.  Fine.  Prove to me you're limited risk."

"As I said before, the records. . ."

"Were wiped sometime last year in a magnetic storm.  Barely managed to keep the base from crashing into the moon."

"Well, do you have a connection down surface-side?  I think it was Major Phillips who was in charge at the time?"  He put a hand up to his ear when I said that, mumbled something into a fairly well hidden communicator.  I caught the word verify, but little else.  Lip reading might be useful to pick up.

"We should have an answer back shortly.  Major Phillips is stationed at landing zone Alpha groundside.  Got put in charge there a while back."  I wasn't sure if it was a promotion or not, so I kept my mouth shut on the matter.  I just smiled a little, not too much though.

"He says you're about as far from harmless as you can get out in space."  That would be Major Phillips for you, why had I thought of him first?  "He also said to send you down to the land-side port because you and he need to have a little chat.  Says to put in in Granite Lake and he'll take a car out to pick you up."  Well, not a total loss then.

"Thank you for your time, sir."

"It's my job, civilian.  Now get off my station."

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Protocol

Listen to the blast.  Two, three, four, boom.  Way down the street behind a few corners, still going at a semi-steady pace.  It's like a microwave with popcorn in it, just more intense.  Honestly, it's about as everyday as a microwave.  Hard to see tech like that coming into being without being used.  Especially when the only people who can't afford a jammer are too poor to really get a voice.  Just enough time to get a scream out before they pop.  Sickening if you see it the first time.  Second time you think you've seen it, then you really watch, really take in the details of how the blood seeps out through the eyeholes.  You never get over it, just learn how to stifle the reflex once it starts, faster, earlier, more firmly.

  In some sense I'm even glad the perp is leaving a trail like this.  makes it easy to track if they leave a dotted trail right to them.  He's not even getting picked up and put down for this, it was for something trivial, poaching might be, I don't care enough to check.  All I need to know he's heading deeper in, down to the darker parts of the crater-city.  down to the parts where electricity starts becoming a commodity again.  Maybe he lives, or lived down there.  Made a break and got a little power, but still thinks of it as home.  Too bad for me I have to follow in.  Even without some of the sensors picking up the heat signatures I can see, I know there are a few watching, more coming.  Still, I've got enough stuff on me to wipe out a city block, so it's not as if it's dangerous for me.  Just painful to go in there and see it all, see the dotted line he's leaving.  A jog then, more than the stealthy stroll that I''d been making up to the edges of the place.  Catching him off guard would be fast, but if I had to spend two hours sneaking up on him before a three second kill, it would still be longer than a ten minute match-off after a thirty minute chase.

The explosions peter off.  A bit in and the house walls started loosing their siding, revealing the pipes and wires underneath.  Half of them were dry and empty, but the splatters were harder to pick up on the uneven surfaces, especially with the grime.  Then they stopped.  Maybe the guy got tipped off, maybe he got bored.  Now I had to switch to real tracking.  Flip a switch on the visor, moving it from visible light and heat to x-ray and auto-scan.  Too many and it got a bit hard to visualize what was going on unless you were really good with them.  Some people ran with all eleven filters running, but I liked to keep it simple.

Tracks led left, through a back alley and up a roof-access.  Gave me a little warning before my jammer beeped in my ear.  Rooftops, right.  He was making it easy on me then.  No cat an mouse once he realized.  When I got a fix on his skeleton up at the top, three floors up, I could see his mouth move, likely to swear by the body posture.  I grinned a bit; swearers were entertaining, especially if it were only from his stolen tech not working.  I could hear him as I hurtled upwards toward the roof, relying on the strength of the tech snuggled around my legs and arms to get me a safe landing.  I hadn't practiced anything like this much, but I'd seen some of the more veteran jump and draw taking down four or five people with a few shots in the air before landing, but I figured that would be just a bit too showy.  Plus I wasn't so great at the quick-draw that I'd risk dropping my gun three stories.

His face was crumpled into that angry expression people get when they know that somebody is about to do them a wrong turn.  Blames it on me.  He knows he's not living through this.  Tries to fire off the device at me again, hear him pull the trigger with a click at the same time my jammer beeps again.  I sigh as I draw, watching him drop the piece and rush me.  He bowls me off the rooftop, out into the open air, but I get the gun dug in where his heart is and pet out a shot, straight up.  Gonna have blood on the suit;  gonna get yelled at and have to clean it when I get back.  Hitting the ground barely registers as I go over in my head what I have to file this as.  Easy to push him up and off me as I stand.

In one of my pockets there's the standard issue marble.  Small, no external sources of propulsion, runs entirely on gravity.  It sticks when I drop it on his torso, then raises him up like some brutal marionette of a ballerina  arching her, his, back.  I took the stairs this time, letting the body float in the street until I went to get it.  It lay where he dropped it, a long sleek chrome wand.  interfaced directly with the nerves, no buttons on the surface.  It went in a pocket and I hopped down, landing on my feet this time.  Now all that was left was the slow walk back to the base.  The easy part was done, now he had to figure out how to talk his way out of being the research team on this guys motives.  Damn shame protocol demanded instant execution if possible.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Ellucid Dreaming

I slip under, feeling the hazy half-real fever dreams when your body just needs some time to protest your current activity.  It's black in here, real black, but fuzzy, kind of.

Hey.

That's new.

Hey you.

It's like a ball of bright white light streaking around inside here.  Looks like the lightning from before.

I ~am~ the lightning from before, and you will address me by my full name.

Usually my mind only summons up the occasional conscience.  I talk to myself enough, but this is different.

Stop ignoring me.  I'm not you.  Of course I'm not you.  Do I look like some lowly two-legged creature?

Well, no.  It, I mean you. . .

You may call me His great and terrible Conqueror of the western skies and all that fall below; Terror of the inland sea and. . .

Anything shorter?

. . .scourge of the great nation of Kwai; Magnificent Serpent of. . .

I'm going to call you Ning.

. . .the expansive ceiling-ocea-what no!

I'm not going to say that whole thing.  Plus, you look like lightning.

I ~am~ lightning, or lightning is a lesser form of what I am.  Don't just casually undermine my status as. . .

Come on, lighten up.  It's just a nickname.

I am not "nicknamed" by mere mortals.

What are you, then, and why are you in my head?

Weren't you listening to my titles?  I'm the great and terrible. . .

A short version oh your eminence?

Stop interrupting me mortal!  This is the short version. Now let me finish.  I have to start over now.  I am the great. . .

He's a sky dragon.

It's coming from behind me, I thought, but when I turn I don't see anything.

No, down here.

Stop.  Interrupting.  Me.

My arm is on fire again, and a form is squeezing itself out through black crevasses in the charcoaled skin.  It's orange and flame colored, flickering a little.  Not like anything I'd ever seen fire do before.

Of course not, flame spirits are quite different.  But anyway, that glowering thing is what you humans have been calling sky dragons.

Such a noble being as I could not take so small a name or so simple a title.

Like the legend of the prince and the seven seals and how he goes to restore the beauty of the land?

Hmph, I should have eaten that one when he showed up with the silly talking donkey of his.

That is one instance, yes.

Stop ignoring me, mortals!

The children's fairy tale.

I mean it!  I shall smite thee both to dust!

You are talking to a flame spirit and a prideful ball of lightning in your dreams.

Point taken.

I'm going to do it, I really am.

Oh come off it cloud-breath, you're insubstantial in here, nothing really happens.

Not until I eat him and take over his body.

Until you what?  Until he what?

Don't worry, the beast is overestimating his capabilities.  We would not make a good snack for him.

I think you will both be delicious and a good three hundred and thirty fifth paragraph for my title.

You seem to be forgetting that eating a human from the inside is not the same as eating a mage.

Mages don't exist anymore.

Just like your kind, cloud breath?

A mage?

Yes, a wielder of high sorceries.

But I'm not a. . .

Yes, well, you show some of the signs.

He most certainly isn't one.  I would have seen the aura before I jumped inside to eat him.

How do you explain me, then?

A figment, the boy has obviously imagined you in order to dissuade me from eating him.

Care to test that?

Gladly.

Ning leaps forward and the fire expands out into a huge mass of flame between me and him, perched on my arm.  Lightning meets fire and the two spark back and forth at each other.  Heat building up that I can feel, unlike the fire.  Err, flame spirit.  It takes a while, but the two eventually split apart.

Would you stop your narration, mortal, it is becoming annoying to my divine perception.

It ~is~ a bit silly.

I can't help it, this is the weirdest dream I've ever had, I have to think through it like this!

Must you though?  Can you not talk just like the rest of us?

Ning rubs his singed nose with his tail.  Ah, sorry, see?  I can't help it!

This will doubtless work much better when you are awake.

But then you two dream figments will be gone.

. . .

. . .

Right?

Things have just gotten a bit more complicated for you, I'm afraid.

No they haven't, as my divine and me-given right, I will eat him.  Not complicated at all.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Grab the Fire, Ride the Wind, Eat the Lightning, Speak the Thunder.

Grab the fire, huh?  They make it sound so easy.  They say it like the thousand year old ritual it is, like the creaking, old bones that stood here before me.  It's not a torch to be grabbed by the handle, it's not some metaphorical flame, it's a naked flame flickering in the soot-stained brazier that sits atop this high mountain.  I can see the scars on their hands, aged burns, some more so than others as they stand on the other side of the light.  Their white robes plastered against the darkness and the cloudy sky.  I step up, trying not to look at their hands, their faces.  The shivering goes away, the wind slicing through me no match for the furnace before me.  Inside it, the deep orange slithers over the blackened logs which burn into little flecks of white caught in the updraft to sail up into the night.  The fire is not special, no strange, magical wood, just some pieces brought up from the kitchens down below.  The brazier is only special in its ancient nature, just iron bent and smelted into a rough bowl on thick, tripod legs.  I'm certainly not special, not fire resistance here.  Just a cup of tea, drugged a bit to dull the pain that will come.  I've been waiting for a while, but the elders don't show impatience.  They don't turn when the thunder echos down in the valley.  I'd rather get it over with before the storm moves up this way though.  A little fire is initiation but a lightning bolt is death.  Plus, the tea is going to wear off soon.  Down into the light I plunge my hand, grabbing and finding nothing.  This is, of course, the expected result.  I have to wait for it to catch.  It's hot, but it feels like there's a layer of something in between me and the fire.  The older monks say that's what the tea does.  A little tongue flicks its way into the cylinder of my hand.  I don't think, just grip down.  It feels cold, so hot that I feel the chill move up my arm as I yank it out, falling over.  My arm aches, and I see the flicker of flame on it out of the corner of my eye.  Above is just the dark clouds, an occasional flicker of light in them arcing from one high grey blob to another.  The bucket.  If I let it burn too far my arm won't fit in the bucket.  I can't see it right away as I pull myself up, scanning the ground to my left where it should be.  A hand on my shoulder, one of the elders holding it out for me.  Thunder.  Lightning.  It comes like a snake out of the cloud, and I can see it dart out at me.  White with little hints of blue to highlight teeth and eyes as it steams forward.  Maybe the tea is still working, because I don't try to dodge, can't dodge in time.  My mouth is the only thing to move, dropping open to scream, to shout a warning, to question my teachings.  I don't know, I just faint.

Its damp, lying here on the stones.  It must be a low patch because it puddles up around me.  The rain is still falling, causing my eyelids to jump every time they get hit.  I'm still outside, still lying in the rain.  Each strand of muscle feels stretched to its limit, strained and bruised.  I can't open my eyes to see, won't, really.  I don't want to see.  I should be inside, bandaged and resting, so something is wrong.  I didn't put the arm out, I let it burn on.  The lighting stopped that somehow.  A groan.  Somebody is still here.  I have to open my eyes, have to sit up.  I'm heavy, like a drenched log, and my body protests the effort.  It doesn't get to make up my mind though.  I'm upright, and now the eyes can open, free of the downpour.  Ahead of me lays Elder Marin.  He also is struggling upright, if a bit faster than I did.  I want to say something, but I can't hear my voice or it won't come out.  I can hear the rain though.  He was always so unflappable, and now his mouth is open, starting.  Past me?  I spend the effort to turn, but just more storm clouds sit over mountaintops that way.  Then I look down.  My hand is still shut into a fist and I see a speck of orange beneath the scarred fingers.  I relax it open, or try to.  I have to bring my other arm open to pry a finger up.  A spark, and a catching one flares out, settling back on my hand despite the rain.  It's warm in the cold dampness, sputtering angrily against the rain before catching into a conflagration that envelops my arm, scars and all.  I hear Elder Marin start mumbling a mantra, but I don't look up, can't look up.  The flames entrance me.  Beneath them I see my skin blacken more, going from the reddish crispy part it was before to a dark obsidian.  The flame draws into itself, burning hotter and the black flecks off into grey, then white ash.  The flame disappears entirely, red veins of heat in the flaky white skin.  The tea must still be working, because I can't feel a thing.  Maybe they mixed in some hallucinogenic stuff with the pain dulling herbs.  Then it goes out entirely, rain washing at the ash, running it off my arm in rivulets.  My whole arm.  My unscarred arm.  Then the pain hits, aches all over again I'd forgotten I had.  When they come to drag me back down to the infirmary, drag all of us down there, I can barely register things.  I might have fainted again.  Brother Milo is a liar, this was much more nerve wracking than the spring resplendent ceremony.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Underneath

Wrecked and broken, whole and sturdy, fear and fearing all go down, down into the hole of a city.  Spiraling round like gutters on the pit walls the roads empty their people in.  None leave, not by that route.  It is somewhat of a pilgrimage for them, soaked in religious fervor mixed with pragmatism.  What little shade and water that hides itself down in the depths draws them in, flowing like water down deep to soak into the tunnels, caves, and cavernous buildings that make it up.  We all abandoned the dying surface, that or died on it, parched in the sun.  What's left of us is darkened, even the hopeful casting their eyes downward, away from the light.  I blend into the crowd, blackish cloak with a thick hood, nothing showing from underneath it.  Anonymity for each man woman or child, though nobody seems to care either way.  Some people take quick glances up, burning the surface into their eyes, a moment of pain to remember humanities moment of pain.  It's a passing thing.  Most are lost in thought of what happens next.  What is life like down there, how do I survive, who can I trust, how did it all happen.  Pointless, most of it.  Life just happens, dwelling over it before you even know anything just muddles the mind.  How it happened is worth something.  It won't help now, not for a few generations.  Think on it enough and it will leave a mark, imprint something in us that might be a little respect.  Some of that down the line will help.  Might not take the ground beneath our feet if we have it, might not end a way of life same as how the sky above our head came crashing down.  Still, we exist, we trickle down into our hastily dug holes to hide.  Hundreds of thousands of them scattered all across the globe.  Plans are to connect them all, form a network between them.  Some of them might, most will have to fall down into chaos before they get up as a society again, if they get up again.  This city might make it, should make it.  I knew these people once, and they were strong, they were brave, they were honest.  Some broke under the sun, withered and shriveled into monstrous shapes, but under the black cloaks there are strong men and women.

Day doesn't fit anymore, even with the lights.  There are periods to sleep and periods to work, periods to play and to congregate, but it is not a day.  A night, perhaps, but everything is night, pillars of scattered through the city like stars, a great round chamber in the center shining like an inside-out moon.  We live in seasons now, life progressing for the person despite being crammed in with so many others once the ceiling was closed off.  We are shut in, closed to the sky, and to each other.  The moon-chamber is our openness.  Our center, our light is always alive with the singing and dancing.  It is sad, it is happy, it is brash and shy.  Ecstatic, somber, ritualistic and brave.  There we share ourselves and our emotions, the tender smiles and the flares of anger.  When we spend ourselves there, enervated with our souls bleeding out, we flow back out into the canvas of the night, to the silence.  The moon our heartbeat and the stars our work, sleep, and thoughts.  All that is left of our sky is the food and our clothes.  The sweet tastes of sun and clouds, grass and rain.  Some of that is in it, vitamins that we produce and mix in, chemicals that flavor it like what we used to eat.  Of our dress, it is of the beaches.  Little bits of color tied and draped on around us in certain key places.  The heat forced us to it, and the fashion of it charmed us.  As we work, tunneling, laboring away in it the fat melts away and the muscle stays.  We walk leaving a trail of it in our sweat.  Even the long days of working the machinery or calculating out rations is bathed in the sweat and movement of life.  We are industrious in this, working like ants in a hive.  When a lack is felt somewhere, a man might step in to fill the position; where we fall short, a woman pushes through our lack.  We live here now, these past ten years are the awakenings of a seed that was planted in the midst of hopeless winter, sprouting in the spring of our new way of life.

Where there is darkness comes tragedy.  We put up lights and it seeps in, hearts and rooms alike filled with shadows.  For twenty-five years, the earth was still.  Small shifts as we settled into her, digging our tendrils into clay-flesh and rocky-bone.  She moved this sleep-cycle, cracking apart and flattening in a swathe.  Just pockets left glimmers of light that I cling to.  I push back, forcing my way towards sounds, other shifts in the rock like my own drill.  Where we had once felt proud in our precise cuts, measured calmly and with deliberation, I stab out again and again, moving with instinct.  Loose stone grinds above, reminding me of my folly.  I must check the panic, harness the fear.  Drive and not be driven.  Breathing lets the explosion that builds within settle.  With a care, a thought to our ways before I head out for the moon-chamber.  A great crack runs through it, the center half buried in grey-brown mess.  There are dead all around, many more than passed in the whole of our time here.  We had grown, expanded, and prospered in our fall.  I see others, recognize the dread, the looks from twenty-eight years ago when the sky began to fall, from twenty-five when we assembled that first day in the moon-chamber.  We forgot that lesson, perhaps.  We feel it again, and curse ourselves for it.  

We few reach out to the rest of the city, stretch our power to regain what we had.  Enough to live.  In the tunnels we find the dead.  I know them, the blank faces.  Excavating more room in the graveyard takes as much time as finding them.  It had been left untouched somehow, the peace of the past dead at least left undisturbed.  These are still the strong men and women that walked down here, but we stand hunched and worn down.  With us all the moon-chamber is still left with room for more and more.  The great crack is still there, cracked around us, into us, and between us.  In the large emptiness we create sparks, words like rocks smashing against each other to argue our path.  Some leave, tunneling off into the darkness even beyond the flickering stars of our home.  Most of us stay to rebuild.  We have known other ways, the sun and the sky, and we could change again, but running away just reminds us of what we lost.

A monument of sorts has been erected into the moon-chamber.  The names of the lost, dead and departed, we carved them into the cracks, the opened fissures that run through the dome and the sloped floor.  It seems short of what we should do, but it gives us some peace.  In the months past the collapse, we have been quieter.  Loneliness is less present, most travelling in groups, coming together for the presence of others to lessen the emptiness of the halls.  Then and in the moon-chamber we speak less, sing less, dance less.  Noise will spring up, continue on, and then die with a glance at a remembered name or the slope of a wall that reminds us.  Sometimes it just takes the echo of space to give us pause.  I see the wound as much in the stone as in the hearts.  We heal slowly, and our scars remain.

The face is done, one of them.  They are to be sisters, both scarred and weathered.  A stone pillar I found holding up the center of an unused chamber.  It was once a church, I think.  The earth comes first, as she is the older.  Her face is soft in the hard stone, a smile for her sister wrapped within her arms.  As mankind's features emerge, cycle after cycle into the carving,  I am driven to longer hours.  Her face upturned towards earth's, a wonder in her smooth eyes.  Every so often somebody passes by, drawn by the sound of stonework.  I am not done, I have no time to see them, to look to the door.  I eat quickly, sleep what hours I can in the room, and build up a stench of sweat.  Perhaps it drives away some of the visitors, I am not sure, they never say anything.

Toes complete, and now the base, thirty feet in circumference.  I have reached the place where some inscription must go, yet nothing appears to me.  Each fold of their short dresses, each scar scattered across their bodies cried out to me its shape and form, but this blank loop whispers only of its emptiness, its unfinished blankness.  I sleep, bathe, eat, each time returning to an enigma of my own creation.  It is not done, I cannot move on.  Some days I sit and stare at it, circling it in impatience before sitting again, back against the door-frame.  Other days I wander in the tunnels, reinforced now against a quake of greater magnitude than our collapse.  I have cut myself off from the rest, and I begin to feel it.  Even when I step inside the moon-chamber I stay at the wall, staring out into the people.  I wait, for what, I don't know anymore.

Night gives way to day as day moves ever onward towards the night.  This is what it shall say.  I looked down at the white emptiness for so long I had begin to forget up existed.  Above us there is a sky, past the deep layers of stone there pounds down sun's rays, harsh and blinding.  I looked up, finally.  Water dripping on my nose did it, reminded me of the rain.  I want to see it again, long to in this long night.  So much of it all I have forgotten in the name of remembrance.  Where there are grave lessons of the past, tragedy and pain there were also happy things.  We have forgotten that, somewhat.  It seems to me that it is part of our humanity to forget.  This is why the stone, the earth, is our other half.  Carve out our memories in stone and they last where in flesh they soon disappear.  One day, when I'm old, I will go back to the surface, see the sun with my dying breath.  Now I live in the night, carving out our history for the ones who follow.  First of many, the sisters were the easiest to put into concept, far harder tasks of folly or vivacity will follow.  When I pass them, glancing in, there is often light, one or two figures staring up at the faces or down at the letters.  Perhaps they will gain something from it as I have.