[scrap] Shotrox.

Oct 7

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The first day of Balance was dark this year.  My little house, on the edge of the forest, normally looked out on the lowland, the town and the river, but today it was all fog below and dark clouds above.

Beautiful, of course, the mundane details of earth and sky washed clean by the humid air.  I did worry, though, that the rain might ruin the ceremonies if it came.

Regardless, the ceremonies would happen, good weather or no, so I made sure my feathers were in place and my scales were bright as I robed up and got ready to head out to the standing stones.

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[partim] Blake.

Oct 7

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“And monologues help, do they?”

Blake shook his head, mouth full, and swallowed.  “Well,” he said, “it helps to think over advice when you don’t quite have it internalized.  Though it does make you look a bit hypocritical should you happen to fail to live up to it. So I wouldn’t normally.  But,” he said, leaning in towards me, “you’ve shown an interest, so this is the kind of thing you get to see.”

He actually blushed a little, a bit of pink around the ears. “I’m sad to say I’m not particularly romantic, I’m afraid.”

I grabbed a piece of faving from his plate, tapped his nose with it, then took a bite.  “Don’t worry.  Neither am I.”

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[scrap] Isaac.

Oct 7

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I had most of the planet to myself.  A million Martians, and land to provision themselves with, take up very little in the way of space, even from their perspective, I imagine.

So I travelled.

There’s not much in the way of food on those endless Martian fields, I know you’re thinking.  I do have a bit of help in that regard—my knack is autotrophy, so as far as I can tell all I need to survive is light and air and water, which are a lot easier to come by than more substantial fare.  They say it might be why I was able to grow so big.

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[scrap] Micah.

Oct 7

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The question of first contact would be a difficult one.  How would a city of monsters reintroduce itself to the humans who’d forgotten they were real?

The Atlanteians had put a lot of thought into the question; some debated whether it would be necessary at all, at least for a good long time—Mars was a big place, after all, and they—we—could probably avoid humans here as we did on Earth.

Of course, this would ruin the point of having the humans there at all; we would, eventually, be detected, whether by colonists or watchers from Earth, so better to have them nearby, so explanations could be done in person, and communicated home with less panicking.

That was the optimists’ plan, anyway.  I knew it wouldn’t work out; human nature is just like everyone else’s.

Still, as the Atlanteian lander waited, invisible, not far from the human settlement that was already calling itself the Martian Research Station, even though no research had quite been done yet, I hoped a little.  Dad would be able to do it, if anyone could.  As long as having hidden wasn’t taken as some kind of betrayal…

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[partim] Mori.

Oct 6

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The door had opened out onto a countertop that was several paces across.  There were rows and piles of books here, most books being taller than me, and even sitting on my golem I couldn’t see over many of them.

But there was no sign of a computer, and I couldn’t sense any connection to the network, either.  Who would do research without the Internet?

“So what did you bring me here for, Munk?”

The golem carried me to a book that lay by itself on the counter.  Unlike many of the other books, the title was in a script I recognized, even if it was Devanagari.

Now, while I did have to learn a bit of Sanskrit for alchemical studies, I was, in general, pretty hopeless at it.

The title, at least, was pretty straightforward; it was just चन्द्रिक, Moonlight.

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[partim] The day of the singularity.

Oct 6

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“The doors—” the man started, confused for a moment. The doors were indeed of the push-to-open kind.

“I guess I should start here, then,” he said. “This is the Halkiadakis Institute, of course, I’m John, in this place we… well, everyone coming from the past comes through here. So it has to be kept traditional, so people aren’t disoriented.” He started walking again. “So different areas for different arrivals—this is the Modern area, and I work in the Medieval and sometimes the Primitive—”

“Wouldn’t time travelers be ready for new and strange futures?” Ralph said.

“Oh, we’re not here for time travelers,” John said. “I mean, I said everyone coming from the past, I mean everyone. That’s our mission here, our number one obligation.”

“What is?”

“To salvage everyone from the past. To have made death meaningless. To give everyone, every person who ever lived, another life free of death and hardship.”

“But—everyone does die—or did, back then, anyway—isn’t the past, the timeline, supposed to be immutable?”

“It is—and that’s where you come in, Ralph. Your talent makes this whole operation possible.”

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[scrap] Taaq.

Oct 4

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I said there wasn’t much my mother could tell me about the history of the world.  There was one story though, which may as well have been myth for all I’d really believed it, but the diarists had put it in their preface anyway.

I’d been a little cub when first I’d heard it; I’d heard that off-worlders could see all sorts of things in the sky—suns, moons, stars, and how much of the time the whole thing might be lit up in blue or pink or whatever… and I asked her why our sky was just black.

And she told me the story of Bαkhfikeιννᴥi, which the diarists had translated as “Frontarius”.  I thought it really ought to be “Frontier,” since it was the same as our name for the planet, but I guess “Frontier” isn’t a manly name in their language.

Anyway, Frontarius was a king of icebears back in ancient times…

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[partim] Piñata.

Oct 4

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My body hit the wall with a hollow thunk.  The wind roared harder; I felt myself being pushed back farther, even though I’m sure I wasn’t moving anymore.  I couldn’t even shut my eyes to keep the wind out of them as the sun started coming up over the west side of town.

That didn’t seem right at all.  I haven’t been out here all night already, have I?

That didn’t seem right either.

And then I saw a car driving down the street backwards.  And then more.

And then crowds of people, all moving in reverse.

I felt like I should be scared.

I mean, I was—but the fear itself was a bit hollow, without my body pumping the chemicals in.  I knew I was scared, but I didn’t feel it.

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[partim] Blake.

Oct 4

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“But yeah,” he went on.  “We don’t have absolute power over anything in this world.  And because our power is not absolute, there will be times things outside our power happen.  And of course they’ll be things we wouldn’t have wanted to happen, if we had the power to stop them.  But it’s a rejection of reality to expect things to always go the way we want—the correct thing to do is be ready for when our control fails.”

“So when you lose a memento of your sister…”

“Then I launch into monologues, thank you.”  The waiter had appeared again with Blake’s order, which the menu had defined as wheaten moon-cakes, flaky after the Viennese fashion, and not, by any stretch of the imagination, biscuits of any sort.

I placed my order—dovo amandine, which was apparently the day’s special; Blake ordered “likewise.”

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[partim] Mori.

Oct 4

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The kelvin took one look at me—a wounded tiger being carried by a golem—and raised his spear as though to guard the door.  When he saw we were a wounded tiger being carried by a golem, though, he dropped his spear and vanished.

Munk carried me through the red door.

There was a big room on the other side.

All right, while it was a welcome change from the maze of twisty passages, all alike, that’s really no introduction to the place.

It was big.

I keep wanting to start there because bigness really was the defining characteristic of the room.

All right, it was obviously a laboratory.

A big one.

And I don’t just mean the size of a warehouse—though certainly it was—but everything in the lab was big.

This was a space for giants to do science.

Therefore, the room was big.


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