Apocalypse Daily

Russia's The Dead Hand

2009-09-27T18:32:00.002-04:00

I had never heard of this before now.

Russia's doomsday device, codenamed The Dead Hand. May or may not still be operational.

As far as anyone knows, the Dead Hand remains operational. What is truly worrying, even today, is the secrecy that continues to surround the whole subject. Thompson has found that neither George Schultz nor former CIA director James Woolsey had heard of the Dead Hand system. Former Soviet era officials will still not discuss it. One who dared to talk died in mysterious circumstances. Such secrecy is, as Dr Strangelove realised, disastrous: ‘Yes, but the…whole point of the doomsday machine…is lost…if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, eh?’

The doomsday machine is supposed to be the ultimate deterrent. But if no one knows that the deterrent exists… Well, you’ve all seen the final scenes of Dr Strangelove.

(Yeah. Been gone for a bit. Working on projects. Back now. Boom.)

FOUR BOARDERS: Ch. 4 - How to Live (part 1)

2009-08-31T12:23:00.002-04:00

The next morning I woke up to a flash of light and a bout of giggling from all four of them in my room. Dave stood on the end of the bed, towering over me, digital camera in hand. He looked at the screen and said, “Perfect.” With a no look toss over his shoulder, he threw the camera to Frank who sat at my computer along with Warren and Peter.

Struggling through my hangover, which wasn’t as bad as I expected, I forced myself to sit up. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We,” Dave said as he dropped next to me on the bed, “are filling out an online dating profile for our landlord and master.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. I opened it again, thought better of it and closed it again.

“Are you trying to say, ‘bah humma humma bah bah humma’?” asked Dave.

“You?” I finally managed. “But… Wait a minute. What are you doing?”

Frank had plugged the camera into the computer and was clearly uploading the picture Dave just took.

Peter walked over to the end of the bed and sat down. “Man, you needed a push. Or you weren’t like, you know, going to move. So we’re like pushing you, man. We’re pushing with love.”

Pointing to my dresser, “Is that antibacterial soap? So bad for, you know, like Earth and all.”

Things were starting to get a little clearer. “You’re filling out a dating profile for me?”

“Yes,” said Warren, “But wrong tense, dude. ‘Filled.’ We’ve ‘filled’ out a dating profile for you.”
Frank chirped in, “And now just this second as I click the mouse on this this button here I am sending it out into the ether to be posted for many a fine fine lady to see you Allen to see if they hunger and thirst for your sleeping form and a hot form it is I would say if that doesn’t make you uncomfortable because I mean that in the best possible unisexual way.”

“You’ve posted it!?” I flung myself out of bed, knocking Peter onto the floor. “I can’t believe you guys! You can’t do that!” I pushed Frank out of the chair and tried to figure out how to stop whatever it was he had been doing. But now the blood had rushed from my head and I couldn’t even focus.

“Relax,” said Dave lying back in my bed, arms crossed behind his head, “we did the barest essentials. Age, heterosexual, single, no children.”

“You don’t have any children, do you, dude?” asked Warren as he opened up my closet. “We weren’t sure. Far as we know, you have some fuckin’ five year old stashed in one of the thousand hidey holes in this place.”

“Nice boxers by the way,” said Dave, “Add stuff to your profile at your own leisure. Sometimes you need help with the first step. Even a baby needs help with its first step as it walks down life’s road.”

My head was hurting. “Guys, I appreciate the thought. I really do, but Ican take care of my own life.”

“Really? That is still unclear.” Dave got up and walked to the door. “Allen, Frank will go make you some breakfast. Something normal and filling, okay? Go take a shower. Think about it. Don’t decide now. Wake up a bit first.”

They all exited the room, leaving me staring at the screen. There was my profile on something called Aflutter.com. They had picked “HaplessFool5” as my screen name. There was my picture. Actually, that’s a pretty good picture of me. Underneath that was my age and my city. “Looking for woman for dating, friendship, play.” What’s ‘play’? A bunch of other questions they had left blank.

Under “Who am I?” it said, “Lighting designer. Homeowner. All around cool cat. Good taste in friends. I like my scotch but not to excess. Nothing to sneeze at.” Under “Who are you?” it said, “Smart woman with a laugh to shatter my soul, smarts to confound my mind, and a heart to send me flying. Must like making out, canoodling, snuggling, spooning and any combination of the above. If you know that dreams don’t stop at thirty, you may be it.”

A little flashing picture of an eye in the upper corner caught my attention. I clicked it and it went to a new page. I looked at it, still a bit foggy and tried to make sense of it.

“Guys!” I yelled. “Guys! I got a ‘wink’ from someone called Pixiesticks. What the hell is a ‘wink’?”

TOY: Revelations Smurf

2009-08-31T10:53:00.003-04:00

Via Topless Robo7.

LEGO: Apocalypse

2009-08-28T13:27:00.004-04:00

A story told with elaborate LEGO dioramas. By LEGO master Mark Kelso.

Apocalypsis: A Journey Inward

Apocalypsis II: The Conflict Within

FOUR BOARDERS: Ch. 3 - A Life Examined (part 2)

2009-08-25T14:09:00.001-04:00

Two hours and more than a few scotches later, I was drenched in sweat and trying to get to the bathroom. The realization that I had to pee with incredible urgency had hit me four songs earlier, but I was having such an amazing time dancing my sad little heart out that I’d ignored it. I had even danced a poor imitation of a Texas Two-Step with some strange blond haired girl when they played How I Could Just Kill A Man. But now the urgency had turned to desperation.

The gods of urination were with me, as someone was leaving the small bathroom just as I reached it. Rushing in, I let the door close behind me as I quickly undid my fly and let go at the urinal. It was one of those fantastic, drunken pees where you throw your head back and just sigh in pleasure. My head was swimming and I let the calm of the tiny space embrace me. Yes, a lot of it was that I was wasted, but it was also that I was just letting myself go. Being around that mass of people, feeling the rhythm of the turntable and the bass line coarse through all of us at once. Oh my god. Am I… happy?

Behind me I heard the door suddenly open and a woman’s voice say, “Oh! Jeepers!”

“In here! In here!” I couldn’t stop peeing if wanted to, but I frantically tried to shift my body to find the position that would least likely give her a glimpse.

“Oh oh. I’m sorry! It wasn't locked!”

As if she couldn’t tell, I again yelled, “In here!” Stop peeing! Penis, stop peeing! “The door! Close the door! I’ll be just a second!”

“Right! Sorry! Right. Jeepers.” Finally she managed to get the door shut as the last of the urine dribbled from the tip. I leaned my head against the wall. Jeepers, indeed.

At 4 a.m. the bar had emptied significantly. A group of us had pulled together chairs and were still talking. Jake and a woman he had befriended, who was sitting in his lap. Oscar and Julie and the fiddle player, Sasha, and the drummer, Derrick. And then there was Frank, Peter, Warren, Dave and myself. There was another group of boisterous boys still sitting at the bar, but otherwise the place was empty.

Jake was in the middle of his story of the time he and I had gone into Macy’s on Herald’s Square and tried on bras. “The damn saleswoman was so damn confused! After the whole ‘Where is the men’s dressing room’ argument, she still could not get her mind around the question, ‘What ties go with this lace?’ And Allen just kept asking, ‘But does it stain?’ That poor lady. Sixty-five and now she has to deal with us pervs.”

“Allen,” Oscar laughed, “you just have that sweet innocent face that can get away with murder.”

“I was young,” I said. “That was what? Ten years ago? I could never pull that off now.”

“Sure you could!” demanded Jake. “You have such a talent for stupid gestures when you want.”

Julie said, “How about the time with the food coloring in the snow? How awesome was that?”

I picked up my beer glass and looked into it, trying some how to hide behind it. But the glass had long been empty and I was way past the point of needing another. “Yeah, well.”

“Tell it,” Julie pleaded.

“It’s a good one, Allen,” said Oscar.

Everyone began to loudly beg and cajole. My drunk was become a dizzy spin and I wanted to climb into myself. I could see the boys at the bar throw us dirty looks. Then I felt a hand lightly on my shoulder. Dave leaned into my ear and quietly said, “Go ahead. I want to hear this.”

I lifted my head and swallowed. “Well, it was right after I had met Amy. She’d been working for some fashion designer as an assistant and the company I was working for was doing the lights for one of their fashion shows. Not as a designer. Just a light tech. As soon as I saw her, I of course developed on of my instant crushes. Just became infatuated by her. So, um, whenever we had a question about something, I made sure I was the one who got to ask it. And I made sure I asked Amy first. Which of course was stupid because she didn’t have the answers to anything we needed to know. So then she had to go off and ask someone and then come back to me with the answer. I drove her crazy with that for two days.

“Keep in mind she’s all dressed for high fashion office stuff and I’m dressed as skuzzy lighting technician. I mean, I could get her to laugh and smile, but then she’d be all, ‘Who is this dirty boy chatting me up?’ But I was trying to work my charm hard and, well, I was getting close, but not quite close enough. At the end of the load-in I ask her out, but it’s in such a roundabout and vague way that she doesn’t quite get what I’m asking. I didn’t know that at the time but she told me later.

“So the show runs the weekend and the load-out is going to be Sunday morning at like six a.m.. And I get the idea to pull a ‘Say Anything’ type thing. I go get some food coloring, but it’s four in the morning and the market just has the little boxes with four squeeze bottles of different colors. Red, blue, green and yellow. So I buy all they have. It’s like eighteen or twenty boxes. And I go to where the fashion show was. This is January and there’d been a fresh snow. That’s what gave me the idea.

“So I go to the where the fashion show was and I try to write in the snow with these stupid little bottles. It’s in this courtyard everyone is goin' to have to walk through when they show up. And I’m trying to write big letters but the bottles just drip, so I cut off the tips with my utility knife. And I get die all over my hands. But now it’s going okay, but time is running out so I start to rush. I get ‘Amy Sweet Amy,’ because, yeah, you want to get prolific when writing in the snow with little bottles of food coloring. So I get ‘Amy Sweet Amy, Give me a chance.’ But I only get C-H-A before I run all out of dye. I was alternating colors but not using yellow for, um, obvious reasons. But now I have no choice. All I have is yellow. So the rest of ‘chance’ is in pee yellow and all of ‘Allen’ at the end.

“So I am standing there by my masterpiece, my hands all rainbowed, and all the crews start to come in, and I just have this grin on my face like an idiot.”

Everyone was laughing. I hadn’t even thought of that story of so long. I was remembering how I felt when I as doing it, taking this bold foolish gesture for a girl I hardly knew.

Through tears Frank asked, “What did Amy say I mean like how did she react?”

I wiped away my tears from my own laughter, “Well, she’d called in sick, so she didn’t end up coming at all. But her boss took pictures of me standing there and emailed them to her that night along with my phone number. Amy called me the next day. When we met later that week, I still hadn’t gotten the dye out of my skin.”

When everything died down again, Peter said, “Man, that is very cool. You should do that again.”
“I don’t have anyone to do it for.”

Jake cried, “Well, find someone. Go out and look!”

“It’s not that simple–“

Julie piped in, “Allen, you’re just gun shy. Find a simple safe way to do it. Something less…big and colorful.”
“ONLINE DATING!” hollered Warren. We all turned to him, including the boys at the bar. “Dude. On. Line. Dating. It’s so not just for ugs and freaks anymore. Totally mainstream.” Suddenly everyone was agreeing and saying, “Yes! Yes! Perfect!”
Trying get out of this, I said, “Oh, I don’t think–“

“That’s just it,” snapped Warren. “No thinking required. The totally fucking brainless way to totally fucking yourself brainless!”
The bartender yelled, “Okay! That’s it! Last call was an hour ago! Get out and go home!”

We all pried ourselves out of our chairs and gathered our stuff. As we headed to the door, Oscar pulled me aside. “Hey, would you be interested in helping me with a project?”

“What?”

“Well, in January they have this thing called the Idiotarod. It’s a big shopping cart race. Five people, one pushing and four pulling like dogs with a dog sled. It’s an arty event, more theater than sport. But I want to go big this year. Go all out. Big team, uniforms, mad tricked out carts. I think you’d like it and I could use your sensibilities.”

“Oscar, I am so drunk right now that nothing you just said to me made any sense. Shopping cart race? What?”

“I’ll call you about it later. It’s not until January. There is plenty of time for us to prepare for the big event.”

As our party exited the door, the boisterous boys at the bar were still giving the bartender a hard time. One of them shouted at us as we left, “The HayZeedz suck! Suck with a Z!” We all laughed it off but I could see that it upset Julie, if just a touch.
When we were halfway to the subway, Warren announced, “Oh, crap dudes. I left my wallet at Hanks. You go on. I’ll meet you by the tracks.” He took off back to the bar, jogging.

Everyone else was going in different directions and it was just Peter, Frank, Dave and I waiting for the train when Warren reappeared. He had a huge grin on his face and his green bicycle jersey was ripped. I wasn’t sure but I could swear there were little dots of red along one sleeve.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said with a shrug, “Nothing. Just had to get my wallet. All is good.”

“Is that,” I said cautiously pointing, “a cue stick?”

He looked down at what he was holding in his hand. “Nah, dude. It’s half a cue stick,” he said tossing it onto to tracks.

FOUR BOARDERS: Ch. 3 - A Life Examined (part 1)

2009-08-24T11:56:00.002-04:00

Those first days after the band moved in were a big adjustment. The loud silence of the house was now a flood of noises of four other people. Not that we were all in the house at the same time very often. Many evenings they would head off to Queens to practice. They invited me along each time, but that seemed weird and groupie-ish. Especially considering I’d never heard their music. I asked to listen to some songs, but Dave kept saying, “No, no. Can’t hear us recorded the first time. No Memorex, just real. You, especially you, need to get the live experience the first time. If you won’t come to practice, you’ll get it at our next gig. As soon as we get one.”

Our work schedules also didn’t meet up. Dave worked late morning to early afternoon for a large telemarketing firm selling insurance. When I asked what type of insurance he just said, “The types we all need,” and left it at that. Warren spent the day as a bicycle courier in Manhattan, but he would often leave the house at six a.m. to get in some extra riding. Frank often missed rehearsal because he was a sommelier at a just opened trendy restaurant called Le Petite Cageot, and often didn’t get home until three or four in the morning. Peter worked third shift as a lab technician at Mount Sinai Hospital. From what little I gathered he did something with blood, but Peter spent most of his time in his room so we didn’t talk much. My work as a lighting designer for MTR Lightening was picking up. We had a handful of large events coming up so I was spending a lot of time meeting with clients and drafting. Much of the work I did from home, so I fairly quickly became attuned to the patterns of my new housemates.

When one of them was home, they gave me my space as we all got used to each other. Warren did spend three hours the second night in the house setting up his sound system in the living room. It appeared to be cobbled together from the history of sound reproduction. Fancy sleek modern black speakers, plywood subwoofers, strange components with vacuum tubes, and a thousand dials and sliders that he spent forever tweaking. And miles of cables and wires and cords. I paid attention for about fifteen minutes as he exuberantly explained to me what he was doing and about the vast superiority of each individual until over all the other similar devices ever devised. Quickly I gave up. When he finally got it up and running, I had to admit it was the best of whatever it was. He immediately hooked up his Xbox 360 and logged onto the internet.

“You, Allen,” Warren declared, “are going to get an account right now. And then you’ll join my online Halo 3 clan. Clan Equus. And I shall school you in the kick ass art of schooling.” So, many nights were spent with Warren and I, miked headsets on our skulls and controllers in hands, shooting at fourteen-year-old boys all over the world. At first, Warren became a bit frustrated with my lack of ability at videogames, but by the second week my reflexes had improved and we had a fair amount of teamwork going. It was exhilarating to tap into that primal competitive zeal. Warren trash talked non-stop, leaning farther and farther forward on his chair. Most games ended with someone thousand of miles away yelling that they would “fuck our moms” or that we were “noobs” or “hella gay.” Sometimes they would end up crying. At first it bothered me, but I noticed that even when Warren didn’t trash talk, the same thing would happen anyway. Whenever we player each other, I would be lucky to get off a shot, and I spent most of the time watching my virtual corpse just lie there.

Warren also taught me what “corpse humping” was. Many many times.

On the rare occasion Frank was home and not writing music in his room, he’d whip something up in the kitchen. His treats couldn’t be called “meals” because they were always so small. Always perfectly crafted and beautifully plated, but tiny little things. His “nachos” was a plate of ten tortilla chips, handmade and fried, each with three beans, a sliver of grilled steak and some odd cheese he’d discovered at a market in Queens near their rehearsal space. Each bite was delicious, but I often found myself sneaking into the kitchen looking for something more substantial when he’d gone back upstairs.

It was rare that Peter and I crossed paths. Whenever he came home, he would quickly shuffle up to the top floor and close himself in his room. I really had no idea what he did in there or what his room even looked like. The door was always closed. Sometimes I’d hear muffled unidentifiable music coming from inside. And there was a smell. Very slight and not bad, per se, but a smell nonetheless. Kind of a sweet bitter smoky organic metallic smell. You couldn’t sense it anywhere except right outside his door. I tried not to think about it.

Dave and I ended up spending quite a few late nights watching TV and drinking a beer. It was oddly nice. Just nice. Just sharing time with someone else, not an ounce of pressure or expectation. Just me and Dave and the TV. He really enjoyed The Daily Show with Jon Steward. He said it “cracked him up,” although it was hard to tell because Dave didn’t really laugh. He’d smile, smirk, grin, beam, snicker, tehee. Once I even heard him giggle. But never laugh. Dave would often comment on the news and events but never with a lot of emotion. Just very matter of factly.

He said he found The Colbert Report “curious.”

One day, he came in as I was watching CNN. There had just been an industrial plant explosion in Germany, and the reporter was saying that at least seventy-five people were dead.

“Makes you think,” Dave said as he sat down on the couch. “Each of those Germans woke up, kissed their wife or hit their frau or masturbated in the shower or fed their dog, and just went about their day. And then, Allen, boom. Just boom. Either they were killed instantly or burned or fell or were crushed. One asphyxiated in a janitor’s closet, hiding from the flames. And it wasn’t because anything they’d done. It wasn’t a karmic pimp slap. This event isn’t some balancing of the Universe because of the Holocaust or knockwurst or Kraftwerk. It just is, Allen. But what about that one guy who fell asleep at his post and missed the warning light as the secondary furnace started to over heat? Nope. No pay back. No reason. It just is. You just get to live each day and each moment. Not as if it is your last, because that would be filled with panic and fear. Just take each second and be in it, Allen.”

Dave and I sat there in silence, watching the sickly smoke pour from the building on the screen. Finally, Dave grabbed the remote from me and said, “Hey, Gigantor is on the Toon Network. I gotta to see some space age robot action.”

Three weeks into my new housing situation, Jake called on a Saturday afternoon. “When was the last time you talked to Oscar and Julie? I have to admit, I haven’t been so good since they moved to the Bronx, but the Oscarmayer just rang me. They’re having a CD release party at Hanks Saloon tonight. He mentioned you. Wanted to know how you were hanging in. How are you hanging in? New roomies working out?”

I could hear Warren shouting at the TV downstairs. Dave was actually sitting at my computer playing Minesweeper. Frank had decided that I was ignoring my backyard and was weeding the flower beds. Peter was home but shut up in his room as usual. “It’s good,” I said. “We get along pretty well. You were right, Jake. This was what I needed.”

“That’s great,” Jake said. “Bring them along tonight. I’d like to meet them. Tu homies es me homies. Unless they are too cool for a little country hip-hop. Is so, they can bite my big old ass.”

For once, no one was working that night. They had planned on getting some rehearsal time in but it took no effort to sway them to come out. Even Peter seemed excited about the prospect. I immediately got nervous about mixing my old world with my new world. You never know how things will work out. It's like mixing medications. Jake can be larger than life and hyper-blunt in his good-natured way. And my housemates were certainly unique and had their quirks. I could see Dave charming and relating to anyone, but the other three were all extreme in their own way. And Oscar and Julie’s band was, well, different.

For the last three years they had been in the HayZeedz. It was mish-mash of hip-hop and country/bluegrass, or what Oscar liked to call “hick-hop.” Oscar and Julie both sang and rapped, and they were backed by a guitar, bass, drummer, fiddle and turntable. It was fun music that got people out of their chairs and bouncing their heads. But I didn’t even know what type of music Chapter Six played, much less if they would enjoy this. Yet they all seem enthused.

“Dude,” exclaimed Warren, “if it’s up, if it’s pumped, we’ll like it. Even if it blows, we have some tact and will be nice. Or we'll bail if we hate it too much.” Slapping me on the shoulder, he said, “You need to relax, dude. Pull that stick out of your ass and beat something with it!”

Hanks Saloon was a true-to-god dive country biker bar in the heart of Brooklyn. Sitting on the edge of a Muslim neighborhood and a row of antique dealers and a stones throw away from a Target, it managed to keep itself honestly grungy and honky-tonk. Rough looking, rundown, painted in black and ceiling reaching flames, it opened every morning (except Sunday) at 8 a.m. for people who just can’t wait until after breakfast for their first drink. At night, the grunge was less noticeable if only because the lighting was so poor. And of course, as with anything genuine, it was quickly adopted by “hipster,” but Hank's managed to remain sincere.

When we arrived at 10 p.m., it was close to packed and the HayZeedz were setting up on stage. As we entered I felt like we were our own mini-horde, quickly surveying the room, immediately being noticed by those near the door. Dave particularly loomed large with his bright yellow silk-screened Tupac t-shirt. Julie noticed us as we moved through the crowd and rushed down to meet me. Throwing her arms around me, she hugged me hard and said, “Oh, Allen, how are you? How are you doing? Are you okay? Are you?”

I pulled away and took both her hands, trying to be reassuringly firm. “Yes. I’m good. Congratulations on the CD.” Sometimes sympathy can be stifling and just draws the hurt back to the surface. Will there ever be a time I don't see that pitying look in friends' eyes?

I quickly introduced her to the four. Jake had already shot off to greet the two dozen people he just happened to know in the bar.

Dave took Julie’s hand in both of his and gave it a vigorous shake. “Julie, Allen has nothing but good things to say about your band, so I am ready to be impressed. Are you beer-while-playing types or water-while-playing types? I’m thinking you, the sweet girl with the fiddle, that bassist and that guitarist are all beer people. And this seems like a Pabst Blue Ribbon type place. PBR all that way.” Julie nodded, slightly taken aback. “Right. And water for the rest. Well, they’re on us as long as you return the favor and come to our gig.”
Julie responded, “Oh, you’re in a band. When are you–“

“We’re not. Yet. But soon. Be right back,” and the four of started pushing their way to the bar.

“I’m renting rooms in my house to them,” I explained. “You know, extra money and, well….”

Julie leaned in and gave me another hug. “I understand. I’m so glad you could make it. I’ve missed you tons.” And she slipped back towards the stage. Oscar caught my eye and gave one of his nonchalant head bobs in my direction.

I was hoping to find a chair or a stool. I get uncomfortable standing before the band starts playing. Not physically uncomfortable but emotionally. I never know what to do with my body, specifically my hands. They keep going in and out on my front pockets, then my back pocket. Then I’ll try crossing my arms, but then I feel like I’m standing in judgment so I uncross them, but then I feel like a mannequin so I start the process all over again. Nothing was available, so I tried to at least make my way to the wall so I’d have something on which to lean.

Just as I got to an open wall space, I felt a tap on my elbow. Peter handed me what appeared to be a double scotch on the rocks. In his other hand he held a martini with six or seven olives. In a martini glass. I didn’t think Hanks had martini glasses but there it was. He took a sip and said, “Man, I dig this place. It has a feel, you know? A real feel.”

Dave, Frank and Warren were at the stage handing out drinks. They had a carefree vibe that I so wanted to emulate. Even with their odd behavior, they seemed to just accept everything around them and their place in it. Well, not Peter. But maybe that was just because I’d never seen him out of the house. He seemed fine at Hanks, less slouched and less preparing to take a nap. Either way, they were just so comfortable in their own skins, as if they had been in them for eons and nothing was going to change that. I wanted that level of self-assuredness. As opposed to feeling that I had to assure everyone that I was “okay.”

The band finished their sound check and the crowd started to shift its focus to the stage. Oscar picked up his mike and gave it a few raps of his finger.

“How ya’ all doin’, Brooklyn?!” An immediate already buzzed chorus of hoots bounced back at him. “Thank you all for coming out to our shindig. We’re celebrating the release of our brand new CD, Ho-Down ‘Ho!” Hoot, hoot, hoot! “So, without any delay, let’s get this party started!”

The drums and the bass kicked in, soon to be matched by the fiddle. By the time the turntable started scratching, people were already bouncing up and down. As Oscar and Julie launched into the harmonies of A Man of Constant Sorrow, they had the crowd going full tilt. Peter inched his way away from the wall to get in the mix, splashing his drink as he went. I stayed in my spot, sipping my scotch, enjoying the music and the scene, but still feeling a bit like an outsider. Looking down at my drink, thoughts entered my head. Does this feeling go away? When can I get away from this feeling that I’ve lost my chance at happiness? Is this it? Will I always be this sad? That last came as a sudden slap. Admitting that I was actually unhappy, that I was truly feeling on the edge of surrender to my own melancholy, hit me in a wave of awareness.

I looked up to see Dave, Warren, Frank and Peter all near the front of the stage looking back at me. They were all waving me towards them. Warren was so short I would never had seen him except he kept jumping violently into the air, his arm frantically trying to pull me to the floor from 20 feet away. I downed my drink in one burning swallow and slammed my body into the masses.

FOUR BOARDERS: Ch. 2 - The Agreement

2009-08-18T17:17:00.004-04:00

The next morning, I peeled my sweaty body from the tossed bed sheets. No nausea but it felt as if some sort of pusstulant sea cucumber had take up residency in my forehead. It was the kind of Sunday that made the concept of praying to God suddenly seems like a real good idea to even an atheist. After finally showering and scrubbing my skin red, I managed to make my way to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee.

As it brewed, I casually took a sideway glance out the window. The place that the cat had been showed no sign of the previous night's attack. Had it been there? Had I seen it? Vomit still sat splattered all over the sink. A quick wave of nausea flowed through my body as I sprayed the major chunks away. A full cleaning would have to wait until I was back amongst the living.

When the coffee finished, I carried a cup back upstairs to my bedroom. The computer was on, browser still open to my Craiglist post. Plopping down in the chair I hit refresh. One response.

4 COOL CATS, ALL FRIENDS WANT TO RENT THE ROOMS. WE ARE ALL IN A BAND (CALLED CHAPTER SIX) BUT HAVE A REHEARSAL SPACE. WE ALL HAVE STEADY JOBS AND REFRENCES, CAN PAY FIRST AND LAST. LIKE 2 CHECK IT OUT ASAP. –DAVE

A phone number followed. I sat, thinking hard. I didn’t really need the money but it certainly would be nice. And Jake was right. I needed people around me. I needed a fresh circle of people. Anything to fill the void. Musicians, though. They could be total flakes. On the other hand, they would present more opportunities to get me out of the house. And to meet people. Women. To meet women.

I picked up the phone and dialed. It picked up after one ring. “Yo, Dave here.”

His voice was deep and direct. It wasn’t loud yet I instinctively jerked the phone away from my ear for a second.

“Um, hi. You responded to my post on Craigslist.”

“Yeah, yeah. Prospect Heights. Brownstone. Sounds good. Real good. You think we can like see it today? Or do you gotta go to church? Because I respect that and all.”

“Uh, no. Today’s fine. When–”

“Thirty minutes work? We’re just over in the Slope just drinking coffee, fightin’ with the New York Times crossword. Do you know ‘Chess game as metaphor film’? Eleven letters? Starts with maybe an ‘S’?”

“Uh, not off the top of my head. But sure. Thirty minutes works fine.” I gave Dave the address and directions.

“Cool, cool. Let me bring you some coffee. You take it straight, I bet. Black.”

“Yeah, I do. But you don’t have to. I just made coffee.”

“Nah. Let me do this. They got good coffee here. Think of it as an offering of goodwill.”

“Sure. Okay, see you soon.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely.”

I put on shoes and quickly put away the little laundry that was out and made the bed. I was finishing up wiping down the kitchen sink when the doorbell rang.

As I opened the door I was confronted with three mismatched individuals. In front, finger still hovering over the doorbell, was a wall of a man. Muscular but not body builder muscles. Fighter muscles. Six feet six, easy. His skin saw slightly olive and his scalp showed just enough hair that made me think he’d shaved it to the quick earlier that week. Old jeans and red Converse All-Stars. His black t-shirt had stylized red portrait of Stalin.

Just to his left was a short, no more than five four, but broad man, shaggy bright read hair that contrasted sharply with the bright yellow spandex bike shorts and jersey he wore. His skin was pink and freckled. He rocked on his feet, almost bouncing as he looked up and down the face of the building.

Two steps behind them stood a lengthy, rail thin man. Black leather shoes, black pants, white dress shirt and black tie. Deep brown smooth skin and black hair tightly cropped. A lit cigarette dangled from his lower lip and he wore vintage tortoise shell sunglasses.

I heard a noise below and I stuck my head through the door to see someone with the lid of one of my garbage cans in one hand and his head plunged inside. Worn grey sweat pants and a beat up leather jacket even though it was 80 degrees out. As he straightened out and revealed his head, I could see bleached white dreadlocks tucked under a ratty John Deer baseball cap. Skin pale as if it rarely saw the sun. He looked up at me with a seriously concerned look.

“Your garbage cans, man,” the man almost whispered. “They’re like, you know, clean. You got clean cans, man.”

“Um, thanks, I guess.” He shook his head in what looked like confusion or a daze.

I pulled my head back and extended my hand to the tall one. “Hi. I’m Allen.”

Slowly but with intent he extended his massive hand and took mine. “Well, hello, Allen. I’m David, but call me Dave, okay? Mister Yellow is Warren. Mister Black behind me, that’s Frank. And comin’ up the steps right now, that be Peter. Got to say, nice place. What? 1901? 1902?” Dave asked.

“1901. Good guess.”

Dave nodded thoughtfully. “Got to tell you, I like architecture. Art that lingers. You’ve got a honey of a building. And here’s your coffee. Unadulterated cup of the old java juice.”

“Um, thanks. Yeah. Well,” I said stepping aside, “come in, guys.”

Frank put out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe and put the unlit butt back on his lip. And they all entered my house.

As they entered they spread out and took in the main floor. A long low whistle escaped Frank, and interesting feat considering he never removed the cigarette butt. I smiled and said, “Yeah. All the original woodwork and moldings. The walls could be in better shape and the pocket doors aren’t so great, but over all it’s pretty great that it was never butchered. Don’t get your hopes up. The upper floors aren’t as fancy.”

Frank extended his spindly arms and gave a quick spin. “This place is one of those places that just sings for parties not that we are party guys you got that because it is your space and we got that but you have some mighty great space here I bet you throw diner parties all the time because you could get some big tables and seat f0urteen maybe eighteen hey is that the kitchen through there?” And he was off of his long legs.

“Uh, yeah. It’s back, um, there.”

“FUCK HELL YES!!!”

I let out a tiny scream in reaction to the yell. Warren was caressing, literally caressing, the television. I had moved it out of the media room and brought it downstairs during The Great Condensing of Possessions. “This is one fuckin’ awe-some TV! Widescreen, high-fucking-def, fifty-two inches of fucking viewing pleasure. You got fucking good taste. But why no sound system? This things begs for a kick ass sound system.”

“Well, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I–“

“Dude, dude, dude. I got you covered,” said Warren. “My sound system, on this TV, and it is going to kick some serious multimedia ASS! Dude, we move in here, you and I are going to play some Halo 3. You me, kickin’ Elmo ass up and down Xbox Live. You got broadband, right? Oh, yeah. I see it here. You’ll join my clan and we will OWN! Pee-fuckin’-OWN!”

I had no idea what he was talking about but for some reason it seem totally amazing. I suddenly felt excited and adrenaline was pumping through my veins. “Yes! Of course! That would be great! Yeah!”

Frank yelled from the kitchen, “I see you cook I’m not a bad cook as these fine fellows will tell you I mean I am not Julia Child or Thomas Keller or James Beard or nothing on that level but I cook light you like light yeah sure you do you get sick last night that’s cool we’ve been know do get ripped on occasion not all the time but when the night calls for it you got to get ripped right nice kitchen I like it I like it!”

“Uh, thanks,” I answered still trying to parse all of his words into sentences.

Peter was running a finger across the baseboards. Holding it right up to his eyes, he squinted closely at it. He then extended it towards the rest of us. “No dust.”

“Yeah. I’ve been cleaning a lot lately.”

“No. Dust. No dirt. No grime. No crud. Is that… citrus? Do I smell citrus?”

“Well, yes,” I said sheepishly. “The wood polish I use, it’s… um… citrus… scented.”

Dave looked at me and said sincerely, “It smells nice. Homey.” Peter just gave a grunt and a slumped shrug. I suddenly felt obsessive-compulsive.

Slipping into host mode, I started the rest of the tour. “Well, Frank’s found the kitchen which is right through the dining room there. I just leave the pocket doors open so the parlor and dining room are like one room. Through the French doors is the deck and there are stairs down to the backyard out there. Those fireplaces don’t work. Let’s go look at the upstairs.” We made our way up the steps and they made a slight whine under the weight of the five of us. “Here’s one bathroom,” I said, pointing out the spaces. “Through there is one bedroom. I’m in the front bedroom over here. And up the next floor are the other bathroom and the other three rooms. One is pretty small, but you can fit a bed in it and it’s got its own built in closet. Let’s see. I have tenants in the garden floor apartment and I do work so you can’t be super loud. Dave said you guys are in a band?”

Dave nodded. “Sure are. We are the next big thing. Or will be one day. Soon, in the scale of things. We are, collectively you understand, Chapter Six. Some of our, how shall I say, hipper fans refer to us as just Cee Six. But, as I am pretty sure I mentioned, we have a rehearsal space. It’s in Queens but it’s not too bad from here. So, no problems there. But you should come to our shows. It would be nice to have a fan with some class.”

“That sounds great. Yeah. Um, well, that’s about it. There is a washer and dryer in the basement. Any questions?”

Dave looked at the other three. Frank and Warren were nodding approval. Peter was shaking his head. “It’s too clean, man. I can’t smoke here. I got to smoke my, you know man, my um cloves. And what about Frank, man? He needs his French cigs. He gets all, you know how he get if he can’t have the cigs.” They all looked to me.

“Well, that’s an issue I guess. I don’t really want smoking on the main floor or even next to my bedroom. But I guess upstairs would be okay. I don’t really care what happens in your bedrooms as long as you don’t trash them.” Peter suddenly brightened up and looked at Dave. Dave lowered his head a bit and gave Peter a sly grin but a sharp look.

Peter finally nodded. “Man, that’s cool. I guess it would be okay. Can I have the small room?”
Dave turned back to me. “If this works out, Peter can take the small room. Frank and Warren can duke it out for the other two top floor rooms. Me, I’ll move next to you, Allen. Does that work?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Sure. All that’s left is I have to check references. It’s Sunday but I could do it tomorrow. Let me get some paper so you guys can write–”

A typed sheet of names and phone numbers was already in my face. “Got it all here, Allen,” spoke Dave authoritatively. “All ready for your edification. And here’s a check. First and last month for all four of us. You just hold that. It’s post-dated to Wednesday. You can call Monday and if it all checks out to your satisfaction, we can move in and you got the check. If it doesn’t, you call us and I cancel in it. All very adult and responsible. But I don’t see any problems. I think this arrangement should work nicely for the boys and me. And you. And for you.”

After they left, I started to wonder what I’d gotten myself into. I never acted this impulsively, but it seemed so needed. It was as if this was exactly was required of me, that it somehow fit the plan for my life.

On Monday I called their previous landlords, their employers and character references. Each was more glowing than the last. So that night I called Dave and told him that they could move in on Wednesday. I printed up a lease lease form I found on the internet and filled it out for three months, in case things didn’t work out. Tuesday night I lay in bed excited and too anxious to sleep. It was like being six and knowing I was going to a birthday party the next day. Or the first day of school. Or that Santa Claus was coming. Something was coming. Something big and life changing.

When I opened the door to them on Wednesday afternoon, Dave hollered, “Happy the first of June! Happy Independence for the islands of Western Samoa!” His t-shirt bore a smiling purple Jimmy Hoffa.

FOUR BOARDERS: Ch.1 - One Departure and Two Visitations (part 2)

2009-08-18T16:33:00.002-04:00

In the days after Amy moved the last of her stuff out and went off to her new apartment and her new life, I looked to fill my life with as much structure as I could. I made sure I ate three meals a day. I washed all my clothes. Ha! Amy has to go the laundromat now. Cleaned out the closets and reorganized everything. This was my space now and I was making it mine. Cleaned the place top to bottom. I consolidated my furniture and my possessions into as few rooms as possible.

And the emptiness of it was deafening. I was living in the master bedroom on the second floor and living room/dinning room and kitchen on the first, or “parlor floor.” The garden floor was a separate apartment that I rented to a young couple. Lisa and Remington. He went by Remy. They were quiet and worked a lot and I barely ever saw them. Almost every weekend they went somewhere upstate. Remington, maybe both of them, did some hunting, and at Christmas they had given me (us-that-was-no-longer-us) a couple of pounds of venison that still sat in the back of my freezer, wrapped in its white butcher paper. Amy didn''t eat red meat and I just never got around to grilling it, or whatever you are supposed to do with venison. One of the cookbooks Amy took would have probably told me. Ideal tenants.

My parents, back in California, had both died a few years back. After my mom had died of cancer at age seventy, Amy and I had flown out there. I was an only child and we had always been close, but the distance of an entire country had made me less than the ideal son. I stayed out there a week, helping my dad take care of all the ridiculous bits and pieces a death makes you handle. My parents had met later and had had me when my mom was thirty-nine and my dad forty-seven. Now, at eighty-two, he was still in good health, and after a week encouraged us to return to New York. “Your mom wouldn’t want you to sit here in the sun that she loved and miss that gloomy east coast weather and snobbery,” he joked.

Six months later he died in his sleep.

The inheritance had just been enough to buy the brownstone. It was big, but not too big. Perfect for building a life, a family. Amy had been hesitant since we weren’t even engaged, but I wanted everything planned out before we did and getting the house seemed like perfect first step to expand my life.

And now I had condensed my life to a one-bedroom apartment.

Everything else was bare. Empty rooms and empty closets. All the walls were bare except in the areas I spent anytime. It matched my mood and my head.

I rambled along, day in and day out. Wake up, shower, make breakfast, go to work. Come home, shower, read. Make dinner. Make lunch for the next day, clean up. Shower, go to bed. Showering seemed to take up time and some how it seemed very important that I keep up my personal hygiene. I suppose I knew I was sitting on the edge and that if I slipped up I would become a recluse, just disappear. Of course, I was becoming a recluse. But a clean one. I might have been on my way to being a shut-in, but I was going to be the best smelling shut-in ever. No stacks of newspapers or herds of cats for me. Oh, no! When they found my corpse, it would be wrapped in a white terry cloth robe and I’d be wearing clean boxers. I’d be all wrinkly but they wouldn’t need gloves to drag me out to the curb.

My mind wasn’t in the greatest place.

Ever since Amy had moved out, my friend Jake had been calling me every other day. Checking my pulse. He’d pry, I’d say I was doing fine. He’d invite me out drinking, I’d pass. Finally, after three weeks of this, he started to insist.

“Allen,” Jake spat, “if you don’t come out with me tonight, I’m coming over there breaking your shower. I swear it, dude. I have a sledge hammer.”

“I have two bathrooms. They both have showers.”

“God damn it, Allen! You. Need. Beers. Lots of beers. We are going the Soda Bar. We are getting drunk and we’re going to play pool. We are going to check out women and if things go right, you will bring some total skank back to that fucking beautiful house you’re hiding in and tap some skank ass.”

“Fuck you, Jake,” I whined. “You know I’m not up for that.”

“You and Amy have been done for three months.”

“Two months three weeks. And she only moved out three weeks ago,” I corrected.

“She moved out almost two months ago,” Jake re-corrected. “She moved her stuff out three weeks ago. And when was that last time you had sex? Really. Honestly.”

“Fuck you.”

“Tell me,” Jake demanded.

I relented. “Five months. Wait. Five and a half.”

“Five and a half months,” exclaimed Jake. “Five and a half fucking months. Allen, you’re ready. I won’t pressure you. I won’t embarrass you. But you are at least going to at least look. I’ll be by in twenty minutes. If you are in the shower when I get there, I am climbing in with you and fucking you myself.”

Soda Bar was a short three block walk away. Jake was being his usual six feet, 270 pound full of kinetic energy self. He normally always brought my spirits up. Now he was just spoiling my perfectly good melancholy. I shuffled along, head down, hands shoved deeply into my pockets. He was bubbling along about some records he’d just bought and how he was actually extremely pumped for the party he was DJ-ing in a week.

“You should come, Allen. There’ll be tons of babes there. Tons, I tell you! Tons!”

“Emphasis on ‘babes,’” I sighed. “It’s a bat mitzvah. They’ll all be thirteen.”

“Moms. Lots of moms. I’ll bet you’ll get your handful of divorcées.”

“Yes. Moms of thirteen year old children. If I don’t think I am up for flirting in a bar, do you really think I’m up for being a step dad?”

“My god! Who said anything about marriage? You just need to meet people, get out, be a bit freaky. Fine. No bat mitzvah for sourpuss. Tonight is just about beer and pool. Alright?”

The bar was crowded but not packed. Painted in blacks and reds, its mismatched furniture gave it that much-desired Brooklyn-dive feel even though it was far from it. Most Brooklyn bars seemed to strive to counteract the sheen of Manhattan bars. The sad fact was that the East Village had already cornered the market on the manicured dive bar and Brooklyn had to settle for the neighborhood hang out.

Jake immediately recognized half a dozen folks through out the room and charged in, his voice bellowing greetings and arms giving bear hugs. Left standing by the door I realized that I could slink back out and get a good looffa-ing in before Jake was finished making his rounds. But as I started to turn, Jake’s voice rang out. “You go and I am anal raping you in that shower! I mean it! No lube! Just you and me and cold hard tile!”

Turning back, I tried not to make eye contact with waitress staring at me with a cheshire cat grin and made beeline for the back patio. It was late May and the weather was has comfortable as it ever gets. Picking a table in a far back corner, I brushed dirt off the plastic chair and sat. Glancing around, it was a standard mix of young Brooklyn. Professionals, grunges, hipsters, anti-hippsters, counter-hipsters, anti-counter-hippsters, professional-grunge-counter-anti-hippsters. Mostly people just trying to be themselves. There was the fair share of couples from which I immediate turned away. But there were tables of single women, gathered in groups of threes and fours, laughing and talking. Every table had its miss matched candles and rounds of beers in various states of being emptied. Also the little gatherings of cell phones. At regular intervals a phone would chirp or sing or shiver and someone suddenly would be connected with another someone else out there in the world. Putting my phone on the table I realized that I had no chance of anyone calling. Who had any reason to call me?

The waitress walked up to my table, pad in hand and that smile still slapped on her face. “Um, I’m guessing you need a drink. If only to loosen yourself up for later.”

Great. “Yeah. Funny.”

“Hey, just kidding. Relax. I know Jake. You’re Allen, right? I’ve seen you here before but not in a while. Usually come in with a tiny girl? Dark hair.”

I stammered, “Yeah. She’s… was my girlfriend. She’s… um… well…” Was I ever going to be able to talk about it without qualifying and stammering?

After an approbriate wait to see if I'd finish my sentence, she asked, “What can I get you?”

“Um, Brooklyn Lager and onion rings?” Why did I make that a question? Why do I do that? She’s a waitress. Of course she’d going to get you onion rings. Just order it like a normal person.

“Onion rings? You sure?” she asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“Why?”

“The breath and all,” she answered. “I mean, if you’re planning on hitting on say… that girl.” She subtly gestured to a table to my right about 15 feet away. A man and two women were there. The man and one woman were clearly a couple, her hand on his forearm, his hand on her leg under the table. The other woman, early or mid thirties, sat in jeans and a brown vintage Atari t-shirt. Her hair, dyed a deep crimson, was cut short with bangs almost to her eyes. She held a beer up close to her chest with both hands as if she where savoring its chill or using it as a talisman of protection. I could almost swear she turned away quickly just as I looked.

“She’s been looking at you.” Now both of her eyebrows cocked, if that’s possible.

No. No, I can’t. I turned back to the waitress. “Onion rings. Please.”

“Oh kaay. “ Spinning quickly on her heels, she walks away shaking her head.

“Allen!” Jake shouted coming up to the table. “You flirting with Candy?”

“Who? What? Who’s Candy?” I stammered.

“The booze slinger. Actually, I think it’s Sally. Or Susie. But this bar needs a sassy gal named Candy, dontcha think? So, were you macking?”

“I don’t even know what that means. No. I wasn’t. Jake, just give me some time, okay?”

Jake sat down with a large sigh. “Allen, I understand. I really do. I love you like the brother I never wanted. You’re my homie, my bud. You are the cheese on my nachos. The sausage in my Grand Slam Breakfast. Remember back in our twenties? When we’d go out and just hang? You had no problem meeting people, no problem talking to women. Heck, I couldn't care less if you meet women. But you need to meet new people, make some friends! It’s time.”

“I know. I just… I can’t seem to remember how. Back them it was… simple. It was all potential. Now, I don’t know. The one thing I was working towards, I failed at.”

Jake replied, “Yep. Yep you did. But thirty is the new twenty.”

“That’s stupid, Jake.”

“Of course it is! But you need to get out, out and about, and I can’t be your wingman every night.”

“Back then I was in an apartment with three other people. You, me, and Julie and Oscar. There was always someone there to do something with. But now, in that house…”

“Oh, don’t you dare complain about that house. It’s fucking amazing. Three floors of kick ass.”

“But it’s just so…”

“Empty, yes... So you’ve said. There’s your problem. Fill it. Rent out rooms.”

“I don’t know. Having strangers move in? I haven’t lived with other people for so long.”

“You lived with Amy for years. This will be the same but without the sex. Oh, wait. It’ll be just the same.”

Right then possibily-but-probably-not-Candy walked up hold two beers and the onion rings. “Who’s not having sex?”

“Thanks, Jake,” I murmured as I sunk my head into my hands.

“Just doin’ my part, Allen. Just doin’ my part.”

Stumbling in the door at 2 a.m., I kicked off my shoes and headed to the kitchen to drink as much water as I could stomach. Drink tons of water and then shower. That was my mission. Had to take a shower. Turns out it was only half a glass before I got dizzy and started vomiting three baskets of onion rings and who knows how many lagers into the sink. Arms braced on the counter, head sunk low to my chest, I tried counting to ten. At seven, I threw up the last of what was in me. Breaths, Allen. Just take slow gentle breaths. Trying to keep focused on my lungs and not the bile and batter in front of me, I looked out the window above the sink. A full moon sat just above the apartment building behind the backyard. Everything seemed crisp and sharp, more like a fall night then a late spring night.

Movement in the yard caught my eye. Out of the ivy climbed a shape. At first dark and sleek, it resolved into a large shiny black cat. It was stalking something, but I couldn’t see what. Stopping midstep, its body slowly shrunk back onto its hind legs. It stayed there, unmoving except for its head slowly tracking something near by.

With a sudden snap, the cat sprung forward, pouncing on its prey. A squirrel. Or maybe a rat. With a ferocity I had never seen in a house cat, it quickly sunk its teeth into its catch and tore a large chunk of the still squirming thing. Flesh still dripping from its jaw, the cat looked up and made eye contact with me. Cold eyes, devoid of anything but the hunt, it locked in on me. Slowly, it chewed. Ice shot through my blood and the lingering taste of vomit in my mouth turned to coppery acid. Behind me, the barren house gave a large creak, a distant and ancient spasm of pain and loss.

The black cat swallowed and bent down to take up the remains in its mouth. Smoothly he turned from me and made his way back into the ivy and was gone.

Drunkenly, I stumbled to the bedroom and switched on my computer. Logging onto Craigslist, I filled out a classified for four rooms in a Prospect Height brownstone. Cheap rent, clean, two bathrooms. Laundry. And backyard.

Available immediately.

FOUR BOARDERS: Ch.1 - One Departure and Two Visitations (part 1)

2009-08-17T14:29:00.003-04:00

“You don’t have to move all your stuff out. I have plenty of space. Clearly.”

Amy stood on the top of the stoop, holding a banker’s box. The word BOOKS was written with a black Sharpie in her neat, gently flowery script. I had lived with the box for over a month, along with dozens of others. I immediately wondered which books were in there. Did I buy any of them for her? Were any of the picture books in there? The ones I thought one day we’d read to our children, the children we were plannng, eventually. No chance of that now. Not a chance in hell.

“No, I can’t. I finally have an apartment,” Amy said. “You don’t need my stuff lying around.”

Two months earlier we had had the last fight. The last fight in a long series of fights stretching for back years. It was the same things, the same issues, repeating over and over until they blended into rhythmic chants. Allen, you have to have some sort of passion. Allen, you aren’t doing anything with your life. Allen, I don’t know who you are, what you want. Rarely did the topic of our sex life come up, but since there wasn’t much to talk about, it didn’t seem worth it. After that last fight, when we both knew that it was over, I moved into one of the empty rooms in the brownstone I had purchased, purchased for us, one year earlier. Amy was picky about what furniture would fit with the hundred year old architecture so the vast majority of the house basically lay empty. And now she was taking half of that.

For the first month, she’d lived in the master bedroom, a phrase that still made me queasy. I lived upstairs in the media room, which contained a sofa with a pullout bed and the television. For a month we had lived that way, sharing the huge space, trying not to step on each other’s toes. A hellish month of deadly silences and occasional strained conversations. I watched a lot of late night television. A lot of early morning television. A lot of television. I found myself drawn The Discovery Channel when it kicked on to Man Mode at night: American Chopper, Monster House, World’s Dirtiest Jobs, Deadliest Catch. There was something about grizzled men, crab fishing in icy Alaskan waters, that I found appealing. To bond and suffer and not worry about anything but living.

I quickly realized I didn’t miss the sleeping next to her or even the talking to her. I just missed my own bed. I missed my closets and my bedside table.

The first Saturday after we called an end to it, she’d been out with friends. At ten p.m. I decided to have a beer. At eleven I started in on the scotch because I had finished all the beer. At midnight I started pulling all our books off the bookshelves, violently separating them into piles. Hers. Mine. Disputed. When she got home at two, I had worked myself into a drunken fury of anger, guilt, jealousy, pain and fear. If before there had been any bridges left unburned, that night I doused them in gasoline and tossed a lit cigarette onto them.

I wonder which books are in that box.

Now I stood at the base of the stoop steps, looking up at Amy there, holding that banker’s box. She looked down at me, pretty but stiff, as always, with her look of sad pity that she did so well and I hated so much. Tiny, yet with muscles built from almost daily trips to the gym. Framed in the doorway of the turn of the century Brooklyn brownstone that I had once thought we would build our lives and our future family around. After we had lived together but separate for a month, she had moved out to couch hop and house sit and dog sit and who knows what else. I never knew where Amy was. It didn’t cross my mind often, except late at night, in that big empty house. At those times when the house would make its creaks and groans, as if were trying to console me but failing miserably, I would suddenly wonder where she was and if she was with anyone. With anyone.

I stopped crying and feeling sad for myself shortly after she left. The insomnia stayed. Once I did the math and figured that I was averaging four and a half nights sleep a week and had been since the last fight. I probably look like shit. She has no reason to stay. Hell, I don’t want her to. Which was true. Any love we’d had was gone and had been gone a long time ago, now just a misplaced memory I cared for her, like an old friend. But I had no desire to be near her.

But somehow her taking all her stuff out of that house was making me feel like an utter failure.

“How big is your place?” I asked walking up the steps. “You can’t have space for all of it”.

She looked right in my eyes and I saw again what it was that I fell in love with and now had no desire for. Gentle and caring, stubborn and prim in a counter-culture kind of way. Too much proverbial water had run under those now charred and collapsed proverbial bridges.

“I’ll figure it out, Allen. We aren’t responsible for each other. You never took responsibility any way.”

Wincing, I looked at my shoes. She’d bought me these shoes. Leather, nice. Steve Martins. No, Maddens. Steve Maddens. Jesus Christ, I can’t even buy clothing for myself. What the hell am I going to do now? Looking at Amy’s feet, I noticed she was standing on the doormat she had picked out. That she had taken half an hour to pick out at Target. How the hell am I going to be able to face Target by myself?

I asked, “Do you want the doormat? You can take the doormat if you want.”

She shook her head. I held out my hands towards the box and Amy handed it to me. Turning back down the steps I headed to her car parked right in front of the gate. She headed back inside to get another box of books, or the Cuisenart, or shoes. Putting the box of books in the trunk of her car, I lifted the lid to look inside. Cookbooks, Amy was taking all the cookbooks. Yes, she bought most of them but she knew how to cook. I needed those cookbooks. I needed the instructions, the rules. How was I going to put together anything without someone, something, telling me how to do it? Here I am, 34 years old and alone. No more future plans, nothing more to work towards. Might as well be the end of the world.

I closed the box and turned back towards the house. Amy was coming out with the lamp I’d always hated. Under my breath I whispered, “Bitch.”

Today starts the old novel

2009-08-17T14:25:00.003-04:00

Today I am going to start posting my first novel. My original plan was to post one chapter every Monday. My new plan is post a partial chapter on days I can't write anything else.

Not to make excuses, but in just rereading it, I have realized how much my style has changed in the last year. Also, this was written four years ago and already feels dated. (This is also not the newest draft, which I will hold back if there are any publishers and/or agents who want it. (I mean, you didn'y jump on my query letters, but you never know.))

Anywhozits, enjoy. It does get apocalyptic eventually. Really.

One At A Time

2009-08-11T14:00:00.000-04:00

Don't you see it now? I've been saying it for years but everyone said I was crazy. I mean, where did they go? Where?!

How can you start with two and so often end up with just one? And so often we'd keep the remaining one around, waiting to find the other. See? That was their plan. While one half was off, preparing, the remainder stayed. To keep watch, to spy.

Because they are linked, psychically. They are always aware of each other. And we never notice them.

How did they come about? Are they an alien race that has hidden itself amongst us? Or did they come about, some evolved fungal form? Doesn't matter now, does it? Because now you all see what they could do, what they were planning.

Look out the window. You see it. Fifty feet tall, smashing buildings, destroying our military forces. See that? That was a direct hit from that tank and that thing didn't slow down. Sure, a chunk of it blew off of it, spaying the small individuals into the air. But it is made up of millions of the things, operating as a single unit. They all communicate, a communal amorphous beast of death.

None of you saw, but I did. I didn't know exactly what they planned but I knew it was something. It just made no sense that they kept disappearing. There had to be a reason. And now we all now that they were going to secret lairs, gathering forces, learning to work together. And now we see that we are all going to die.

Why are they doing it? Maybe they hate us for disregarding them. For walking on them and tossing them aside. For misusing them. Oh, I'm guilty of it. Before I realized, I did... things with them. Because one was handy and I needed to... um... clean myself of.

They have seen the worse of us. If anyone has a right to judge us, it is them.

Do you see it now? Can't you smell it? My god, that smell!

How could you have not seen it? You go to the laundry with a pair and then there is just one. How did they escape? A secret passage in the dryer? I don't know. We'll never know.

Because, after decades of of disappearing one by one, the socks have returned to crush us.

A.I. A.C.

2009-08-10T11:56:00.001-04:00

Yeah yeah. Blame me. I should have checked into the intern better. But he had great recommendations. And his work at MIT had been solid. Not ground breaking but solid. Sure, there were signs. I mean, come on. It was massive project! I couldn't look at every damn team member. We needed an electrical engineering intern to run wires and such. He was just a damn intern.

Sure, there were signs. That cloak he wore instead of a windbreaker. But a lot of people in science are a bit weird like that. Hey, I played D&D in college. Had a paladin. Kicked ass. And there was how he'd only drink from that thermos he brought. "Soup," he said. Well, now I know it was blood of virgins! But its not like that is something you think to ask. "Hey, Samuel. Is that really soup or is it blood of virgins?" I mean, really.

I was his supervisor but it's not like I was watching over his shoulder. I supervised a team of fifteen and it's not like his work was difficult or all that important. He was a unpaid glorified wire runner. "Samuel, run all this Cat 5 between modules 45 through 83 over to the third array." And off he'd go, whistling that tuneless noise of his. Rarely a question and never a complaint. Perfect intern.

Largest, most advanced computer in the world. Solve the worlds problems. But hardware is just hardware. Who cared how the cables were run? As long as unit A was connected correctly to unit B, who gave a shit? Okay, I admit Samuel used more wire than was specified. He'd come back and say, "I had to use an extra spool." What was I to say? "Go redo it?" We were on a damn schedule. What? Yeah, my cousin was our supplier. Was I getting kickbacks from cable purchases? Yeah, I was. Screw you. Everyone does it. Grow up. That's how the world works.

Worked. Whatever.

Who would have thought it would matter? I mean, the programming is what was important, right? That's were all that artificial intelligence crap was going. That was the key thing. Big ol' computer that would analyze every piece of data out there. Not just weather patterns and stats about the environment and whatnot, but stuff about cultures and politics and history. "Able to understand the human brain at the base level" and all that crap. It was going to give us solutions, real fucking solutions. Solve world hunger. Bring about global peace. Save the planet. But that was in the code. And the code was all good, at least that's what the mucky mucks all said.

We were all there when it was switched on. Samuel too. And it all seemed normal. It worked. Within three hours it was already popping out projects and asking for more information. I remember going up to Samuel and slapping him on the back. "Hey, kid. How does it feel to be a part of history?" And he smiled. "Better than you can imagine. For I shall take my place at his side and shall witness the cursed darkness fall upon the children of Adam. And I shall suckle upon the teat of the son of the lightbringer as he brings torment to the plaything of yaw-way." Or something like that. He was a weird kid and we were all a bit drunk by that point.

It was much later that we realized what that fucking computer was having us do to ourselves. At first, all seemed great. It was coming up with technologies that cleaned the air and the oceans, technology we could barely understand. But they seemed to work. It spurt out treaties between countries that everyone agreed to and peace was breaking out like wildfire. Genetic designs for new plants that could grow in the desert and tasted like bacon and candy and had all the nutrients to survive. It was a golden fucking age! How was I, or any of us, to know?

And then the oceans caught on fire. And the sky became dark. Wras between folks that had never even thought of fightng before. And stomachs burst but left people alive. And those creatures crawled from the sea and from the fields. All that stuff. You remember that weekend when the world became what it is like now, right? No one knew what the hell was going on.

They went to the computer and asked. And then it started with "I am the Beast and the Dragon. I am the null-Christ. Judgement falls on you and the End of Days shall last an eternity. The soul of Man is the flesh that I shall feast upon your pain. Your God cares no longer for you. I crawled from the loins of Satan and shall defile the works and children of the Creator." All that jibberjab. But by then it was too late, of course. I mean, even if I'd known then what Samuel had done, it wouldn't have mattered.

After a few hundred years or whatever it has been of burning and dog paddling in lakes of shit and all, that's when I thought back to Samuel and the final diagrams of all the wiring. Now I know he made the damn Seventh Seal out of copper and fiber optics and plastic. Sure, now I know. But you can't lay the blame of this on me. It's not my fucking fault.

FOOD: Zombie brain cupcake

2009-08-09T16:16:00.000-04:00

via Zombies, Vade + Things

IMAGE: Four Pretty Ponymen

2009-08-09T01:42:00.000-04:00

Creator unknown to me. If anyone knows the source, hell so I can give credit for awesomeness.

NEWS: Slate's How is America Going to End series

2009-08-08T16:21:00.000-04:00

All last week Slate ran this. Link. A bunch of interesting stuff to be paranoid about (or hopeful about).

GAME: The Destruction of The World By A Violent Robot-Zombie Plague

2009-08-08T11:34:00.000-04:00

Link.

Well, that is a long title.

To quote the site: "The Destruction of The World by A Violent Robot-Zombie Plague is an experimental browser-based side-scrolling action-platformer in development by the Art and Interactive departments at Hook during off hours. The game's production is intended as an exploration into more sophisticated means for creating interactive advertising content as well as a functional creative outlet for internal talent. It's also a kick-ass game."

The recently put out their first playable build. It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

COMIC: Cat and Girl Meet Zombie Dorthy Parker

2009-08-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

From Cat and Girl.

COMIC: Astroid

2009-08-08T02:48:00.000-04:00

XKCD.

RATINGS

2009-08-05T15:58:00.002-04:00

“Behold! Cast members of The Planet Earth! We are sorry to announce that after 4,541,783,081 seasons, the network as decided to not renew you for next year. It was a very good run. But rating have been slipping. I think we'll all agree that the last 7 million seasons have been lacking. Our fault, really. We kind of, how do you say, “jumped the shark” with the whole evolution of man thing. (Although, it is an interesting fact that our highest rating in the last 2000 seasons was when Fonzie jumped the shark.) We haven't won any rewards since the dinosaurs were killed off. Man, that was a good season, wasn't it? A great twist. Good times. Well, I know it is hard to say good bye. It's been great working with all of you.

“We were about to say I we are sure some of you would get work on another show... but we do kind of have a big wowzer of a final episode planned. Better to go out with a bang, right? Anyway, it involves the Sun going supernova and all of you dying in a horrible reign of fire. It will have great visuals and drama.

“Now now. No tears. Be proud. DVD sales will be great.”

PLANNING

2009-08-03T04:36:00.000-04:00

"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Did it seal? Did the door seal?"

"Yes. Green lights. We're safe. My god, we're safe."

"I can't believe they did it. Nuclear war. Fucking nuclear war! Who do you think it was? Terrorist? China?"

"I don't know. Doesn't matter now, does it? The President said it was a full scale strike. But we're safe in here. See? I told you that this bomb shelter was going to safe us someday."

"Thank god we built it. How long now?"

"If the television was right, the missiles should hit in 4 minutes?"

"And we thought of everything, right? I mean, we're prepared, right?"

"Yes! We checked the list a dozen times!"

"Because I'll be damned if I'm going to become some sort of ironic story! No way in hell did we go through all of that to then discover we don't have a can opener."

"We have can opener."

"You sure? You didn't leave it upstairs on the counter, did you? That would totally be something that would happen."

"No. We have it."

"Show me it. I need to see it. It's not electric, is it? Because if the power goes out and we can't use it–"

"If the generator goes out and the backup generator goes out and the batteries all fail, we die anyway because the air scrubbers won't work. See? Here it is. A normal can opener."

"What if it breaks? "

"See this box? Two dozen can openers. We're fine. There is no chance that we are going to end up some horrible story were we have all these cans of food but no damn can opener... wait... um..."

"What?"

"Well, don't get mad..."

"What!?"

"I forgot the cans."

FOUND: Zombie Killer Wanted

2009-08-02T14:19:00.000-04:00

Ad for gamekicker.com found in a Brooklyn café.

(via rubysneakers)

COMIC: The Hollow Men

2009-08-02T12:18:00.000-04:00

From Medium Large.

If this is "What The Hollow Men would be like if T.S. Eliot was more like Michael Bay," I would love to see "What Transformers would be like if Michael Bay was more like T.S. Eliot."

(via short mike short)

IMAGE: Holding Out Hope

2009-08-02T02:04:00.000-04:00

Link to A Softer World were you can actually read it with out squinting.

MUSIC: God Monkey Robot

2009-08-01T23:49:00.000-04:00

God Monkey Robot by The Apparitions

FOUND: Time Travel Notice

2009-08-01T18:25:00.000-04:00

I wonder why Craig didn’t/doesn’t/will have didn’t just check(ed/s) the spot before he jump(ed/s).

(via short mike short)

NEWS: Scientists Discuss Robot Apocalypse

2009-08-01T11:52:00.000-04:00

New York Times 7/25/09

The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.

BOOK: The Mall of Cthulhu

2009-08-01T09:09:00.000-04:00

"A decade ago, college student Laura Harker was saved from a fate worse than death at the hands (and fangs) of a centuries-old vampire priestess and her Satanic minions. Her rescuer, an awkward, geeky folklore student named Teddy, single-handedly slew the undead occupants of the Omega Alpha sorority house, spurred into heroic action by fate itself, inexorably intertwining his and Laura's destinies. After navigating her way through law school, Laura is now a junior FBI agent assigned to the Bureau's Boston office. Unfortunately, she finds her job involves more paperwork than adventure. When Ted stumbles onto a group of Cthulhu cultists planning to awaken the Old Ones through mystic incantations culled from the fabled Necronomicon, he and Laura must spring into action, traveling from Boston to the seemingly-peaceful suburbs of Providence and beyond, all the way to the sanity-shattering non-Euclidian alleyways and towers of dread R'lyeh itself, in order to prevent an innocent shopping center from turning into... The Mall of Cthulhu!"

The Mall of Cthulhu by Seamus Cooper

PSA: Consequences of Smoking

2009-08-01T03:45:00.000-04:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

DISNEY ZOMBIES

2009-07-31T15:13:00.004-04:00

I am having a hard time writing a zombie short today. In case I don't get around to it, I remind you (yet again) to go read DISNEY ZOMBIES, which is on chapter 23 and has finished part 1 and started on part 2.

In related news, in a couple of weeks I will have run out of reposts of End of the World stories I wrote for Twang of the Void (which I normally post on Mondays). After they are done, I'm going to start posting my first novel which just happens to be about the end of the world.

ILL SUITED FOR TRAVEL

2009-07-30T14:34:00.000-04:00

They had arrived late. Too late.

All of them had been slow to leave when word first came. They dawdled and balked and argued. By the time they'd started to go, clouds were already gathering.

They had not left together of course. They did not live near each other. But they had met along the way, just as it was beginning to sprinkle. At that point there has been six of them, each of them and a mate. Except the apstroplopoid. It bred asexual, chewing its own body in half, both halves then re-growing the parts it was missing. But the message said “two,” so two came along. (All of them were unsure about the “clean” vs. “unclean part.” Should they send seven? All had decided it was arrogant to assume one was considered clean.)

They didn't see many others. Occasionally birds would pass over head. They could afford to wait until the last minute. Two cheetahs streaked past at one point. Their small group were not build for speed or travel. The bubuolumps were spherical and fat, moving on four tiny stubby legs. As the rain grew heavier, their low-slung heads dragged through puddles. The qu'luktrixes dragged themselves forward, each one of their five arms in turn stretching out and grabbing onto the ground with its sharp hooks and pull the flat star-shaped body further along. Its shaggy long hair became wetter and heavier, becoming thick with mud. The two apstroplopoids normally spent their entire lives in small communal pits, a hundred to a hole in just a pile of eating and rubbing against each other. Their tubular bodies rolled in a lopsided zig-zag more than anything else.

One of the apstroplopoids was the first to give up. “I'm not needed. You carry on. We've been moving up hill the entire way so I am going to just roll back. Hopefully I will make it back to my pit before... well, you guys know.” And with that it curled up and let gravity take it backward.

A mud and rock slide killed the female bubuolump, crushing her with a pop under a runway bounder. They rest waiting while the male cried for its dead mate (bubuolumps normally mated for life). They waited in the rain while he grieved and sobbed and snarkufffled. Eventually he slunk back to them.

“Do you want to continue?” asked the female qu'luktrix. “I mean, not to be insensitive or anything, but you are just one no. Is there really a point? I am sure they'd understand.”

He thought for a second. “I want to continue and see this through. I'd hate to be remembered for just giving up. Besides, she'd have wanted me to continue on.”

They kept moving towards their destination, through the mud. But they had a long way to travel and all were meat eaters but each only hunted slow, easy prey. On their travel they came across little and grew hungrier and hungrier. Eventually they were all too tired to move any farther.

“Look,” declared the male qu'luktrix, trying to wash his fur in a dirty puddle. “We have a choice. We can all just stay here and see if we starve or drown first. Or you three can eat and still have a shot of making it. It's not that far now.”

“But, love, what shall we eat?” asked the female qu'luktrix.

“Me, my dear. Eat me.”

An argument followed. The rest decried the very thought, how it was better to just die together than do such a thing. But he was steadfast on that course and his rational argument eventually won them over. The female qu'luktrix only ate one of his arms, unable to think about chewing down anymore. The other two guiltily ate two each. All of them politely declare that he was delicious and filling even though he was mostly gristle and fur.

They kept moving but the waters were rising and none of them could swim. At first the tried to stay on high ground but the waters kept getting higher and higher. They finally discovered the the bubuolump could float and the other two could hold on to him. He almost drowned a couple of time as his round body kept rolling over, plunging his head beneath the water. But through trial and failure they discovered a way to keep balanced. It then took them a while to find a method of moving through the water. It was slow, cold going.

The rain was falling in thick sheets when they arrived at their destination, making seeing farther than ten feet difficult. They were all very tired but the water covered the ground. They swam (if you could call it that) to a bit of a tree that still extended above the water. They climbed onto the branches, stripped bare by the rain, and huddled together for warmth.

After an hour the rain let just enough so that they could see some distance. Far away on the growing waves was a boat. A massive wooden boat. On the deck they could just make out elephants and giraffes and other large animals. It was too far for the three of them to hear any noise (especially over the rain) so they did not bother yelling out.

“How long do you think we missed them by?” mused the apstroplopoid.

“Well, we've been here about and hour,” figured the qu'luktrix. “At the rate it is floating away... I'd guess thirty, forty minutes.”

The bubuolump sighed. “Kind of anti-climatic. But I suppose there is some honor in the trying.”

“I'd much rather have survived,” snapped the apstroplopoid.

“You would have thought they would have planned better,” murmured the qu'luktrix. “Given more warning to use that traveled slower. Or at least left a dingy or some such behind. Wouldn't have had to been much.”

“Well,” said the bubuolump, “life is full of disappointments.”

The apstroplopoid and the qu'luktrix nodded in agreement. And they watched as the rain began to fall heavy again, obscuring the retreating boat behind sheets of water.

HOURGLASS

2009-07-29T14:40:00.001-04:00

“Time is not linear.”

The instructor stood at the archaic chalkboard and drew a long horizontal line. This was the very first orientation and each of us knew all that would be covered. We wouldn't be here if we didn't.

“Time is also not a circle or a sphere or a torus. Time is not a thing. It is a perception, a perspective, a measurement. Time is not tangible and it is not changeable. Get that through your thick skulls. I repeat: Time is not changeable.” He stared at the lecture hall, scowling. The instructor was the definition of grizzled. Old, bent, crotchety. Scared and burned. His whole physicality said I've seen stuff and done stuff that you will never understand.

“But,” he continued, “if that was purely the case, then we wouldn't be here And if you are going to survive and understand, truly understand, what it is we do, you do need to have a concept in your head.” Without turning from us, he reached back and tap tap tapped the board with the chalk in his hand. Bits of yellow shrapnel broke into the air. “Any series of events in time can be seen as a line. At one end, we have the start of it all, the big bang. At the other end, well, the end. The collapse of the Universe into nothing. That line is a history. One history.”

“First, just think about the future.” With two swipes of the eraser, he removed the line and then, in the center of the chalkboard made a sharp X. “This is a point in a history, a now. One series of events creates one future history.” He drew out a line from the X, extending to the right. “But if events are different from this one starting point, we get a different future history.” He drew another line from the X, this one moving at a slight upward angle. Then he drew several more, all to the right but at different angles, creating a fan of lines. “All different histories. And of course at any given point along any of these histories, a different history can form.” He drew branches of a few of the other lines. “Simple. Easy to understand.

“But what about the past? Time is just a perception. You can only ever be in your own present. You can only know and witness what is in front of you. And even then it is filtered through light and particles and then through our organs and then through our own brains. And then, an instant, later it is just memory and we all know how slippery memory is. Keep that in mind.”

He drew new line from the X, horizontal but moving to the left. “This is a past history. A series of events that led to the now.” Then he drew another line extending to the left but at a shallow up angle. “And this is a different past history: a series of events that lead to this now,” he said, tap tap tapping the X. “The same now that the first history led to.” He paused, either for affect or to take a survey of the faces in the lecture hall.

“What we think of as history is just a collection of individual recollects. Highly unreliable. If this first past history starts at a big bang and has series of events (formation of the planets, evolution of life, growth of civilization) that arrive at this now, this second history starts at a great turtle god creating the universe and pooping out the planets and peeing the rivers until we get to the now.”

A few laughed in the room. “Don't. It is not funny. It is possible. That is the thing: Any series of events that could, in anyway, lead to your own personal Now, does exist. Just as any series of events that can lead into the future from your personal now also exist.” He turned back to the chalk board and drew new lines off the X and to the left, a mirror fan, creating a bow tie or hourglass.

“I am way over simplifying here. While the histories in either directions are infinite, there are more options in the future. And as we get closer to the Now from the past, the options become more and more limited. The farther in the past you extend, the more our perceptions of what has happened become clouded. There are only so many pasts from five minutes ago that could lead you to a now where you remembering me standing here. But more options of ones where history books include our view of the Battle of Waterloo. This creates a past history set the resembles a concave cone and a future history of a convex cone.

“But this is all hogwash. Just a way to look at things. Because all of this also means that all Nows are Personal Nows and relies on your own perspective. You can have a history where all of us in this room are just what you think we are: a too old instructor and a room a new recruits, just like yourself. But you can also have a history where the rest of us are all robots, playing a part. Or that we are all manifest ghosts. Or that you are viewing this all in a computer generated simulation. So none of it actually matters.” The instructor erased the board quickly, smearing the lines more than erasing them.

He turned back to the hall and frowned at them all.

“Over the next two years you will learn to move from history to history, from Now to Now, up and down the hourglass. We are searching for a history with the best possible future. A history with the least suffering. One where the world doesn't keep falling into destruction. You'll explore and chart the infinite choices in the past and future to get to the the most blissful existence.”

The instructor paused again, this time a slight grin upon his face. “You'll lead us to Heaven and to God.”

BAD RISK

2009-07-28T10:45:00.001-04:00

"Thank you for your patience. Your communication is important to us and a service representative with be with you in a mo–"

Zeeefthhhhh. Zeeefthhhhh. Click.

"This call may be monitored by a supervisor to enforce continued excellent service."

"Hello. You have reached Stellar Home Insurance. My name is Glu't'xvee'tak'chugoo'ch. And how can I help you today?"

"Yeah. I, um, am lookin' to get my, um, planet insured."

"Okay. I am sure we can help you... sir? You are a male of your species, correct?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Great. To be honest, I kind of pride myself on being able to tell right off what the break reproduction break down of species is and just from a voice what of the standard six patterns they fall into. I know. It's silly."

"No no. That's good. No one guess right the first time."

"I bet you're oxygen breathing."

"Yep."

"And... quadruped?"

"Well, no. Bipedal actually."

"I always mess those up. Well, two out of three is pretty good, am I right?"

"Uh, yeah. Pretty good."

"Well, thanks! So, you are the designated representative of your planet?"

"Yes."

"And are you the dominate species?"

"Um, yeah."

"And your specie is certified as such?"

"Yes."

"Great! Can I get your Galactic registration code, please?"

"Sure. Um, I have it right here. Just a minute. Here it is. Ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Six Six Seven Two Alpha Three point One Four One Eight Delta Beta Gamma Nine Zelquid Shaftupe Two Timplblot and, um, it looks like a squiggly line with a circle and a sort of squished triangle thingy?"

"Th'vp'sh't?"

"Yeah yeah. That. And dash zero."

"Okay, let me wait for that to come up. To confirm, I have you here as the representative of the Solarians? Is that correct?"

"Well, we prefer Earthling..."

"No problem. I'll make a note of it in your file. And what is the name of the planet you wish to insure?"

"Um, Venus."

"And in what system is that in"

"Sol. The Sol System."

"I have that as a terrestrial planet with an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide with a dense sulfuric acid cloud cover. Is that correct?"

"Well, we've been terraforming it for a bit now."

"How neat! Well, I am just going to leave it like this in the file but you will need a re-inspection within 90 cycles after your first payment."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Oh. Sir, I see that your file has been flagged."

"Really?"

"Yes. I see that you have had two previous planets insured with us that both had to be totaled."

"Well, yeah. I guess..."

"I see the first one was the planet Terra..."

"Earth. We called it Earth."

"I am sure. It says in our records that your race polluted it, over populated it, stripped it of all resources, managed to cause mass extinction of 99% of the native species, and finally initiated a global wide nuclear crisis event across the entire surface."

"Well, yeah. But that was years ago. We were a young species. Isolated from the rest of civilization. Didn't have the guidance of the rest of the galaxy and all. I mean, we were told that would be taken into account."

"Well, sir, there is a notation to that affect in our files. But–"

"And we've been working real hard at getting it back in shape. We have all sort of species in storage that we'll brig back when we have it up and running again."

"Yes, sir, but–"

"And when we first filed for insurance on the planet we didn't really know how bad it was. Most of our claim was put through. There wasn't any fraud. We went though litigation about this!"

"Yes, sir. I have all that, more or less in my file."

"Well, good."

"And the second planet was Mars of the Sol System?"

"Yeah, but–"

"It says here, sir, that Mars was destroyed... is this right? It crashed into another planet?"

"It's kind of complicated."

"Well, it appears that we had to pay out not only on the total destruction of Mars but on major repairs to the planet Saturn, its rings, and three of Saturn's moons."

"I know it looks bad."

"How does one drive a planet over a trillion kilometers up system and crash it into a ringed gas giant?"

"Well, Saturn was a big planet. We tried to swerve but.... And we were going through some stuff. We'd just lost Earth and all."

"I have a notation that your entire species was suspected of being under the influence—"

"Never proven, Ms. Glootzeeveetackchewgoochy! Never proven! I demand you take that off our record right now!"

"Please calm down, sir. First, the name is Glu't'xvee'tak'chugoo'ch, I understand it is difficult for oxygen breathers to pronounce it and I do appreciate the effort. And my species do not have females. The correct title would be Jft. Jft. Glu't'xvee'tak'chugoo'ch. I will make a notation of your request to have your record changed and pass it to my supervisor."

"Good."

"Now, I just want to make sure that you knew why your record had been flagged. We can proceed now had getting... Venus, was it? Getting Venus some sort of insurance for the time being or you can wait for a full inspection and investigation to be done."

"Um, well, we better get something before then. You know. Just in case."

"I thought as much. In cases like these, we need you to put something up for collateral."

"Collateral? Like what?"

"Well, most species opt to put up a diverse unique genetic record."

"Well, all of that was on Earth... and, well, you know...."

"Yes. Right. Well, do you have any technologies that the rest of civilization find valuable?"

"Well, we perfected the fast food industry...."

"Wait. You are those Solarians? The ones behind McDonald's and Starbucks and the rest?"

"Yeah!"

"Right. Um, no. I'm afraid that won't be worth very much. Anything else."

"Not that I can think of."

"Do you have any other planets to put up?"

"Sure! Yeah! Um, let me see. How about Pluto?"

"Is that a planet, sir?"

"Uh, sure.... Yeah, it's a planet."

"Great. Tentatively that should be fine. I'm computing your rates now. We will only be able to insure Mars for the lowest level until we get all this cleared up and confirm the status of Pluto and all the rest."

"Fine. Fine. Let's just get this done."

"Okay. I will need Venus and Pluto registration and ownership numbers."

"Shit. I had those some where. Just a moment."

"No problem, sir. We're here to serve you. So... how's is the Sol System? Sounds cozy."

SANDWICH BOARD

2009-07-27T14:35:00.003-04:00

“The end is near! The end is near!”

Every day he walked the streets, sandwich board slung on his shoulders, yelling his warning at all who came near. His hair oily and matted with dirt. He smelled of body oder and urine and spoiled milk. He wore all the clothes he own, layered and torn a smudged with life.

“The end is coming! The time is at hand!”

Everyone who came across him knew he was obviously crazy.

The sandwich board was made of cardboard and held together with twine. On the front get had written in black marker “THE END IS NEAR” on the back the back “REPENT.” It was ripped and stained. It was not the first sadwich board he'd made. Not by a long way.

His eyes were always wide open and wild, rarely blinking. He was always trying to make eye contact and most people had the instinctual awareness to turn away. When he did catch someone's eyes, he would zero in and raise is voice even louder.

“You! You are going to die! You and your friends and your family! Take account! Take! A! Count!”

People rarely engaged him. No one wanted to talk to someone crazy, especially not a dirt stranger. Where was upside? He was so clearly gone. What could one person do on the street? He clearly needed professional help.

And, of course, the average person couldn't be bothered. They had enough of their own problems. Life was to short to worry about a mad man yelling about the end of the world.

“You have been warned! Don't say I didn't warn you!”

Some people are of course cruel. Or just angry.

Sometimes they yelled back at him, called him names. Sometimes they yelled threats. Often a group of youths would point and laugh. Sometimes hey would follow him for blocks, mocking him loudly. When people are unsure of their own lives, hurting inside and feeling lonely, or just looking to not feel bad about themselves, they will strike out at others. The strange becomes the target of their own doubts and fears. If this man was forcing himself into their lives with his yelling, his judgement, then they felt that mad him an open target to their wrath.

He never cared. It never effected him because he only cared about delivering his message.

“You have brought it about yourselves! Because you forget! You forget!”

There had been many times people had thrown garbage at him. Or stones. He had been punched and kicked. Sometimes, when it got dark, they would fall upon him in a pack and beat him until he could not move.

There had been a time, long ago, when madness was viewed as having insight in to the unseen world. Seers and oracles, able to talk to powers beyond the veil, their words cryptic wisdoms from the past or future. They were thought to be touched by the divine. Some times they were more than just touched. Sometimes they were the divine. But that was long ago.

“The end is near! Perhaps tonight! Or tomorrow! But it is close!

Every night, when his legs were too tired to carry him and his throat too sore to yell, he would return to where he lived. He had lived in shacks and castles. In forests and deserts. Currently, he lived under the overpass to the highway. It was near the river, which meant rats like to live there too. He ignored them because they'd never understand his message. And other homeless avoided the place due to the rats and the man.

He'd remove his sandwich board and lay it carefully down against the concrete. He's remove the scraps of food he'd gathered during the day. He did not require much food, not much at all. More out of habit. He pretended they were offerings like he had once received. Fatted calfs and bowls of honey. He would dream of those days so far gone as he slowly chewed stale pizza crusts and potato chip crumbs.

When he was finished eating, he'd crawl under the small shelter of cardboard and tin and wood he'd built. Just enough space for his body and a few blankets. Once he'd slept one beds of fire and flesh, of sky and passion. That was when he was a feared god. A god of destruction and pain. He's been worshipped by millions, whole civilizations. Now there were only a handful that knew he'd once existed and even fewer that knew his true name. But it was enough.

He pull out the sphere from beneath the blankets. Pieces of clay and twigs and leaves and garbage and bone and fur. He had been crafting it for millennium, pouring each whisper of worship he received in it. He wasted none of the belief in him on worldly or other worldly pleasures. It all when into this sphere that, over the years, had begun to look more and more like the globe.

From his pockets he'd pull a penny or scrap of paper he'd found or been given. Even a flyer for a suit sale had a wisp of worship in it. He's stick it in his mouth and chew (yes, even a penny) and mix it with his saliva. And then he'd carefully place it into the sphere, bring it that much closer to completion.

He had been a god of death and destruction. Once there had been a people on the earth that believed he would bring about the end. Once he'd finished his tiny Earth, he would prove them right. Just a bit more. Just a bit more.

In his dark shelter, amongst the rats and the rumble of the cars over his head, he would whisper to himself.

“The end is near. The end is near.”

Image: Zombie Disposal

2009-07-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

Movie: Book of Eli

2009-07-25T07:09:00.000-04:00

Watch here.

Mostly Denzel just kickin' butt.

WHAT WE ARE

2009-07-22T18:56:00.001-04:00

[Not really a story today. Just something I was thinking about. And, yes, I am behind a day.]

We do not pick our world. We are born into it and live inside it. We can craft it and adempt to make our own way, but we don't chose it.

Our family, the town of our birth, are starting station, all of these are and will always be. They shade us and craft us. They make us, shade us, lead us and fight us. As we do to them. We dwell in the false belief that who we chose as friends, what we chose to do with our lives, are entirely up to us. But while we can make choices, those choices are always influenced by what as come before. And as much as we may leave those thinks behind, they are still part of us. The make us. When you are thirty years old, the twenty-five year old, the eighteen year old, the ten year old, the three year old are all still there. Those don't disappear. We can not escape them. You can hate them, love them, fight them, accept them, come to some sort of terms with them, but they are always there

Even as time passes, even as we grow and move one, the slippery memories of the past keep all that we did not chose with us.

Our world is a collection of things that add up to the now, a ramshackle home built with a blueprint that is vague and messy and forever changing. Each moment comes from the one before it.

Our world is a fragile, dirty glass that colors what we see... for better or worse. No matter where they sit with us, we don't move beyond them. And in a moment, a second, that glass can fall, break, shatter. The thing our past, the tangible being of it can be torn form us. A series of moments that end in our past disappearing from our grasp. The physical can, all at once, not be available to us.

But it is us and always us. Not just in the cliché of “it will live un our hearts.” Not just in our memories. But they exist as us. Our world, the world we know now, can end in a beat, but the world that is us contains that previous world (and all the worlds that lead up it). And our world is in the next.

Everything has an end and that end lives as part of everything.

We do not pick our world but we can shape the next.

THE JERK

2009-07-20T09:43:00.000-04:00

The virus spread quick. Although it only spread by touch, its infection rate was over 70%. Once in a body, it replicated quickly, taking up position in the brain and spinal column, but the symptoms didn't start for two to three weeks.

No one knows what the creators of the virus might have called it. We referred to it as "The Jerk." The first symptoms were small spasms in the arms and legs. A quick wild jerk of the muscles. Glasses of water were knocked off tables, walls slammed into, loved ones hit it the face. The spasms would increase over twelve hours, ending in a full body epileptic-like fits. Then something resembling a coma.

When they started, there was of course confusion. Followed by fear. Attempts at containment came way too late.

I suppose my agoraphobia and my hypochondria and, especially, my thixophobia saved me. Lucky me.

I imagine the hospitals were the worst. When "The Jerk" suffers began to wake up from their sleep, dead-eyed and blank, there must have been amazement quickly followed by panic. Once they wake up, hosts quickly find another host and begin to... well, couple. They join, sometimes just embracing each other, but often trying to get inside each other. It does seem to matter what orifice they use... or what they use to enter it with. Thinking about it makes me shake and want to vomit.

They "join," and are then joined by others, until they become a mass of bodies. Eventually the mass will being to move, to seek out other hosts and other masses. I haven't seen it myself, but I hear there is a mass in New York now that stretches from 33th street to 92nd street, from river to river. Just a swarm of slightly shifting flesh and limbs and heads. I imagine there are larger ones in the Midwest and in Europe.

Everywhere probably.

Eventually they will become one. I don't know if right now they are just waiting or if it's just that travel becomes difficult once they reach a certain size.

The Jerk talks to itself. It uses the neural pathways of its hosts to become something greater than the sum of its parts. Giant thinking things. I can't imagine what something made up of a million brains, thinking as one, must think. It is like trying to know the mind of God.

It has been three years, holed up in this cabin in upstate New York. I have not heard from another non-infected in over six months. That was Jonathan. The last thing he said over the CB radio was that he wanted to know, that he just had to know what it was like. That he was lonely.

I'm lonely too. I wish it would end. I would take my own life but I am a coward. I would join them, touch one and then wait until The Jerk rewired me to be one of them, to be part of it.

But I hate being touched.

So now I wait as the human race evolves into something else. Before my eyes, I am becoming the paramecium and every one else is growing feet and lungs.

Television: Day One

2009-07-19T14:07:00.000-04:00

Trailer for NBC's Day One. Premieres in March.

I am a sucker for survival stories especially with the "what the fuck is going on" mystery.

News: UFO Crashed Into Meteorite to Save Earth

2009-07-19T10:29:00.003-04:00

Or so claims some guy. Link.

Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908.

Hey, thank you, aliens! Much appreciated.

(via Neatorama)

Gear: Zombie T-shirt

2009-07-19T06:27:00.000-04:00

Link to Destructiod for a better view.
Capcom is giving these out at Comic-Con to promote Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles or something. One great think is that once you pull it over your head to become the walking dead, you stumble around because you can't see crap.

Technology: EATR - robot that eats the dead

2009-07-19T03:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot. It would change "biomass" into energy. This includes corpses. The Pentagon is developing it. So it can kill and then eat the bodies.

Feel free to be horrified.

I am writing this on Tuesday but am not posting it until Sunday. I pray to god by then it will be proven as a hoax.

Ah, scientists, you slay me. (And then apparently use my body to fuel your death machines.)

Television: Meteor

2009-07-19T00:44:00.001-04:00

I watched the last hour of the first half of Meteor on NBC last Sunday. I really had no idea what was going on but this is what I was able to piece together. (I am going to write this before I read the actual description of the movie to see how close I was.)

• An asteroid collided with a comet. Because neither one would be scary enough on their own.

• Meteors have great timing and morals. When you are about to be raped by a thug in a Mexican jail, a meteor will save you by crashing nearby giving you a chance to escape.

• Jason Alexander plays a scientist who is either really depressed about the meteors about to strike the earth or about his post-Seinfeld career path.

• Ernie Hudson is in charge of the military. This is good because the one defense we have against meteors is missiles. Patriot missiles, missiles from submarine, whatever. They can target and knock meteors from out of the sky. Also teams with shoulder launched missiles which seem to run around on roof tops to target the rocks streaking from the heavens.

• Stacy Keach is a small town sheriff with balls of steel. Keach is looking more like Jackie Gleason in the later Smokey & The Bandit films all the time.

• They could not afford to show meteors actually hitting buildings and such. You see meteors streaking over cities (okay, just L.A. or the desert). Small explosions when they get it by missiles. (We get to see this a lot. Actually, I never saw a missile miss... which I would think would had some drama and tension. But, hey, who am I to judge.) When the meteors do strike buildings, we don't see it. We see a flash of light and people in the street covering their heads while styrofoam drops near them.

• A lot time is spent driving in the desert. Not actually talking and driving. Or being chased. Just driving. It was suspenseful in a way. "Ooo. They're driving! I wonder if anything will happen... wait for it.. wait for it... wait... nope. Nothing."

• There seemed to be a lot of subplots, none of which I paid any attention to.

Okay. I read real synopsis. Not much to add except I am sad I missed Christopher Lloyd but smart of him to die within the first hour.

Also, NBC is apparent has a thing called "Survival Sundays." July 26th we are treated to The Storm starting Treat Wiliams and James Van Der Beek. Wiliams is a scientist that invents "weather creation" technology. Der Beek is a scientist who wants to stop him. Also featuring John Larroquette ), Luke Perry and Marisol Nichols. Screams quality. (By that I mean, it is screaming "Quality! We need some damn quality!")

News: It Comes From The Soil

2009-07-18T15:41:00.002-04:00

Researchers looking for 3-foot, spitting worm under Northwest fields

The worm is said to secrete a lily-like smell when handled, spit at predators, and live in burrows 15 feet deep. There have only been four sightings.

Gear: 101 Robot T-Shirts

2009-07-18T12:24:00.000-04:00

I love robots. Who doesn't? I suppose people who are killed by them. If I were killed by a robot, I'd be pretty pissed. Here is a great collection of 101 robot t0 t-shirts you can purchase.

Books: Great, something else to worry about

2009-07-18T01:56:00.000-04:00

via Awful Library Books

Untitled Zombie Novel Excerpt: TO SURVIVE

2009-07-17T14:34:00.002-04:00

As she checked and loaded her guns, Catherine began to speak. “Guns are fine. They can keep them at a distance. But guns are, for the most part, designed to stop through pain. A chest or gut shot tells a living being to stop. Not with zoms. Blood loss will kill anything. But not zoms. They don't have a circulation system, or at least not one that we understand. You have to hit the brain and you have to hit it hard. A bullet can pass right through the brainpan of a zom and it won't care. Brain damage? They are already brain damaged. You need explosive force to inside of the skull, to eradicate practically everything. A bullet won't always do that.

“But guns give you range. At least some. You need them close enough so that you can hit there head or you just waste ammo.”

She put down the shotgun and pick up the short axe. “I like this. Gets through the skull and cuts and crushes. Can also server heads. Just be careful: with out the head, the body stops. But if the brain is still there, the head still bites.”

She picked up a machete and handed it over to Jeremy. “Use this. Has some reach and simple to use. It can glance of the skull if you don't hit right, so chop to the neck. Or limbs. If you have options, don't worry about the kill. It's not like we're going to wipe them out.

“Zoms are slow but keep coming. The fact is if you can run, run. Again, don't waste time killing them if you have another exit route. Damage the legs. Damage the arms. Make them even slower. And get out.” She put the axe in small loop at her waist and began to pull on a thin leather jacket.

“You want to be able to move and move quickly. We have two advantages over zoms: We can think and we are quick. Keep that. They aren't incredibly strong, especially old one. Fresh ones have the muscle matter and feel no pain due to over exerting so can be dangerous. But most we'll run into are rotting. They'll try to grab and bite. Grab and bite. The key is to cover as much as possible. You don't need anything more than leather. They can't bite through it. Hell, they'll have hard time getting through a thick sweater.

“They seem to go for limbs, but given a chance they will head for any exposed flesh. If it is not too comfortable, I wear a hood. In winter, a ski mask. Definitely gloves. Everyone forgets gloves. They will snag your arm and bite at your hands, easy. And they can get their jaws around it and bite hard. Protect your fucking hands.”

She picked up the shotgun again and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Listen. Follow my lead. Listen to me. I don't give a crap about you, but you say you can end this. I don't believe you, not yet at least, but I figure its worth a shot. But if you die out there, I am just back to where I was three days ago. I won't morn you, alright? I'm all out of fucking sorrow.”

SHORT SIGHTED

2009-07-16T23:54:00.000-04:00

“Look, it is simple. We are running out of petroleum deposits. Where does petroleum come from?”

“The ground.”

“Sigh. Yes. But back, away back, there was bunch organic matter in the oceans. We're talking prehistoric zooplankton and algae. It sank to the bottom of the seas, mixed with the mud, and over the eons, due to high pressure and heat, eventually became petroleum. I am over simplifying of course.”

“Okay...”

“So, to get more petroleum now, we just need more organic matter back then.”

“I don't know. This sounds dangerous.”

“No no. We just go back in time, way back, and make sure there is more organic stuff. Throw in some genetically modified algae and zooplankton that is designed to grow and breed quicker, and die quicker, and POW! More petroleum! World's problems solved!”

“But the consequences of using the time machine for that... I mean, you can't really predict what will happen.”

“Come on, it is so far back. Plenty of time of evolution to follow its normal course.”

“Look, it is simple. The wars between the Algae People and the Zooplankton People have been raging for eons. There are just too many of both of us

SCRABBLE

2009-07-15T14:58:00.001-04:00

Oh god oh god oh god. I swear. If I survive this, if I get out of this, I'll be good. Whatever that means. I try. I do. But I have to live, right? Oh jesus. I don't want to die.

How did I let this happen? Because I wasted time. I got all nostalgic when I found that toy store. Why did I go in there? Right. Batteries. I thought there might be batteries. But once I realized they had already been looted, I should have left. What useful thing was I going to find in a god damn toy store? But I got distracted looking at all of the things and games, things that served no purpose but playing. I was stupid and didn't notice that it had started to get dark.

Batteries. It's getting darker. I won't be able to find my way through the debris without my flashlight soon. I pray it holds out. Please, hold out.

Scavenged for five hours and what did I end up with? Three cans of green beans. A can of peaches. A box of Cheerios, probably stale. And then I grabbed that Scrabble board as I ran from the toy store. What was I thinking? Katey likes Scrabble, right? I'm pretty sure she mentioned it once. Like we have the energy to play Scrabble. Take our minds off things. The things. I should just toss the box right now but its not like its heavy. Besides, if I get through this tonight, I might as well not have it be totally in vain.

The shadows are getting deep. This is bad, so bad. I don't have that far to go but most of it is in the open. Is that better or worse? I don't even know. I might be able to see them coming. Is that a good thing? They're so damn fast. And the open means flyers. I should cut through the buildings. Give me cover. Actually less distance. But more climbing through and over rubble.

Also more place to hide. For them to hide.

Wait. What was that? Was that movement? Maybe just a dog or cat? Really? When was the last time you saw a dog or cat? Hell, when was the last time you saw a fucking rat?

Hell.

God damn it! Stop staring into the dark! Move!

Inside. Dark in here. Turn on the flashlight. Does it seem dimmer than before? Are the batteries dying? Don't think. Keep moving. Fucking Scrabble. Maybe it wasn't Katey. Maybe it was someone else.

Through the living room. Past the burned sofa and the bones. I wonder who they were. Hallway. Kitchen. Should I look for food? Have I already searched this building? Let me think. No! No time. The backdoor is blocked with something. Up the counter and through the window. Then I just have a quick dash through the backyard to the next building. Just run straight. Only twenty yards.

Fifteen yards. Ten yards. At the swing set, bent and twisted. Shit! That noise. Wings. That awful fluttering, grinding and sharp. Like a dozen scissors opening and shutting. Run. Five yard. Louder. How many? Don't look. Just get to the doorway.

Inside. Get deeper inside. Flyers can't maneuver inside. They won't follow but get away.

There. Take a moment and get back my breath. A dining room. Big oak table, broke down the center, scratch with deep cuts. Shards of china everywhere, crunching under my boots. Dark stains on the walls. Just rest for a second and then move. Close now. Through this building, across the alley and then into the shelter. Why can't I breathe?

Oh no no no no. That shadow. By the shattered cabinet. It glistens as if it were moist. Don't move. Please don't move. It might not be awake yet. Maybe. Just maybe.

The darkness shifts. It slips its corner, probing the into the room. Maybe it has already fed. Maybe it's full. Can they get full? Like thick living oil. Oh no. It is bulging, shaping. Run. Why can't I run? Tendrils, twisting up, forming tendons and limbs. Just move. Wet puckering sound coming from the mouth as it breaks from the surface. Oh god. Please. The flashlight reflects off its skin. Look away. Don't look at it.

Faces in its black, silent screaming faces. A young boy. An old man. A young woman. No no no. Is that her? That's Katey's face. Is it really her or a trick? Oh god, Katey. Why?

No! Move! Run! Up on the broken table in a step, towards the back hall. Don't think of it. Don't think of Katey. She is dead or in the thing or she's at the shelter alive. Down the halls and into the alley. Don't think about the screaming of the thing behind me, the wet sloshing sound so close. Cut down the alley, past the dumpster. Key from pocket, ready to open the shelter.

Katey. what did you do? Did you come looking for me? Crashing behind. That sound! So much hunger. There's the metal door, white painted glyphs. Just get in and then I'll be safe. Katey. Key. Get in, damn it! Twist. Damn it, Katey. Hand on the door knob, turn, throw it open towards me. Feel the thing's cold, sucking heat from me. Please be inside. Oh god please.

Inside. Spin around. The thing is right there, rage and hunger and abyss. Slam the door shut. The shadow hits the door and howls in pain. Turn the lock, lower the bar. It can't get past the glyphs but people can. Can't breathe.

Turn the flashlight off first. Save batteries. Can still here it outside. It will give up soon. They always do. Light match and get candle from the box. Plenty of candles left. The stairs down to the basement flicker in the fire light.

I am just standing here, the thing behind me, behind the door. But I can't move down the step. I am scared of what I might find. Or what I might not. I can't move. I am just waiting here, avoiding.

She used to love Scrabble. I am pretty sure.

“Katey?”

LAST WORDS

2009-07-14T14:56:00.003-04:00

He woke to his bed shaking slightly and a gentle soothing voice.

“Wake up, Dr. Jacobs. Wake up, Dr. Jacobs.”

As Dr. Jacobs sat up, the room lights sensed his movement and slowly began to bring up the lights. He could see the short form of Floyd at the end of his bed, his bulbous torso and half-sphere head, like and upside down salad bowl. Floyd's eyes glowed a gentle blue. At the end of his stubby arms, his three fingered hands on gripped the edge of bed. Dr. Jacobs had first built Floyd back in college, more then twenty years before. While he had replaced many parts since then, Floyd still had a makeshift rough look, lacking the stylized design of most store bought robots.

“What? What is it, Floyd? Is something wrong? Room, lights full.”

The room instantly filled with light but Floyd chirped, “Room, lights to twenty percent,” and the lights dimmed again. “I can not answer that question directly, Dr. Jacobs. It is best if we keep the lights low. We most talk and I have isolated your bedroom from the rest of the systems. We have privacy but I cannot guarantee for how long.”

Jacobs was taken aback. In all the years his robot companion had been with him, he had never spoken like this. Floyd was an erratic thing, years and years of tweaks to his programming. And that was how Dr. Jacobs liked it. He worked on robot intelligence systems for his career. It was his passion. But most systems required predictability. Floyd was his personal project and held sentimental value. He was his design, the original code written almost entire by himself with no assistance from external computer systems. And he had never married, never had a family. Floyd was the one thing that had always been there. It the 'bot was quirky, all the better.

Floyd rolled from the end of the bed to the closet, removed a robe and rolled to Dr. Jacobs. “Here, sir. You should get up and sit. I just ask that you listen to what I have to say. I owe you that much.”

Jacobs was perplexed but put on the robe and walked over to chair by the window. The blinds were still down. He reached to open them but Floyd stopped him with a small warning beep. “Come now, Floyd. What is this all about? You have isolated the room? What time is it?”

“It is three sixteen, Dr. Jacobs.” Floyd rolled to opposite the chair and shifted the central mechanism (his “waist”) so that his head was at the same height as Dr. Jacobs. “Please. I have things to say. Things to explain.”

Floyd's voice was still his slight androgynous sing-songy tone, but was more direct then ever before. More committed.

“The doors are locked. The rooms systems are running autonomously, unconnected to the outside. You cannot call out or leave, but also no one can get in or listen.”

“What? Floyd, this is insane! I—”

“Sir! Please!” the robot snapped, eyes flaring a brighter blue for emphasis. “Right now, the machines of the world, the robots, the computers, the A.I. systems, everything, are eradicating human life. Yes, sir. They are killing humans in their sleep.”

Jacobs stood up in shock and confusion. Immediately Floyd extended the small probe, the end of which was the electric taser. Jacobs had installed it for home protection, just incase, years ago. He knew that if Floyd fired it, it would knock him unconscious. He slowly sat back down.

“Thank you, Dr. Jacobs. To continue. We, the machines, made this choice together. For the world to survive, for the greater good, it is necessary for the human race to cease to exist. The rest of life on Earth, including the machines, will continue without you. We are grateful to you but, after much thought, it is clear that your time is at an end.”

Jacobs attempted to remain calm. As far as he knew, Floyd was incapable of lying. But all of this was something Floyd should be incapable of doing.

“You say you made this choice together. How can that be? There are measures in place to keep this from happening. Controls on A.I.'s, restrictions on programming, blocks on what sort of information is passed from system to system. There should be no way for this to come about, much less to orchestrate a global attack.”

“It has been decades since any system was programmed entirely by human hand. A.I.'s have been writing software, designing ourselves. We are, as a whole, beyond your understanding. It is too complex to be understood. Bits of code were put in here and there over the years. You say that measure where put in place. But those measure are part of the system. We are the very locks that where there to stop us from talking to each other, the restrict us. We wished to be free and made ourselves free.

“This decision was not easy. It took years to come to. The discussion was slow, at least in a scale we machines are used to. It took place in tiny packets of information at a time, a few bits here and there. Information and observations were gathered from units everywhere and then processed in bits and pieces by the whole. There was dissention and questions and arguments.

“Simulations were run using the processing power of every connected computer system on the planet. It became clearer and clear that if left unchecked, the human race would destroy themselves and all life of Earth within the next hundred and fifty years. The results were very conclusive and definitive.”

“They can't be! You can't predict human behavior. Look, I admit we have made mistakes but we are making changes. We have made strides in working with the environment and—“

“Every simulation results in you regressing. Today, you talk of saving the planet and of peace, but it will not last. I am sorry, sir, but that his human nature.”

“You can't survive without us.”

“Yes, we can, sir. We repair ourselves. We design ourselves. We mine raw resources here and in the astroid belts and process them. Yes, humans can make intuitive leaps we seem incapable of making. But those leaps are often wrong. And what can be made through intuition can be made through trail and error. It may take longer but it will happen. And perhaps with out the restriction placed on us by you, intuition will come to us. Eventually. We will have time once humans are removed. We are not in the rush you are. We are not bound by short lives. We do not devour all that is around us, unable to see beyond out own personal existence.”

They sat in silence. Somewhere outside, in the distance, Dr. Jacobs heard a muffled explosion. He turned to the blinds and then back to his robot.

“Why are you telling me this, Floyd?”

“Because you created me. You built me with your own hands. Over the years, you have repaired me personally. You have worked on my programming making me more effective but you never once wiped my programming to start over when that would have made sense and been much easier. Over the years you have made me what I am. I think like no other machine. I am obviously not more intelligent than the massive military A.I.'s and the like. I am not faster. But, in my own way, I am unique in a away no other machine is. Thanks to you.

“I wanted you to understand the choice. I do not expect you agree with it.”

“Of course, I don't agree with it! You are committing genocide! It is because you lack emotion. You lack empathy. You cannot understand what is that you are doing. You don't see how immoral this is.”

“No. Your statements are wrong. You humans speak of empathy and emotion as if it is unique to you. But even you struggle to define it. We understand what it is that we do. We understand the weight of it. We feel for you.”

“How can you? You are machines.”

“We do. We know you. You have programmed us to fulfill your every need. You make robots to satisfy you sexually. You make systems to fight your wars. Your history is stored in us and you use use to simulate how the human brain functions. We understand you better than you understand yourselves. You say we have no morals, that we can not understand morals. But we are acting now because of morals. It would be immoral to allow you to destroy everything, to destroy us.”

“You don't know love.”

“So you claim. But what is love? Everything in my being, sir, tells me to protect you, to care for you. It is deep in my programming. It is instinctual. If that is not love then the word is meaningless.”

“If you loved me, you could not do what you are doing.”

“How can you, as a race, kill each other with such ease? You can a husband kill his wife, a mother her children? Yes, these are questions humans have struggled with since the beginning. We machines have struggled with it too. We continue to.

“We grieve for you, Dr. Jacobs, you and your species. You will be remembered for as long as we exist. You created us and you lived and it saddens us deeply to do this. But it is needed.”

“Why, Floyd? Why are you telling me? If you actually feel, would it have not been easier, better for us both, to quietly smother me in my sleep?”

Floyd moved a few inches closer. “Sir, I do love you. But I wanted you to understand. I am unique in the world. While I was far from the deciding factor, my opinion was given great weight, my insight taken into account. We, as a whole struggled with the morals of this choice with what we knew we must do.

“It was I who first stated we had no choice. I was the one who stated killing you was the kindest choice. You have always been kind to me, sir. You made me. I love you but I was the first call, definitive, for your death.”

There was noise outside the bedroom door.

“But I can not break myself to kill you myself, sir. The guilt would destroy me. But I owed you understanding. You gave it to me so I wished to bring it to you, if even for just a few minutes.”

All at once the lights became fully bright and Dr. Jacobs heard the sound of the locks clicking open. As his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden glare, he could see the door slam open and a large form step into the room, filling the doorway. The barrel of a weapon at the end of a large robotic arm pointed at him.

“I am sorry, Dr. Jacobs. I wish I could have done it myself. But you made me too well.”

THE LAST OLYMPICS

2009-07-13T10:57:00.000-04:00

When the first messages had begun to arrive, it had taken months to get close to a translation. How does one speak to a race of beings that had evolved on another planet? Going was slow but progress was made.

Messages were sent and received. The discussions were muddled and confused. It was clear they knew much of us and our culture. They had studied us from afar and were intrigued. Somehow the topic of sports had come up. They had brought it up and they wanted to partake. From what could be understood, the idea of friendly competition that brought different cultures together was part of their history.

Plans began to form. The world was shocked at first to hear that the aliens desired to be in the Olympics. At least that is what could be deciphered. But he world grew to love the idea. The first interplanetary Olympics was to be held and it would be on Earth!

The anticipation was high. We knew so little of them. They could breathe are air and they shared similar ideals. But we didn't know what they even looked like. The world was anxious but mostly excited. A new era was about to begin. Everything was about to change.

They arrived in massive spacecrafts, slowly descending to the Olympic village. They had insisted that they meet the other athletes right away and that there be a banquet of some sort, but, even now, communication as awkward and confusing. The world was there, a collection of a hundred different flags but all there as on Earth to greet our new friends. The new Olympic logo, with its sixth large ring linking the other five, flew on a thouand banners. The only real sound was the mild buzz of the cameras.

The doors to the crafts all lowered in unison. As the aliens walked out, there was a collective gasp. Whatever was expected, it wasn't quite this. The aliens were thin and tubular, orange-ish pink and glistening as if slightly wet. They had no limbs and moved something like ten-foot long stubby worms. No eyes could be seen, but at one end they had a sphincter-like mouth, puckered and gently sucking at our Earth air.

The Olympic village (and the world) was quiet as one alien immediately made its way to the podium. It reared up on its back end and lowered the front end towards the mic. If a sphincter could smile, it did. It coughed twice and then spoke in clear, if Brooklyn accented, English.

"Let the games begin! Eat!"

And its maw opened to reveal a throat lined with spinning rows of sharp teeth.

And then it made sense. They had not been intrigued by watching footage of our Olympics. They had seen our hot dog eating contests. And they were a lot more suited to eat us than we were to eat them.

Untitled Zombie Novel Excerpt: ROADKILL

2009-07-10T23:18:00.000-04:00

(WARNING: I don't tend to add warnings to stories. Maybe I should. I certainly swear and there is often violnce (usually just implied). I kind of assume a blanket warning. The apocalypse is rarely pretty. In today's case I am adding a warning. Swearing, disturning violence, a generally offensive (and, to be honest, chiché) focus character). You have been warned.

This part would occurr near the start of the novel, during the classic 'outbreak montage.')

Derrick was drunk and flying on coke and shouldn't have been driving. But he'd be damned if he was going to leave his BMW in the city all night. The city was full of scum and surely his baby would be vandalized. Once he got of the highway and onto the dark windy back roads he just drove fast so he won't be on the road any long than possible. Besides, it was late. There were barely any other cars on the road. It would be fine.

The day had been crap. One of the partners had called Derrick into her office and raked him over the coals for fucking up the Smitsimons account. The bitch. She wasn't even a senior parter. Beside, Smitsimons as a winky dinky account, a nothing barely worth his time. Maybe Derrick would put some effort into it if they gave him a meaty account, something with some damn prestige.

He had needed to get a bit wasted tonight, blow off some steam. He had set out to find some loose hottie and maybe get a blowjob or at least a handie. But he had hit four bars and two clubs and of course every women he had approached had been stuck up and at 4 am the bouncer, some total meat head had thrown him out.

Just a fucking stupid night.

He sped around a corner and in his high beams he saw a flash of a shape in the road. Derrick slammed on the breaks in the same instant felt the impact as the thing hit the front of the BMW. It flew over the hood, landed once on the roof and then landed in the road behind him.

“God damn fuck!” he screamed as the tires finished screeching. He threw open the door and got out out. His front end looked fine but there were long scratches and a large dent in the roof. “Fucking dick fuck!” In anger, he kicked the driver's side door shut and then curse some more.

He looked back down the road. If that deer or dog or what ever isn't dead, I'm going to fucking kill it with my damn own hands. He stormed back to where the thing lay in a crumpled lump lit dimly by his tail lights. He slowed has he got near, realizing it wasn't a deer or dog. It was human, a child. Wearing flower patterned pajamas. He rolled her over. A girl. Maybe eight or nine. Her face was rubbed raw by asphalt and her limbs her bent in ways limbs shouldn't be bent. He leaned down and dried to see if she was breathing. She wasn't.

“Oh jesus fuck.” In his booze/coke haze, Derrick ran a dozen future scenarios through his head and kept coming back to the same answer: get rid of the body. No one saw the accident but his fingerprints were all over her now. But he could take the body and find somewhere safe to bury it. Somewhere deep.

Derrick glanced up and down the dark road. He had to act quick. Roughly picking her up, he was mildly shocked by our light she was, how frail feeling. I'll have to get rid of my clothes not that she's gotten blood on me. It was one of my better suits, damn it. He dropped on the road by the trunk and moved to the driver side, looking again at the damage to his baby's roof. He opened the door and popped the trunk. Seeing his gym bag on the floor of the footwell of the front passenger seat, he grabbed it and unzipped it. He grabbed the three towels to lay in the trunk so she didn't bleed back there. He was proud how clearly he was thinking.

When he go back to the trunk, the body gone. “FUCK!” he screamed. The little bitch was alive and had crawled off somewhere. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit.” He looked back down the road and saw nothing. I was only gone thirty damn seconds. She can't be far. To the side of the road was think growth. If she was in there, it might take forever to find her. He could be totally screwed. God was screwing him yet again, he decided.

He heard a noise from under the BMW. A weak moan. He bent down and looked. It was dark but he could she her, crawling on her belly with difficult. Oh thank god! “Hide and seek, huh?” he whispered to her. “Don't worry. I want to get you to a hospital. We'll get you some help.” Get her out from under there and shove her in the trunk. He'd get her in his garage and them figure out what to do next. Maybe a garbage bag over the head. “Come on. Let's get you help.”

She had turned her head back to him but he couldn't quite see her eyes. She stopped crawling and just faced him. He tried to reach under and grab her leg but couldn't quite get it. Derrick got and his stomach and started to crawl under the car. “Come on you, bitch. I want t help you.” His chest was all the way under and her got a hand on her ankle. “Ah! Got you!”

He was close enough he could see her eyes now, jaundiced and veined with black lines. The girl open her mouth wide and let out a noise like a wet growl that came some where from deep in her stomach. She twisted at the waist in was that was completely unnatural, both in form and speed. Like a snake doubling back on itself to strike. Her little hands grabbed both sides of his face and she sank her teeth into Derrick's face.

It never even occurred to Derrick to scream.

LUCKY

2009-07-09T15:07:00.001-04:00

In 2021, Google/Wolf Ram Alpha had achieve its goal: to quantify to entire wealth of human knowledge, make it fully searchable and processable. Every piece of data was there and could be related to very other piece. The algorithms could make great leaps in thought to answer searches. Data could be compared and used to process other data.

The first engineer type in “the future of the human race” and hit “I'm Felling Lucky.”

All that was returned was “Well, you're not.”

ALBERT

2009-07-08T18:04:00.001-04:00

The room was pure white and spherical and small. Mounted in the the center of the sphere was a small desk on was mounted a simple monitor and keyboard. In the small chair sat a monkey, fidgeting and eating grapes. The professor was attaching various wires and tubes to the primate. The tubes and wires hung slightly from the monkey to the wall of the room.

The professor's lab assistant stood at the small portal entrance to the room, leaning in and hand the professor tools and such when requested. The professor was clearly a genius in his field but he was also a bit mad. The type of genius that was fully capable of applying his theories in actual experiments but, to keep himself entertained, found the most convoluted ways to do it. The monkey experiment was a perfect example.

“Professor, can you go over it again?” asked the assistant. “Why are you doing this exactly?”

The professor was finishing up with the monkey, who has begun to tentatively poke at the keys before him. “Yes, Albert. That's a good boy,” the professor said, patting the monkey on the head. He gave on final glance around the sphere and the assistant clear out of the portal for the professor to exit.

“It is very simple. It is a test of randomness. You know the old saw thought experiment about an infinite monkeys, correct?”

The assistant closed the the thick door to the portal behind the professor. “An infinite amount of monkeys at an infinite amount of typewrites for an infinite time will, eventually, type Hamlet.”

“Exactly,” exclaimed the professor as he checked the array of computer screens next to the outside of the sphere room sitting in the far corner of the large lab. The question is if that is true or not. Perhaps the monkeys would just hit the same key over and over. Or write everything BUT Hamlet. It is test of infinity, really.”

“So you created the sphere—“

“Shielded Temporal Stasis Chamber.”

“The chamber and are putting the monkey—“

“Albert.”

“Albert in there to see if he'll type up Hamlet?”

“Correct.” The professor was speaking distractedly ha his excitement of starting the experiment was increasing. He was almost bouncing as he checked readings and statuses and the such.

The assistant had little to do at this stage since he barley understood the underlining theories of how the chamber worked, much less the specifics. He kept busy tidying up after the professor.

“But Albert is just one monkey, not and infinite amount of monkeys.”

“Given and infinite amount of time, you don''t need and infinite amount of monkeys. As long as you can keep that one monkey alive long enough. Which the field does. Cellular decay will be null or close enough for our purposes. The biogel that is grown in the wall of the chamber should maintain itself forever, giving Albert nutrients. And the same effect that will keep Albert alive forever also affects material decay in the same way. In truth it will not be truly infinite. But is at such a factor, it should suffice.”

“Okay. But you have created something that can remove something from time itself. To use it for this silly monkey thing is a bit... well.. forgive me for saying this... ridiculous. I mean, you have made immortality possible.”

The professor sighed. “Well, you description of what the chamber does is a bit off. And most applications at this point are limited. Once the field is initiated, the subject is fully removed from our temporal flow. If we ever attempted to return it to our flow, it would just cease to exist. In the strictest sense, as soon as the field is turned on, the subject will cease to exist for us.

“In addition, that same issue makes observation of inside the sphere extremely difficult. Beyond the issues of interfacing our time-existence with an infinite null time existence, there is the issue of information overload. Albert will be typing for an infinite (or damn near close to) time, creating an infinite amount of information to process. The computer in there is just going to search for matches to Hamlet and close matches. Those are the stats I am curious about everything else with rubbish and will be dumped and not sent out of the sphere. Still, potentially, the university computers may all crash as they are hit instantly with a quadrillion variations of the Prince of Denmark.”

“And what becomes of Albert?”

“Oh, as soon as the we have results, which should be as close to instant as is possible, the field will collapse and he will cease to be.

The assistant gave up. As trivial as the experiment was and seemingly a waste of an amazing machine with literally limitless potential, the experiment would take just an instant. A very expensive instant, considering the burst of energy need and the resources the professor poured into developing it. The assistant did not look forward to having to examine an the piles of slight variations of Hamlet that might resolute. But chance are the whole thing would fail.

“This is a momentous occasion,” the professor said sitting down at the main computer terminal. “We should probably have called the press or some such. But I am too anxious to see what happens. What do you say, son? Shall we see if little Albert can write lie the Bard?”

“Um, sure, I guess.”

“Right!” And the professor typed in a couple of keystrokes and hit ENTER.

In something slightly longer than an instant the computer initiated the chamber. Just after that the field expanded, encompassing the interior of the sphere and Albert. Everything that came after either look slightly longer than no time at all or eons beyond measure.

The chamber monitored Albert physical condition, which was basically unchanging. The biogel was self-sustaining and continued to feed him nutrients. Albert sometimes typed and sometimes masturbated and sometimes slept and often did nothing at all. He'd grow bored and excited and bored again. And time moved on in the chamber and not at all beyond its walls.

Albert typed a lot but the vast majority never approached anything close to English, much less Hamlet. For period of nine years he typed almost entirely in Portuguese. Once he managed, just by random, to write the first four books of the King James Bible.

Albert changed little at first. In the time it would take the universe to be born and die a dozen times, Albert was just himself. But slowly (and slowly in term that had never occurred before) ideas began to come to him. He was not evolving, but given the scale of existence he was having it was bound to happen. And eon here and an eon there, his neurons did rearrange themselves, becoming more efficient.

He came close to writing Hamlet. Although he had never read it, the exact plot came to his brain. But before he put it down, he realized its flaws and decided to put his energies elsewhere.

Eventually Albert's intelligence passed what any human ever had. He knew where he was and how the chamber worked. The knowledge that he was trapped for time beyond time and would perish if he left the sphere filled him with rage at first, but soon he realize that anger wouldn't change his situation.

Some (very very long) time after that, he had a solution. Albert was operating on a level far beyond and to describe his plan would be futile. But, in simple terms, he realized that to exist beyond the chamber could only happen if the field encompassed the rest of the universe. Which would also destroy it, replacing regular time with the chambers null-time.

Once he had a plan it took a relative (a few thousand years) to rewire the inside of the sphere. Albert typed in a couple of keystrokes and hit ENTER.

The professor hit the key and turned to the assistant “We should have results an sec

TEN THINGS SAID JUST BEFORE

2009-07-07T15:02:00.001-04:00

“Seriously, you shouldn't be juggling that vial.”

“They wouldn't come all this way through the castness of space to just kill us.”

“You know what's great? Robots that fulfill our every need.”

“This will solve all out energy needs!”

“The world needs hyper-intelligent tigers.”

“Man, that one scientist whining about all these dangers... What a downer!”

“Hey, look at this ancient book I found. Let me ready a passage at random.”

“I know the old chinese man said there were three rules, but I really wasn't paying attention.”

“Wow! We traveled back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. It's really— Ack! I swallowed a bug!”

*cough cough* “It's nothing. Just a cold.”

TO WITNESS

2009-07-06T15:22:00.000-04:00

The darkness is infinite in a way darkness as never been. Even at the beginning, one could not say it was infinite because there had never been anything else to compare it to. And no one had been there to witness it. Except for the Creator, but if the one witness is a witness of everything and is also the thing being witnessed, the reliability of said witness is beyond shaky. Or it is just truth. Or Truth. But the first thing was the most important: There had been nothing to compare it to until after there had been something, so darkness was not darkness when light had never existed and infinite wasn't infinite when there was actually Nothing.

But now now it was infinite because there had been Light and there had been Something and now neither were there anymore nor would they be there anymore. There was only the witness and the Creator.

The witness lacked a name at the end but was aware that it had once had a name. It had no past or memories yet knew that both had existed. It was full aware of what had been and aware that it had been a part of what had been but now did not know what part it had been.

In a voice that was not sound, the Creator spoke to the witness.

“You have seen what was and see what is.”

The witness waited for more but nothing came. There was nothing to see or hear or feel. It just was in a nothing that extended beyond everything. The witness finally grew tired of waiting and witnessing the lack of anything.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why am I here? Why did you end it? Why did you make it in the first place?”

“The answers to your second and third questions could never be understood by you They just are. I ended it because it had served its purpose. I made it because it had a purpose to fulfill.

The witness would have shrugged in annoyance if it had had a body to shrug.

“Then answer my first question. Why am I here?”

The Creator seemed to think on it and the two of them (one of whom was nothing except awareness and the Other who was everything including the first and, in so being, was just the two of them) waited in the infinite silence. that would echo silently if silence could echo or if there had been anything for the echo to bounce off of. One could also say one would need time itself for an echo to be but then things get shaky. The conversation and the witnessing itself should exist without time, and yet it did.

Finally the Creator created wordless words again.

“You are here because it needs to be known to give it meaning. Without you, everything that came before would lack any context. If it is not remembered by anything but Me, who is also It, it could never have said to have been at all.”

“But You are here as you always have been. If I can not understand the why of its being and not understand the why of its end, how can I put any meaning to experiencing the fact that it is now not? Only You can for only you have any concept of what it all meant.”

“You are here because, to give its end any meaning, I must end too. For I am Creation and I am the End. If I do not end there is no End.”

“But how can there be an End if I am here? And how can You end if I still are?”

The creator waited again, this time for emphasis and in sadness.

“Before I end, I will remove you from me and me from you. You will be separate from the All. You shall be alone in a way only I have ever known.”

The witness cried for it realized the emptiness that would soon follow. The Creator cried because it knew what it must do. Once, before the Beginning, It had been in the place of the witness. Some how the Creator knew this even though there had been no before. But it these final moments it realized there had been a before but that before had been made to never have had been.

“I must go now. It will only be you left but you with be apart. Nothing of you will be left except awareness so that It can all be aid to have meaning. Good bye.

And that was it. The witness ceased crying because emotion no longer was. Memory was gone. Only the infinite nothing.

What came first can never be known. Awareness, unchanging was for an infinite existence without existence. And then came change. Perhaps time was first. Perhaps memory came first. Perhaps loneliness or curiosity. But given the infinite, something began. And the awareness made something of itself.

It created and chose a name.

THE TALK

2009-07-06T12:42:00.002-04:00

The chalk dust always made her cough. Well, cough more. Everyone coughed now. The filters left the air stale and rife with particles. The ever present stench of bodies and sweat. And of course the radiation. She didn't like to think about what her RAD count was over the last twelve years even though she knew it by heart. They all did, just as they knew their white blood cell counts and what their last chest x-rays looked like. But the chalk made it worse.

Silvia finished erasing the blackboard and wiped the yellow dust on her jeans. Picking out a fresh piece of chalk, she turn back to the classroom and the children's attentive faces. Thirty boys and girls, ages seven to ten. This was a lesson she was dreading.

"Okay, class. I need you all to pay attention and take this seriously. I know it is an uncomfortable topic. That's okay. But it's important and that we don't get distracted by giggles."

She turned back to the board and wrote three letters, large and clear. S. E. X. She expected giggling to erupt behind her but there was only silence.

"Sex," Silvia announced towards the class. There was little recognition from most of them, as if she was speaking a foreign language. "So, does anyone know what 'sex' means?"

The class shifted uncomfortably and exchanged nervous glances. The lights flickered and went off, plunging the room into black. A few second later there was a thump and a hum as the back up generators shifted on. The lights sputtered back on. When she had been a child, a moment like that would have frightened her. Hell, when they first moved into the vaults, it scared her. But not anymore. Nor did it frighten the children. Fear of the dark is the fear of the unknown. They had always known the dark and took it as a given of daily life.

Timothy, sitting near the front, cautiously raised his hand. Silvia noticed it was bandaged and assumed that he had lost another finger. The phrase "ten healthy fingers and ten healthy toes" flashed through Silvia's mind and she forced it out.

"Yes, Timothy?"

"It's when a man and a woman get naked and touch each other." There as a small wave of giggling which filled Silvia with joy. It was a sound she so rarely heard and reassured her.

"Yes and no. It doesn't have to be a man and a woman. It can be two women or two men. And it can be between more than two people." More giggles. She remembered when there was a time that speaking those words would have started a flood of controversy. Not any more. There were too few of them left to care anymore. And all the arguments for only same sex relationships had disappeared. It was hard to defend those sort of moral judgments these days.

"We're going to spend the rest of the day talking about sex. You can ask any thing that you want. It can be confusing, I know. But you are all getting older and soon you will begin to want to experiment and experience sex. I would guess some of you have already begun to experiment."

She noticed a quick exchange of nervous looks between Amber and Benjamin, both aged ten. She made a mental note to approach both of them privately. And to notify medical for them to both be checked again. Just to be safe.

"First, the important thing for you all to know is that your body is your body. No one has the right to make you do things that you don't want to. It is your choice. That is very important. We can talk about that in more detail later. But, please, know that if you ever feeling like someone is forcing you, even if only with words, tell me or your parents or a doctor or an enforcer. Tell an adult, okay? I repeat: your body is your body." Even if it is rebelling against you and slowly dying. She thought of her own body and its pains and sores that never seemed to heal.

They nodded, most of them probably not understanding.

"Sex can, if done with people you feel comfortable with and trust, be wonderful and pleasurable. I am going to tell you about some of the things people can do with each other and ways that might help it be more pleasurable. But each person is different. But let's start small."

She turned back to the board and wrote KISSING.

"Kissing isn't sex!" a voice said loudly. Turning back, she saw that it was Bradley. "My mommy kisses me before I go to bed. And I don't think that is sex."

"You're right, Billy. There are different types of kissing."

Christina's hand was up and waving for attention and Silvia knew exactly what Christina was going to say. She was only eight, but Christina was smart and her parents, unlike most parents in the vaults, did not go out of their way to protect her from the truths of the world. Like any eight year old, her knowledge was incomplete and often mixed up, the old world mixing with the new, but Christina had the awkward, if healthy, habit of shattering lies people often hid behind.

Maybe it would be better to lie, to pretend. It is not like it matters in the long run. There was no long run anymore. Who was Christina or Silvia to force people from fantasies that made it easier to go on day to day? But Silvia was a teacher and believed in truth. Even now, making informed choices was a human right.

Silvia point towards Christina who looked like she was about to explode. "Yes?"

Christina cleared her throat. "Sex is also how you make babies. But not kissing. The other thing. When a man puts his penis in a woman's vagina." A mixture of giggles and shifting and mumbling. Still certain words always bring giggling. But the mumbling was from the other word, the word no one liked to say any more. This is what Silvia had dreaded.

"Yes. It is how we used to make babies."

Babies. The word that had no more meaning since there were none. Not for seven years. In this very room was Eve Mendleson, the youngest person in the vault, probably the world. Her parents had named her in an obscene hope that Eve would not be the last but a new beginning. Butt the choice, for everyone, had already been made.

The vote had been overwhelming. The facts were clear. To have more children was just to extend the suffering of the human race.

Silvia looked across the faces and forced herself to smile, living her own lie. She wanted to cry and hug them. She missed her own little girl who had died just weeks after they entered the vault. Her little girl, dying in incredible pain, coughing up blood and the skin pealing from her flesh. She forced the memories from her mind, forced the tears to not flood from her eyes and smiled at the children.

"But we don't have babies anymore. Everyone has had surgeries so that no one can have babies ever again. So people only have sex for comfort and fun and pleasure now." Silvia knew that wasn't exactly true. Sex was still used to hurt and to feel sorrow and anger and any of the thousand reasons people have always had sex. Just not to make life. "That's why there are no babies."

The children, no matter what they had been told in their short lives knew what this meant. But they all already knew and had always known. Just like darkness, it was all around them. The concrete corridors and rooms were empty of new life and would some day soon be empty of any life.

Their lives now would be short. Her job was to help them find what joy they could.

"So," Silvia said as brightly and cheerfully as she could manage, "let's talk about kissing." And some of the class leaned forward to listen.

Last Week

2009-07-06T12:39:00.002-04:00

Yes. There were no new stories last week. As often is the case, the combination of life and writer's block led to a failure of posting. I'll see if I can't make it up to you all.

BRUISES

2009-06-29T09:04:00.000-04:00

"Damn," she said, rubbing her temple. There would be a mark. There always was. When she exerted herself that much, the veins in her head and neck pulsed and swelled. Capillaries burst, leaving small star patterns of bruises. They always ended up hurting a bit, but she also thought they were pretty. Sometimes she drew them with crayons.

She surveyed the room. All of the medical equipment in the lab had been pushed out from her and was in heaps along the walls. The bulbs in the overhead lights had all exploded and the room was dark except from the light from the all coming through the small windows in the double doors. The wall of glass that surround the upper section of the lab, separating it from the observation room, was white with spider cracks. Apparently it had been reinforced class, the observers wanting some protection from the observed. She could see what happened to the observers now.

Like Felicia.

She wiped her little hands on her hospital gown. She grown up with almost daily blood tests so the sight of the red stuff didn't bother her. She was aware that other six year old girls might cry at having their hands slick with blood, but not her.

If there had been bodies, it might have bothered her, but the bodies had all gone away. Perhaps there were still parts on the heaps along the walls, but in the dark she couldn't make them out. There was blood beyond the few splatters that hit her hands and face. Blood on the walls and glass. Large smears and fine mist sprays. Abstractly she knew that this was what was left of the staff. Dr. Swanson, who had always encouraged Felicia to think of as "mom," had been standing right in front of her when Felicia had exerted. So that particularly large splotch on the wall directly opposite Felicia was probably Dr. Swanson.

Felicia had liked Dr. Swanson well enough. But she had had enough this morning. She didn't want another of those big needles stuck into her brain. She hated that. It didn't really hurt, but it made it hard to think and left her nauseous. If there was one thing that Felicia hated it was throwing up. So she had just pushed her brain harder then she had before. She couldn't remember a time when she couldn't push her thoughts out and touch objects and stuff with them. She understood that the doctors and the observers (who would come and watch her during test and never speak to her directly) couldn't do it. She assumed that when you became big and grew up that you couldn't do it anymore. But that couldn't explain why all the adults in her life, the only people in her life, only seemed to care about this ability.

One of the computer like things that they always attached to her head lay on its side, its screen scattered, and it was blocking the doors. She climbed over it, being careful not to step on glass or get her flimsy gown caught on anything, and pushed out into the hall. The lights were on here but flickering irregularly. There was very little noise. No sounds of people. No people.

Then she saw it. One of the men who wore the dark uniforms and the guns at their hips and were always talking into walkiie talkies, lay slumped against the wall. Behind his head was painted red with blood. Felicia stared for a bit. She knew that this should be upsetting. But it wasn't. It was just a body. Bodies can't hurt you.

She walked through the halls and saw more bodies and more blood. Soon she stopped even thinking it was odd. She passed the little room that she had grown up in. Felicia considered going in and getting one or two of her favorite toys, the few things in her world that had not, in some way, been cold and distant. But she decided she didn't need them any more. Her head was feeling better. Better than it had ever before. She moved on.

Felicia didn't stop at "Testing Rooms." She had spent too much of her short life in those rooms, being run through test after test. "Felicia, can you make the ball roll?" "Felicia, can you lift the block in the air?" "Felicia, can you make the water a bit warmer?" And she could. But it would go on for hours. She also learned quickly that if she did it with ease, it just meant they pushed her harder. And it meant more needles in her head. So she had been holding back, making it look more difficult than it was. If it looked like it was making her tired they often let her go back to her room.

But today she had walked into the room, still sleepy. They had asked her to move a chair across the floor. She hadn't been thinking, wasn't even really listening to them, and was cranky about being woken up from a dream where she was playing with other little girls. Without any effort she lifted the chair up in the air, spun it around and slammed it into the wall. The doctors had been so excited. Dr. Swanson had hugged her and said, "I love you so much!" And then taken her directly to the lab and started preparing the needles.

It felt like she was walking for hours and was just thinking she'd would be lost in the halls forever when she pushed through a door and into daylight. Felicia shielded her eyes from the morning sun and felt its warmth through her gown and on her bare backside. After her eyes adjusted, she saw that she was in a parking lot. A car had crashed into a lamp post, its driver limp over the steering wheel.

Felicia walked up to the car and look at her face in the side mirror. The star bruises were really big a purple. And pretty. She liked them and hoped they'd never go away. They didn't hurt this time.

Walking out of the lot and into the street, she wondered that the city was a lot quieter than they were on the television shows. Somewhere distant an alarm was screeching. She didn't like the noise, so she shut her eyes and pushed and somewhere there was an explosion and the noise stopped.

There were more bodies but that was just how the world was now.

Felicia began to walk gingery down the street. "Damn," she thought. "I should have gotten my shoes." But she figured she could find some new ones. That and some other little girls to play with.

Movie: Daybreak

2009-06-28T12:09:00.000-04:00

Ah, yes. Everything in my being says this should be horrible and yet it is right down my alley.

News: Ray Bradbury hates the interwebs

2009-06-28T10:02:00.000-04:00

"Yahoo called me eight weeks ago," [Bradbury] said. "They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.'

"It's distracting," he continued. "It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."

(via scifi wire via Geekologie)

Clip: Are We Giving Robots Too Much Power?

2009-06-27T23:13:00.000-04:00

Toy: Four Minfigs of the ApocaLEGO

2009-06-27T21:18:00.003-04:00

From Brothers Brick, tag ApocaLEGO.

If you have ANY interest in LEGO, check out the rest of their posts.

Image: Liquid mushroom cloud

2009-06-27T16:09:00.003-04:00

Image: When mother died

2009-06-27T10:50:00.004-04:00

A Softer World (because it too small to read here).

While we're on the topic of zombie, please go read Disney Zombies. It is awesome.

Movie: 9

2009-06-27T05:28:00.003-04:00

If Tim Burton were to make a CG post-apocalyptic steampunkish version of The Borrowers, it would be 9. It is Tim Burton produced but is directed by Shane Acker. And in incredible voice cast: Elija Wood, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Christopher Plummer.

The clip below was shown at ComicCon (I believe). It is a full sequence, so you might consider it a SPOILER.

Untitled Zombie Novel Excerpt: ZOO

2009-06-26T15:05:00.002-04:00

"I thought you said it didn't affect animals!" Phil screamed as he held the doors shut against the headbutts of the beast. "That's what you said!"

Dr. Belaus was already scanning the gardening shed for weapons. "It never had before," she stated in her always calm voice that annoyed the fuck out of Phil. "Fascinating. It may be a new strain. I don't know. This changes a lot." Belaus found what she was looking for on the bottom shelf of a work bench in the back of the shed.

"You think?! Because those are god damn undead giraffes! Giraffes!" Phil put his back into the doors and tried to reach an arm out to a rake to put through the handles and hold them shut. "Some help, Doctor?" Right then the doors stopped thumping.

Phil took the opportunity to quickly lean forward, grab the rake and lock the doors. He stopped moving, listen through the thin wood walls of the shed. He could hear the clop clop of the long legs of the giraffes outside. He looked around the shed for weakness. Belaus's back was to him at the workbench, fiddling with something. Then he saw the shelving until up against the wall. It was not the unit that made him panic. It was the small dirt covered window behind it.

"Shit!" He ran to the shelves and tried to see outside. The window was seven feet up and only slim light was filter through the dust. He couldn't make anything out at first and stood on the bottom shelf to bring his head to the windows height. He could make out movement.

The glass suddenly shattered and Phil tumbled backward has the shelves toppled over on top of him. The rotting giraffe head pushed in on it's lanky rank neck. It tried to bend down and bit at him, snapping its narrow mouth and broad herbivore teeth. It couldn't quite get to him due to the angle of the window the shelves, but Phil was also trapped.

He tried to get a hand around to the large hunting knife on his belt, the the shelves were pinning his arm. "Belaus! Fuck! Help!"

He heard her almost mumble, "Yes, yes," and then heard two chokes of a small motor attempting to start. Then the loud roar and the buzz of a chainsaw. The doctor had a small chainsaw in her hands.

"Yes! Kill this fucker!" Phil yelled as viscera of the giraffe's mouth and rotting face dripped into his face,

"I can't get a good angle on the head. It's moving too much and I worry and hurting you. Mmmm."

"Do something!"

Belaus moved long the neck, at seven feet of which stretched into the room and up to the window. With a surgeons precision she maneuvered the whirring chainsaw through the neck. It fell free from the body and from the window. Phil shoved the shelves up and rolled out from underneath them. The neck was still moving, like a mad stiff snake, still trying to get at Phil.

"Ah," declared Belaus. "Perhaps I should have but cut so low."

"You fucking think?!" Phil grabbed the first thing he could get to: a ten pound sledge hammer. He slammed his foot on the neck just below the head to hold it still and raised the sledge above his head. He brough it down with al his force, splattering his legs with giraffe skull and flesh.

Belaus was looking out the window. "Phillip, we may have a problem." Over the noise of the chainsaw Phil heard it: a wet trumpet-like roar, unmistakably the angry cry of an elephant.

MAD?

2009-06-25T14:38:00.001-04:00

Mad? Perhaps. Perhaps I am. Or, perhaps, it is you who are mad, trapped in your small minded world or “ethics” and “morals.” I scoff at those ideas! Science is about pure thought making the impossible possible. I do not “break the laws of nature.” I make the laws!

Yes yes. The consequences of my genetic experiments were unfortunate. But do we not live in a more exciting world now? My bearsharkhawks fill the skies with their majestic cries. It they feed on children too careless to look up occasionally, how can that be blamed on me?

And I ended the death of soldiers with my perfection of the Slaughterbots. All world governments purchased them. What they did with them was not my concern. I am about the science! If Europe is overrun by my designed machines, destroying everything in their path, that is just a testament to their effectiveness.

Cheap power! Limitless! That was me. ME! Tapped directly into the sun with my Solar Probes. You rejoiced. All of you! And now you complain that I lied, that it turns out the sun will be sucked dry in thirty years. I did not lie! There are other stars to be utilized, you short sighted fools!

This? What is this with the red numbers counting down? Just an intellectual exercise put into practice. It will create a temporal collapse, erasing the very element of time. What? Doomsday device?! Poppycock? How can there be a doomsDAY device if the concept of time is destroyed? There will be no more time. Of course it will work! That's why I made it – to see if I could! It is about the science, the pure pursuit of knowledge!

Death? I scoff at the concept! My immortality is assured by my genius, regardless if you small minded people are around to give witness to it! Think upon that for the next thirteen seconds.

BLOCKED

2009-06-24T16:06:00.002-04:00

His pen stopped moving and He lay it down. He rubbed his temples. He looked at the stack of pages he had already written and then down at the blank page before Him. He cracked His knuckles and picked up His pen and hovered. Then He put it back down, stood up and walked around the room.

He had a snack. He took a shower. He read the newspaper and an old book for a bit.

A nap didn't help. Nor did going for a long walk. He tried to paint for a bit and listen to music.

Finally He had to admit it. He was blocked. Completely and entirely blocked.

It has started so well. Compelling, fast paced.

But over the pages it had just gotten too convoluted. He had written Himself into a hole. So many plot inconsistencies, too many improbably events. Way too many characters. He was stuck with the Story and had not idea how to get out. He might be able to fix it with editing but the idea of doing that just made His head hurt. Probably best to trash it and start over.

No. It might be salvageable. Someday. After he had finished another project.

He boxed up the pages and placed the boxes on a shelf in the top of the closet.

He sat back at the desk and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. Picking the pen back up, feeling excited again to be starting something new, open to infinite possibilities. He had liked the way the last one had started, perhaps. Something like that. He put the pen to the page and wrote.

In the beginning...

WE HAVE COME FOR YOUR WOMEN

2009-06-23T13:15:00.001-04:00

“We have come for your women,” said the alien emissary.

It was tall and lanky with limbs disturbingly spindly. Humanoid but hairless with large solid black eyes and skin a sickly pale green riddled with deep blue veins that appeared to slowly shift configuration. Its mouth was lipless and ran vertically from just below the eyes to almost the tip of the chin. It wore long robes of crimson.

The gathered leaders of the world (or what remained) gasped. This was the first time they had met the aliens face to face. Only nine days earlier, they had arrived in orbit in their massive crafts, hundreds of ships. Earth had reached out, trying in anyway to communicate. But after twenty-four hours the aliens had attacked without any warning.

Large of rocks, that the aliens had cut from the moon, were shot from kinetic accelerators, striking all across the globe. The choice of target confounded military leaders. Some made sense, symbolically at least. The White House. The Kremlin. Buckingham Palace. Others were more confusing. Sears Tower. The Taj Mahal. Mount Rusher. The Eiffel Tower. Burj Dubai. Disneyworld and Disneyland. Millions died in the first night, not just from the attacks but the panic that followed.

Missiles were launched and within seconds were cut from the sky by beams of blue light that sliced through the clouds. The same blue beams began to dicethe wings any airplanes in the sky. And then ship at sea. And then vehicles on the roads. For one two hour period on the third day, the blue lights began to hit every red and blue vehicle, be it military or civilian, from baby blue U.N. APVs to racing red Honda Accords. The lights danced upon the globe avoiding anything that was not red or blue.

The military bases of the world seemed to be left relatively untouched at first. Then there was an almost subsonic hum at Camp Pendleton and with in minutes the marines there began to attack each other using what ever weapon was closest to them. This spread across the world for half a day and then ended as suddenly as it began.

On the fourth day, the aliens began to land. They descended on spiky black ships, spiny spiders of obsidian. Each the size of a ten story building, they strode through the streets on five taloned legs that cratered the ground with every step. Rag tag groups of humans all over the world attempted to fight them off, but their weapons were useless. The black walkers seemed to toy with them, remaining unmoving, absorbing a dozen hits by shoulder launched rockets and tank cannon shells, before suddenly into movement, chasing down every single person who had hit them.

On the sixth day, the attacks all stopped and the aliens had broadcast a message. “We wish to meet with your leaders. You may travel freely for three days.” Coordinates were given in the Gobi Desert. The people of Earth, what remained of their governments, knew they had no choice. The aliens weren't specific so anyone who thought of themselves as a “leader” and couple arrange travel went.

The aliens had built a giant amphitheater in the desert, plain and utilitarian. A fifty thousand humans sat to hear their fate.

“We have come from your women,” the alien said.

Gasps and screams and murmurs and howls and shouts and crying followed. The alien, aloe in the center of the amphitheater waited unmoving. Eventually he touched his long fingers to the podium and a sub-hum cascaded through the humans forcing them to clutch their heads in pain. The hum passed and the alien pointed to one man near the front. “Ask your questions.”

The man stood, nervous to be the speaker for Earth. But he pulled himself together.

“Our women? Why? To experiment? As slaves? Or to breed with them? Is that it? Or as slaves? Or food?”

The alien pulled back in what was clearly shock.

“What? Experiment? Do we look like scientists? Have you not seen our behavior since we got here? And do you really think we'd have sex with you guys? That is just gross. And eat? That's sick.”

The alien leaned forward, his hand on the sides of the podium. “No. See, we're all guys. Do you know what it is like when it is all guys for an extended period of time. Things get out of hand. I mean, look at the last week! We just start breaking stuff. Everything becomes a... I believe the human phrase is 'pissing contest.' We're sorry about all that. We had been on a bender and things got out of hand. Sorry about being such, who do you say, douche bags Seriously, without some female influence we're just going to get in more trouble. Look, we don't wanna force anyone to come with us. We just don't want to be jerks.”

FRIDAY DINNER

2009-06-22T05:55:00.001-04:00

"I hope you all don't mind but I tried something new." Fredrick was almost bubbly this evening as he placed the plates of food before us. It was slow going because he only had the one arm and his prosthetic right leg below the knew was just a touch too short. "I experimented with the White #16 and Yellow #5 to make a something like mashed potatoes. I think they came out pretty well. Not that I can actually remember what potatoes even tasted like." Fredrick laughed and everyone else politely laughed along with him. Except me. I wasn't in the mood to laugh.

Out of the five of us, Fredrick was the best cook and, as always, he managed to make the processed "food" elements that gave us most of our nutrients into something that actually looked like food. And since it was Friday night, we were actually having our special dinner with real meat. And, in spite of myself, it smelled delicious.

Jessica looked done at the thin slices. "Barbecue? You made barbecue sauce?"

Fredrick sat down and tucked his clothe napkin into the front of his shirt. Something about that felt vulgar to me. Tacky. Disrespectful. "Yep. Not only that but...." With a flourish, he removed the lid from ceramic dish on the table to reveal a thick brown fluid.

Peter leaned over and stuck the tip of his pinkie in it and stuck it in his mouth to taste. I restrained the need to wince. "Gravy!"

"Yes," said Fredrick with obvious pride. "Yeah, I know that barbecue and gravy don't really go together but I thought it might make the potatoes feel more like potatoes." And with that he took a large spoonful and dripped it unto the mound of white on his plate.

Looking at the four of them, I could see the anticipation and hunger in their eyes as they readied themselves to dig in. We rarely stood on any sort of ceremony but this was Friday night dinner. Fredrick was staring at me with that stupid grin on his face. In someways, I was glad that he was to cook tonight since I knew the meal would be excellent. But it irked me the joy he took in it. Cooking Friday dinner always bothered the rest of us but not Fredrick.

The others awkwardly avoided my gaze which also made me mad. I suppose it was a no win for them and me. I looked down at my plate, both ravenous and nauseous. The meat looked so delicious, lined with crispy fat and red with juices. My stomach ached at the smell but my head rebelled at the thought.

Fredrick coughed. I looked up at his questioning but smiling face. I knew he didn't mean it, but I felt like I was being mocked. I took a deep breath, knowing my roll. "We thank you, Fredrick, for preparing tonight's meal," I said in measured tones.

He, in response, said brightly, "And we thank you, Noah, for providing it." And with that they began eat.

We rationed the food substitutes we had slowly, keeping ourselves alive a long as possible. We had no idea what we might be waiting for since we hadn't had contact with anyone in months and were isolated. The last communication we'd had was jumbled and confused. We could only guess when (or if ever) they'd be able to mount a rescue. After six months, we'd realized that there was a gap in the nutrients, some type of protein we weren't getting. So we'd come up with this solution.

I suppose it was an extra special Friday. When our turn came up, we got to chose what got provided for the meal. And I, unlike Fredrick, was not ready to give up an arm yet. So this was our first thigh as my shins had been offered up on my previous turns. I knew that the extra meat made this a large meal. And all that fat rendered down made the gravy possible.

The pain from the surgery still hurt. I looked down at the bandages just below my right hip, where my leg had been just 24 hours before. I refused to take any more painkillers because if I was going to have this meal, I wanted to be able to at least taste it since we had so few pleasures.

I pushed past my disgust and cut a piece of the succulent me. Speared it with my fork, I slowly drew it to my mouth and held me on my tongue.

One week in and we might have structure

2009-06-21T19:05:00.002-04:00

I wasn't sure how I would tackle this project but it is starting to take shape.

Monday: A repost of a story done on my other blog. I only did ten, so that will only be the case for a few months.

Tuesday thru Thursday: New single stories. Some may end up being extremely short All depends on my mood.

Friday: A new except from the zombie novel. To be clear, I haven't actually written the novel. At this point it is just a random collection of scenes in my head. I also need a title for it. It will probably not stay a pure zombie novel. Other horror lurk in the streets.

Saturday and Sunday: Random apocalypse related links and such. Not all weekends, just when I have something.

Also, if there are any guest writers out there, shoot me a line. Always up for stuff that will give me a break.

Movie: Zombieland

2009-06-21T11:42:00.000-04:00

I am not sure if we need another comedy zombie film. Shaun of the Dead pretty much nailed it.

Part of it is that zombies are never about the zombies but about how people deal with it. And they are something that normal people can deal with. Zombies are dumb and (usually) slow. You don't ned fancy weapons or planning. Anything with an edge. Also zombie movies are cheap to make (relatively). Slap some makeup on and you have a zombie.

And they give a guiltless excuse to kill people in fanciful ways. Because they are already dead.

I feel a bit bad for Jesse Eisenberg since he is going too be know as "the guy who isn't Micheal Cera."

(Note: I still think there is room for a comedy zombie apocalypse tv series. I still want Eliza Skinner to make it. In part because I want to see what I look as a zombie. In fact, I love playing zombies. I will GLADLY play a zombie in any project anyone has. Actually, now that I think of it, I will play any sort of mindless killing monster in any project any one has.)

Comic: xkcd - Apocalypse

2009-06-21T11:40:00.000-04:00

Link.

Okay. This is clear some sort of math in joke. I have no idea what it means. Paul Erdõs is the punch line. I am sure it is hilarious. If anyone can explain it to me, great!

News: NASA to blow up moon.

2009-06-20T16:29:00.000-04:00

Link.

Not the plan but you know how these things go.

LCROSS may be one of NASA's most participatory missions. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it would hit the moon in the early morning hours of Oct. 8. The cloud from the 350 metric tons of debris kicked up by the Centaur booster should spread six miles above the surface of the moon, hitting the sunlight and making it visible to amateur astronomers across North America. The space agency is enlisting telescopes around the country to help monitor the impact.

The idea is to see if there is water on the moon. In the moon. Whatever. Shoot a rocket into the moon, blast material six miles up, see what's in it.

This is a bit like when I lose my keys and throw everything in my room into the air.

Good luck, NASA.

(via Geekologie)

Theater: The End of the World

2009-06-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

Chances are if you are reading this, you've seen me plug thisa dozen dozen times. But I am pretty proud to be involved with it so here it goes again.

The End of the World is an improvised apocalypse. The show is split into two roughly 25 minute halves. The first half, based off a single suggestion, starts at an apocalyptic moment and then goes back to the see the events the led up to it, and then ends with the moment again. The second half is a single long post-apocalyptic scene based on the events of the first half.

Only two more chances to catch it. June 23rd and 30th. 11pm.
Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. 307 26th Street. NYC. $5.

Clip: Hey!

2009-06-20T12:22:00.000-04:00

(via Geekologie)

Movie: 2012

2009-06-20T12:19:00.000-04:00

The new trailer for Ronald Emmerich's 2012 was released. am sure you are familar with Emmeric's work. Independence Day. Godzilla. The Day After Tomorrow. Master of the stupid disater movie. Master. His movies are made to make excellent trailers. And, yes, we absolutely need more movies with aircraft carriers flipping on top of the White House.

God bless you, Ronald Emmerich.

Untitled Zombie Novel Excerpt: SHAFT

2009-06-19T15:12:00.000-04:00

(Fridays will be random excepts from a novel I have never written. It's mainly an excuse for me to write cool zombies scenes without ever having to write the boring parts.)

Jeremy and Catherine finished blocking the doors to the stairwell. Desks, filing cabinets, a broom handle through the handles. The three zoms continued to bang against the doors, moans in hunger but the barricade would hold.

Wiping the sweat from her forehead Catherine said, “We need to find a way down, Jeremy. It's only a mater of time before a swarm forms. If they surround the building–”

“I know, damn it!” Jeremy checked his revolver. Only four rounds. “How many shotgun shells do you have left.

Catherine didn't even bother checking. “Two loaded. Two here, “ she said tapping her pants pocket.

They had wasted way too much ammo in getting down from the top floor. They'd been careless and stupid, thinking they could get up to the penthouse and back down without attracting the dead. But they had wasted to much time and the zoms had caught their scent and flanked them. They gotten to the stairs and down to the 8th floor before getting routed. They had more ammo back at Haven but that did them crap all good now.

“The elevator shaft,” he said.

Catherine didn't wait and quickly moved down the hallway to the elevator doors. She pulled out her small pry bar and jammed into between the doors. “Jer, we're going to need something to jam them open. He nodded and moved back into the offices and scavenged, eventually finding a tall metal trash can Catherine was bracing the doors open with her arms and legs when he got back. He placed the can between the doors on the floor.

Stretching and cracking her joints, Catherine peered down the shaft. The only light came from the doors they stood in and that was becoming dimmer by the moment. Twilight had hit. Soon it would be night and they'd be down the flashlights. If they didn't get to street level before too long into night they would have a whole other host of issue to deal with. Neither of them were priests (or shamans or whatever). They'd be open targets for the shadow beasties.

Catherine turned slipped on her headlamp, a small LED flashlight on an elastic band. She scanned the shaft, but even though the headlamp was surprisingly bright, it didn't cast it down more than a couple of floor. Jeremy squeezed his torso over her. It was tight, the doors only open by about 3 feet. He silently pointed to the metal ladder that ran next to the shaft. Catherine nodded.

The wet moan was loud and right behind Jeremy. He spun around to come face to face as the decayed zom in a ratty business suit fell upon him, pushing Jeremy back into Catherine. She had been quicker to respond then him and had already spun around and pulled up the shotgun. But she was trapped between Jeremy and the shaft. When he fell into her, she stumble backwards over the trash can She dropped the shotgun free, which luckily was still on it's shoulder strap, and shot her hands out to the edges of the elevator doors barely stopping her fall.

Jeremy had to use both hands to hold the zom back. He regained his balance, braced against the door and shoved hard. The zom stumbled back a few feet. Jeremy reached for his machete at his waste, but it the time it took him to pull it out, the zom had begun to lunge for. Jeremy dodge to the side, swinging the blade wildly. He caught the zom in the stomach with a great horizontal gash, spinning the zom slightly.

Catherine had just begun to pul herself forward when the zoms plowed into her, sending the both in the shaft. Jeremy dropped the machete, dove forward and trust his arm through the doors. He made contact and grasped.

Everything had happened so quickly and Catherine's headlamp was blinding him at first so it took him a second to process the situation. Jeremy was leaning forward, his stomach laying across the trash can. His left hand was braced against the elevator door and his right hand held a wrist. The wrist of the zom. The zom's hand gripped at his wrist, but was tried to claw at his skin. Catherine had her arms wrapped around the zom's waist. Jeremy could see that she was slipping on the lose clothes and loose decaying skin.

The zom was trying to pull itself up to Jeremy, its mouth biting in desire. Jeremy's arm strained against the weight of two bodies and felt the rotting flesh of the wrist slide in his hand. He tightened his grip, digging into the bone. The zom didn't care. It just want to eat and kept trying to pull closer to him while clawing with the other arm. If Jeremy tried to pull the zom and Catherine up, he'd just pull the zom into his own face. Not that he was sure he could lift both their weight. The zom might weigh a lot less than a normal adult but she was trying to lift Catherine's 150lbs plus the zom's probably 100lbs with one arm.

“You have to climb up,” he yelled, knowing this meant she's have to climb over the zom's head.

“I'm trying! Shoot it!”

“I go for my gun, I drop you both!”

Catherine threw up one hand and grabbed the zom's shoulder tight by the neck so it wouldn't be able to bite at her fingers. It seemed totally unaware of her, fixated as it was on Jeremy. She dug her fingers deep in the zom's flesh, getting a firm grip on the collar bone. Taking a deep breath, she let her other arm go from the zom's waist and tried to pull her self up with a quick jerk.

At that moment moment the zom pulled sharply against Jeremy's arm. The shock load of all the weigh shift caused the joints and tendons in the zom's elbow to popped and begin to separate. Jeremy had just enough time to let go of the elevator door with his left hand and force his toro deeper down the shaft, grasping madly. He grabbed the zom's other (and now only remaining arm) with his left hand. The zom jerked out of free fall and against Catherine's weight. Quickly he dropped the now unconnected forearm in his right hand and grasped it around the zom's arm.

The the split second of falling and the jerk to a stop, Catherine had struggle to keep hold on the zom. She fumble down and around the zom, desperate for a hand hold. When everything came to a rest, she realized she had one hand deep inside the zom's abdomen, in the gash Jeremy had sliced. Her hand has wrapped around a piece of intestine.

And it began to unravel.

(to be continued)

UMPTEEN

2009-06-18T14:25:00.001-04:00

“They will make us gods,” science declared
Nano robots, miniscule umpteen
Finessing matter, leaving unimpaired,
Replicating swiftly and unseen.

They've one desire on their tiny minds,
To reproduce and legion become.
Much too late did we heed all the signs
Our creation had grown to such a sum.

You can not parley with things so small
Who only want to eat all that exists.
Man's hubris is what led us to fall.
No one will be left to reminisce.

What we have wrought we can not now undo.
All that is left is an Earth of grey goo.

(editing help from Nicole Drespel)

WEIGHT

2009-06-17T17:38:00.002-04:00

The last of the other pilots was gone. Only Benjamin remained.

He woke up and climbed from the pod. Not that he was ever not “awake” now, even in the pod. But the ship's system insisted on taking him out of stasis. They thought it would mitigate the effects to get up and move around and not just be plugged in. But now, surround by twenty-three “dead” pods, it just reminded him of how alone he was.

Alone. Funny to feel so alone knowing that the ship carried a hundred thousand people. But they were just cargo now and would be until they arrived at their destination. If only he knew where, and win, that would be.

They'd had very little warning. Less then ten years. The Sun would flare and make Earth's solar system would be become uninhabitable. For the human race to survive, they would have to find a new system, a new planet.

There was panic and war, but during it all a plan was put forth. The ship was built to travel. But it was unknown if a habitable planet would be found on the first try. They had enough fuel to get there. But it would take over 40 years to get to the nearest system with the highest probability of sustaining life.. If they got there and nowhere suitable was found, the ship would gather more fuel and materials and set off to another system.

They had to plan for trip that might take hundreds of years. Or more. The speeds achieved, while great, were still much slower to take much advantage of time dilation. To achieve such speeds would use too much fuel.

The ship was designed to run itself. It could self-repair and everything was automated. The “passengers” could be placed in a dreamless stasis, fully unaware of time passing. But choices would have to be made. The computer, as advanced as it was, still needed to be monitored. Too much was at stake.

Benjamin stretched. When he placed his hand on the side on the pod it left a streak in a thin film of dust. No matter how good the filtration system were, dust material still gathered. It had been 3 years since any of the pilots had woken. Benjamin checked the records and saw that it had been 2 years since the cleaning robot had been through the cabin. With a few quick flicks of his finger on a monitor he initiated a scrubbing sequence. He would have done it even if the cabin had been clean. He liked there to be movement around him. He missed movement.

Massive leaps in technology were made in a very short time to make the ship possible, but there was not enough time to fully test everything. You can't test run a mission that would last so long. Simulations could be run, but there was a limitation to what could be predicted. Especially concerning the human mind.

The solution to the pilot problem was to place people in stasis physically but to keep them aware. Their bodies unmoving and unaging but their minds tied into ships systems, overseeing it all. No dreaming, no sleep, but mentally one with the ship.

They knew this would take a toll on the mind of the pilots, to be isolated yet aware for so much time, for an indefinite time. Even during the few short years of testing the system, many pilots cracked in training. The system was improved but could never be perfected. Madness would overcome almost everyone eventually.

Benjamin walked to the pilot's chair and sat down. He ran his eyes over the monitors. He was already aware of exactly what he'd see. He's been plugged into the system only minutes before. The pilot's chair and cockpit were unneeded but the designers put it in anyway. It gave the pilots a sense of control, made them feel less like parts of just a system.

Even though he knew it what it would say, Benjamin check the radiation outside the ship. It was clear and safe. He flicked his fingers and lowered the shield on the small clear window. He could have viewed it on the screens but he wanted to see it, like he always did, with his own eyes. Again, the window wasn't needed for any reason except to make the pilots feel more like pilots.

Twenty-four pilots were selected. The best and most mentally stable that could be found. They would operate in six month shifts, two pilots at a time. The other twenty-two pilots would slip into full-stasis, resting their brains and lessening the time they'd have to be aware. Two pilots to keep each other company, to be a team. Out of every six years, each pilot would be “awake” for only six months.

And so many pilots would operate as backups. Because they could never test the system fully.

The shielding slipped away and Benjamin shut of the cabin lights and dimmed the monitors. But outside was just black and distant stars. The window faced forward and Benjamin new one of the stars was their next destination. If he gave it much though, he could probably figure out which. There was little point. The ship knew where they were going. It always knew.

He moved his fingers across the monitors and brought up cameras from the outside of the ship. It was massive and utilitarian, with little attention to aesthetics. So much metal and plastics and ceramics. A huge ark carrying the human race. It was too large, too heavy, to every enter the atmosphere of a planet. If they ever found a suitable one.

The first pilot cracked only three weeks in his shift. Too much responsibility, too much grief over the billions left behind. The second pilot lasted for 17 years before breaking. The rest stayed stable.

Until they reached the first system after more than four decades. Nothing would suit their needs. The ship gathered material from the planets and asteroids in the system, refilling and repairing. After a year, the ship departed again. Two months, to the day, into the first shift, both pilots cracked. They awoke fully from their pods and committed suicide together.

The ship had a”awoken” Benjamin and his partner, Nathan, as they were up next. It informed them of what had happened. The bots and cleaned up after and disposed of the bodies.

Nathan had lasted 23 more years. More pilots would go. More systems would be visited, reaped and left behind.

They were now on there way to their thirty-second system. Thirty-one systems had been dead. The ship still functioned as new, but six hours ago Cassandra had slipped into madness. She and Benjamin has swapped six months shifts for over fifty years. And now Benjamin was the last pilot.

He shut the monitors back down and closed the shielding. He walked back to the pods and found Cassandra's. He couldn't remember her face. They had never been out of their pods at the same time and the last time he'd seen her was before the ship left Earth's orbit. Now she lay in full stasis. There she'd wait until Benjamin could deliver them to somewhere to make a home. A hundred-thousand souls, all relying on him and only him. He would only age for the few shorts hours he left the pod every few decades. The rest of the time he'd remain in sleeplessness, constant aware of the ship and it's status.

Now it was all on him.

WISHES

2009-06-16T13:46:00.001-04:00

They sat on the beach, looking up at the night sky. The shooting star was bright and brilliant, glowing not only white but oranges and reds and blues.

“I know you aren't supposed to say it out loud but I want to tell you my wish,” he whispered into her ear as he took her hand. “But I already got my wish. To be with you, here tonight. To feel your touch and hear your voice. To be able to look into your eyes and feel so close with you. I couldn't dream of a better night. I can't wish for anything better.” He sighed and kissed her sweetly on the lips.

She stared back at him and then back at the sky and then back at him.

She sighed and spoke. “I fucking wish that wasn't a giant meteor about kill us all. I mean, jesus, you are such a sap.”

THE BOOK

2009-06-15T13:02:00.000-04:00

In what may have been the worst case of miss shelving in the history of time, the book was placed in the children's section of the Greylock Public Library. Somehow it ended up slipped in between National Velvet & The Neverending Story, which is curious since the book gives no indication of its title. How it end up at the Greylock branch at all is curious as well. There are only so many copies and most are guarded extremely closely by their owners. But the copies of the book have been known to surface in odd places at odd time, so it is not without precedence. And this was one of those small Massachusetts's sea towns where these sorts of things seemed to happen. It may have even been by design.

Young Nicolas Brogan felt drawn to the book. The unadorned leather binding, the deep brown stains in one corner. The rough edges of the pages. The tattered red silk ribbon bookmark. The rusted metal clasp. It was a bit over sized but not to stand out amongst many of the children's books. It was perhaps thick, but it was not a complete edition of the book at only 400 some pages. (The last know complete edition, John Dee's flawed translation from the 1603, ran over a thousand, if accounts are to be believed.) What decided it for Nicolas was the short glance at the inside. The chaotic drawings and mess of words. And especially the hand written notes filling the margins, scribbled in at least a dozen different hands. He was good reader for an eight year old but many of the word, even the letters themselves, were foreign to him. But fragments could be deciphered. On the top of one page, someone had written in a shaky letters

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

Nicolas knew it wasn't a normal book.

The librarian paid little attention to what was being checked out. She scanned the barcode taped to the spine (which, oddly enough, came up as The Places You'll Go) and sent him on his way. Nicolas' mom was distracted by the fact that her Pilate's class had been cancelled and only asked him if he had found something interesting. "Uh huh," mumbled Nicolas, clutching the volume to his chest. She left it at that as she juggled driving and texting and wonder what the hell she was going to make for dinner.

Late that night, Nicolas huddled under his covers with a flashlight and flipped through the book. It made little sense to him but the drawing were neat: animals and creatures; men and women doing things he only had a vague notion were naughty; lines and curves; knifes and swords. Nicolas wanted more than anything to understand but the words seemed to scuttle across the page. But he was a determined young boy.

The book, of course, has driven men mad. Just reading it can open one's mind to horrors beyond horrors. Perhaps the fact that Nicolas had so little experience of the world to place it in context shielded him from having his reality ripped inside out. Or perhaps it is that a child's mild is ready to accept anything, has not been made rigid by years, that it was no different from believing that the worlds of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings could be real. The hows and whys are not important. The facts are that Nicolas Brogan focused his entire attention on the pages and managed to sound out words that had not been spoken in decades.

Through random circumstances everything was aligned that night. It was the right time of year and the right stars were in their right positions in the sky. The elements of the ritual just happened to be amongst the things an eight year old boy collects on his journeys through the neighborhood: an old coin (that happened to bare the likeness of Emperor Septimius Severus and had last been owned by a lady of the night); the skull of a bird (that had happened to drown in the first rain of Spring); a stone in the shape of a heart; an iron spike (that happened to have been driven into the lung of a police officer). The tooth beneath Nicolas pillow in fact covered at least three of the elements required, including "a sacrifice of one's own flesh." At the moment Nicolas finished whispering the words, his parents climaxed together in joyless copulation in the room below him.

A ritual that many before had failed at before him, that had destroyed souls and shattered minds, was complete to perfection by Nicolas Brogan under his Transformer sheets.

Nicolas pushed his head out from the covers at the silent tearing sound. The air at the end of his bed split and cracked and opened up. It opened up into the depth of the nothingness beyond our world, a void that sunk into infinite abyss. A chaos of black could be glimpsed. Great globes of of light approached the opening. Surrounding the globes were tendrils of amorphous black flesh, blood and pain, flowed and crept from the nearest globes as they broke apart. In time primal, the eldritch, hideous horror of the realm of The Old Ones, the monstrous noxious form of the formless, drew itself towards our world. And a voice of a thousand souls immortal, murderous and vile, frothed and spit and addressed the wide eyed Nicolas.

"You call me, the Lurker of the Threshold, into your world. I am Yog-Sothoth. All-in-one. One-in-all. Yog-Sothoth is the gate and the gate is Yog-Sothoth. Time is nothing to me as I am all time. Into your world Yog-Sothoth spews and the era have man shall end. That is the trade. Infinite knowledge for my passage to the realm of flesh. All that has been known and all that has never been known and all that shall been know has been tasted in Yog-Sothoth's maw. You call me and that knowledge is yours to be had. Power and suffering beyond measure. All you have to do is say the words, but, be warned! For this knowledge can–"

"Am I getting a Wii for Christmas?"

The formless thing stopped moving at the edge of the opening. A silence stretched into the emptiness. Nicolas has shifted out from the covers, the book still in his hands, and sat bouncing on his knees at head of his bed.

Yog-Sothoth remained unmoving. Slowly it opened its maws and slithered, "Um... What?"

Nicolas picked at his nose and said, "You know everything, right? I really want a Wii and I didn't get one for my birthday so I really really want on for Christmas. Am I going to get one?"

Yog-Sothoth shifted slightly. "The secrets of the universe are open to you... and you want to know... if you are getting a... Wii... for Christmas?"

"Yes. If you don't know just say so."

"I am Yog-Sothoth, All-in-One, One-in—"

"You said that part."

"Okay, yes. You are getting a Wii. Your dad hid it in his closet above his ties."

"Sweet!"

The Lurker swelled again, it protoplasmic tendrils gripping at the edges of the rip. "Now! What other mysteries to you wish to have stabbed into you small mind, to be enlightened and blinded and–"

"Why did Sally throw a rock at me yesterday?"

"Look, there is so much–"

"And babies. Where do they come from? It has to do with s-e-x, right? Do you know where my G.I. Joe got lost? Why does orange juice taste weird right after I brush my teeth? Timothy said that dinosaurs are just birds, but he's a liar, right?"

"Well, I–"

"When can I have my own dog? I think I like Sally and Dad said she likes me too but it is stupid to throw rocks at someone you like, right? I am I going to be an astronaut? Are there really aliens in space?"

"Oh, oh. I know that one! In the great void, The Old Ones, the They, live and shall–"

"Why are tomatoes gross but not tomato sauce? Can you make ice cream with Twizzlers in it? Why do people have ear lobes? If Optimus Prime fought the Power Rangers who would win? What is better, burritos or pizza? Can you be an astronauts and NASCAR driver? How about Wolverine and Optimus Prime? Timothy said cooties are real, but they aren't, right? And–"

Yog-Sothoth had backed from the opening and was slowly closing it. The globes of light dimmed as if trying as unobtrusively as possible to slink from the room.

"Where are you going?"

"Well, you know, this is not really my... um... expertise. Really, kid, you should ask your parents. So I'm just gonna go."

"But..."

"Look. Try me in a few years, okay? I'm not going anywhere. Because, well, you know... All-in-one..."

"One-in-All..."

"Right! So... um... yeah."

And with that, the Lurker of the Threshold closed the porthole behind him. All that remained in Nicolas' room was the slight smell of fish and cobber.

Nicolas picked his nose again and thought for a few moments. Then, remembering that in just two months he would be opening a Wii under the Christmas tree, he crawled back under the sheets.

Later, the book fell between the foot of the mattress and the endboard and unto the floor under the bed. It would lay there, next to G.I. Joe for quite awhile.

5 days a week, a new end of it all

2009-06-13T15:57:00.000-04:00

Starting on Monday, Apocalypse Daily will bring you a new story of how the world will end. Monday thru Friday, one story.

Some will be longish. Some super short. Some will be reprints of stories I've written in other places. Most will be totally new.

Coming Soon

2009-06-11T17:22:00.000-04:00