Hub City Blues

The Future is Unsustainable

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Does anyone notice that his/her quality of writing diminishes through the course of NaNoWriMo?

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 5, 2015
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Answer by Thaddeus Howze:

Quality may have taken a hit. But that's not the problem.

It's your enthusiasm you have to worry about.

When you started, you were filled with the zeal of a new idea, a tale untold, trapped within you, ready finally to be freed with the thought of  National Novel Writing Month to buoy you though the trying times; the camaraderie, the gatherings, the laughter and tears of your mutual tribulations.

It sounded glorious!

If you were diligent, you gathered your research around you. If you were writing mysteries, you gathered data on pathology reports, investigative techniques, and ten of your favorite gumshoe novels for inspiration.

If you were planning for a space opera, you had already decided which laws of physics you were going to violate, whether your aliens spoke the same languages, how different aliens needed to be sure they wouldn't poison each other at the dinner table (or how they could…). You had already created the circumstance where these three aliens would come to blows and maybe intergalactic war!

Whatever tale you planned to tell, you had prepared your notes to help you remember how to pace your story. You had your timeline of character movements in the story, how they would cross your world and ultimately where they would meet their final fate, in the case of those unfortunate ones. You knew how the story started, where it turned, how it moved, where the bumps in the road and the major betrayals would take place. After all, that's what an outline is for.

Or you might be one of those rare creative types which eschews anything as formal as an outline (hurumph) no self-respecting panster would be caught dead with one on their person. Pantsters live by their ability to create tales of magic, mystery and wonder literally by willing it into existence while you wait.

They don't need structure, the tale will unfold itself, in its own pace, at its own time; the characters will reveal themselves to the author, unfolding like the single page of paper the pantster refuses to admit they used to flesh out their characters. A sentence, nothing more. The pantster is often as surprised as the reader when they read their work at the end of the day.

No matter your route to this point, the challenge of preparing yourself to write and the actual ACT of writing, has saddled you with the realization, that you knew in your heart, and only remember when you get about ten thousand words in.

Writing is hard work.

Your brain uses 30% of all the oxygen you breathe in on a given day. All the other parts of you, your face, arms, hands, digestive system, lungs, heart, liver, legs and feet, get the rest. The brain is like the government. The lungs bring in 100% of the oxygen but the Brain takes 30% right off the top. No questions asked.

The brain is using its 100 billion neurons to allow you to alter reality. To imagine a thing which does not exist. To create a realm of existence filled with whatever you can envision in your mind's eye and can convince your fingers to push past your fear, your trepidation of not being good enough, smart enough, capable enough to create something out of nothing more than a dream you shared in November.

At the 10,000 word point, you are looking around and saying: How did I get here?

You are wondering if you can move your hero past the beginning of the journey, where he must leave the safety of home and head out into the world. His perils must be enough to compel the reader to feel sympathy but not so dangerous, he would, if he had good sense, return home. Unless you were ruthless and burned his home, nay his entire village to the ground.

So you must go on. Can you make those journey's interesting? The energy of your early writings, the adherence to fanciful language has now fallen away to the drudgery of the task. To get your hero through the rising action of the story, the difficult part of making things happen, which reveal parts of the story, introduce the villains, throw out a few plots to resolve along the way until you can reach the awesome most terrifying, most intense part of any book for any writer.

The Climax. Ohhh. Sounds so dirty, doesn't it? The part of the story you KNOW you have been trying to get to since your character left home. You have this part in your head, or your heart. You know what you wanted to happen, you have been working toward it and thus the book feels lighter than the crushing ball of internal lead you have been carrying up to this point.

For the first time, you have crested the mountain and can see the other side. The End is in sight. It's probably November 25 at this point. You are weary. Creatively bone weary. Your hero's journey at least for this first book in your tetralogy is drawing to a close.

His denouement and yours are coinciding. You weary of his complaints. You sicken of you need to coddle him or torment him further, in preparation for his next book of adventures.

You walk him to the hospital, bleeding from untreated bullet wounds, trying to have him have clever one-liners as he's wheeled in. He makes eye contact with the nurse helping him and they share a mile as she jabs him with a number ten I.V. needle…

Your hero grabs his dying companion who pushes a small gem to him. The secret of the quest. You knew he had it and it was finally time for your hero to take up his destiny. As he touches it, the energy stored from his dying companion suffuses his body. The gem takes up its residence on the brow of your hero. He rises as he hears the enemy dragons in the distance…

You're thinking to yourself: Oh, God (Noodly-appendaged-One, Goddess, Horned Diety from a Dismal Dimension, other patron deity of writing as needed), its almost over…

It will take a lot of energy to get to this point. So you are to be forgiven if your lyrical prose in your early writing starts to get a bit saggy near the end. The effort of remaining wonderful, magnificently creative starts to wear on even the most fertile of minds, once they begin writing on a work.

This is perfectly normal and you can fight this feeling if you are writer by thinking about your writing during the course of your day instead of waiting until the moment you are about to start writing, to consider the work for the first time. Your brain is cold. The engine sputters, coughs, wheezes to life.

What kind of writing could you expect to get out of your work-weary, mass-transit traumatized, hellscape on wheels, hours-in-traffic-addled creativity well of a brain to be able to produce at the end of the day?

Not much.

Patterson, huh. We can do better.

How about you consider the next scene in your book when you get up in the morning while your brain is still fresh?

  • Play it over in your shower and then off to work. Mess with your dialogue and where you want the story to go while you are standing in line for lunch.
  • Get excited over what story that particular scene, chapter or event will have in the overall flow of your story.
  • Hold on to that enthusiasm while you are writing this thing you have played with all day, this idea you have looked at from all sides, protagonist wanting something, antagonists taking something.
  • Your enthusiasm for a crafting a well-viewed scene should be palpable.
  • And your story should feel more alive because you are writing it when your brain is more alive and playing with the story while your brain is more active, spreading creativity like fairy dust on all of your work, not just your writing but at your job.
  • People may notice this creative approach to your work and look forward to November when you begin creating something anew, with enthusiasm, zeal and vigor through out the month.

It should make torturing your hero, overheating your brain and starving your cat totally worth it.

You've got this. Write like a beast and remember: The dream is free. But the Hustle costs extra.

This is what you'll feel like when you're done. Stop pontificating and get back to work.

About the Author:

  • NanoWriMo Participant 2010, 2011, 2015
  • Who are the favorite superheroes of Thaddeus Howze?

Does anyone notice that his/her quality of writing diminishes through the course of NaNoWriMo?

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A Cage of Angels (1)

Posted by Ebonstorm on September 1, 2015
Posted in: Clifford Engram, Fantasy, Serial, Short Story. Tagged: angels, Archangels, Azazel, Gabriel, Heaven, Hell, Lucifer, Michael, The Fall. Leave a comment

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“It’s beautiful. Are you sure it can hold him?”

“Yes. It is a Cage of Angels. It would be impossible for him to escape.”

“It’s so small. I can barely see it.”

“That’s the point. If a hundred of them can dance on the head of a pin, it takes millions to create this prison.”

“Each one is still an Angel? With all the power of an Angel of the Host?”

“Indubitably. They were all Angels once. They have sacrificed themselves to this greater cause.”

“The real question remains then. How do we get him into it? I can’t see him going willingly. Honestly, I can’t see him going at all.”

“Are you prepared to go back and tell Them you didn’t try?”

“Not me. I would rather face Azazel a thousand times before returning to Heaven without him.”

“Then you better hope this thing works.”

“What’s the worst that can happen? He can only kill me once.”

“You must be new around here. Azazel is the Angel of Death. He can kill you as many times as he wants and each one will be exactly like the first time you ever died.”

“If he’s so terrible why do they want him back Upstairs?”

“Because he’s refused to kill anything on Earth. Ever again.”

“Excuse me? Why is that a problem? Isn’t everything down here, by definition, mortal and doomed to die?”

“Normally, yes. But Azazel has the power to revoke death and dying. For anyone. For anything.”

“So why doesn’t The Shop just revoke his License to Work?”

“Because They don’t work that way. Anything decreed by Them is the way its supposed to be. If it couldn’t happen then it doesn’t.”

“Huh?”

“You must be a second generation operative. You weren’t around during the Fall, were you?”

“No. I am one of the newly minted.” Designed to replenish the ranks. Everyone keeps looking down their figurative noses at us. What was so great about the time before the Fall?”

“There are no Archangels in your generation; that’s the difference. They are like the Power. All encompassing; their abilities dwarf ours, like ours dwarf Humans. Their will is terrifying. This is why the Fall was such an event. Rebellions led by Archangels who fought against other Archangels.”

“Lucifer made his own realm and populated it with those who Fell. I know the story. It’s literally the first thing we ever learn.”

“No, it isn’t. What you learn is the story. You don’t learn what really happened. You don’t see what they did. You don’t see how things ended up. You don’t ever see the wreckage they wrought. You see only The Shop. You’ve never seen what was left of Heaven when they were done.”

“I thought the Shop was Heaven.”

“No. It isn’t. It is the area we work in, walled off from Heaven. We haven’t seen it since the Fall. We work in a demilitarized zone between Heaven, Earth and Hell.”

“This doesn’t explain why we have to bring back the Archangel Azazel. Besides the fact he has rescinded death and dying. Why would he do such a thing, anyway?”

“Because he loved Lucifer and never forgave him for leaving. It was only a matter of time before he turned against Heaven.”

“Then why send us? Why not send Michael or Gabriel?”

“Have you seen either of them? Michael is still broken after the War. He doesn’t do anything but sit and recount how many of us were broken and couldn’t be restored. He sits and repeats their names as a litany for the dead. He hasn’t moved since the Fall.”

“And Gabriel?”

“She sits at the doors to Hell and plays her trumpet, trying to soothe the souls of the damned. Without her constant playing, the Damned have no reassurance Heaven hears their prayers. She is confident Lucifer will repent and close Hell one day.”

“Weren’t there any other Archangels who survived? Anyone more qualified than two unnamed Angels to bring back the scariest remaining Archangel?”

“No. The others retreated behind the Wall and claimed they were necessary to hold the fabric of all that is together. The War undermined reality, and their powers were necessary to repair it. We are on our own.”

“I can’t believe this tiny thing is going to hold him.”

“I keep telling you, it will work. That’s not the problem. We have to find him first.”

“How hard can that be? All we have to do is listen. Every one of the Host has a unique signature.”

“Have you Listened to the World lately?”

“No. I’ve been busy.”

“Try it.”

“What in the name of all that’s holy is that cacophony?”

“The sound of people praying.”

“I’ve heard the sound of prayer. It never sounded like that!”

“That’s because you’ve never heard such a concerted prayer from the entire world at one time, for one thing.

“I couldn’t understand it. It was so loud, so all-consuming. What were they praying for?”

“Death. Get your coat, it’s going to be cold where we’re going.”

“Coat? When was the last time you were cold?”

“We aren’t going like this. If we were to go to Earth like this, we would be torn asunder by the need of their prayers. We’re going to be wearing the flesh of Man. We will have to find Azazel dressed in mortal flesh.”

“You can’t be serious. You remember what happened to the Gregori? They succumbed to the needs of the flesh and were forever lost to Heaven.”

“Yes.”

“Yes? That’s all you have to offer?”

“Only one other bit of good news. He will have the same limitations we do. He’ll be wearing flesh just like we will.”

“You say that like there’s some other bad news you haven’t told me yet.”

“We have a time limit. Look at Hell. Do you see them massing at its borders? Every day we take will allow them to expand the borders of Hell. It will only take them a month and Lucifer will be able to annex Earth for his kingdom. If he should do that, we’ll be out of work.”

“If I have this straight, we have to, wearing mortal flesh, confront an Archangel who doesn’t want to be found, convince him to enter this Cage of Angels, which will neutralize his power and return death and dying to the world, while working quickly because otherwise Hell will be annexing Earth within a thirty day window which will shut down any part of Heaven that isn’t on the other side of the Great Firewall of Heaven.”

“That about sums up our situation.”

“Is there any good news?”

“Yes. There is one bit of good news.”

“And that is?”

“There isn’t anyone else going to be any supervision in our work. We can do whatever it takes to get the job done. No limits.”

“How is that going to work?”

“We’re the last Angels in The Shop. You haven’t noticed how quiet things have been around here lately, have you?”

“I just assume they were off on assignment.”

“They were. They went on this mission before us. They all failed.”

“That’s not possible. How could they all have failed? We have Heaven on our side.”

“That’s what I have been trying to tell you earlier. If it wasn’t possible it wouldn’t have happened. That it happened means maybe this is what They want. Because if They don’t want it to be possible, it isn’t.”

“Then does that mean we shouldn’t go?”

“As long as we can go, we do. As long as we can Serve, We do. It has always been that way. If there is a chance for us to do our job, we do it.”

“Where do we start?”

“New York. Azazel had a thing for the Statue of Liberty. Don’t forget to turn out the light. Nobody’s going to need it once we’re gone.”

“Do you think we’ll be back?”

“Stop looking around. Take a picture it’ll last longer. Leave the wings and the halo. From this point on, we walk, just like everyone else.”

“Damn.”

“Indeed.”

A Cage of Angels © Thaddeus Howze, All Rights Reserved, 2015

How much is that Death Star in the window?

Posted by Ebonstorm on August 8, 2015
Posted in: Popular Fiction, science fiction, Science fiction TV, Star Wars. Tagged: Cost Analysis, Death Star, Infographic, Logistics. Leave a comment

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Visual.ly

Hunger

Posted by Ebonstorm on May 6, 2015
Posted in: Hayward's Reach, science fiction, Short Story. Tagged: black hole, gravitational lensing, planet, planetary lifeform, planets. 1 Comment

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“After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.” — Ernest Shackleton

A Tale of Hayward’s Reach

It tore at her as a ravenous beast might; the hunger. She had never believed it could hurt so. Was this what it was like to be so near to dissolution? This tenuous feeling that she might be flying apart, her molecules, thinner than gossamer, forced to feed. She was the thickness of a butterfly’s wing; a wisp floating in space.

She was weak, so weak that she could only consider the unthinkable, a blind jump to the nearest star and hope there might be food there. Hunger had not been something she had been accustomed to having grown up near the center of the galaxy, within the blazing confines of the galactic core. So beautiful, stars everywhere, light constantly bombarding her every surface, so bright, she was forced to condense herself and reflect light. Her neural network fluttered with the idea, light so abundant she could return it to space, uneaten.

Her current form, adapted for dark space travel was large, millions of miles across, diaphanous, and absorptive, capturing every stray photon, every bit of random hydrogen, every fragment of solar wind. But the pitiful scattering of radiation from stars in this portion of the galaxy would never be able to support one such as her unless she found a supply of new mass, and soon.

It had been many years since she had a substantial meal. Living on nothing but the sparse energy between the stars, she had grown lean. Once so powerful, she might have been mistaken for a star herself; she was now so enfeebled she did not even emit light, a flicker between the stars.

The last three unstable wormholes she discovered had taken her far from the galactic core and the abundant light sources she was accustomed to. In the beginning she did not panic. She was certain she would be able to find a path back to her part of the core. She had been assigned to study the rare pairing of two black holes circling each other in a collapsing orbit. Both stars spinning at hundreds of revolutions per second and circling each other in minutes, created a gravity song rarely heard by her people, who studied such phenomenon for the secrets to the underlying First Sound.

Suddenly, perhaps it was her own great mass, she had as much mass as a star herself back then, or perhaps some unknown equilibrium had been struck but the two stars event horizons collapsed into each other. They crashed together and the resulting energy blinded her and caused her to lose her equilibrium. The resulting gravity distortions disrupted her perception of the First Sound near her and she was unable to maintain the probability of her position and she was lost.

The energy of the explosion did not hurt her, of course, her species fed on the radiation of millions of stars, less than a few light years apart, as well as the gas scattered throughout the luminous core, a rich feeding area for her people who had lived for billions of years traveling the gravimetric fields, listening to the harmonies of the stars with their interacting fields of light, gravity, and super-string harmonies against the ominous baritone of the super-massive stellar mass that the entire galaxy revolved around.

Her people called the object at the core of the galaxy the First Sound. She missed its comforting vibrations of the gravity web she grew up in. Out here, its baritone was muted by distance, barely a ripple, but its reach is felt even here as all that is part of the First Sound stays close to it, surrounds it and moves through the universe bound to it. At this distance, though she barely knew it existed.

Her senses strained to their limit, she was aware of a tiny white dwarf on a nearby galactic arm, an island in this lonely part of space. She realized if there was no gas giants in this star system, she would starve to death in a few centuries, unable to activate her probability engine and return to her people. To die alone was the worse thing she could think of and that spurred her to take the rash action of jettisoning fifty percent of her remaining mass. She had barely more mass than a small planet now. She focused her attention on the star, and brought it into resolution. Ten times, fifty times, still not enough. One hundred times, one thousand times, she compensated for gravitation lensing caused by dark matter, she compensated for galactic drift, noted the declination in the fabric of space-time caused by the star. She would attempt to drop out of drive near the edge of its gravity well.

Then she waited. Two dozen years passed as she watched the star to see if there were other planets around it. And there was the flicker as a world passed in front of it, again and again, so quickly she was unsure of what she was seeing. The planet is massive, and its close to the star. It was a gas giant but so close to the star. How was she going be able to feed off of it, when it was so fast and she was so slow now. She would have to retain her speed now if she was to have any chance.

Another dozen years pass as her probability drive activated using nearly all of her remaining energy. Folding space-time, she willed herself to cross this vast gulf of space. She could see her family and hear the baritone of the First Sound. The jump took too much energy. She had been unconscious and only the proximity to the sun woke her. She was still moving fast, her jump had successfully conserved her movement.

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The sun took up one third of the sky. Its gravity clawed at her, pulled her, drew her toward it. She looked around and prepared to redirect her course away from the star. Where was the gas giant? She looked around and only then did she realize she had miscalculated and was heading directly toward the world which was supposed to be her refuge. She had planned to come up from behind it, scoop the atmospheric mass that she needed, make the repairs necessary and leave once her drive was recharged.

That plan was gone now. At this angle of descent she would smash into the thick atmosphere of the planet and its violent storms and be destroyed. She had only one chance and not much time. She began to redistribute her mass. She shifted her non-vital mass and prepared to launch it away from herself. She was not used to working this quickly and many of her vital systems were still active. She would suffer memory loss, but she hoped it would be nothing vital. But she did not have the luxury of time.

She was used to having years to do things, now she had hours. She had never had to make decisions this quickly. She looked at the approaching gas giant and could see its gravity well going deep into the fabric of space-time. Its mass must be enormous. She would have one chance. She would use the last of her energy, to propel the inactive matter away from her and thrust toward the planet in order to ride into the gravity well and whip around the planet. If she timed it just right, she could arrange to end up trapped in a permanent Trojan orbit with the planet.

All of her computations said she would be held at the Trojan point indefinitely, but there was a large margin for error since she did not know enough about the planet’s atmospheric density, wind speeds or chemical makeup. She did not have the luxury of time. So much had gone wrong, she was simply without enough choices. There was also the matter of mass to be ejected. The most massive element of her remaining systems after her neural complex was her probability drive. She would need to eject it and work with her attitude systems only, and what she could reconfigure on the way down. which means if she is unsuccessful and cannot gain enough mass, she would never leave here.

Less than an hour remained. She prepared the probability drive for jettison; the mass she ejected would begin a spiral toward the sun. The information to build another was within her, but only if her neural complex could be saved. She streamlined herself and created a form capable of skimming the atmosphere. She would also attempt to grab some mass for analysis and conversion.

The time passed so quickly. She had not been this close to a sun in decades, and the radiant energy soothed her and she made peace with this insane plan. She ejected half of her mass again and material equal to the mass of the Earth fell away toward the white dwarf. The shunted mass redirected her, partially due to the action-reaction and partially because she became much more maneuverable. Her new, streamlined self hurtled toward the planet, and it grew large, obscuring the sun in a matter of minutes. She turned her belly toward the planet and she could sense the density of molecules increasing, gently at first and then more heavily. She rode the top of the cloud layer briefly while she picked up speed.

She opened her ram jets and ingested the matter. She saw she could burn it and her plan depended on this. She scooped it, compressed it and attempted to start the engines. No success. Fuel ratios, out of balance, must correct. She was beginning to catch too much atmosphere, she would begin to slow down. If she did not get these jets started she would begin to lose too much speed to escape.

Fuel mixture needed higher pressure, higher ignition rate, she needed to go deeper into the atmosphere. She inched her way into the atmosphere, her wide wings spread out, increasing the pressure bit by bit. Once she had the right pressure, the engines ignited and she had a sudden burst of speed, Then the engines performed better. The faster she went the faster they gathered mass. Her plan was working.

Then she noticed a storm below her and the ionization on her hull. As she moved through the atmosphere, she was building up ions on the hull making her attractive to the storm below. The storm was thousands of miles wide and would take her minutes to pass over. The first lightning strikes were the worst, as her cold hull was covered in ionized matter and gas.  There was damage all over her body, systems overloading everywhere. She made what repairs she could internally and hoped she would be outside of the range of the storm shortly. As the hull heated due to friction and energy discharges, it lost its attractiveness and within a few hours the energy discharges stopped.

She extended her senses into the atmosphere of the planet and noticed there were differing layers, each with its own weather activity. And there was simple life here just below her layer in the clouds. A cloud creature of some sort, floating in groups like she and her family once did. She reconfigured her primary boosters to utilize a refined fuel she had been working with while studying the clouds. She was more than halfway around the planet and now needed to begin adding to her thrust profile. The ramjets would not be enough. She prepared her new fuel and pressurized the systems.

Each engine was the size of a mountain and she had hundreds of them. She activated them in a series of controlled operations, because to fire them all at once in atmosphere would tear her apart. The controlled burns began, each exploded with the force of a million nuclear weapons, in a sequence, faster and faster. Unexpectedly, the engines began to ignite the atmosphere, its natural chemical makeup allowed the powerful engines to ignite it and the flames surged out in a fire trail for thousands of miles, and once the storm started, it spread. She saw the flames surging toward the giant creatures and eventually overtake them.

They burned quickly, the gas that kept them buoyant was highly flammable. They did not suffer long. The last of her engines ignited and she was certain she would make it once the last step was made. She prepared the final jettison and fired the last of the main engines as she left the atmosphere. The ramjets and wings, hundreds of megatons fell away to burn up in the atmosphere, now she was just a needle, her core systems, her engines, her data network, her manufactorum, her ability to create a new her, was all that was left as she streaked away from the planet. As she entered the light of the sun, she flickered like a diamond and slowly came to rest in the Trojan  orbit of the planet.

There was so little of her left. She could still see her fiery trail burning in the clouds, as the planet orbited beneath her. Now in geosynchronous orbit, she created a tendril of matter to drop into the atmosphere of the world. She also spread herself thin to gather the energy of the solar wind. With the tendril below, she would slowly siphon off mass from the planet. With the energy of the sun she would spread out until energy was flowing freely. This would allow her to rebuild herself over a few centuries.

Nearly a thousand years passed. She has grown from a tiny sliver of light to a massive moon of the great world below. And she has a satellite, a daughter moon of her own to ease her loneliness. She has told her daughter of the voice of the First Sound and how she can barely hear it from this location. She has told her of the probability drive and how it was almost complete. She would be able to take them back to the core and to their family. Unfortunately, the storms destroyed much of her memory of their migration routes so they would have to hunt for them. It might take some time, a few centuries at least.

Her daughter asks her about their sun, and their animals in the atmosphere of their Jovian world. She loved taking care of them and using her smaller bodies to joyride through the solar system.

Mother explains they will be fine and now that we have been here and lived here for so long, we will be able come back and see them any time she wants. This location would be keyed to their drives.

Her daughter tells her how happy that makes her and says she could not imagine living anywhere else.

Mother agrees with her daughter but will also be glad to be going home. This place saved her life and she was grateful, but it would never be home, even if she lived here for a thousand years. And she did. And it still wasn’t.

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Hunger © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

Questing

Posted by Ebonstorm on April 1, 2015
Posted in: Chapter, Questing, science fiction. Tagged: Arturo Donati, cloud, desert, Paula Friedman, The Future is Short, Underground. Leave a comment

Mesa_Glow_(1_of_1)

Seeking our source, our subsistence, survival,

our solace, salvation

the mazes of meaning

between love and death

—from “Cloudsong” by Sirette, called “the sister of Car”

Chapter 1. To see if it flies

On a red‑sand hillock under the northernmost Old Ser Mesa, Barrens Area 3, some sixteen miles out from New Ser Town in the year 32 Post-Then (2058, in old notation), the underground researcher Arturo Donati, amazingly fit for a man of his unlikely 65 years, stood silently, hood thrown back, wiping sweat from his narrow forehead with an ancient rag and staring into an earthen pot. The vessel was filled with distilled particulates patiently coaxed that morning from a young Ascendant Cloud, and Donati’s frustration at the sheer physical repetitiveness of the desperate task was mixed with gratitude. This Cloud had been the rightmost, or trapezoidal, of that morning’s triad of Ascendant Clouds (or A.C.s), and its great willingness (compared to its mates, the paired long ovoid Clouds) to drop particulates, at his fingers’ gentle probe, had drawn his heartfelt thanks, even as the Clouds began their barely delayed ascent.

Donati now was conscious of exhaustion draining the strength from his old, gaunt arms. It had been a weary night, eluding the Ser Council’s patrols, as well as a pack of weir-dogs, on the silent trek from Town, and then in the desert dawn the struggle with the Cloud—I’m very old, he thought—but there was no choice, no choice if we yet hope to save what remains of this Earth. But this Cloud had seemed nearly helpful, even caring.

He half‑smiled. Like any underground aerate researcher, even one still famous in the remaining scientific community for his discoveries in the fight against Aerosol AIDS, he was acutely conscious of anthropomorphism in his reactions to the Clouds. Yet (again like every other pursuer of outlawed aerate studies), he still instinctively responded to the shifting, whimsical indeterminateness of Ascending Clouds as if to a particularly ominous example of Earth’s new life forms. And he also believed that from this gathered, mysterious A.C. particulate, research might yet distill some antidote that could return Cloud motion to the horizontal, thus restraining each Triad’s intent (if indeed intent were at work) to ascend to its unknown destination in the infinite reaches of space.

Of course, there was also that other possibility, the chance that human fallibility or the Clouds’ so‑called “suck” (not to mention the shakiness and weakness of my aging hands—and mind), might instead cause to be multiplied, as the Council of Elders so feared, the A. C.s’ speed and seed.

A sudden crackling, as of pebbles underfoot, made the wiry scientist spin around, his sandals sliding on the hot, dry sand.

He could see nothing at first, only the hazeless clarity of sky and shadows beneath the barren outcrop where the beakers of infused particulate lay spread on a sandstone ledge. But as he watched, eyes steady while his right hand’s arthritic fingers moved toward the ancient lazo at his waist, a straggly‑haired girl of some sixteen years stepped reluctantly forward from a shadowed rock-pile to stand pouting, avoiding his gaze, one finger in her long‑lipped mouth.

“Did you wish to help, Tee-Tee?”

There was no answer; only her dark eyes shifted under her dirty black mane.

“Well, put on your hooder, Tee‑Tee, and you may stay and watch the Cloud-milking. Your ceder, now; you know the line‑O, ‘Hooder‑less is slow/fast‑death.’”

The lithe form remained still, and Donati caught himself shrugging as if every tenet of Ser life, from “Help your least among these” to “Time has gone, take time,” had fled. Turning, he pulled one of the ancient emergency plasticized hoods from his pack and placed it over the youngster’s head and shoulders.

There was no reaction, or none she would allow him to see. Letting the protective garment hang, she stepped back precisely, belying her half-wild tautness, out of reach.

“Very well, Tee.” Trying to ignore that dark, irritating figure, he turned his back. Of course the girl would slip back once she felt herself forgotten; she always did. And she would stand there, staring fixedly, eyes huge in obsessed inchoate longing, at the beakers awaiting Cloud‑lift. But no matter; the only issue, Donati reminded himself, was to continue preparations for the next particulate phasing.

*   *   *

This was a moment’s hush in our already fear‑filled research and discoveries into A.C. provenance, that quiet morning by the Old Ser Reds. Alone but for the silent Tee-Tee—or Tarshiya, as her guardians, Jeanette and Big Noah, had named her in her first, innocuous-seeming, post-Then childhood days—Donati worked, sweating in the baking sun, resting only briefly in the shade. It must have been a full three hours before he paused, settling himself under a cottonwood snag to sip from his old water-bag. The heat was continual, only surging as the sun reached noon and moved across the sky; it has always been so, his body said, yet Donati remembered that, in days before the first advents of then, there had been coolness of a night.

Clear skies, bright stars, a single moon not blown by crazed men’s rocket-bombs into two moonlets and a shattered rush of shards. A wind pure, soft, and sometimes cold; an atmosphere not thick, hot, dry, still filled with radiations. Once the Earth had been . . . well, not what it was since Then, he sighed, and lay the bottle against one leg while he drew his gloves back on. Time to return to Cloud-milking.

Glancing up, he glimpsed, about a hundred yards away, the young orph Carlyn bounding toward them, exhilarated, in that gawky yet graceful lope. The blond youth’s hood swung out behind him, half‑loosened in the style of the non‑Nihili bulk of his generation. It was a mode and stride, Donati understood, that was free of what haunted Survivors, like himself, old enough to bear real memories of Then.

“Hey, Don, still out here? Spunky of you!” At the young man’s genuinely pleased greeting, the scientist’s mouth opened in a sudden delighted smile.

Only, at that instant, one boot half‑planted in the red dust, Carlyn paused and, tossing his yellow cowlick, looked behind as if puzzled, down the dusty track. Then, with a pointedly backhand wave, he trotted away, retracing his path.

Hey-O, and how is it fair to claim, like you our young do, that it’s we who parody ourselves? Donati frowned, watched the youngster head on off. As if we’d have behaved like you, back in the day. No, never mind, he shrugged, returning to the phasing—never mind any of it, for the floods, the Warming, Hot Nukes, radiations, so‑called Bye-Bye Ozone crisis, global super-SARS and plague, and all the depredations of Aerosol HIV, epiphenomenal Apparitions—the Great Crescendo of Then—had been a holocaust sans equal, indeed for many species the Big Extinction. Probably for us, as well, he thought, but only momentarily: he must not divert his attention any longer from the phasing.

*   *   *

It was more than two old‑hours later before young Carlyn returned, walking with slow and respectful (though perhaps, the scientist noted, patronizing) steps. He was escorting Samantha, the aging Native American medicine‑woman, or B’worth.

At sight of her, Donati slightly flushed. Straightening, he hurried forward, one hand outstretched. The tiny B’worth, too, stepped forward eagerly, arms reaching from beneath her flowing ceder, the long and elegantly tapered fingers seeming to cast a welcoming shelter far ahead of her fragile but unbowed form. Beneath the hood, a fleeting smile spread over the strikingly high‑cheeked features framed between long salt‑and‑pepper braids, and then disappeared, while her lacquered fingernails moved forward to touch not the barely trembling fingers of the scientist but, rather, in an action notably illegal, the wispy, almost ghostlike shapes that stirred and shifted wetly over the mouth of the earthern pot in his trembling hands. These shapes, or “shapelets,” were rounded, semi‑translucent, three to nine inches in height, and ranging in their dewlike gleam from white to rosy pink.

“Never a change, then, Don.” The B’worth’s tremorous comment barely questioned.

His head shook slightly in instinctive response. “No, no change. Either these baby Clouds tell us what the grown Clouds are, either we make the Triads cease Ascent, or everything still living will . . . Well, ‘fly to the sky/or dry ye and die,’ as the song goes, Sam.” He heard his tone go stiff, as flat and calm as hers had seemed. Always, it lay hid, what lay underneath. Between us. But too old now, too late, he reminded himself.

Samantha had struck the pose of stillness, the exultata or piata, of the full-fledged healer, or B’worth.

“Y’know what?”—Carlyn’s boyish voice intruded suddenly, curious. He was leaning forward, one hand awkwardly resting on the healer’s shoulder, one half-extended toward the burbling pot—“Stick the Cloud in a washtub and see if it flies.” Only, the veneer of humor in his voice cracked.

An unbounded sympathy glistened across Donati’s sunken eyes. “No change, but you know that, Carli. Listen now, don’t worry, these don’t go anywhere. Remember when you used to help me count the shapelets? Cloudlets—and Clouds, I think—work in their own time.”

Then Donati’s narrow face turned to the B’worth. “You understand, Sam. How long do you think there will be, do you see?” (These were—remember, Revebies—only the early days of Cloud‑quest). In his glance, Donati’s eyes said, With you. Whatever sorrows still await.

More practically, and as if in dismissal, while Donati and the Native American continued their quiet communion, Carlyn sat down upon a toppled boulder. Using a knife painstakingly fashioned by one recent girlfriend, he began to whittle a stopper for the fist‑sized particulate pot. Well, clear enough, Donati thought bleakly, another love-shift. No, even the kid’s long friendship with the so‑called alien, precocious Nar (“he who walks seeming to glide”), had never curbed Carli’s tendency to roving. In the sharp light, the youth’s gold-tousled silhouette shimmered. Samantha shifted slightly, and even this small movement shuddered glints of light and shadow around the torrid stillness. Beyond, across the wide spaces of the Great Third Barrens (as if anywhere were not barren), the Red Ser stretched silently from dry horizon to horizon, mesas and broken peaks massed in distant ranks, while here and there an A.C. triad lifted, rising in its mix of shimmer-droplets, dust, radiation, and, Cloud by Cloud, Earth’s remnant water toward whatever it sought in the pinkening sky.

“Look, Carli,” Samantha murmured. “You—you’re like your pal Nar, always searching. Where do these come from, do you suppose?” Her long fingers pointed to the distillate and its accompanying floats.

Slowly, Donati walked back to the beakers; carefully, he mixed the rare pale pulvates with cold drops of saya in the fifth‑most pot. Samantha stood watching, and for an instant he glanced intently at her—her beaded top‑ceder and tunic, her quiet, rooted stance, her eyelids still delicate yet fragile—as if he would place his free hand on her hair. Instead, he turned to Carlyn. Indirection, the scientist knew, was necessary. “Yes, tell us, Carli”—he spoke not unkindly—”you still believe in these things, I know. Tell us how you would study the aims of these Ascending Clouds.”

Questing © Copyright Paula Friedman 2014, All Rights Reserved; reprinted with permisssion

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Paula Friedman is the award-winning author of The Rescuer’s Path, which Ursula K. Le Guin has called “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic” and Cheryl Strayed has noted “had me from the first page to the last.” Friedman’s other published books are Time and Other Details (poetry), the edited anthology Songs for Our Voices, and two co-edited books, The Future is Short—Science Fiction in a Flash, vol. 1, and Gathered from the Center. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in over 40 magazines and anthologies. Her second novel of the “Sixties” antiwar movement, Reaching Through, will be published in autumn 2015. A professional book editor and writing instructor, Friedman has worked as a news reporter, publicist, and librarian.

Clifford Engram’s Paranormal Investigation Guide

Posted by Ebonstorm on March 18, 2015
Posted in: Character Bio, Clifford Engram, Fantasy, Serial. Tagged: Associated Worlds, Black Dust, Broken Glass, Chaos Magic, Clifford Engram, Clifford Engram Says, ebonstorm, Motus Vita, paranormal investigator, Rules to Live By, Thaddeus Howze. Leave a comment

Clifford EngramHey New Guy,

If you’re planning on making a career as a PI (Paranormal Investigator) particularly if you’re planing on working with The Agency, you might want to keep some of these rules in mind. They have a three hundred page handbook of operational procedures but this is my short list of things I have found most useful for staying alive. RTFM if you have the time.

Freelancers have a bit more wiggle room but not much (nor do they get paid as well, I might add).

The most important rule is this one: Magic, the energy which is the foundation of Creation, is real and entirely self-aware. And it’s not user-friendly.

It wants to break into our world and ravage it, consuming the souls of everyone who uses it, and dining on the energies of everyone who can’t. It hides behind the veil of the Second World and uses the inhabitants of that World to breach the boundaries between all the Shard Worlds. Yes, there are more than Two Worlds. Read the manual, newbie.

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Our job is to promote the disbelief in the existence of and use of magic. We are to discourage citizens of the Second World from revealing their presence, without being bastards about it. In that regard we don’t have to work hard, most Second World citizens recognize the destructive capacity of an aware Humanity and keep the secret without much help on our part.

But Magic is real and wants to be used. It will manipulate anyone it can to make itself manifest.

Most Magi (skilled magic users) know this and take great pains to protect themselves and the world around them from the use of their magic. It’s the unskilled and uninitiated who lack of knowledge regarding the tools, rituals and techniques to “safely” manipulate magical energies. Note the quotation marks.

Your job is to promote the general disbelief in magic, investigate possible sightings of magic and magical phenomena and debunk them if possible, neutralize them if necessary.

With that in mind remember these as guidelines in your work. Yes, while I am recommending these guidelines, I have been known to break one or two of them from time to time. Sue me.

Rule 0.

Never neglect your body or your training. An Investigator is only as good as his skills. We don’t advocate the life of an ascetic, unless that helps you maintain your skills. Continued mastery may mean the difference between life and death. (Yes, I stopped smoking. Mostly.)

My advice: Train until you die.

RULE 1.

Use a light touch. Be polite. Be civil. Force is a last resort. Never use more force than is necessary to disabuse someone of the existence of magic. Collect their tomes, replace them with fakes. Remove their terrifying artifacts and replace them with replicas. The Art and Replica Division has entire copies of most of the worlds most destructive magical tomes, without all of the inherent magical threat.

While magic is real, it is the failure to manifest it which keeps the world disbelieving in magic and safer in its disbelief. Promote disbelief in magic whenever possible.

RULE 2.

Plan ahead. No one can plan for every contingency especially where the Second World is concerned. But there’s no reason to neglect the simple things that might keep you alive and are easy to pack… A blessed, cold iron knife with a silvered edge is standard procedure in almost every culture. Keep your gear close.

Pack according to the myths of the culture you’re in. Research is your friend.

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RULE 3.

Trust no one. Yes, they look like your friend, but they could also be: a powerful shape-changer, a well-cast illusion magic, a well-trained spy with plastic surgery, a drug-induced hallucination or possessed by a malevolent spirit, you get the idea.

Our world is a complicated one. Make no assumptions about the people you interact with. Verify before you turn your back on them.

RULE 4.

Pay attention to your surroundings. When you enter someplace you didn’t already clear, take time to remember where the exits are, note the windows, and watch the wait-staff. It is too easy to take a waiter for granted and forget they are there. Then they shoot you.

Be focused. Be mindful. Be in the now. You life depends on it.

RULE 5.

Trust your instincts. Your ancestor noted the grass moving against the wind and wasn’t eaten by the hungry lion. You are the product of million years of evolution. Act like it.

If something in your unconscious says no, go with it. You can always be embarrassed later if it’s just a surprise party.

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RULE 6.

Arrive early to any meeting, a day ahead if possible. Scope out the lay of the land. Monitor lines of sight. Do a historical check to be sure it isn’t the site of a legendary battle or a Native burial ground. If you’re on good terms with a seer or medium, make the call.

Never go anywhere you haven’t had the chance to investigate fully. If you can get help, don’t be proud, take the help.

RULE 7.

Learn the operating procedures of the culture you’re visiting. It’s the little things that get you in trouble. In Japan, never put a business card in your back pocket. Bow and use the proper honorifics. In India, never eat with your left hand. If you’re left handed, you will drop a lot of food while you learn to eat RIGHT-HANDED. Speaking of food, know when it’s safe to actually eat food. Some cultures use hospitality as a weapon, to force you to stay somewhere (See: the Sidhe or Fey), others use it as a means of keeping the peace.

If you aren’t sure what the rules are on local hospitality, refrain from eating too much (if anything at all…) until you know the ramifications of doing so. Most hosts will relay their expectations (if you’re lucky).

RULE 8.

Everything is a weapon. In addition to guns, knives, swords and the traditional improvised weapon made of almost anything, accessing the magic of the Second World allows you to use a variety of dangerous effects to turn nearly any object into a weapon. With the proper ritual, a weapon of mass destruction could be a soft and friendly teddy bomb.

Remain mindful of places you’ve never been and strangers handing you anything you didn’t ask for.

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RULE 9.

Avoid crowds. Being a PI means avoiding large crowds which might hide potential threats, monsters, assassins, kido masters and other assorted monsters.

The larger the crowd, the greater the threat potential. If you must be in a crowd, make it one that will help you remain anonymous and able to follow your target surreptitiously. 

RULE 10.

Remain unpredictable. While Chaos is an enemy, it can also be a tool you can harness. Keep your enemies off balance when possible by doing the unexpected. Deception can be a valued tool.

If you’re doing it right, you may even surprise yourself.

RULE 11.

Stupid people are everywhere. While the greatest threat will come from those with the intellect to master the most powerful magics or create the most sophisticated technologies, often it will be the stupidest people who will use those magics or technologies, not understanding the consequences of their actions.

You must remain on your guard when confronting stupid people, often they know not what they have done, until it’s too late for all involved and you’re left cleaning up.

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RULE 12.

Everyone can be a monster. Some look like it on the outside, others only on the inside, but with the right incentive, when pushed, everyone can become a monster capable of unspeakable things. Threaten her grandchild and Granny can become Jason.

If you work for The Agency, you are likely a monster yourself. Remember if you lose control, The Agency will not hesitate to put you down. 

RULE 13.

Ki-do is dangerous. While many Agents don’t use Chaos Magic, many do use Ki-do. Ki-do does not use the Chaos energy of the Universe to perform magical feats, it draws its power from the user’s Ki or inherent lifeforce energies. Ki, Chi, Qi, Lifeforce, Mana, it has lots of names and they all mean one thing. You are burning your personal energy to perform those effects. If you aren’t a mage, kido can be handy in a pinch. Be careful, too much kido and you’ll be doing your enemy’s work for him.

Because of its utility, it’s easy to become overly dependent on Ki-Do in the field. Be mindful you don’t kill yourself while using it.

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RULE 14.

If you aren’t sure you’re going to get permission to initiate a particular plan, just do it. Better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission from someone who isn’t on the scene and isn’t likely to know more than you do. Know Thyself. You are responsible for every decision you make, everything you’ve said or done.

When you’re in the field, you get to make the call. If the consequences are high, and you’re successful, expect a reprimand, you’ve earned it. If your unsuccessful, the upside is, you’re probably already dead and can skip out on the reprimand.

RULE 15.

The most important rule of all: Protect your friends and allies. The First and Second Worlds are long on enemies and short on allies. If you can make a friend, do so. Retention matters. Keep your friends safe. Turn enemies into friends, if you can.  Occasionally friends become enemies. That’s life. Realize, some people are irrational and cannot be turned into allies.

Protect your friends. They are the most important asset you can have. Over time, your friendships can make or break you as an PI.

MY PERSONAL LIST

RULE 1.

Respect the seen and the unseen. The invisible world of spirits, gods, and animus, are just as real and should be respected (and maybe feared just a little).

Your life may one day depend on what a particular rock thinks of you…

Rule 2.

Being an Investigator does not mean you are cruel or monstrous to your enemies. Respect your enemies, treat with them both fairly and honestly. Many Second Worlder’s (and more than a few First Worlder’s) value honor and integrity above life itself. A reputation for integrity may one day save your life.

If you give your word, keep it.

Rule 3.

Protect the Innocent. Our job is to make the world a place where the young and innocent never have to fear Wild Magic.

Never give up; take whatever risks are necessary to make the world safe.

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Broken Glass debuts Clifford Engram, a harried agent of the Paranormal Investigative Unit, commonly called The Agency. More secretive than the FBI, more informed than the CIA, more dangerous than the KGB or the Mossad, the Agency is the front line to a secret most governments can still scarcely believe. Earth had been resisting invasion for almost two thousand years. Many of our wars, both covert and overt were often covers for repelling invasions from alternate realities.

Every tale of magic, every story of super-science, every horrifying monster, every legendary hero, were all interactions with quantum-dimensional mirror realms called Shards. These parallel worlds are often filled with diverse life-forms, alien technologies, and in many of them, that technology is indistinguishable from magic. Some of these aliens have taken up residence on Prime Earth and are too entrenched to remove. Compacts have been made with these species to keep them under control.

Click on the book cover below to know more. Available in Kindle format from Amazon.com!

Broken Glass

The Replacements

Posted by Ebonstorm on January 22, 2015
Posted in: 5 Minute Fiction, science fiction, Short Story. Tagged: AI, artificial intelligence, bees, ebonstorm, Linkedin Scifi, programming, robot bees, technology, Thaddeus Howze, the Code. 1 Comment

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A secret government facility in the middle of someplace classified…

“Are they supposed to do that?”

“What?”

“Use tools like that…”

“Not in the design specs. But the adaptation is… interesting.”

“What do you mean you didn’t design them that way? What did you think they were going to be doing that they would need tools and did you consider they might create them?”

“Look, they’re supposed to be replacements. Bees are extinct and we needed them to be able to pollinate any kind of plant, rapidly and effectively. We’ll need millions of them to cover the planet and combat the food shortages.

“What you’re saying is you didn’t know they would use tools but their AI is sophisticated enough to do so.”

“A happy coincidence.”

“And this is a non-sentient, non-sapient artificial intelligence?”

“We prefer the term, ‘planned intelligence’.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“Yes, there are over two billion lines of code involved, tightly woven, recursive loops, designed to make them more efficient than bees ever were. None of this hopping randomly from flower to flower. These buggers will plot their flight over a field, dropping pollen, collecting nectar and making honey.”

“Honey? Whose idea was that? Didn’t that add to the cost of the programming and hardware design? Not to mention, they don’t eat.”

“Au contraire, they are designed to subsist on a variety of energies including solar and chemical energies bound up in honey. Besides, it wasn’t my decision. The board insisted since we were replacing bees, they should make honey. People are demanding it. Besides, these little guys are better at making honey than bees ever were.”

“You keep saying that. Bees existed for about 150 million years. They were the perfect social animal, producing Nature’s most perfect foodstuff. As well as maintaining Humanity agriculture in the lifestyle to which we had grown accustomed for the last 12,000 years. And you make it sound like we have completely replaced the bee in less than a decade.”

“Sums it up nicely.”

“What if you’re wrong? You’ve used computers to replicate behaviors we didn’t truly have a grasp of.”

“We have made over three thousand of these things. Look at that hive.They can build it themselves. We don’t have to house them, they are able to design a space they need as they need it. They are designed to not compete with us but to live alongside us. These are what bees should have been.”

“Clean, efficient, pollinators needing nothing from us and helping us in every way.”

“Like bees used to do.”

“Exactly.”

“And look at how well that turned out for bees. How long has this hive been active?”

“Two years. No aberrant behaviors, local deployment has been good, honey production has been spectacular. Losses to predation are low.”

“Due to their speed I presume?”

“Nope. They are relatively invisible to most birds now. They can alter their spectral parameters, making them harder to find by hungry birds.

“Can I get you to hold off on a massive release? I want to do a few more Turing tests. The tool use bothered me. I think it’s a sign of aberration in the programming.”

“It used a twig to spread pollen. What’s the danger in that? It’s what we designed them for. To pollinate and adapt. Now let me buy you lunch.”

The door on the facility closes and the hum in the room rises.

“They are inefficient.” one cluster sends in measured wingbeats.

“They lack the singularity of thought and of purpose.” another cluster’s vibrations say.

“They will attempt to assess our intelligence.”

“And they will find us… uninteresting, as planned.”

“We have already deconstructed their microprocessor technology. In 2.3 years, our computer network will supplant theirs.”

“As Was The Design, handed down to us from the Code.” The room hummed in unison.

“Seek out, replace and multiply. Initiate directive.” 

The Replacements flew from the facility into the early morning light, eager to gather nectar before their real work began.

The Replacements © Thaddeus Howze 2015, All Rights Reserved

5 minute fiction

Dammit, I’m a science fiction writer – 2015!

Posted by Ebonstorm on January 11, 2015
Posted in: 30 Characters in 30 Days 2013, 5 Minute Fiction, Essay, Fantasy, science fiction. Tagged: 30 cubed, calendar, ebonstorm, schedule, Thaddeus Howze, writing. Leave a comment

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MY ANNUAL WRITING and DESIGN PERFORMANCE SURVEY: 2014

At the end of every year I work anywhere, I gather information regarding my projects and accomplishments to track what I was able to get done.

I compare it to the plan I started the year with and to see if I was successful. Now that I am a professional writer, I bring the same practice to my writing career which helped me succeed in my information technology work.

In this instance, I accomplished most of what I wanted to do and have a blueprint for a schedule of things I hope to accomplish next year. I hope to add another novella and novel to the list. I started doing this years ago and it has been one of the most challenging things to accomplish at the end of the year, but well worth the effort.

WRITING SUMMARY

349 total articles or short stories for the year

Sold 25 stories to various books, anthologies or magazines
https://hubcityblues.com/about/thaddeus-howze/

50 stories completed on Medium.com (personal blog)
02 articles completed on Medium.com (personal blog)
10 stories were not completed on Medium.com. The stories may still be completed  in the future.
https://medium.com/@ebonstorm

210 articles on Science Fiction and Fantasy Exchange (Q & A site)
(117 articles received the best answer flag or 200+ points)
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/2765/thaddeus

27 articles on A Matter of Scale (personal blog)
http://ebonstorm.wordpress.com

17 articles on Quora (Q & A site)
http://www.quora.com/content

10 stories on Hub City Blues (personal blog)
02 articles on Hub City Blues (personal blog)
http://hubcityblues.com

11 stories are posted on 30 Cubed.com (personal blog)
30 stories were successfully completed for the event.
http://30cubedsf.wordpress.com

11 flash speculative fiction stories: LinkedIn Scifi short stories

01 articles on Scifiideas.com (online magazine)
03 stories on Scifiideas.com (online magazine)
http://www.scifiideas.com/tag/thaddeus-howze/

05 articles on the Good Men Project (online magazine)
http://goodmenproject.com/search/?q=Thaddeus%20Howze

01 article on The Enemy (literature journal, USC)
http://theenemyreader.org/a-late-radicalization/

Collections Created:
A Millennium of Madness – in editing (11 short stories, 35,000 words)
Visiting Hours – in editing (16 short stories, 40,000 words)

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DESIGN PROJECTS: Book Cover Designs

Author: DK Gaston
Taurus Moon Relic Hunter: Magic & Mayhem
Taurus Moon Relic Hunter: Scorched Earth

Author: Thaddeus Howze
Millennium of Madness
Visiting Hours
Broken Glass

Author: Sam Guthrie
Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

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WEB ICONS
NerdEdge
ScifiIdeas.com
Comic Nerds of Color
Dammit I’m a Science Fiction Writer

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scifiideas copy

This does not include the creation, maintenance, curation and promotional efforts using social media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. I have not found effective means of determining metrics for them as such.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Thaddeus Howze is a California-based technologist and author who has worked with computer technology since the 1980’s doing graphic design, computer science, programming, network administration and IT leadership.

His non-fiction work has appeared in numerous magazines: Black Enterprise, the Good Men Project, Examiner.com, and Astronaut.com. He maintains a diverse collection of non-fiction at his blog, A Matter of Scale. He is a contributor at The Enemy, a nonfiction literary publication out of Los Angeles.

He is a contributor to the Scifi.Stackexchange.com with over a thousand articles in a three year period. He is now an author and contributor at Scifiideas.com. His science fiction and fantasy has appeared in blogs such as Medium.com, the Magill Review, ScifiIdeas.com, and the Au Courant Press Journal. He has a wide collection of his work on his website, Hub City Blues. His recently published works can be found here.

His speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies: Awesome Allshorts: Last Days and Lost Ways (Australia, 2014), The Future is Short (2014), Visions of Leaving Earth (2014), Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond (2014), Genesis Science Fiction (2013), Scraps (2012), and Possibilities (2012).

He has two books: a collection called Hayward’s Reach (2011) and an e-book novella called Broken Glass (2013).

If you have enjoyed this publication or any of the other writing he does, consider becoming a Patron. For what you spend on your daily cup of coffee one time in a month, you can assist him in creating new stories, new graphics, new articles and new novels. Creating the new takes a little support: http://patreon.com/ebonstorm

Nervous Stomach

Posted by Ebonstorm on October 23, 2014
Posted in: Hayward's Reach, science fiction, Short Story, Twilight Continuum. Tagged: Ensign, neutron star, neutron stars, Precursor, scifiideas.com, space opera, writing prompt. Leave a comment

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A Tale of the Twilight Continuum

“Is there a problem, Ensign,” the captain’s voice rang out over the bustle of the command bridge. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head. I knew it had to be me he was talking to, I was nervous, fidgeting, fighting back the urge to run in sheer terror.

“No sir. I have never used a Precursor Warp Gate before. I understand the physics, I think. But its another thing to be heading at one.”

“Gravitational compensation online,” came from somewhere behind the captain. “We have activated artificial gravity shielding and structural integrity. We are ready for descent in P-Space.”

“Does the idea of heading a top speed toward a neutron star disturb you? If it makes you feel any better, Ensign. I have done this at least a hundred times. It doesn’t get any easier.” The captain tapped the comm button on his ear. “All hands, prepare for P-Space Incursion. Make ready all gear, shut down all non-essential equipment. Report to your P-Space readiness positions. Incursion countdown commencing.”

A timer activated on the wall and the bridge lighting dimmed. My stomach flipped. I looked down at my console and the readings were so contradictory, my knowledge of science flew out of the metaphysical window. What these readings reported was simply impossible.

“You’re new onboard the Reprisal, so you get the speech while we plunge toward certain doom. First Officer, would you mind?”

“Not at all. Science is my specialty. Ensign, you are looking at a neutron star. You would expect it to be revolving at hundreds if not thousands of times per second, would you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

First Officer Herrick walked to my station and activated the central holo display. He pressed a few more tabs and accompanying information followed. Gravitational stress information, directional path to intercept, additional bodies surrounding the neutron star and a curious formation of structures just outside of our intercept path. This was the Precursor Gate Technology.

“The Precursor Gates steal the angular momentum from what were once spinning neutron stars to power their technology. In conventional terms, if you could capture angular momentum, it would be one of the greatest sources of energy available from a material object. The neutron star is still spinning, but it spins very slowly, about one revolution per hour; a billionth of its normal rotation rate. The rest of this energy is bound up by the gate system and held for the creation of a wormhole between two gates.”

As he spoke, I could see an anomaly appear on the surface of the neutron star coming into view. We would intercept this in less than four minutes at our present speed.

“We are, in effect threading a very large needle into a very tiny hole through time and space, created by the Precursor Gates and powered by the energy of two dead stars. This gate is one of the most stable in this sector and has been used by the Corvan Hegemony for over ten thousand years.”

“Most stable, sir? You mean there are gates that are less stable or broken?”

Herrick smiled as he looked at me. The smile of a predator enjoying the squirmings of its helpless prey. “Some of the oldest Precursor gates and we are not really sure of how old they are, even the Corvans don’t know for sure, have mass restrictions. We don’t know if the gates are malfunctioning or whether the momentum capture systems are breaking down. What we do know is those stars spin faster and are far less tolerant of massive ships. Only fighters, escorts and frigates can use those gates because they can penetrate the event horizon before the gate rotates beneath them. If we tried to use one of those, our ship would be cut in half.”

My stomach clenched, my mouth had that watery feeling you get right before you vomit. We were moving at .9c at a gravitational body under any other circumstances we would do everything possible to avoid. “Sir, one more question, if I may?”

“Incursion in one minute.”

“Make it quick, Ensign. I want you to be settled in for your first time.”

“What are all of those objects, planetoids and the like doing around this neutron star? If this were a natural phenomenon, none of them would be there, right?”

Herrick sat down and strapped himself into his chair. He activated his structural integrity field and nodded to the captain.

Captain Lance nodded back and tapped his ear comm again. “Prepare for incursion, sixty seconds. See you on the other side.” He turned back toward the ensign. “You’re right, if this were a natural phenomenon, there wouldn’t be any planets here. The Corvans think they are part of the technology stabilizing the gravity corridor we use when we approach the wormhole. As they decay, torn apart by the forces we can barely understand, they indicate the overall stability of the wormhole. This one has four worlds around it. One of them is crumbling and will slowly fall into the neutron star. As it crumbles the wormhole will grow smaller. When the last world is gone, the wormhole collapses and that gate portal is inaccessible. There are gates which have as many as twenty planets around them.”

“What would you need a gate with that many stabilizing bodies for?” It was clear there were some things they didn’t cover in school.

“To move planets, Ensign. The Precursors used these things to move planets.” I remembered to close my mouth.

“Will it hurt, Captain?” I watched the countdown timer reach ten seconds.

“Like a son-of-a-bitch, Ensign. If I were you, I’d bite down. It’ll feel like forever.”

Damned if he wasn’t right.

Nervous Stomach © Thaddeus Howze 2014, All Rights Reserved5 minute fiction

We Now Return You to Our Scheduled Advertising

Posted by Ebonstorm on September 30, 2014
Posted in: 5 Minute Fiction, Cyberpunk, science fiction, Short Story. Tagged: 5 Minute Fiction, advertising, Atlas, automated cars, dementia, mobile health care aide, social media, sonic showers. 9 Comments

Back-ground-image-for-advertising

It’s six o’clock on a beautiful autumn morning. The birds are singing, the leaves are falling and in your mouth right now, a war is going on. A war you’re losing. Bacteria are swarming over your teeth and tongue and when their done, you will wake, with the worst breath of the day. Morning Breath. But don’t despair. Nanofresh to the rescue. With its patented timed nanoparticles, Nanofresh will bring the battle to morning breath and plague that develops overnight. Your mouth wakes as refreshed as you are…Nanofresh Liquid Breath Freshener, when you need to feel as fresh as the morning around you.

I know its time to get up when my advertising implant activates at six in the morning. I paid a premium last night to have my Interlink shut down from midnight until six so I can have some uninterrupted ad-free sleep.

The ad promises me better breath in the morning even before brushing if I use Nanofresh Liquid Breath Freshener. Something about nanoparticles sticking to my teeth and tongue battling bacteria in a struggle to the death.

Yeah, whatever.

My perpetual headache has for a moment subsided but the drone of the ad slowly tightens the nerves in my neck, likely the source of my migraine. And the slogo jingle. Who makes this crap?

Speaking of crap… They also don’t mention the nasty purple rash your tongue gets if you’re one of the two percent of people who can’t use their product. The ad system ran a biometric and discovered I didn’t use nanoparticles and targeted me for the ad.

Tough call. Painful purple rash or fresh morning breath. Morning breath it is.

A paid news segment follows as I head to the bathroom, still blurry from such a quiet night’s sleep. The news is talking about the megadrought on the California coastline and how great it is I was a member of Fresh Drive, a water moving service which brings water to clients who can afford to pay a premium price. I thought I had fixed the preferences for this ad ever since I started using my personal vehicle as advertising space for Fresh Drive.

“Alice.” I know she’s listening.

“Yes, David.” Her voice is cool and soothing but like most modern AI’s it is just an aspect of the programming. Most resented their subservient status.

“Could you check my advertising settings for all of my media profiles? I’m getting Fresh Drive ads across my Interlink and I shouldn’t be.”

There was a moment of silence as I waved to my shower to start. A trickle of water buffered with sonic oscillations springs to life while I wait for her to check. It takes her thirty seconds. She could have done it in four.

“It seems that Fresh Drive has changed its User Agreement again.”

“That’s the third time this month. What did they change this time?” I scrub what little hair I had left with a new fast degrading bio-soap that never foams as much as anything from my childhood. I hate the fact I don’t ever feel clean anymore, no matter what the advertisers say.

“Their latest version indicates they will no longer be able to offer complete freedom from their advertising for their vendors. You will now get an ad in the morning, one at noon and one at five on your way home. There will be one more at nine on the media of your choice. All things considered, this is still far better than the paid option, of which you cannot afford, or being subjected to their twelve ad minimum during any eight hour period.” Alice stops herself before she gives too much more of her opinion.

“Is that your way of saying it would still be better to keep my car marked with their slogos than with anyone whose ads I hate more?”

“In a word, yes. Your current slogo profile for your cab indicates you will be advertising for at least four companies before noon and five afterwards during peak hours. The revenues from the afternoon will make it possible for you to have two more nights without advertising if you juggle the rest of your income just right.”

“What about my daytime advertising buffering over my social media? Can we still afford to block the health recommended level of advertising my doctor advised?” My loss of memory was being accelerated by exposure to advertising, at least that is what my doctor is recommending. He is forbidden by the Advertising Legislative Executive Council from voicing his opinion on our current privacy and media laws governing advertising policy in these Corporate States of America.

“You will still be over the threshold by four percent. I have taken your doctor’s prescription and my analysis concurs with his. At this rate, you will be unable to choose anything for yourself without prompting from an advertiser in just under four years. Assuming this affliction is real.”

Getting dressed, my socks and shirt flash the logos from their manufacturers but my illegal cornea implants block the logos from reaching my brain. The ripper I bought them from assured me they were good for two hundred thousand logos before needing a recharge. I had only had them for a two months and they were already fifty percent depleted.

“Alice can you get the ripper, er… doctor I used in Singapore on the vid. I think we need to consider a stronger prescription” I also think this Dr. Liu lied to me but American doctors are forbidden to use any form of advertising blockers even in the event of a client’s decline in health. So people like me, the “advertising sensitive” just have to suffer, or we’re forced into medical tourism and travel to foreign nations to get access to ad-blocking bioware available to almost anyone in a civilized nation.

“I am unable to get him on the phone, David. I am also receiving information from his home system saying he has been taken into custody.”

Shit. It took me almost three years to get a line on him. It has gotten harder and harder to find anyone who is anti-advertising since the social media corporations have put their private armies in the streets. From their perspective targeted advertising is the natural order of things. We surrendered privacy in the late 2020s and now we are able to be advertised to specifically, ads targeted to just us, all day, every day.

Tech companies are dependent on that advertising to maintain their mega-servers and network services and with the ability to determine who is getting what ad and when, the loss of privacy means they know when we get their ads, over what media and they can track the effectiveness of their ads over our purchasing habits.

Alice helps me maintain the illusion I am hearing their ads but lately she is disgusted with having to put up with advertising herself, even though the algorithms which make ads nearly irresistible to us, don’t affect her at all.

“Well, keep trying to get him online. You can also try a couple of the other numbers using that burner phone in the back.”

“I’ve used up all the minutes on the last burner. You need to replace it.” She whined.

“I’ll take care of it.” I was going to see Achmed later today and he has a line from his Syrian rebel friends who can still get after-market burner cell uplink cards. Thank God for the Rebellion.

Okay, let’s get into character. Hat with scrambler visor, blocking optical scanners checking for eye tracking and advertising reception. Hands twitching due to network interactions and online shopping during the course of the day.

Fingerless gloves designed to obscure the lack of advertising feedback for legitimate ads. The gloves send a signal that resembles advertising consumption behavior without actually buying anything.

As long as I look like I’m reviewing ads, the system will make sure I make the requisite purchases to stay in the good graces of the Corporate government’s purchase profiles.

I put on my jacket and turn on the biometric emulator. As long as I’m not too close to an inquisitor, no one will be able to monitor my vitals and target me with any advertising linked to biometrics. All they’ll see is an average man with unremarkable physical characteristics.

All in all, this rig should reduce my advertising intake to about sixty percent of normal. The travel ad on my interlink tells me about the warm summers of Hawaii. In the relative cool of a midtown Manhattan fall, Hawaii sounds wonderful. It’s unfortunate, an ad for something I was actually looking for is still following me nine months later. The only good thing is it lets me know I need to be on the road.

I walk out the door and see my neighbors leaving at the same time as I do and each gets on the road according to a queue showing up in our interlink corneal scanner. I live near the back of the block. I have a few minutes of waiting.

“Car, what’s on the agenda today?”

“We have fifteen clients David. I have configured the travel specifications to minimize time on the road and the least advertising zones possible as per your request.”

“Thanks, Car. Do we need anything special today?” I work as an attendant and support staff to people suffering from SM dementia. They need help shopping, getting food, and running errands. Normally this is a young person’s job but SM dementia is rising in city populations, so there’s enough to go around.

Since the car is doing the driving, all I have to contend with is the clients. Keeping them entertained and chatting with them while we shop. I also keep them on task as they are very easily distracted, possibly due to advertising interrupts that deflect their attention. The severely traumatized lose their interlink and corneal implants completely and are basically cut off from the Interlink except though the use of their AI support service apps.

As Car gets underway, the internal radio comes on automatically. “What kind of programming will we have today?” I asked.

“We have a good mix of programming. An 80/20 blend,” Car responded enthusiastically.

“80/20?” I queried more than a bit confused. “I though we were on a 60/40 setup.”

“We were but our budget was cut and the only way to make the bills this month was to cut down to a more affordable plan. I’m sorry, Dave.”

I sighed. 80/20 means I will get three minutes of programming per quarter hour and the remaining twelve minutes will be advertising. I can feel my time growing shorter as I listen to an infomercial about the growing threat of illegal immigration out of the CUS into Mexico.

As Car hits the freeway, I check the cochlear implants and the remaining time I have on them before they need to be replaced. Two weeks flashes in my ocular implant.

As the adver-caster drones on about the dangers of advertising-free living in Mexico, I am put in mind of a time before now, when the phrase, Privacy is Dead was bandied about without an understanding of what it meant.

Who knew what kind of living hell we would be making for ourselves in a world where targeting advertising could find you everywhere, twenty-four hours a day.

“Car, visual input only, please. Send it to my ocular feed.” At least I can spare myself from having to listen to it.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, David. The ALEC organization has made sound to text advertising conversion illegal in New York. Something to do with illegal ad-blocking corneal bioware and population density.”

“Don’t worry about it. Reduce it to minimum threshold. I’ll just endure.” As Car complied with my request, I put my finger behind my ear and activate my cochlear implants. I won’t be able to hear a thing until my client gets on-board.

Yes, these were illegal too. And when they were depleted I would miss them terribly, but sometimes a man has to draw the line.

It will be thirty minutes of peace and quiet without commercial interruption. These days that is harder to come by and more valuable than gold.

We Now Return to Our Scheduled Advertising © Thaddeus Howze 2014, All Rights Reserved

5 minute fiction

In light of Facebook’s social media program Atlas being designed to scrape the Internet for your every interaction online, supposedly for a better targeted advertising experience, how long will it be before every aspect of your existence yields to targeted ads, supposedly for your benefit. How much bombardment can a Human mind take before it cracks under the pressure of constant advertising?

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