September 13, 2012

From “The Worrying of ECJ” by Eric Cummings Jr.

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I worry too much, it’s true. I worry so much that I worry about worrying, what my professors would call metaworrying because slapping a prefix like meta- onto anything immediately makes it sound cool.

A lot of people say that, that they worry too much, and then when you quiz them it turns out they mean worrying about one thing ever is too much, the implication being that we should all be carefree and living in the moment. Then you have my uncle Frank, who says that there is usually one person in every organization who does the worrying for the other 99 twats who can’t be bothered, with that one person also usually being the one who does all the work.

So I guess you could say that I’m the worst of both worlds, in that I worry over a lot of things but am in a position to do very little about them, powerless as indentured graduate student instructors are.

So here I am worrying what I’ll do if that sass in my 2:00 class tells me my assignment is a waste of their time again (odds are about even for losing my temper and breaking down in tears in front of the whole class). Worries about the esoteric (what if the mediocre job I’m doing is condemning me in the afterlife?), the prosaic (why can’t American manufacture anything people want to buy anymore?), and the cosmically unlikely (what if my high school crush Abby Durant turns up on my doorstep–embrace or revenge?) mingle freely.

Why can’t I find a church that’s a happy medium between raging fundamentalism that hands out suicide bomb vests instead of votive candles and the Grand Generic Universalist Church of the Warm Liberal Fuzzies? I worry that’s a personal failing. Am I so negative that without complaints and worrying I’d have nothing to talk about? I metaworry on that one frequently. What if I wind up like Great Aunt Agnes, sitting in a nursing home with nothing but worry and bile to sustain my husk? The metaworries march on.

Then of course there are the heavier ones that I try to avoid, not because I want to be all oblivious and happy-go-lucky but because they make me ice-cream-tub depressed. I worry that no one would ever want to spend their life with me, I worry about clinging to my virginity in the unconscionable depths of my mid-twenties, I worry that I lack the courage to change anything about myself and that the worries will blur together as my entire life spins itself out as a lonely, bitter monotony.

And I worry about being too depressing, which means trying to worry about puppy dogs (and their under-representation versus kitty cats on the internet) and rainbows (and their co-option as a symbol by various and contradictory groups) for a while.

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September 10, 2012

From “The Prosperity Ambush” by C. Alton Parker

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Virginia MacNeil, daughter of Marshals Vincent and Patricia MacNeil and soon-to-be Prosperity Ranger, crept through the tall grass at the outskirts of the Prosperity Falls settlement. She wore her full gear–her mother’s full gear–of duster and boots despite the hot and heavy air of the place, even close to midnight.

By the moonlight, she could see Jeanette Rhodes creeping into position on her left and Dale Ward quietly parting the stalks on her right. She signaled for them to move ahead, taking care to keep tree and grass in between them and the firelight in the distance. Their quarry loitered about ahead of them, unaware without so much as a sentry posted.

Virginia’s ambush was coming off without a hitch.

Their first target was dead ahead, apparently totally unaware of the three youngsters sneaking up on it. Jeanette and Dale flanked it with Virginia taking the center position. At the prearranged signal, a snap of Virginia’s fingers, they charged.

The cow grunted quietly as Virginia, Jeanette, and Dale leaned into it.

“It’s not tipping!” Dale grunted. “You said it would tip!”

“I thought were were going to push on it and then step back!” Jeanette cried. “Then it’ll fall when we move away cuz it’s asleep!”

“Does it look asleep to you?” Virginia cried. “Push harder!”

As they redoubled their efforts, the cow decided that it didn’t much care for the squabbling, yowling creatures pushing it as hard as they could. It mooed–or brayed, it was hard to tell–loudly in response, an alarm cry that was taken up by its fieldmates.

A moment later, a lantern appeared at the farmhouse door. “Who’s out there?”

“It’s Morrison!” Virginia cried, all thoughts of tipping the whole field suddenly forgotten. “Scatter!”

She and her confederates split up and dashed for the fences. Behind them came the roar of a rock-salt shotgun charge. “You goddamn kids! Get out of my field!”

In retrospect, Virgina thought sullenly, it wasn’t quite as heroic an episode the great Prosperity Ride of 1866 or even the legendary Cowpie Prank the junior rangers had carried out in 1870.

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September 4, 2012

From “Salacious Tour” by Jordan Mosena

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It may not have been as informative as other tours, and certainly didn’t contain the standard boilerplate about “where your success begins” and other consultant-generated slogans. It was mostly the kind of salacious gossip that only 100 plus years of academia could generate.

It also kept people asking for Kay’s tours by name.

“This is the university library. It’s the place where, in the fourth floor men’s restroom, Dr. Hulmann was discovered in a compromising position with a grad student. It got them both fired and divorced, and now they run an organic food store in town.”

“That’s the graduate college. There are study carrels there and every semester or two a student tries to move in. The last one caused a fire by plugging sixteen appliances in the one outlet provided.”

“The plans called for Bickerman Tower to be twice as large as it is, but they shrank it to match the budget. That’s why the restrooms only fit one person and the offices would be condemned for human habitation if the building inspector wasn’t an alumni.”

 

September 3, 2012

From “I Wonders” by Loren H. Cossairt

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This post is part of the September 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “the number seven”.

1. The Colossus
“Well,” said Chares of Lindia, looking at his gigantic statue snapped at the knees after a massive earthquake, “maybe Helios wasn’t so crazy about the monument we built for him.”

2. The Gardens
“Our ancestors planted these rooftop gardens for a queen that was homesick for a place with plants instead of just a lot of sand,” said Arsaces II, King of Parthia. “I wonder if she was also nostalgic for the giant earthquakes of home. If so, we’ve just done her proud.”

3. The Temple
Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, leaders of the Goth raiders, roasted meat on spits over the temple they’d just set on fire after plundering. “The last time someone burned this place down, he did it so everyone would remember him despite being a nobody,” they said. “Wonder if that’ll work for us, too?”

4. The Statue
“In retrospect,” said Zonaras and Cedrenus, watching the flames, “maybe it wasn’t the best idea to disassemble all the greatest works of art from the Roman world and put them all together in one wooden palace.”

5. The Mausoleum
“What a coincidence,” said Sir Ronald of the Knights of St John of Rhodes. “Here this giant such-and-such has weakened and partly knocked over by centuries of earthquakes, and we just happen to need stone in a hurry to castle the place up.”

6. The Lighthouse
“The two greatest enemies of big stone things around here are earthquakes and people with castles to build,” said Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qaitbay, Sultan of Egypt. “But it’s not like anyone had lit the thing in the last thousand years or so, and my cannons need a safe place to blast the Turks.

7. The Pyramid
“So,” said one Egyptian farmer-laborer in 2550 BC, “how long do you think this ‘Khufu’s Horizon’ tomb we’re building will last?”

“Sure, it might be the tallest thing in the world now, but how long will that last? Plus there’s earthquakes, fire, hostile people on our borders who don’t much care for us,” said his friend. “I give it fifty years, tops, before someone else decides they want to use all this stone for something else.”

The Wonders
Colossus of Rhodes – Toppled in an earthquake, 226 BC (only 64 years after construction)

Hanging Gardens of Babylon – Destroyed by earthquakes ca. 1st century BC

Statue of Zeus at Olympia – Disassembled and moved to Constantinople; destroyed by fire ca. 5th century AD

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus – Burned by Herostratus in 356 BC, plundered and burned again and more thoroughly by the Goths in 262 AD

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus – Heavily damaged or destroyed by earthquakes before 1494 AD; used to build castles afterwards

Lighthouse of Alexandria – Heavily damaged by earthquakes, 1303–1480 AD; used to build castles afterwards

Great Pyramid of Giza – Still in existence; first wonder built, last to survive, tallest building in the world for 3800 years

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September 1, 2012

From “ArtCity One” by Caprice T. Anderberg

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ArtCity One was the ultimate extension of the expensive, popular, and uncharacteristically honestly-titled Let’s Put Stuff In Space To See What Happens program. The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration constructed, at taxpayer expense, a huge titanium sphere designed to rotate in such a way as to provide gravity in some areas and none in others and filled it with 10,000 artists. Every shape and form of art was represented, from writing to sculpture to bizarre outsiders who worked in mediums like spider pee and bat earwax.

A committee of USASA bigwigs chose the artists from a stack of applications. They were accused of stuffing ArtCity One with weirdoes and gadflies the government would prefer to have on the other side of a few million miles of hard vacuum, but in fact the only thing the artists had in common was that their best work was apparently ahead of them. No established or high-profile figures were included, though a few did try to bully themselves onboard.

With great fanfare, ArtCity One was launched ten years to the day after construction began, borne skyward by 1500 surplus Saturn V rockets. As part of the agreed-upon plan, there was no communication between USASA mission control and ArtCity; the artists were left to do as they would while USASA monitored the sphere’s automatic systems. They planned for numerous contingencies, keeping a rocket with a rescue crew on 24/7 standby.

The only thing USASA didn’t plan on was a budget cut.

After an election, the new president made the controversial decision to divert the Let’s Put Stuff In Space To See What Happens program’s $200 trillion budget into a new program. Its reputation, they claimed, had been inevitably tarnished by such fiascoes as Operation Pork Lift, the Mucus Orbiter, and of course the notorious Unstable Radioactive Isotopes In Rapidly Decaying Orbits initiative. The president transferred the funds to the new Let’s Give Money to Various Voting Blocs program, and ArtCity One was left to its own devices after a message asking the crew if they would like to be retrieved received no response.

Eight years afterward, the president left office and $100,000 was allocated by their successor to the Let’s See What Happened to ArtCity One So Their Relatives Will Leave Us Alone initiative. The two-man crew, made up of astronauts previously dismissed from the program for substance abuse problems or trying to murder their ex, rendezvoused with ArtCity One in a secondhand Soyuz capsule that the Russians had put on the “free” table at their national garage sale.

The first transmission was garbled; the USASA Relief Mission Control Team (normally assigned to supervise space junk in near earth orbit) could barely understand any of it. The only clear words were “massive,” “gazebo,” decoupage,” and “hive-mind.”

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August 31, 2012

From “Hell’s Turnpike” by Hipolito T. Palmrose

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Ever wonder how the tollbooth attendants get into their booths when there’s no door? They used to use a ladder to climb to a crawlspace above or below the turnpike or hidden doors carefully machined into each booth, but those were cumbersome solutions, especially given how hard it is to find attendants to work the late shift to say nothing about the danger of being pasted by an oncoming car.

Now they’re born there and only let go after they’ve earned a million dollars for the city.

Every turnpike booth is fitted with a GesteCo BioWomb™ that produces a pod to fill every vacancy, with workers born at the physical age of eighteen with training and procedures already implanted in the cerebral cortex. They’re ready for business the moment the pod bursts and the patented BioGel™ drains through a sluice in the floor. Each booth is equipped with a TV tuned to city programming, a counter with their total money earned to date (less taxes and fees), and a tray that is filled with nutrient-rich GesteCo Replace-A-Meal™ paste three times a day. A colostomy tube does the rest.

Thanks to state and city ordinances, after the million dollars is earned, the attendant is flushed out of the booth through the sluice, landing penniless in a nearby storm drain. Most, weak and overweight after decades of inactivity, are quickly run down by motorists or eaten by wolves; the maimed survivors generally find work as cybernetic street sweepers. Many of the lucky few that survive intact opt to go into city politics.

A fresh pod is provided to replace them, and the cycle begins anew.

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August 30, 2012

From “Bite Into a Legend” by Oralee K. Melino

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Are you a member of the living dead looking for a world-class dining experience? Is the bother of chasing down victims interfering with your enjoyment of their still-living entrails as you tear them to shreds? Do the John Qs and Jane Does you catch lack the cachet of truly classy meals?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then the Zombie Cafe is for you. Conveniently located in the heart of the tri-state area, the Zombie Cafe offers everything from quick meals to full top hat and tails dining experiences. Our crack staff of zombie chefs and terrified thralls inedible due to disease or infirmity hunt down fresh living victims daily and prepare them to order. Everything from fresh cadaver for older or newly risen zombies to free-range humans hamstrung to make pursuit and capture a breeze!

And if you’ve the cash or the clout, Zombie Cafe offers a choice of gourmet off-menu meals kept on premises. The rich and famous of the human world are kept alive and succulent for your dining pleasure as a whole meal. Or why not split the check and carve up a star with a group of interested friends? Why, just last week Zombie Cafe staff served Kanye West to a consortium of powerful zombie politicians. And the couple that took Nicole Kidman’s severed arm home last week agree that it’s her best part yet!

The Zombie Cafe: Bite Into a Legend™.

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August 28, 2012

From “Coat the World” by Jon Schlette

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“Good morning, stockholders,” said Daniel Ellis Washer IV, president and CEO of Washer-Allen Paints. He strode into the boardroom as quickly as his advanced age would allow, passing in front of a massive oil and canvas rendition of the famous Washer-Allen logo: a paint bucket pouring over a globe to form the words “Coat the World.”

Washer shuffled papers in his hand. “I’ve got quite the major announcement for you all today,” he said, his voice as commanding as ever. “We’re poised to fulfill a long-held dream of-”

He was shouted down. Board members kvetched in a discordant hubbub about labor difficulties, unfair competition from Chinese paintmakers, the proposed merger with Belgian Boy, and a host of other piddling issues that didn’t interest Washer in the slightest. He banged the gavel for order, but was ignored. In disgust, he gathered his papers and walked out.

As the noise subsided behind him, Washer paused to look once more at the plan he had assembled to being his great-great-grandfather’s dream to fruition. A dream expressed simply and brilliantly in the “Coat the World” corporate logo that was to have served as a backdrop for the announcement.

Washer sighed as he looked at the plans for the Washer-Allen PS-1 Paint Satellite, an orbital device to convert cosmic dust and radiation into paint and dispense it on a slow drop from orbit. Ten hours after launch, the system would be capable of covering every square inch of the planet’s surface with green paint.

“Soon, my dear,” Washer cooed. “Soon.”

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August 27, 2012

From “The Other Book of Changes” by Lady Kaila Pisciotti

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The Other Book of Changes
Codex Entry #497

The causes are pretty straightforward: the natural spring empties into an enticing pool connected to the ocean, ringed by white sandy beaches and easily visible from the road between the conservative megalopolises of Eastern Empire and the high tech universities and employers in the Beral Lands. Many travelers on the road, after a long day in the saddle, will pull their wagon, horse, or 4×4 over for a quick dip in the azure waters.

Of course, these travelers, be they Berallandians headed to visit home or Eastern Imperials in search of opportunity, rarely read the signs that warn of waters tainted by a subterranean vein of raw and chaotic magic. Young Brea Ladlesuns was headed to the Berals for no reason other than wanderlust when she pulled her red Edison Raceabout over to refresh herself in what the sign charmingly described as the Gecko Springs or Gecko Pool.

Naturally, when wading in a mysterious spring, most people would be rather put out if their hair suddenly and inexplicably got shorter and shorter, going from shoulder length to a bob to close-cropped to stubble to gone. To say nothing of suddenly shrinking and vanishing ears and nose, growing climb-anywhere pads on hands and feet, losing a bikini bottom to a sudden tail, and of course a twice-body-length tongue. Brea was startled at first, as anyone would be, but upon reflection she saw her sudden geckoification as just the opportunity she’d been seeking.

In fact, in between gigs as a window washer in the nearby town of Harbin, Brea was soon attending meetings of Geckos Unlimited, made up of others who had been transformed by the Gecko Springs. Harbin was something of a mecca for such, and led the Beral-Empire route in job opportunities for lizard-shaped people (or is that people-shaped lizards?). Locals still laugh about what happened next.

At a Geckos Unlimited meeting, just as it’s her turn to tell newcomers how much being a gecko had changed her life for the better, the magic of the springs ran out and Brea reverted to her human form. She apparently hadn’t realized that the magic needed to be refreshed with additional trips to Gecko Springs; finding herself completely embarrassed and out of place (pink, naked, and with hair) she charged out into the streets of Harbin with nothing but a Geckos Unlimited brochure.

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August 25, 2012

From “The Airport Earrings” by Cristofer Muenchow

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Airports were such seas of harried and unfriendly faces. Maya was shy at the best of times, but in major airports she tended to look at the floor while hurrying from gate to gate rather than risk getting a nasty look from someone having a bad day. It occasionally disconcerted other people, but on the other hand she tended to find a lot of change on the floor, even if it was often too hazardous to retrieve.

Raleigh-Durham wasn’t the worst offender among the airports she frequented; that was O’Hare, or as she sometimes called it, O’Harried. But with a divorced parent on either coast and a scholarship to Southern Michigan’s pharmacy program, airports were an unfortunate necessity of life, as were the frequent layovers at various hubs.

Near Gate A13, Maya noticed an earring on the floor near one of the peoplemoving sidewalks crowded with those who probably could have used the exercise. It looked like costume jewelry, with three bright crystal beads around a central wire and a bangle of black-veined red at the end. Maya thought of picking it up and turning it in to the docent at the nearby Super Executive Platinum Club, but the swarm of people about it, and the notion–somewhat irrational, in light of that interesting bangle of stone–that it was a cheap fake. She passed, and continued her downlooking way toward distant Gate A113.

After passing about three harried families shouting in foreign tongues, Maya came into an open patch between throngs across from the River Rock Books by Gate A31. She was startled to see, nestled between a discarded ticket stub and a gum-filled wrapper, the earring’s twin. Curled up around itself and dusty, but unmistakable.

“Huh,” Maya said to herself. “If I’d picked up the other one I’d have a set. Oh well; who cares about an earring on the floor anyway?”

Eighteen gates later, she nearly collided with the hurrying form of a man in a kilt. Maya muttered a passive-aggressive threat and continued on her way. Ulberth the Stone-Shaper of Dumfries did the same, frantically searching the ground. How could he have been so careless?

The Chaos Earrings were lost, and the fate of the universal balance hung on their safe recovery from the Raleigh-Durham airport’s cheap tiles.

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