[partim] Shine.

Mar 3

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I sat kind of awkwardly in the chair, and he scooted into the kitchen.  My light flickered a bit uncertainly as people started to stare.  Why would a place like this be so full of people this late at night?

I covered my face.  Nobody’d said anything, nobody’d gotten up—they were just watching.

After about a minute, the guy came back, carrying three plates of food on a tray—chicken, pork, tofu, rice…

“I don’t have any money,” I said.  When I’d spoken he looked at me like he just realized I hadn’t understood anything he’d said yet.  (Sure, as a tiger I’m technically Asian, but it just doesn’t work that way.)

He gestured for me to wait and went back into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bored-looking teenage girl in dark makeup and a black dress.

He talked on for a bit, in Chinese.

“I can’t afford this,” I said to her.

“He says it’s on the house,” she said, after translating it back to him.  “I think he wants you to be a mascot.”

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Scrap – Isaac.

Feb 17

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This sort of goes with the previous post. It’s also not something I’m entirely happy with (not enough showing, too much “telling”), but it did give me an unexpected idea of the kind of person Isaac is.

December 10, 2494 (old calendar)
Isaac had a bonfire set up on his end of the valley for Huck and Maxim’s birthday. It was an old-style birthday so it wasn’t as big a deal as a proper Martian anniversary, but the giant wolf took any opportunity he could to invite his friends over, since he wasn’t really allowed in town.

He was well taken care of, and he was able to keep in touch over the network, but overall, it’s lonely business being a giant. He was glad to see Mack and his cousin coming down the slope a half hour earlier than expected.

“Evening,” he signed, and they waved back, sitting across the fire from him. He was worried he might have made the fire too big for them — he never was very good at his estimates when he tried to size things for smaller people.

Luckily they didn’t seem to have any complaints, and they warmed themselves for a bit before pulling out their [Rami word] and sparking them up.

Isaac, of course, wasn’t really allowed an instrument either, — the sounds would be too loud (heck, he was only even allowed to talk in emergencies) or the lights too bright, causing distractions in Dunamy.

In his dreams sometimes he imagined rampaging. He couldn’t really see himself hurting people, but every now and then he felt the urge to smash something—not an easy urge to work off, when the only things you own anywhere near your size are your own pants.

And those were a whole set of their own problems.

He shook his head and tried to clear out the dark thoughts.

Mack was swinging his spear, leaving trails of white light in the air around him,

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Scrap – Kohath.

Feb 3

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—First things first—to get away from the cold. I packed up stuff for the day—another sandwich, a book of Dickinson, my computer,—and took a bus to city center.

The bus was empty at this hour of morning; it was still city night.

I needed to be around people, though—the condition I was in, whatever it was, was no condition to be alone in.

Someone had set up a sort of pavilion in the park, and I headed towards it.

About half a dozen people were inside, mostly lunars, and they were frying up a lot of breakfast.

“What’s the occasion?” I said, walking up. A few that hadn’t seen me approaching looked up, and the tallest waved me over.

“We’re gaṇakas. Have you heard of us? We’re semi-secret.”

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Scrap – Aristophaneus

Jan 17

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This was something I sort of started throwing together during Sketch Night week before last.  So far it’s more of an exploration than a narrative.  Will have to see how it goes.

NSFW (M, two-body) below cut…

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First day on the moon.

Jan 10

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More ancient scraps. Most of the notebook I’ve been copying stuff out of is undated, but a poem on the ending page of this that I posted to LiveJournal around the time I wrote it gives this a terminus ante quem of September 29, 2005.

1 Aug
The trip to the moon was short and uneventful. I knew it would be—it’s just a routine shuttle, after all. Still, I was hoping for something special for my first time off the planet.

A circle of lunar humans off the ’port staff waited to greet us as we came out the gate. Most of them wielded video recorders in case any of the terrestrials wanted to say anything stupid. Souvenir discs of My First Words on the Moon go for €10.50. Nobody wanted to announce any giant leaps for Podunk today—all the other passengers were either lunars coming home or tired businessmen who’ve probably done the trip a thousand times. Me, of course, you’d never find doing anything so touristy.

The welcome committee soon dispersed after seeing no one really cared about being welcomed. I passed through the crowds and bound up the stairs to baggage claim. My muscles were used to hefting around a body six times heavier than I now weighed. I figured I’d better enjoy it while I could—I knew I’d be paying for it trying to lug around my pudge when I went home for the summer.

I got my bags and found my way outside. The dome above was darkened, indicating the fiction that was the lunar city’s night.

Right. I pulled my computer out of my pocket, uncrumpled it, and called up local time. Quarter to ten… fifteen minutes until there wouldn’t be anybody at the college to let me in. I pulled up gmaps and a compass and got directed to a bus line that went straight there.

The bus was empty. I stood and watched the city go by. Unlike the inside of the bus,… the city for the most part seemed clean and new.

I reached the university gates just a few minutes before closing. The gate guard pointed me to the dormitory, and I rushed to get in just before the doors locked.

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Scrap – Mori

Jan 6

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This is from an old notebook I’m in the middle of transcribing. In Nother, an astrode is a device similar to an orrery which allows for teleportation based on astrological principles.

Moriarty ascended the stairs of the ruined apartment. The thick air did nothing to obscure the golden light blazing from the attic room. He shaded his eyes as the room entered his view, and there as he had dreaded, stood the broken astrode.

—”How’m I sposta fix this?”

That doesn’t work.

I could barely see for the brightness, and my footpaws were damp and sticky from the pool of sunshine I was standing in.

How ’bout I start with this—

I ran back downstairs to find a pitcher. My footprints glowed in the dust. “Frotz,” I said.

I came back up and scooped up the most part of the sunshine. It was sticky and puddled together on its own, like mercury. The pitcher was about half-full when I was done.

I set it on the stand at the angle left by the tracks in the floor.

The band of planetary signs along the wall lit up.

“Oh crap,” I said.

I didn’t recognize any of the signs.

There were only five, laid out thus:

I set up the stand with the moon that had fallen over, and crossed my fingers. Only one way out, and that by trying… I pulled the dusty globe and it began to reflect the beam directed from the pitcher of sunshine. The other moon had quite shattered, and I was thus left with three choices. , I thought, bad sign. The was too complex to— could be a distorted Mars…

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Blake.

Jan 5

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He tried to wave a waiter over, with no luck.

“Ah well,” he said, “Gives me some time to dry off. Have I ever shown you my sister’s music?”

“You have a sister?”

“Yeah, she’s beautiful, her name’s Island.” He reached in his pockets. “I have a clip of her singing, one moment…” He pulled out a phone, which was kind of damp-looking, but he still managed to get it turned on.

The hologram he pulled up was indeed of a beautiful red kangaroo, dressed in gray and black and white, standing in front of a microphone. A few puffs of smoke came up around her as she began to sing:

“When Jesus wept, the falling tear
in mercy flowed beyond all bound;
when Jesus groaned, a trembling fear
shook all the guilty world around—”

The smoke was joined by a spurt of blue sparks, and the phone went dead.

Blake shut his eyes.

“That was amazing,” said a human at a table next to us. “I didn’t catch it in time, though—who is she? I’d love to download her.”

“Her name’s Darker Island,” Blake said. “But you won’t find her, she’s L & L. You’d have to go to Blantyre.”

“A Luddite, eh? I don’t even know where Blantyre is.”

Blake didn’t answer. He picked up the phone and gave it a couple of smacks. It didn’t respond.

“L & L?” I said. “That’s awesome.” The Live and Local movement avoided globalization and the Net, creating their own microcultures instead. “She must be really close with you, to have let you make a recording.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She was.”

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Library updates

Jan 5

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Added Arky’s offer 2 (NSFW) to the library page.

(This was posted to FA earlier as Scott the Alchemist 3, but apparently I hadn’t titled 1 and 2 that way here.)

Also removed the Ralph stories from the ‘clean’ page.  They’re not porn, but they do talk about shenanigans, so.   Really I’m kind of on the fence about them—both the chapters I’ve posted so far were written with more explicitness than the published versions.  I cut that stuff out because their story didn’t seem to be about the sex.  But in another sense it feels weird to gloss over it.   I’ll probably post a more porny ‘director’s cut’ in the future.

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Scrap – Silk Rail

Jan 4

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So as to avoid suspicion, I stayed the night at an inn, instead of fleeing immediately. I got up at dawn, paid my bill, and rode out of town before the alarm was raised. I figured they’d be holding up any ships from going downriver, so I headed for Sepouri to take a ship back to Karkedon.

I hoped to make it before anyone thought of closing the port—but I didn’t rush, because nothing makes people ask questions like seeing a wolf in a hurry.

I made it to the harbor some time after noon.

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The day Ralph and I changed places.

Jan 3

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June 8, 2000 — The day Ralph and I changed places
“I stood in the rain on White Oak Hill. In the heat I was
getting soaked, clothes and fur, but I didn’t move…”

Finished the first part of Ralph’s story and posted it to the library and FA.

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