If we were having coffee, I’d ask you how the election went. Well, actually, I’d just look outside and see if the sky was raining fire, and check to see if I was wearing clothing or sackcloth, and that would answer the question for me. Because apparently when I went to bed last night I slept for seven months. It was gorgeous outside yesterday, or at least it was until the cold front blew through. Now it’s 40 goddamn degrees outside. I bought shorts this week and it’s 40 degrees outside.
Gotta love Indiana.
We– yes, we— have a bridal shower to attend in Illinois tomorrow, so we’re going to be out of touch all day. I may post some fiction; I have a story in mind that I wrote in a single burst a couple of months ago and put aside thinking “try to sell this to someone.” I never did, so I may as well give it to you guys. Hopefully it’s warmer in Illinois; we’ll see.
Let’s see. Anything else? It’s been a pretty quiet week, actually, other than the job interview on Monday. I’d kvetch about that some more but I already did it and I’m leery of jinxing myself at this point. I should know in a few days. We’ll worry about it after that.
Have you seen Captain America: Civil War yet? If not, what the hell are you waiting for? No more coffee for you until you’ve seen that movie. It’s awesome.
Hmm. Yeah. That’s what I’ve got. Let’s listen to Prince again for a while. Let’s Go Crazy has been running through my head for a couple of days; there are worse ways to spend a cold Saturday morning than listening to good music.
If we were having coffee, I’d want to talk mostly about what you’ve been reading and watching lately. I went to see Captain America: Civil War yesterday, and while I haven’t had time to review it yet the short version is “best Marvel movie yet,” which may already tell you everything you need to know. I didn’t get to it yesterday because the afternoon turned out busier than I thought, but it’s coming, believe me.
What good books have you read lately? I’ve mentioned this, but not a lot: I’m doing a project with my reading this year where I’m trying to limit my books by white men to 25% of the books I’m reading. This has meant a lot of books by new authors, which means that competition is fierce as hell already for my top 10 list at the end of the year– because it turns out that when you say “I’ve never read anything by that person. What’s their best book?” a lot, you read a hell of a lot of good books. I’ve got some reviews to write there as well, most especially for Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, which is flat-out the best short story collection I’ve ever read. I’m mostly a sci-fi/fantasy person, as I think almost all of you know, but I’ll read literally anything in English that gets a recommendation from people I like regardless of the genre. So what’s good out there?
(I started Claudia Gray’s Bloodline last night. Her Lost Stars ranks among the best Star Wars books I’ve ever read, so I’m super excited to get into this one.)
So, yeah. What’s good out there? I’m still unemployed, so I’ve got nothing but time right now. Gimme some recommendations!
If we were having coffee, I’d… yeah. Coffee would probably be good, 1:30 in the afternoon be damned. I’ve kinda got a headache. Caffeine may well be helpful.
I slept in an empty house last night for the first time in over four and a half years; since the night after the boy was born, I think. My wife is in Boston on bidness, and because she left so late last night the boy spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. So once I got home after dropping her off, I was alone in the house. She’ll be back on Wednesday; this will be the first time I’ve been a single parent for more than a few hours at a time since the boy was born. I’ve left home a bunch of times, but she doesn’t travel often. I’m not griping– I’m a grown-ass man and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of my son for three whole days while my wife is gone– but it was still weird to be alone in the house last night. I’ve officially survived the boy’s Spring Break, and have to manage to get him up and off to school on time tomorrow. Now, that’s usually my job, so it’s not like it’s a new thing, but it’ll be interesting to see how much of a coma he’ll be in when I get him up at “go to school” time and not “Spring Break” time.
I might ask you if you’ve ever had jury duty before. That’s on the agenda for Tuesday, and who knows how many days after that depending on when the trial is, whether I’m selected, and how long it goes. I’ve gotten the letter before but I’ve never actually made it into the courtroom. I’m actually looking forward to the opportunity since I’ve never done it before, but it could have had slightly better timing– in addition to my wife needing to be picked up on Wednesday, we’re having a new washer and dryer delivered, so I’m going to have to do some fancy footwork to schedule everything if I’m going to be in court all day without access to my phone.
Hoping to have some good news on the job front this week too. I’ve applied for several positions in the last several days that are in the “You have no reason not to call me about this” category, so hopefully at least one or two of them will actually come through. And that’s not counting the “work for the devil” job that I mentioned earlier this week, which I think I’m going to have to decline for a variety of reasons, some of which are better than others. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be a mistake. I’m tired of saying no to jobs; I know I’m not actually being a prima donna about what I do next but I’m starting to feel like one anyway.
But yeah. More coffee; let’s make this headache go away. How’re you?
If– if— we were having coffee, I would be ever so glad to be having coffee with you. So. Very. Glad. Because, presumably, having a weekend cup of coffee would mean that I was out in public and having a Conversation with an Adult, which is a thing that has been incredibly rare lately. Don’t get me wrong– I love my wife and my parents, but other than the three of them I think the last time I had a conversation with another grown-up who wasn’t some sort of employee at a place where I was buying something was last Saturday. If I restrict it to specifically social settings, I might have to go back to C2E2, which was, what, two weeks ago?
In other news, I’ve survived the first week of my son’s Spring Break, and there’s another week to go, and then a four-day period where my wife is in Boston for work stuff and I don’t even have her around. I’ve never been to Boston, and I’m insanely jealous. If I’m still remotely human come April 13, I want some sort of award. Also, I have jury duty on the 12th. So … yeah.
Anyway. Have you been watching Daredevil? I’ve liked the second season a hell of a lot more than the first, mostly because replacing the show’s terrible rendition of the Kingpin with Elektra and the Punisher has been an impressive upgrade. I won’t spoil anything just yet, but I am very much in the minority in that I think D’Onofrio’s portrayal of the Kingpin was/is awful, and the less of him around the better. We’ve watched through to the final episode, which we’ll watch tonight, and then I somehow have to spend the next 24 hours avoiding Walking Dead spoilers until we can watch the finale of that Monday night.
I’m showing signs of finally moving out of the Lexapro haze, too, which is good; I’m currently about six days ahead on the A to Z Challenge, and I hope to get much farther ahead today. It’s been about a month since I started taking it, which is supposedly about as long as you need to get used to the side effects. I’m very ready to be done with being unmotivated and exhausted all the time, so that’s all sorts of good news.
So I went to the post office today to mail a book and a couple of other things. As you walk into the mailing-stuff area of the post office, there’s a tension-ribbon barrier immediately on your right and then a table. So you have no choice but to walk around all that stuff in order to interact with the clerks behind the counter. If there’s a line, this isn’t an issue; if there’s no line it’s a teeny bit awkward if you’re not willing to move or go under/over the ribbon. But no big deal, right?
As I walk in, there are two clerks behind the counter. One of them, who is immediately to my right as I walk in, says hello. Now, I can’t walk straight to him because of the barriers, so he’s sort of as far from me as he can be and still be in the room, because the “first” register is the one farthest to the left.
That may be too complicated of a mental picture. Anyway, point is, I say hi and head toward him, and he says “I bet you didn’t see me back here, did you?”
“Nah, I saw you,” I say. Note that it’s not like I jumped or acted startled or anything like that when I walked in. I did, in fact, actually see the man standing roughly in the location where I was expecting a person to be. I was even expecting to interact with the person once I found them. So there’s nothing remotely surprising or unexpected about this.
He visibly deflates. “Aww, don’t be like that,” he says, in a sort of you have ruined my day sort of tone. I take a moment to assess how serious he is. He actually appears to be sad. Like, f’real sad. That I saw him, when walking into the area of the post office where you go to talk to postal clerks and send mail.
Okay, sure. “I admit it,” I say. “I didn’t see you.” He brightens immediately. I hand him my package and my envelope and ask for media mail, since I’m mailing a book. He gets an impish grin on a face that otherwise is unsuited for impishness and asks me the standard “liquids/battery acids/bombs” question that they have to ask. Nope. It’s a book.
“Now, if they find out you’re lying, they’ll come get you and whack your weiner,” he says.
I swear to God that just happened.
There is a moment of awkward silence.
“Did you just say what I think you just said?” the other clerk says.
“Yes. Yes, he did,” I say.
And he doubles down, and I have to endure at least a couple of minutes of this man describing the weiner-whacker, and saying that they don’t get to bring it out too often, and I’m sort of half playing along (at one point I said something like “Working at the post office must be more exciting than I thought!”) and half what the hell is going on I just want to mail this book please make this stop, and the other employee is visibly horrified the entire time and gets progressively more so the longer he talks.
About whacking weiners.
With a complete stranger.
In his official capacity as a government employee.
It’s Saturday! Hopefully I made a lot of money yesterday, because this convention was insanely expensive. Anyway, James Wylder’s our guest poster today. Have a story! You like stories, don’t you?
This is a brand new short story set in the 10,000 Dawns universe. Its a fun, and continuing, series of sci-fi tales, so if you like it you can find more of it at jameswylder.com/10kd. Thanks to Luther for letting me write this guest post! See you at C2E2 if you’re there. -James Wylder A Magic Trick by James Wylder
Artwork by Annie Zhu
We’d burned through seven fuel cells just trying to turn our ship off to save power, a fact which I was trying very hard not to yell at the Captain about. The captain still wore her old coat from when she was in the Centro Marines, a long blue thing with a red tech-shoulderpad, and was finally moving to inspect our cargo as the Wind Fish clung to the side of the asteroid we’d finally landed on. Captain Nichols was smoking, which made her not only a bad role model for children, but also a danger to all of us since she could cause our ship to blow up accidentally at any time. I respected her a lot.
Nichols opened the first crate, and sifted through some generic supplies before lazily throwing the lid back on, then moved to the next which was filled with gold bars. Finally she opened the third crate, which wasn’t actually the last crate, but spoilers: it’s the important one. Inside was a gray box, maybe the size of a thick copy of one of those books that’s too long for me to pay attention to like “War and Peace” or “Jane Eyre.” It had a standard data cord port on one side of it, and the letter “A” painted on a different side. Not printed, hand painted. I didn’t even know how to hand write a letter A if you paid me and put a gun to my head for maximum motivation, but Mars had been doing weird stuff since their revolution.
Desi nudged me in the shoulder, “That’s how we’re making bank this trip, you know.” I squinted at the box. It looked more boring than that French book I’d tried to read about the guy eating a piece of cake.
“What is it?” She shrugged.
“Some sort of Martian computer program, military grade. Its supposed to be worth a fortune, or at least that’s what our sources tell us. The Index is willing to pay heavily to get one of these things, the Librarian wants it for something special. Or, at least that’s what the rumors say. He might just not want other people to have it.” Either made sense, really. Captain Nichols spun the box around in her hands, puffing away.
“Don’t we like, hate the Index?” I asked.
“Well sure, but they’re offering enough money in this case the Olympian Senate agreed to let us take it on. They get a cut, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Should we plug it in, see if it works?” Jackson asked. Nichols’ cigarette flopped down in her lip.
“Are you crazy? This is a military AI system. You plug this thing in there’s no telling the havoc it will cause.” Jackson looked at the box wearily. She looked at the thing like it was a spirit trapped in a magical ward of salt and bones. From what I knew about these things, she wasn’t even that wrong. Then again I didn’t actually know that much. We were cave-women in space.
“Megan,”she said to me, “get back to the cockpit and check if we’re being tracked.” I yawned, nodded, and started walking over there. I think she still wanted me to salute, but this wasn’t the military. The Valkyries were the best pirates in the solar system, along with every other group that called themselves the best pirates in the solar system, so it was a big tie. I’d joined up at fifteen, mainly because I couldn’t stand school. Living on Titan is frankly better than 90% of the Rim, since we have a corrupt poor government as opposed to no government, but schooling there is so boring. I had to read so many big novels, just because it was the cheapest lesson plan data package our teacher could get. Now I was twenty, and whether or not ship life suited me, I was doing it. There were just the five of us on the Wind Fish, me, the Cap, Desi, Jackson, and Elodie. Elodie was just on here on loan till we got a new mechanic cause our regular one had turned a proton redirector the wrong way and blown herself up leaving only her shoes and socks up the ankles.
Jackson had taken the shoes.
I slid the door to the cockpit open, rubbing my eyes with the other hand, and slid it back shut, only to turn and see a teenage girl spinning around in the pilot’s chair, with a towering cyborg standing next to her. Naturally, this was unexpected. My first thought was “Stowaways!” But that was impossible: there wasn’t any cargo, and we’d stripped the ship down to the barest weight we could before launch. The cockpit only had one way in and out, and the door made enough noise that any of us would have heard someone sneak in regardless. They had appeared inside the ship out of nowhere. There was no way they could get have gotten in, mass simply popping into unoccupied space like a rabbit out of a hat.
“Graelyn, could you stop spinning?” The cyborg asked, “It’s giving me a headache.” The girl stopped, and glanced over at me, grinning.
“We’ve got company.” She said. The cyborg turned, and jovially waved. He had no visible skin, just an outer carapace made of what looked like video screens that curved around his form. He also wore a blue trenchcoat, and what looked like one of those old Admiral’s hats you see in Napoleonic War Dramas. The girl was wearing high top sneakers, a matching blue skirt and blazer,and a white shirt and black tie. She had a pin of a cat, and one of a half-sun, half moon on her lapel.
“What the hell.” I said.
“Shh.” Graelyn said. “I’m Graelyn Scythes, this is–”
“Archimedes Von Ahnerabe.”
“And we’re here to stop you from dying.”
“And take your stuff.”
“Well, I was going to leave that part off till later.” My jaw was loose, and I wished I had a cigarette like the Captain now just so I could let it drop out of my mouth dramatically.
“CAP!” I yelled, and the crew stormed up behind me. The door slid open, and the four of them stood with weapons drawn. The Cap had a gun, as did Jackson, Desi had a vibro-Ax, and Elodie had grabbed a large wrench. Her purple clothes were still stained with grease from the engine room. The girl in the chair sighed, and raised her hands.
“I surrender.” She said with more than a hint of boredom. Arch was just watching her, and she raised her eyebrows and tucked in her lips and he raised his hands to.
“How’d you get on my ship?” The Captain demanded.
“We cut our way in.”
“We’d get signaled if there was a hull breach.”
“Would you get signaled if there was a stealth ship coming in on an attack vector, like, presently?” The Captain leveled the gun.
“Yours?”
“Oh not at all. We just want the box. Turns out the people you stole it from aren’t too happy about it though…” The Cap gestured at us to keep our weapons on the pair, and ran to a console, she fiddled with some equipment.
“Nothing on scanners…” She adjusted a few things. “Shit. The girl’s right, the ship’s bouncing data back at us to tell us it isn’t there, but the timing’s off a fraction of a second.” Cap slammed her fist on the console, which was totally unnecessary.
“Elodie, how long till you can get us up in the air?” I tried really hard to not correct her on the ship not being able to get into “the air” in deep space. Elodie blew out a breath.
“Not before they reach us.” The girl in the chair kicked her legs.
“So let’s make a deal. I save you from the Martians, you let me keep the box.” The Captain’s eyes bulged, she was furious.
“That box is worth more than your life.”
“Is it worth more than yours? Martians aren’t exactly kind towards thieves of high grade military tech. I’ll let you decide. No rush.” The time till the Martian ship intercepted us ticked down on a monitor dramatically. They stared off. Graelyn smirked. The Captain conceded.
“Fine. What do you need to do?” Graelyn hopped up.
“You guys just stay in here, I’ll do to the rest.” She slid out of the chair, and Arch followed her. Closing the door, they covered up the window by hanging Arch’s hat on it. There was a noise, and then nothing. When we finally decided to open the door, the cargo hold was empty.
“I don’t understand.” Jackson sputtered, as the sound of the Martian ship docking with us clanged through the hull.
The Martian Captain, who corrected us into saying they were from “Geru Ghara” not Mars every time they said the word, led two squads of Martian troops into the hold. A group of troops held us at gunpoint, while the rest searched the ship, opening every panel. I’d just tidied a lot of those panels, so it was a bit frustrating, like someone dumping out your trash on the floor after they entered your house. “This is an unusual ship.” The Martian captain finally said. Her left eyebrow had a thick scar through it. She wore all black, aside from a red scarf and a red tech-shoulderpad. Her long coat also had red and yellow stenciling, but I wasn’t sure that counted. You don’t get off for wearing a shirt with tiny green frog on it on St. Patrick’s Day after all.
“Its an old Centro Sleeper Ship. They used to send them throughout the system before drives got fast enough it wasn’t necessary, you’d freeze the crew and-”
“Yes, I know how they worked. But this is a stealth model.”
“There are more of them in service still than you’d think on the Rim, they don’t break down. I heard the Van Winkle and the Red King are both still–”
“Yes, yes… That’s not what I wondered.” The Martian captain pulled up a hologram on a handheld projector. Ironically, it was still branded with a “Centro Systems” Logo.
“This ship was tracked after it assaulted a Geru Gharian cargo vessel, stealing its most valuable cargo.” Our Captain shrugged.
“Clearly, it was a different Sleeper Ship.” The Martian Captain nodded, and put the hologram away.
“Did you fight in the war for Geru Gharian Independance, Captain Nichols?”
“The giant blue coat gave it away, huh?”
“Quite. So you served Centro?”
“If you think you’re going to trump up some charges on me just because I fought for Centro Systems, you’ve got another thing coming. After how the war ended I couldn’t keep fighting for them, so I came out here on the rim making an honest living hauling cargo.” Well, that was all true aside from the honest cargo bit, and the honest living bit. The Martian Captain’s eyes looked distant.
“I can respect that. Geru Ghara had hoped we’d all be able to work together after the war ended…”
“Clearly the Rim’s idea’s of independence are different than Mars’.”
“Geru Ghara.” She said, more faintly. “The war is past us now.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. There’s no way you could have unloaded all of this cargo. Your ship has no way to drop or vent its cargo hold into vacuum without killing the crew. A terrible and massively unsafe design flaw, certainly, but it proves you’re innocent. I’d watch out Captain, someone is trying to sully your good name.”
“Captain Hara.” A man yelled from the other side of the ship. “We have Centro ships inbound, we need to take off immediately.” Hara looked down at the five of them.
“It’s been a pleasure. I wish you all the best, and I hope you find the freedom you seek.” She gestured with her hand, and her troops shuffled back into their ship as quickly as they’d barged in. I hurried up, and ran to the scanners, watching them flee from the group of much larger Centro vessels on their tail. Spoilers, they got away. Good for them. Annoyingly for us, a Centro ship split off to check us out.
I won’t bore you, it went about the same.
That wasn’t the end of it though. If it had been, I might have been able to square it all away with excuses, like only hearing half a joke and assuming it would have been funny. But, as we got the ship ready, we all headed into either the engine room or the cockpit and as I opened the door into the cargo hold after getting pre-flight ready, all the boxes but one were back. You know which one was gone. I called for the rest of the crew, and we marveled for a moment, running our hands along what felt like a magic trick.
“Look, there’s a note.” Elodie said, and we ran over.
“Have fun stealing stuff, see you in the future. Love, Dawn.”
“Who the hell is Dawn?” Jackson asked.
“More what what the hell is it.” I added. The Captain took the note and pocketed it.
“We didn’t get the prize, but we still have a small fortune in other supplies here. Let’s get it back to base.”
“We’re gunna burn a powerpack just lifting off of this rock, you’ll be spending that small fortune in powerpacks just from this trip alone.” I said, and instantly regretted it. The Captain’s face lit up red, then softened, and she laughed.
“That’s life on the Rim, Megan. Get used to it.” And walked off.
I stood stunned, “I was born here! Cap, Cap! I was actually born here you know? You’re the one who moved here!” But no one was listening. There was work to be done now, and the stars were beckoning for us once again. I got a cup of coffee, and got to work.
I began to power the ship up to lift us off, burning up a powerpack, and felt her breath on my cheek. She was leaning over the back of my chair, her tie hanging down onto my shoulder.
“It’s not like anyone will believe you,” Graelyn said, “so do you want to know how we did it?” I nodded, not turning around. I half wondered if she’d slit my throat.
“There’s another you, in another life, who did this same thing. And another one, and another one. And I can cut between the air you breathe, and step through into those worlds, through time, through space, through your existence. I’ve seen this dawn before. We’re inter-reality travellers, Dawn. We’re here and there.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up.”
“You’re being really creepy.”
“Oh, uh, sorry.” She said awkwardly, as if she hadn’t realized standing behind someone whispering in their ear after sneaking up on them was creepy. I spun around in the chair in time to catch a flash of white light, and what looked like a white disk shrinking into nothing. I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed that, or what, but my top concern was more important than any sort of cosmological bullcrap.
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