Posts Tagged WIP

[WIP] Kaido no Yume.

Oct 20

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I woke up again, covered in tigers.

Maro’s arm was over my back, and he was sleeping with his cheek pressed against mine.  Or rather—the absence of feline snores from his direction suggested maybe he was still awake.

I pulled in closer to him, and softly murmured his name into his ear.

“K’haiso, you should be sleeping.”  His voice was full of sleep itself; I wondered if maybe I had woken him up after all.

“Maro, who was Kaido?”

His arm gripped me tighter to him, pulling me into his stripy warmth.  “Our brother,” he said.

I nuzzled into his powerful arm and didn’t say anything.

He leaned in closer and I could feel his breath on the fur of my ear.

“Our brother who was lost to the sea.”

It was sad enough to hear the words.  It was worse to feel the tiger shaking against me, eyes shut, entirely unafraid of showing his tears.

“Our brother who never came home…”

And he only held me tighter, and kissed my forehead, still trembling with the emotion.

“Sleep, wuafo,” he said, and I knew it ought to be impossible, because my tears were wetting his fur and I couldn’t make them stop.  But sleep came anyway and soon enough it was morning.

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[WIP] Kohath.

Oct 11

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The semi-secret breakfast was chiefly fried potatoes in all the usual configurations… tater tots, country potatoes, potato pancakes, hash browns, and so forth—with smaller amounts of eggs and miscellaneous breakfast fixin’s.

In my condition, though, which was better but still not optimal, I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat much, so I just took a small plate and sat next to a lunar and human talking—about the Vegan wars.

I recognized political argument, and resolved not to jump in.

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[WIP] Classifieds.

Oct 11

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I watched him make breakfast—he didn’t really need much in the way of help—and was absolutely at a loss for what to say.  Jay didn’t notice he’d nearly doubled in size.

As he reached up to grab the flour, exposing the entire lower half of his belly, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, an attempt to orient myself: “Jay, do you have any clothes that fit?”

He immediately turned bright red and pulled his shirt down.  “Zed!” he said. “I didn’t know I… just any old thing around the house… didn’t mean to bother you…”

I didn’t try to calm him down—that never worked.  And I could tell he was more embarrassed than hurt.  Still, he left the room, returning after a few moments in a much looser T-shirt, and went back to putting pancakes together.

I tried not to ask any more questions.  Clearly this was normal for him; I’d only make myself look stupid or crazy by asking questions.  So I excused myself and went to looking through the apartment.

And nothing had really changed.  Well—all right, he was definitely fatter in the couple of pictures he had of himself in his room—maybe a few extra snack wrappers by his bed?—but I guess having a 250-lb roommate doesn’t make things much different from having a 150-lb roommate.

That, or I didn’t notice any other changes.

That was kind of worrying.  He didn’t notice the change—maybe I only noticed the change I saw.

And the queasy feeling in my stomach that followed on that thought was immediately replaced by quite the reverse kind of thrill as a new idea came into my head that I immediately kicked myself for.

Because I wondered if I could do it again.

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[partim] The day of the singularity.

Oct 8

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“But my talent’s switching minds, not,” Ralph said, “Not reviving the dead…”

He shuddered a bit at the thought.  John shook his head.  “You go to them before they die.  And you’ll swap out their minds with a blank one.”

“A blank one?”

“Well, not that you’ll be carrying blank minds around… that would be all kinds of ethical trouble… but you’ve said it’s easier to do visualizing it that way instead of trying to trade something for nothing.”

“How long have you known me?”

“About sixty years.”

“You don’t look that old,” Ralph said.  But really, once you knew, you kind of could—the gentle wrinkles around the eyes were, though not pronounced enough to convey a sense of age, were still a little too deep for a young man—once you knew, you couldn’t see the hints of gray around his temples as the signs of a stressful work life any longer—once you knew, he was clearly an old man, but not frail like I’d expect in a man who just admitted to being maybe 75—even once you knew, you could still not guess him any more than a very healthy fifty.

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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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[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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