Wed - April 22, 2009

Magdalen


Social life among the Ash Fork clones is complex, because they are a combination of human design and processes, injected with DNA computers. DNA computing as it exists would be fairly slow, but this is in a future where they have been integrated into the tissue of the Ash Fork clones in vitro. The clones are the evolution of humans into Space. Some of them are eccentrics.

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Wed - December 17, 2008

Audio: Cowboy Jesus


This is an audio recording of the first chapter of Indian Shadow: "Cowboy Jesus," in which the Indian Shadow connects with the criminal midget, Lou Short.

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Wed - October 8, 2008

(01-29) Waiting for Jules


Blue Mesa quickly became obsolete. It was a string of information beginning to lose the attraction to a center. There was only one person left alive, there, and he’d gone unnoticed, because he wasn’t there to serve the new king and he wasn't there to kill him. He had no role in the unfolding drama. He was holding his knees and rocking back and forth while chanting nonsense.

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Tue - September 30, 2008

(01-28) Jules Evolves


An oppressive cold settled onto the high desert when the sun went down. Blue Mesa became a still life, without wind or even the humming of a passing pickup truck on the two lane snaking along the desert floor below the mesa. The silence was so pronounced even the coyotes and the night birds were just listening. Inside the hogan, the first notes sounded.

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Fri - September 26, 2008

(01-27) On Blue Mesa


“What’s in your pocket?” the troll asked without a trace of slyness, because trolls are thick as brick and they are controllers. A troll is just missing the first syllable, con, so he’s no con man. He’s missing his mercury. He’s missing his gold, too. A troll is pretty much made out of leaving and dross. One day he shines and the next day he tarnishes. He lives east of Eden and tills stony ground. But he never complains more than pointing out you can’t win with a losing hand. That’s about the size of it.

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Mon - September 22, 2008

(01-26) God in the Maiz


When Dexter bought, “Midget With a Dwarf Tattoo,” it was because of the picture on the jack jacket. It was a dramatic black and white photo of Paris sitting at a sidewalk cafe, wearing dark glasses and a beret. Dexter had at first been sure she was somebody he already knew, but he couldn’t remember how he knew her. He in fact remembered her from a dream in which she had a nosebleed and he gave her his handkerchief. When she gave it back there were only three drops of blood on it.

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Wed - September 17, 2008

(01-25) Abstract Weather


The rumble of the touring bike was hypnotic; it lulled Paris into a distracted musing about death. She suspected her relative indifference to Louis’ death was an indifference to her own death. Her life was a story, she reasoned, like every life. Birth and death were the book covers. Without them there would be no container for the story. She had begun to see herself shrinking down into her last years, her last days, her last moments. And then what?

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Tue - September 9, 2008

(01-24) Dexter


Paris always imagined people before she met them but was seldom accurate. However, when she was accurate, it wasn’t imagination, but memory. There was no other way to explain it to herself. Some people she remembered before she was supposed to have met them, and when that happened, she knew her passion was being stirred to life.

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Wed - September 3, 2008

(01-23) Creamed Corn


After the first round was fired Indian Shadow could have run away, but he did not. He ran back inside to the refrigerator to rescue the Patriarch. He was reaching for the container when it was hit and the samples blended together and dripped into a bowl of creamed corn. He grabbed the bowl and slipped behind the stuffed Grizzly Bear. He didn’t consciously see that no rounds were hitting the bear but his body knew, and it went there.

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Thu - August 28, 2008

(01-22) From Chicago


Gene Tweaks hadn’t planned on pulling the trigger; he was just sighting his scope in on the midget. Gene was part of a Special Security team, an expert in guerilla warfare, with seminar training in explosives and damage control. The main subject of damage control wasn’t about having a soft footprint, it was mostly about media relations. Gene was pulling down over two hundred grand a year because he was the perfect combat soldier … except for the voices …

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Wed - August 20, 2008

(01-21) Demon Seed


Paris lit a cigarette. It was a rare decision for her to light one. Her tobacco was sun cured and mixed with shake. She inhaled and watched the smoke curl into the damp air. Louis and A-Bomb were at 401 Beach Street by now, with the other little people who found their way to the hideaway on the Mendocino Coast to be with their own kind. And she was here alone. But of course she wasn’t really alone. The doorman was waiting for her to come back inside.

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Wed - July 30, 2008

(01-20) 401 Beach Street


To the men who encountered Paris, she seemed easy. To their admiration she admitted worthiness. When told that she was unique, she agreed. The Inspector thus found himself, as had many before him, on a sandy path between two tidal waves that peered down at him like doting but overwhelming parents. He smiled a silly smile and said, “I’m not sure I know what you said.” So she repeated: “Your love is like a red red rose that lifts its head to spring.”

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Thu - July 24, 2008

(01-19) Mind Reading


As they disappeared into the fog bank Louis and Troll, from a distance, looked like one person. Louis was on his cousin’s shoulders, a yellow slicker covering them, with Troll peering through the opening he'd left himself. "How can somebody who's invisible just make things go the way he wants them to go?" Louis wondered aloud. "We must have every lawman in existence after us and here we go sailing right out under the Golden Gate.

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Sun - July 20, 2008

(01-18) Sailing in Fog


In the Dark Ages reason wasn’t gone, it just wasn’t separated from magic, and at the intersection priests set themselves adrift in rudderless ships to cast their fate to an invisible hand. Faith was all the rage. The sailors on the little yacht prowling along the Marin coast in the heavy fog were without experience, but they had the invisible hand in spades.

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Fri - July 18, 2008

(01-17) Dancing the Dragon


The Patriarchs had been sold to the American public as "hope for the little man." It was described as a collection of progeny existing somewhere in the future, somewhere in space. It was sold as hope for the survival of an evolutionary dream. That it was, in fact, not a collection of equal contributions, but one large, all powerful entity was withheld from the public because the public relations experts concluded this information might be "antithetical to the democratic impulse."

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Mon - July 14, 2008

(01-16) Blue Midget 03


It was when A Bomb watched Troll lifting the rack cases into the bus' cargo hold that he began to suspect Paris' writing was full of lies. If Troll was as naturally strong as she described him as being he had certainly lost it by the time he climbed, sweaty and out of breath, into the bus after the exertion. He tried to broach the subject but Troll thought he was being insulting when he asked, "Can you tear a telephone book in half?"

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Wed - May 21, 2008

(01-15) Conspiracy


“What is it to conspire with someone else? In the most literal sense it is to breathe together,” The Patriarch said. “Join me in unitary breathing.”
“I wish he’d shut up,” Troll said. “He’s creeping me out.”
“Yea.” Fireplug was more cheerful. “We’re not Tele-Tubbies. Where does this organic computer get off, talking like Vincent Price inside our heads?”

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Sat - May 10, 2008

(01-14) Public Relations


"The American Futures Corporation believes this is more than a theft of semen. This was something far more sinister and evil, because it was the theft of a baby, born of this planet, a spawn composed at the edge of our adaptive resources, and this was not my baby or your baby, this was our baby. Who among you would give safe haven to the terrorists who would steal the future, and subject it to possibly fatal temperature variations? Yet even as I speak, the semen of the Patriarchs is in a midget's refrigerator. And this is no cute, benign midget. This is a midget gone terribly wrong."

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Thu - April 24, 2008

(01-13) Conversion of a Sinner


There was a public stage in front of American Futures, where on a typical day a man or woman with a guitar would be set up, singing songs to a mostly disinterested scattering of employees on lunch or coffee break. But today was different. Today there was a freak show, and everybody stopped to watch, including the security guards monitoring the video boards. All eyes were on the band of trolls as they blew open the gates to darkness and threw a party for the devil.

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Sat - April 19, 2008

(01-12) Midget Switching


The American Futures counselors always went out to lunch at Mr. Ping’s on Tuesdays, when Mr. Ping’s Root Beer was free with the buffet. The root beer was an aphrodisiac, as well as having a mixture of herbs that caused mild hallucinations. The counselors would typically be about ten minutes late, and mildly perceptually altered, every Tuesday. This would give Louis enough time to remove the vent and disappear into the ductwork.

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