Posts Tagged writing

[scrap] Rouss.

Oct 11

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Once you get to feeling different, it’s hard to stop.

There’s always going to be something, whether it’s the color of your hair or skin or eyes, the way they drive their car, or the way they think of other people…

Everyone is different from you, and if you keep looking you’ll only keep seeing bigger and bigger things…

And after a while you won’t just be different, you’ll be separated.

And that’s the point where I was at.

I knew I’d never find what I was looking for sitting at home, so I spent my free nights out.

Trouble is, when you’re focusing on being different, it’s painful to be around people.  Proximity feels like distance…

So I went out to the social functions, but only the big ones where there was little chance of meeting anyone in particular.

At the time, of course, I didn’t see that with that sort of mindset, I might as well have stayed at home—my unspoken fantasy of being found would have been just as likely there.

I know better now, of course.  If you want someone to look at you, your best option is to start looking at them.

It’s just like not seeing the forest for the trees, but in reverse—you get overwhelmed by the forest and forget there are trees in it.

But I hadn’t found my tree yet, so still I wandered.

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[scrap] Mitch.

Oct 11

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The first dream was the scariest.  I don’t mean it was a nightmare or anything; it’s just that it was so obviously not my dream, that I worried someone might have gotten into my head somehow.

That was, of course, vanishingly unlikely, but I was, what, twelve?  They told me I wouldn’t have any magic, so I figured it was projected in from outside.

But when I’d woken up, the dream was gone, and nobody seemed to be trying to put anything further in my head.  I lay in bed and listened.

And I started hearing things I’ve never heard before.  From Toby’s bed I heard a rumbling, a rustling, a far-off running train.

It came in his mental voice—I knew it was him.  I knew his telepathy was strong, but… that wasn’t quite right at all.

I listened more.

I heard more.

I got up from bed and headed out into the hall, the wooden floor cold under my tail and paws.

Mařa’s room was across the way; I heard—I heard her mind’s voice crying quietly.

She wouldn’t have been projecting that.

I noticed what my mind was doing unconsciously.

I stopped listening.

It was quiet again.  No broadcasts, then.

I started… listening again.

I started hearing again.

Could it really be happening?  Could I really be getting a knack after all?

I went back to bed.  In the morning, at least, I’d have to test it.

I went back to sleep.

The dreams kept happening.

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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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[scrap] Toby.

Oct 10

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My day starts in the basement of the theater.  It’s a little disconcerting, every time, to experience the room from two perspectives—on the one hand, my projection, which I’d come to think of as my usual body, saw the space as large, if a bit crowded; on the other hand, my real body saw it as a small, enclosed space—like sitting in a closet.

The fans ran nonstop, as body heat tended to make the place stifling, otherwise.

I set the bucket I came in with down and tried to imagine what life would be like if I couldn’t project.  The pallor, the weakness, all inescapably mine, because the world outside was the wrong size for me, and I couldn’t live in it.

Instead I was able to escape the body, somewhat—but I still had to take care of it.

It could indeed have been worse.  It could always be worse.

I tried to keep that in mind as I started washing my poor body down.

No, I don’t hate my body.  I am… well, we all have to hide who we are.  But having another body that can’t really take care of itself gets to be a chore.

And I guess, also, that having high standards doesn’t help.  I wouldn’t leave myself to live in slobbery.

So I was down here every morning.  I’d wash my poor body down, because while I did have to take up space, I didn’t have to make it unpleasant for others.

It wasn’t hard work, but I did have a lot of area to cover—it was like washing four or five cars a day.

When I was done I’d always…well, today I lay on my poor body’s chest, stroking softly as much of it as I could reach, because every body needs touch for the sake of touch, or it starts to break down.

My poor body’s hand would cover me sometimes, because sometimes I felt the need to return the favor.

I might have fallen asleep there, my poor body holding me against its chest; I’d certainly lost track of time enough that it seemed too soon before Mitch was poking at my mind.

Toby! Come on, I’m going to be late!

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[scrap] Mařa

Oct 10

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I keep apologizing because I don’t know where to start.  You get used to feeling awkward when you see every person’s death with them.

You’d think I’d get used to it after a bit, but I never could.

So, forgive me if I have trouble knowing where to begin sometimes.  I’m too busy thinking about how things end.

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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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[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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