I'm on a trip, for some reason, thinking in terms of maps, like I'm looking at a GPS. Mom can't figure out quite how to use the GPS, so I have to help her figure out which way is North, so we can get to wherever it is we're going.
We end up at some sort of stripped-down place of worship, like a church auditorium or a fire hall. We're supposed to be participating in some sort of mystic, new-agey ritual, sort of like a group meditation thing, though what belief system it represents is unclear. We're instructed on our parts in a multi-part ritual, after which we leave for a while.
When I come back, I have a banal question about the ritual, which I pose to one of the group leaders, a young Caucasian female who doesn't seem to have any special looks or powers or significance. I want to know what's supposed to happen in Part 4. She doesn't even seem to hear my question...
She says, "In Part 4, you will burst into flames, and you will go to hell."
One of the other members of the organization overheads and, shocked, tries to chide her, but the woman seems to be in a trance, simply talking at me rather than trying to answer my question. I am torn between writing it off as ridiculous, and being absolutely afraid that I'm now the subject of a mortal prophecy. In that state of mind, I wake up.
I am somewhat low on blood sugar, so as I walk around the house, trying to shake off the dream, it turns out to be very difficult. I think of Galatea, the text-based game I've been playing recently, and how one ending led to the main character seeing everything as "portents and omens." I think the yellow light from one of the desk lamps, left on, looks like the light from a fire. I wonder why the little holes in one of the door frames are organized into a certain pattern. I keep involuntarily picturing myself on fire. My face looks weird in the mirror.
Eventually, the can of Coke and an hour or so working on a project seems to break the spell.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
Supposed to Snow Tonight
The street wants the snow
So bad, now that it's midnight
And freezing fucking cold
And the guy on TV keeps saying
"70% chance of precipitation
Overnight!" So we wait
Forever, it feels like
For the first pinprick
To drift past the streetlight
Searching in slow motion
For the asphalt. You, me,
The street, the window,
The neighbor's Hyundai,
The open trash barrels,
A stoop and a stray cat,
No sound but a siren
From a few streets over.
No hurry, dark Eastern clouds,
We're all just waiting here
To feel the brush of your cold wet lips
When you whisper "Brooklyn" in our ear.
Friday, December 30, 2011
The Extension, Part 6
I glanced toward Marge. “Hey, hun,
Janie's meeting somebody today... a Mr. Michaelson? Do you know who
that is?”
Marge spent another ten seconds buried
in her literature before she looked up to answer. “Yeah, that's
her PET Mentor. They've just been assigned, and they're having their
first meeting tonight.”
“Wow, already? They didn't do that
with us until we were 11!”
“Well, he's 12, dear, and yes,
they're doing it earlier these days. Kids want to be prepared as
early as they can be.”
I set the Tablet down; I had no
interest in the day's news, nor in what I was reading at the moment.
I got up and started digging through my wardrobe, which was lean, but
versatile and effective – Marge and I had put a good deal of time
into licensing just the right articles, cultivating a variety of
colors and styles, so we always had a range of different outfits. I
tried on a pair of stained jeans, and then threw a synthetic t-shirt
over my hairy chest; after a few seconds, I realized the jeans looked
too artificial with the t-shirt, so I switched out into a more modest
pair of khakis. Marge's comment put me in the mood to wear that
tweed jacket, and she was right – the hat was a great little
accessory at the top of the ensemble.
Marge, perhaps inspired by my
perkiness, decided to get herself out of bed as well. She put on a
robe, her old standby for lounging around the apartment, and picked
up a plate of pastry shells she had made the previous night. I heard
her take them downstairs to the common area of the building, where
she could have some people try them and give their opinions. She said
she liked the social energy down there; I suspected she also liked
the occasional bit of attention from passers-by. Left alone, I put on
an audite-book called The Dismantling of Private Transit: A Story
of Reclamation, and took notes on my Tablet while I listened.
I was still listening when Janie
arrived home a little after four. She changed into a more comfortable
outfit and picked up her Tablet almost immediately. I switched off my
audite at the end of a paragraph.
“Getting started already?”
“Yeah! Come on over. I want to finish
my core subjects before dinner.”
“Very enterprising! Are you going to
have anything left for your meeting after dinner?”
“No, dad, that's why I'm getting
started now. It's not supposed to be a study session or anything...
just an introductory meeting.”
I sat down next to her at the table.
She was pulling up today's sub-lecture and assignments in
differential mathematics. “Well, it sounds exciting,” I said to
her as I synced my Tablet up to hers. “So let's get this out of
the way, I guess!”
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Extension, Part 5
I got the confirmation of my time
worked the next day. I was fairly sure I wouldn't be called in for
at least a few more days, maybe even the rest of the week. My
morning was languid and aimless, as I like them to be... I poked
through a few books, then finally, around noon, I went to the
athletic hub and jogged a few laps.
As I took the HighWalk home, finally
fully activated for the day, I thought about my father's stories. He
had lived through the final wave of automation and public
restructuring... when he was young, you were still expected to work
every day, sometimes three or four full hours. Dad found it a
nagging obligation to exercise in his free time, and he said he
wouldn't have done it if he thought he could stay healthy without
making it a habit.
This was one of the many ways our
generation gap showed... by the time I'd finished my tracking cycle,
the manual labor work week was compressed to only a few hours a week.
I had no idea what it was like to have my time usage dictated by an
employer; my peers and I had so much free time that were able –
indeed, we were forced – to really put some effort into creating a
productive structure for ourselves. Balanced, holistic fitness
routines flourished as we found three- or four-day-long pockets of
spare time to distribute.
Varn, my late father in law, said it
was becoming a world of gym rats, which is a sentiment I've never
fully understood.
I still missed Varn. He was a
nostalgic, romantic old professional-class patriarch, with a house
full of small, interesting objects that he'd secured on long-term
exclusive licenses. He liked collecting, which is harder than it used
to be, with all the strict license-enforcement lately. He mostly got
them transferred at refuse markets and deprecation sales. When the
old man died, I tried to keep a hold on his stuff... I applied to put
posterity locks on thirty-five of his licenses, all the collected
curiosities he had accumulated, which was totally excessive. Nobody
wanted that many useless licenses lying around.
Maybe I'd go back and read some of
Varn's old notes later. He'd become quite a productive memoirist in
his last few years.
I got home to find the house very
quiet; Marge was sitting in bed, reading on her Tablet, which she was
accustomed to doing after lunch. I retrieved my Tablet from the
bedside table and sat down on the bed to go through it.
General Interest News Items: 14.
High-priority news items: 0.
Dependent status: Janie is out with
friends. Last update: Arnold's creperie, 17th Street.
Message from Janie, recorded 9:28
AM: Be back by 4, daddy. I'll have my homework done before dinner.
Dependent notification: Janie has a
new appointment today. 6 PM – Trend Michaelson. Location: Your
house.
I glanced toward Marge. “Hey, hun,
Janie's meeting somebody today... a Mr. Michaelson? Do you know who
that is?”
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Extension, Part 4
I looked at Janie for another second,
and then Marge and I drifted off toward the kitchen, as if to check
that we had enough food for the three of us. Marge settled in behind
our mini-bar and started pawing through the cupboard for some
ingredients. I watched her for a second, and then turned to our
dining area to see if anything needed cleaning up before we sat down
to eat. I noticed a beautiful red velour hat on the table, a sort of
squat little thing, with a small feather tucked into the band.
“What a cute little number,” I
said, picking up the hat to get a closer look.
“Oh, yes! The pork-pie!”
“The what?” I felt like I had
heard the term at some point, but the syllables seemed to dissipate
before I could put them together.
“The pork-pie! Do you like it? I
found it at a Hattery in the old market today! Licensed it for you,
second-hand!”
I picked up the little hat. It fit
snugly on my head, of course – CONTRACT would have alerted Marge if
she tried to license me a hat that didn't fit me. I turned and looked
at myself in the mirrored partition of the Southern wall. The
pork-pie was fetching on me, although I didn't fully approve of the
way my hair tufted out on the sides.
“Thank you, Margie. Love it.”
“Wonderful! I think it'll be
especially nice with your purple tweed jacket. Remember to hang it
up when you take it off.”
The evening meandered forward. I joined
Janie for the last bit of her homework, and then we sat down together
for dinner. This was our peaceful life, here in our little home, out
at CONTRACT District KX Extension C.
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
Monday, December 12, 2011
The Extension, Part 3
“Sure thing. I'll see you next time
we cross paths, Bannon!”
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
“Good luck on your dates, Bill!”
I took the 5th Street
HighWalk to the 28th Avenue UnderWalk, cruised under two
blocks of local foot traffic, and came up about a hundred yards from
my unit, which was a modified 21st century Stacked
Brownstone, situated in a row of the same structures between two
office towers. I went up the West Office Tower... it has a
rapid-lift, and we have an entrance from one of the interior
catwalks. Stepping from the matted beige office interior to the
lush, wallpapered hallway of my own building... it was like a gust of
warm, perfum'd air, a breath of comfort.
From the hallway to my front door... a
retinal scan, a quick bioprint (we were thorough with our home
security), and the outside door unlatched and let me into our foyer.
I could hear Janie at the end of the hall, tapping away on a Hand
Tablet.
I looked into the rear study and
regarded Janie for a moment. At 9 years old, she was already
beginning to look like an adolescent... her frame gradually
lengthening, her red hair falling luxuriously across her shoulders.
She was very smart, too... CONTRACT had pushed up her Rigor Curve a
point last week, and she was still knocking out her homework 41
seconds ahead of baseline. She still had a few years to go before she
entered her secondary track, but Marge and I were already thinking
maybe she could be a level-6 or level-7 specialist... not a level-3,
like me, stuck as I was with routine maintenance jobs.
As I watched her touch the Tablet,
lightly, with intricate caresses, I felt a soft hand on my shoulder.
I turned around to find Marge looking at me with a warm, sleepy
smile.
“Napping before dinner, darling?” I
put my arm around her and pulled her into me. I glanced back at
Janie; she hadn't looked up at us.
“You look at her like a little boy in
love,” Marge said softly.
“Yeah, well, it's a nice scene to
come home to.” I pulled Marge in and gave her a kiss; at this,
Janie glanced up for a second, and then went back to her homework.
“Did she go into Primary to get the Tablet scanned?” I asked
Marge.
“Yes, spent most of the day playing
with some friends, then stopped by Primary before she came home. Now
diligently doing her homework, before she eats us out of house and
home.”
“That's what it takes to grow that
fast, I guess.”
“Well, she eats so much, we're
practically over allowance for this period.”
“Seriously? Are you being serious
about that? We can raise our Appeal next period...”
“No, Bannon, I am not serious.
Between you and her and my snacks, our Appeals are big enough for two
families.”
I looked at Janie for another second,
and then Marge and I drifted off toward the kitchen, as if to check
that we had enough food for the three of us. Marge settled in behind
our mini-bar and started pawing through the cupboard for some
ingredients. I watched her for a second, and then turned to our
dining area to see if anything needed cleaning up before we sat down
to eat. I noticed a beautiful red velour hat on the table, a sort of
squat little thing, with a small feather tucked into the band.
(The RSS for this serial fiction can be found here.)
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The Extension, Part 2
That would probably take about an hour.
After that, I would spend another hour filing reports: where was the
data surge? Where was there extra noise in the data? Which transistor
had come loose? Was everything else up to code? And then it would
assign me a general clean-up... another half hour. Then I could go
home. Pretty routine. I've had much worse assignments.
I stopped to talk to Bill again on the
way out.
“How's everything on your end, Bill?
They keeping you here much?”
“Nah, a few hours a week. Probably
not much more time on the clock then you, honestly. Gonna spend this
week rewiring my synth setup, and then got a couple dates later in
the week. Nice-looking ladies, set up for me by CONTRACT's personal
connections service.”
“Oh ho ho! THAT must be why she's
lagging! Bill's love life's gonna take down the local extension!”
“You're too much, Bannon. Just a
couple girls from around town, and one older lady from B-extension.
Then going up to the Adirondacks next week, just to get out of town
for a while.”
“The Adirondacks? What's up there?”
“Oh, I've got an uncle up there...
old Uncle Harvey. He's got a little cabin... lives like a monk. Has
the fewest licenses of anybody I've ever known.”
“Just the essentials, eh?”
“Well, he's a bit of an eccentric,
ol' Harvey. When he was a really young man, living up in Canada,
there were still seditious sects, trying to stay completely
unregistered. So even now, he's a little weird about CONTRACT and
licenses.”
“Well, maybe you'll bring back some
stories from old Uncle Harvey, huh?”
“Damn right I will! So Janie and
Margie are doing okay, huh? How about you?”
“Oh, fine. I'm following along with
Janie in her lessons. Western Imperial History, differential math...
stuff I almost forgot about since my own Primary years. Glad she's
letting me study with her a little.”
“Oh, that's great, Bannon. She's a
good kid.”
“Yeah, I know. And Marge is making
the last few adjustments to her recipe. It's a lot of review, a lot
of testing and calibration. The kind of stuff I wasn't so good at in
Primary.”
“So she's planning to file it with
Maker's Registry?”
“Yeah, pretty soon! I'll keep you up
to date on it. But hey, I better get home. They're probably antsy for
me to be done the work.”
“Sure thing. I'll see you next time
we cross paths, Bannon!”
“Good luck on your dates, Bill!”
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