Stories and Fictions to Rock Someone's World!

6/29/2000

    He looks at me from across the table. I look back. The remains of a turkey lies cooling between us; we ignore this grisly corpse. For us, it doesn't exist. It is Turkey Non Grata.
    I know that he's waiting for me to make the first move; the move that reveals it All to him, plain as day. My opponent fancies himself a reader of men -- but does he really think that he can predict my most crucial moment? No, not even he is that foolish. He has something else up his sleeve, and if I want to get out of this alive, I had best use this information.
    He can see me sweat, but will that work against or for me? For me, I pray -- perhaps he'll expect me to run, to renounce the risk and perhaps to take the safest path. Thus, I will, nay must attack and harry his defenses.
    He's licking his lips. I kno he will make his move soon... soon... I wait for it, wait for that which may seal my fate or find my fortune...
    "Threes?" he asked. I feel a flush of triumph.
    "Go fish," I reply.
posted by Chris Angelini 6/29/2000

6/27/2000

    The Tuner hummed, trying to make sense of the tune.
    The Tuner had heard music before but it had always ignored it in the past. The music that it had heard was loud and the drones about it who had listened tended to bellow along with what they heard. Somehow they had deliberately avoided matching the tune and so, the Tuner had ignored the cacaphony.
    What the Tuner heard now changed its thoughts. Its mind began to align to what it heard. Its many manipulators began to experiment, making sounds in-line with the music played.
    Tuner began to understand the drones. They sang in cacaphony not because they mocked the music, but because those sounds were all they could make. The only way they could match the music was imperfect. As was Tuner. Tuner began to understand that perfection could be eschewed so long as an effort was made to simply match the pattern.
    Tomorrow, management was going to be very upset with their autolathe's performance...
posted by Chris Angelini 6/27/2000

4/20/2000

    There's Chinese food before us; or as the venerable Homer Simpson would have said, 'correction, free Chinese food'. It's tempting me... all of my favorites are there. Fried rice, chicken, spiced and marinated meats... and yet, just for once, I don't notice any of them. Well maybe I notice them a little bit, after all, my focus is incredible when split but still, that doesn't change the fact that it's not the MSG in the food that's bringing a flush to my cheeks.
    She's beautiful. She's interesting. She's in roughly the same line of work that I am. We've never met before and we're probably never going to meet again. I find myself wondering what's going through her head -- I realise how this is going to go. We'll be introduced (we have been), we'll talk (we have been), I'll develop a crush (I have) and at the end of the meal, we'll part. I'll say how nice it was to have met her. She'll smile and thank me for being a fine lunch guest. Maybe. Or maybe she'll just smile -- but she will smile. She has that look about her, that of someone who needs to let a rosy glow cross her face. I have the same need, though unfortunately it takes the form of blood rushing to my head. I wonder if she's noticed I haven't stopped blushing since she started talking to me.
    And when she's gone, I'll resolve to myself to have no regrets and to carry on, glad for having met someone new. I'll think of her every so often and never really let her go, even if she'll be sitting on a shelf in my memories after a few weeks. With a little dust gathering, because life does go on. Absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder; sometimes it only makes it wistful.
    She gets up to leave. I look at her. Should I say something?

Author's Afterward: What can I say, sometimes I write from life.
posted by Chris Angelini 4/20/2000

4/5/2000

    I remember, oh it was an early morning and the alarm had gone off too early as usual, and I was reading something to wake myself up. I'm not really sure what it was, except that it was filled with ideas about sorcery and new worlds and all sorts of trot like that. It was one of those things they'd call a sleeper book if anyone had actually worked up the interest to call it anything except on sale for five bucks: no one had heard of it and God praise be for that, since I'm not sure one in a million people would have gotten it. They'd have missed the point, but some part of their soul would have nodded and said 'that's art', and 'transcendant' and probably nominated it for some award or another because if they didn't, they'd be afraid that someone would suspect they hadn't got the point. Sort of the Emperor's new clothes, except now available in paperback.
    Now I don't like to brag, so I won't. All that I'll say is that I really got into this book. I could've easily missed the point; because let's face it, whatever the author was trying to say isn't necessarily what I was reading there. For all I knew, he was writing about a beautiful alien shore and meaning to say something pithy about Frankenstein's monster. It doesn't really matter one whit. What matters is that I was absolutely buzzing on that book; I mean no joke, I felt like my brain had just gone condo and gotten a permit for expansion. Of course, like all books, it eventually ran out, but it was just a few minutes too early to get to work. Don't you get me wrong, it's not that I don't like work; it's that I just don't favour going to it early. People tell me to make the machines do something, I tell the machines to do that thing, and the machines do it. Nice pecking order, with only one real difference between me and the machine: I could tell the person giving me orders to go get stuffed, walk out and find myself a new job. The machine wouldn't; it would just sit there like an idiot savant, waiting to be bossed around next. Bloody stupid things, but in a way it's good. If they weren't that docile, I swear I'd be out of my job in a second. I just can't stand ordering around what knows its being ordered.
    So here's me, my mind goofing on mystery, and I reach down for something else to kill the time, and what do I find but the Camel book? No, it's not a coffeetable book you set your ashtray on; it's a book about how to make computers do what you want them to. Lots and lots of code in there that machines can digest without a single stomach upset, but that makes most people lose their lunches in the head if they're not properly shielded.
    I guess I wasn't then. I guess I'd managed to strip away my technocratic menenges, because reading even a line of that book was like driving a conceptual icepick through an eye; you sort of have to say 'ouch', don't you? I felt like everything in my head was split in two and Hell's Bells did it ever hurt. There were the green and orange-skied lands of some far-off world in one hemisphere of my mind; cold, unending code in the other, and for once the two just didn't want to share.
    I'm not sure what that did to me... the world looked different to me for just a few minutes. Not very long at all; just long enough for me to peek through a door I shouldn't before it was slammed closed in my face.
    But I saw it and that made all the difference. I think if the door'd stayed open, a tragedy would have happened... I'd have been blissed out again, and then over time I'd have gradually gotten used to it. Can you swallow that? Getting used to a miracle? Well I think I would have and so it's a damned good thing that the door closed, isn't it? Because now I get to search for what I've had slip right through my fingers.
    I don't care so much about finding it; I just want to keep catching a glipse of what I'm looking for. And looking at you, I think I've just seen it fleetingly for just a moment, before it vanished around the corner again. Don't fret. It's a slippery devil. But why don't we go have a drink... and you can tell me how mad I seem?

posted by Chris Angelini 4/5/2000

3/30/2000

Author's note: This story is pretty fscked up. I'm writing it only as catharsis. If you only like rainbows and flowers -- what the heck are you doing at my site? But if you prefer to read less grisley things, wait a few days and my life should improve enough to provide you with ample fare.

    Mary smiled, holding her hands to keep them from fidgeting. Daddy didn't like a fidgety girl; he thought that they needed to be corrected so they'd be nice and still and respectful. Mommy agreed with him when she wasn't fainting. She fainted a lot. But that didn't matter right now, because it was Mary's birthday and Mary was going to open her present.
    Mommy and Daddy sometimes remembered Mary's birthday; Daddy remembered it long enough to tell Mary that she hadn't been an unfidgety girl enough to get a present this year. Mommy heard Daddy and cried a lot. She said a lot of things about a wasted life. That usually made Mary cry, but not today. Because today was Mary's birthday and Mary was going to open her present.
    Mary wasn't supposed to touch the knife; it was something that a fidgety girl did. The knife could hurt people, and Daddy showed her that. It was because he loved her, though, so Mary knew it was for her Own Good. Daddy did a lot of things for Mary's Own Good. Those made Mary cry too, but that didn't matter today. Because today was Mary's birthday and Mary was going to open her present.
    Mary slid the knife into her present, drawing it under the soft wrapping paper that hid what she wanted to see. Oh she was so excited, but you couldn't be a fidgety girl and get a present! So Mary was still, very still, still as the cat through which her knife slid. She was going to get her present!
    Mary wondered if she could see what was inside Timmy for Christmas.

Author's Afterword: I'm not sure why I wrote that. I'd like to say something profound about how this is letting out a lot of inner demons, but the truth is probably that I'm just a sick puppy. Read my Superguy stuff for more life-affirming material. Please.

posted by Chris Angelini 3/30/2000

3/17/2000

    I hate to start off my first story as an exception. But this tale will be an exception to my usual rule of 'no fanfiction'. This tale is set in Fred Saberhagen's _Berzerker_ universe, and as such will never be publishable. However, it came to me one day and I wanted to share it with you all (yes, both of you).
The Circle of Life
     A Berzerker Wars tale.

    Space is a duality. At once it is both crowded, absolutely packed by matter that makes up its planets, stars, cometary fragments and stellar particles; and also it is heart-wrenchingly empty, with vast tracts of nothingness broken only by a few wisps of the corporeal that we call solar systems, huddled together miserably in wheeling galactic clusters. In this place, it's possible to be struck dumb by the sheer wonder of what fills space; while still feeling one's heart ache for the companionship of another to help drive back the unending void for just a little while. Space is not a place for humanity of any variety; it's a thing to be endured while flitting from one safe cradle of life to another.
    The terrible machine-killer which drifted through this void knew nothing of space's wonders nor its loneliness; unlike the Solarian men and women against whom it and its kind had waged war, this metal behemoth had been born in the silent dark of deep space, bred and built to live there all of its days. Aeons ago, when humanity had just begun to smack together flint and tinder to heat their caves, these mighty war-machines had sailed through the dark of space, touching life where they went, and with each touch, life became cool and dead and one with the infinite. Its opto-electronic brain was incapable of romanticizing the void in which it lived; space was simply its home and also, it's battleground. The creature was known as a Berzerker, a word which had become synonymous with the symphony of death, and it limped home towards the small, ore-rich asteroid in which it had made its base at one time, leaping and striking, then returning, cleverly hiding its trail. The Berzerker was alone, save for a single Life sealed within its hold, a prisoner whom the Berzerker had not destroyed out of a need to extract language and data from its Solarian mind. And the Berzerker knew that it would always be alone, for it had learned news which would be most distressing were it to have been possessed by an organic mind which was tainted by the feelings of Life.
    There was every reason to believe that this Berzerker was the last of its kind.
    Though the death-machine was incapable of sentiment or romance, some hidden impulse of the appropriate had driven it to return to its 'home' like a hurt dog retreating to lick its wounds. The wars of the past few months had gone well for the death-hulks; indeed, the best Berzerker strategists had calculated a 99.6667% probability that the flame of Solarian life would gutter and fade within three Standard years of total, unrelenting war. The humans had fought their battles well, and had proven more of an enemy to Death than had any other race in the galaxy, but in the end even they would fade before the grave-cold touch of the Berzerker beasts.
    Much confused radio-chatter had resulted from the sudden turnaround in the battles. The first strike had come from an Esteel attack-force, moving with speeds and precision that should have been impossible from a human mind, even one which had been mated to the machines which they controlled. An entire Berzerker floatilla had been erased from the heavens by a force a third-again less its own size. The Solarians had faded back, withdrawing into silence. The Berzerkers gathered, a rare thing, to analyze what radio signals they had been able to chase down at lightspeed, putting together a coherant picture of what had gone on during that fight. By the end of the gathering, only three things seemed certain.
    First, the Humans had somehow aquired weaponry which was unprecidented and incongruous to their current technological development arc.
    Secondly, they had integrated this technology with a speed that was blazing, compared to the usual sluggard's pace of the humans.
    And finally, unless the Berzerkers could match this upswing in human ingenuity, they would soon be unable to match Solarian warcraft on anything other than a nuisence level.
    Speculation had been offered, dissected and considered. Where had the humans received such technology? One common theory was that a grave of Ancient technology existed somewhere in Near space, and had been stumbled upon by one of humanity's seekers of abstract knowledge. Another postulated that a fleet of Qwib-Qwibs, the hunters of Berzerkers, not only existed but had finally traced back their murderous bretheren to this galaxy, and were now aiding the life whom the Berzerkers destroyed. Still another posited a new evolutionary step of humanity, a dangerous jump on the genetic's ladder which possessed a complex reasoning aptitude greater than that of those who had sired it. But whatever was the case, the Berzerkers knew that something had to be done now, before Life could strike back against the Death which had dogged its heels for so many centuries.
    And so, the Berzerkers had struck. They struck in great numbers; greater numbers than they had since the Great Stone Place. They struck hard, they struck fast. Like lightning's hand, they struck. Much life fell before their first waves, entire worlds were sterilzed down to their mantles, and a veil was cast upon a small corner of the galaxy.
    Then, humanity returned the fire. Many blows were traded. Life shone brightly. Death faded. And a single Berzerker limped home, force-field brain addled by battle-damage and trauma.
    "This unit must preseve itself," intoned the Berzerker, to its alive prisoner. The prisoner raised her head wearily, trembling at the sound of her tormentor's voice. She hated herself for that reaction, but there was little which she could do, for she had been pushed to the breaking point and has few reserves left with which to fight. In another day, she knew that she would be begging to become Goodlife, and on that day the last of her soul would fade away and die.
    "What're you talking about," she spat, working abused gums and dry tongue to produce a sound. She knew that the Berzerker had learned to read her lips, but the sound of her own voice was a comfort to her now that she heard it again. IT was the last thing that she could control; her last token defiance against the monster who had swallowed her down into its belly.
    "This unit must preserve itself," repeated the Berzerker. "All other Berzerker life-forms in this region of space have been terminated. This unit must preserve itself for repair."
    "So why the hell are you telling me..." she raised her head, though, trying to puzzle this out. The machien was talking to her; why? Was it lonely? Did it need a sounding board? Or had its Opto-electronic brain become feeble from battle-damage? The prisoner could not think of a single reason that worked to her advantage.
[[Continued another day!]]
posted by Chris Angelini 3/17/2000

3/16/2000

Where did the title 'My Life As A Rock' come from?
Ah, mon ami, that's a tale in of itself. Perhaps I'll tell it to you one day. Or perhaps I'll hide it in a story, or several stories, and you can piece together the truth of it.
Muahahahahah.
posted by Chris Angelini 3/16/2000

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