June 25, 2013
It was the Ur-Vase, the very model of both the structure of he universe and its tiniest building blocks. Nestled between a 17th-century Ming and a 19th century French porcelain, the Ur-Vase kept the cosmos ordered and intact.
It’s too bad the movers didn’t know that.
June 24, 2013
“We specialize in buying notable but troubled brands,” said Gemini Marketing Consultants LLC CEO Apollo Abrams. “Pixee snack cakes have been renowned in popular culture as the food most likely to survive the apocalypse. And while it’s true that Pixees have an expiration date on the wrapper, that’s a matter of statute rather than necessity.”
Since the removal of milk from the recipe in 1977, Abrams adds, Pixees have been shelf-stable for as long as the old Purser Bakeries was able to run tests. And with the move of the restructured company to Arizona, which has a much looser snack cake regulatory tradition than Purser’s 110-year home of Pennsylvania, that “matter of statute” has been eliminated. “No expiration date on the new Pixee wrappers anymore,” Abrams laughs.
Abrams and his Gemini Marketing Consultants LLC staff are speaking to us in the former Strategic Helium Reserve complex in Toadwater, AZ. Formerly a US Army depot for stockpiling helium to keep American zeppelins in the air in case of a supply interruption, the SHR is now the new home of Purser Bakeries and Pixee snack cake production. It is a massive underground complex hollowed out of the living rock of the Montañas del Muerte hills.
“The government sold this place to us for $1 thanks to the sequester,” says Abrams. “They just didn’t have the cash to follow through on their plans to turn it into an underground fallout shelter for Congress. Natrually, that suits us just fine!”
All Pixee cake production will be conducted underground, in caves rated to withstand a 100 megaton blast. Abrams is developing the long-lasting and blast-resistant snacks as the centerpiece of a combined recreational area and paid disaster shelter. “For only $3000 per square yard of space, people can reserve shelter space alongside the only food item certified to survive it: Pixees! When the Big One drops, the production line and the raw materials to sustain it will be able to support up to 100,000 people for five years. And, as part of their plea deal for getting their jobs back after union action killed the old Purser Bakeries, employees get a 25% discount!” And, in the meantime, factory tours and disaster preparedness courses will keep the curious coming in the door.
Abrams’ company plans to open “The Pixee Survival Shelter and Resort” as soon as they can find a set of 100-megaton-rated blast doors. Gemini Marketing Consultants LLC, a subsidiary of major local employer GesteCo, has announced that the production line should be operational–and Pixee cakes back on store shelves nationwide–by the end of summer.
June 23, 2013
“So you have come to see Acapla, the Lama of Amall Monestary,” said Dilemac the Tibetan monk. “He has spent the last 50 years of his life in intense contemplation and concentration. His meditations are so intense that he can heat or cool parts of his body at will.”
“Yes, we know,” said Sandy, holding Chris’s hand tightly. “That’s why we’ve come to commune with him.”
“Ascend with me to his mountaintop, pilgrims, and speak,” said Dilemac, leading the Canadian tourists up to the summit where Lama Acapla sat cross-legged.
“O great lama, we beseech thee to share thy wisdom with us,” Sandy said, bowing elaborately while babbling excitedly.
The lama regarded the pilgrims with deeply-creased features and eyes both rheumy and clear. “Say it, do not spray it.”
Shocked, the Canadians looked to Dilemac.
“Alas, that is the way of things,” he said. “50 years of meditation means that the lama is great for parlor tricks but not much for conversation.”
June 22, 2013
It is a question oft-asked: why, with magic fading from the world, do the fae seem to be increasing in numbers? Every other creature of magic and spirit is becoming increasingly rare as reason assaults belief, which is the basic necessity for the existence of the transmundane. And why is it that no one has ever seen a young fae, despite intense interest in their habits on the part of innumerable scholars?
In truth, the solution to that riddle has long been known by the learned of the nations, just as it has been vehemently rejected by their peers.
Man has long been known to be unique among the creatures of his world because he is equal parts spiritual magic and mundane clay. The mundane animals hunted for food or kept as companions are all mundane clay, while the dragons and will-o’-the-wisps and such are pure spirit and magic. In man alone are they present in nearly equal measure.
In the waning days of bronze, when man first began to master the forces mundane and magical of his world, the fae were exceedingly rare and regarded as symbols and portents, their tiny flitting forms omens of great good or calamitous evil. In the present age of iron and reason, they are common enough that whole areas are infested with them, so much that one of the few callings remaining to those skilled in the ark and knack of magic is shooing them away.
The bitter truth is that the delicate and ephemeral fae are, in fact, the sloughed-off spirits of men.
When mankind gives itself wholly over to reason and cruel calculation, tearing out the part of itself that deals in wonder and magic, that ripped-out soul takes the form of a flitting fae, all the spirit and magic of humanity in miniature. That is why they bear no young, and that is why they only seem to fade and die when nobles, mercenaries, or men of means themselves sicken.
For, although separated, they are still bound by a silver thread of common destiny. Sorrowful predictions, unheeded by those who have cast out the spiritual from their souls, see mankind as a race wholly divested of its fae shards within the next hundred years at the current rate.
June 21, 2013
Some people are Takers, siphoning inspiration and creativity from others, willingly or unwillingly, able to turn even the most brightly-colored room into grey misery without batting an eye.
Not so Dot. Dot was a Giver.
Inspiration and creative energy followed in her wake, and she seemed to fill even the dullest rooms with color and light. People who had never had an imaginative idea in their life would suddenly behold a vibrant, verdant world of centaurs and satyrs in her wake. The effect could last for days, even weeks.
Fate would seem to dictate that she be an artist, a designer, a high-paid and well-kept muse.
But Dot preferred to simply be a dreamer, a wanderer, a watercolor artist painting real life with broad brushstrokes.
June 20, 2013
As you know, the University of Northern Mississippi sports teams are no longer the Fighting Tuscolas. Negotiations for a new mascot are still in committee, so until then we will be known as the University of Northern Mississippi Northern Mississippians.
In keeping with the administration’s pledge to remove all mention of the Tuscola tribe from university life, the practice of random “Cowboys and Indians” squirtgun and sponge-arrow attacks during orientation has been banned. Anyone caught with a squirtgun or cowboy hat will be immediately removed from their orientation position.
There have been complaints that orientation leaders have been attempting to influence students interested in Greek life to pledge Kappa Qoppa Beta. This is completely unacceptable; Alpha Digamma Nu is the only Greek organization that may be mentioned to orientation students. Rumors that this rule has come about due to a large donation from a former Alpha Di are untrue.
The special “legacy orientations” for sisters of Zeta San Iota have gotten mixed up with normal orientation groups in the past and failed to receive the unique experience that they are entitled to. As such, all “legacy” orientation groups will be issued identical bright pink t-shirts to properly segregate them from “non-legacy” ones. We realize that this will make distinguishing between the girls difficult, as they already have identical heights, haircuts, hair colors, and pants, but ask that you please bear with us.
June 19, 2013
It wasn’t just that summer vacation was coming to an end, and that life would soon be classrooms and textbooks and waking up early to get dressed. This was Tara’s twelfth summer, and she could see childhood’s end bearing down upon her not far off.
There would be school dances, growth spurts, algebra, and other distasteful things to contend with, combined with the pressures she’d seen unleashed on her older sister. The obsessive desire to act older, to cast off childish aspects and habits…it didn’t excite a dreamy girl who preferred to stomp around the yard and scribble down stories in worn-out notebooks.
Tara’s family had a house on the literal edge of their tiny town, with houses across the street and a relative wilderness to the back, bounded on one side by a farm. The highway, sometimes audible through the trees, had brought development to the east: an ugly mini-mall and fast food joints fused with gas stations. But if she walked in the other direction, Tara could find excitement and stories to be told in the woods.
She set out one day, feeling a strong urge to be outside and muddy among the trees. Her older sister and ostensible babysitter was on the phone with her boyfriend–another accoutrement of growing up that Tara was less than enthusiastic about–so with their parents at work the wold was free and fair even though Tara was theoretically forbidden from going in. But rules were made to be broken, and broken especially in the service of squeezing out a few more honey-yellow drops of summer from the dying light of August.
It was, after all, Tara’s last summer.
June 18, 2013
Earth was prepared for a conventional attack, with a network of early warning satellites and nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger alert. It was prepared for an all-out alien invasion the likes of which had long been discussed in Earth literature.
Only the Xanthic didn’t attack that way.
Instead, their agents carefully snuck nanogenetically modified caffeine molecules into the Earth’s supply. Everything from coffee to soda pop to energy drinks was targeted and infiltrated. Then, at the touch of a button, anyone with an iota of caffeine in their system fell instantly unconscious.
In one swift masterstroke, the Xanthic had decapitated Earth’s command and control by incapacitating two-thirds of the adult population in the First World. The non-drinkers were not numerous enough to run the planetary defenses by themselves, and the Second and Third World countries without a critical mass of coffee drinkers were not invested enough in the defense network (thanks to their suspicious neighbors).
Every province and state of NATO and the UN Security Council was swiftly occupied, except for Utah. The rest of the world, starved of imports, swiftly capitulated with only local resistance.
The Xanthic celebrated their victory by buying every human being on Earth a nanogenetically engineered latté and by using their new force of slave laborers to build a massive Cola and Coffee Monument out of gratitude to the humble nonsentient plants which had allowed such a swift takeover.
June 17, 2013
In the category of spirits without bodies, we also find the zaar and the abdar. The words come to us from the Horn of Africa, where they are comparatively common, but zaar and abdar (while rare) occur across all nations and ethnic groups. Lacking a physical form, they most often possess inanimate objects of humanoid shape–mannikins, statuary, and such–or assemble a body out of possessed parts like a suit of clothing. They have also been known to expel human souls in order to possess their bodies, and this is the subject of a number of folk traditions. However, it is relatively rare, as inanimate objects are much easier to possess.
Zaar are created when a soul expires in a particularly lonely and bleak way, cut off from kith and kin. Rather than ascending to the next life, it instead acts as a magnet for malevolent spirit energy, concentrating it in an enormously potent form. Due to the circumstances of their genesis, zaar are often drawn to powerfully wicked creatures like daemons, who will employ them as high-ranking servants. It’s unclear what a zaar gets out of such an arrangement other than a kind of twisted surrogate family…and perhaps that is the point. They are universally mischievous, malicious, and deeply ensconced in most dire affairs.
Abdar represent the other side of the coin, with the same powers but rising from the expiration of a soul in a state of extraordinary peace. They draw in positive spirit energy by the same mechanism, but lack the same need for companionship, order, and structure that so often leads zaar to serve more powerful masters. Abdar instead tend to be fiercely independent, offering aid or advice to those in need. They do tend to be somewhat mercurial, and often prefer to guide those in need toward finding their own solutions rather than intervening directly.
June 16, 2013
The Old Empire had still been in the midst of experimentation with directed-energy weaponry when the last president was overthrown and the Anarchy began. His successors–presidents, president-emperors, and emperors alike–did not have the funds or the technology base to pursue the research and development involved, especially given how badly the polity had splintered. A number of weapons were fielded, but the incredibly complex nature of their ammunition–portable power cells, mostly–limited their use, as emperors and tinhorn despots held their meager stockpiles back.
As such, the only directed-energy weapon to see major use during the Anarchy and the post-Anarchy was the Palomino Model 70, commonly known as the Sunmaker. Produced by Palomino Arms for the civilian marketplace, the Sunmaker was unique in that it could accept power from an outstanding variety of sources. A wall adaptor plug-in allowed places with a functioning electrical grid to simply connect their Sunmakers to the mains to defend strong points. It would accept almost any portable battery on the market with the proper and easily-swappable adaptor; one popular adaptor allowed it to use commercial alkaline batteries, though six such batteries were only good for one or two low-power shots at best.
The form factor of the Palomino Sunmaker was also important. Oh, there was a lot to like about the integrated optic sight which doubled as an accessory rail, or the big triggerguard/handguard that could accomodate users wearing heavy gloves. But the sleekness of the design, its sharklike profile in black plastic and ceramic composites…unnecessary from a design standpoint, but brilliant from a marketing one. Hefting the weapon made someone used to guns that shot bullets feel like they were on the cutting edge…and starting down the lens of one was intimidating.
Sheriff Stevens had agreed to bend the law of his ditchwater burg in exchange for a Palomino Sunmaker still in its box. It seemed like a good idea at the time…
