Mon - July 18, 2005(17) TarzanIt took Wood Johnson almost ten seconds to wilt
under Mona's unflinching gaze. His face slowly dissolved, like a vampire in the
sunshine. "I think Jesus Christ wasn't just a passenger," Mona said. She took
a small cotton cloth bag from her purse, and from the bag she took a little
smoking pipe. Wood's lips parted and his eyes got moist. His smile was
crooked. "What are you?" Mona asked.
Posted at 03:01 PM Read More Thu - July 14, 2005(16) Chutney BowlesThe Vice President was consulting with the
Secretary of War and the Attorney General. "He's obviously deranged," he said
in his dry, expressionless tone. He sat still as a bag of rice, his eyes pale
blue and cool with bloodless logic. "Besides, I'm already sworn in. I was
going to tell him this morning but he canceled our prayer breakfast."
Posted at 07:13 PM Read More Wed - July 13, 2005(15) DuetSnatchel materialized from a snatch of
abstraction. El the masculine
pronoun trails along after youthful vulgarity
like an aging Lothario in a college town. The name lost a letter and became
Satchel, as in a small case with a flat bottom. Now he is in the Purple Room
with Mona, his security adviser, and he's just plain old Wood Johnson, waiting
by the piano to visit a place he goes only with her. "Sing to mama," Mona
repeated. Her voice was hard and sharp and her smile had vanished.
Posted at 03:26 PM Read More Sun - July 10, 2005(14) iAm "Re-materializing more than three times in
twenty-four hours," Prax wrote, "Does something to you. When the Masters of
Prax had waited expectantly for him to continue, he just sent a surge of energy
through the field that felt like a big, vulnerable window open to the night.
They felt how when there's just one of you, you have no power of
reflection.
Posted at 07:45 PM Read More Tue - June 21, 2005(13) Luck"It's May Day," the President said, so this is a
big prank."
"That's April Fool's Day, Mr. President," Jukebox said. There was a long pause. "We're used to him," he added. "Too much fluctuation in the serotonin levels." There was a release of tension in the spacecraft, which had been experiencing turbulence in the form of raised anxiety levels. "Ah," Legggs said. "So that's it." Posted at 11:05 AM Read More Mon - June 20, 2005(12) PowerSnatchel was not interested in sex for pleasure.
He was in it for the power, which had surrounded pleasure and now controlled it.
"You want pleasure, you got to go through me." His soul had been captured by a
ruthless pimp who lived like a leech off his desire to win her back
again.
Posted at 03:37 PM Read More Thu - June 9, 2005(11) Cage FightPresident Satchel P. Pussy, known affectionately
as Snatchel to his many supporters, was having a rare moment of privacy with
Commando Cannon, who trolled the internet as a military man willing to
provide training and humiliation to those wishing to serve a Cannon instead of a
Canon. Snatchel was on his knees, his face transfixed with a grimace of lust,
when he saw the light. "Not now, Lord," he whispered.
Posted at 03:08 PM Read More Fri - June 3, 2005(10) PraxParadoxically, the Masters of Prax were so called
to protect them from disintegration. Prax has no connection to written language
and thus cannot be described by it except in the most abstract terms, on the
level of "my love is like a red red rose." Prax knew
that his children would have to be under the illusion that they were the masters
and he the servant if they were to overcome their toadying fealty to power. He
accepted that there has to be a wounding, even in a god, if he is to survive
death and rebirth. Archer was the wound in Prax's infallibility, and thus the
roadblock to Prax's transformation into a red dwarf star.
Posted at 12:41 PM Read More Thu - May 26, 2005(09) Poppy Fields"Opium poppies represent between forty and fifty
percent of the gross national product of Afghanistan," Legggs said. She was
sitting beside Jukebox in a Ford passenger van, turned back toward Archer Prax
and his four personified aspects. "Under the Taliban opium production was
outlawed and declined, but with the American invasion it flourished again, and
Afghanistan now supplies up to ninety percent of the world demand. The United
States decided to spend three hundred million on eradication, but only a hundred
and twenty million to help farmers switch to legal crops."
Posted at 10:36 AM Read More Fri - May 20, 2005(08) Delia's GoneThe five Masters of Prax was an illusion created by
Archer, who had split himself into multiple forms to avoid loneliness while he
was appearing and disappearing in different places and times. He was an energy
field which had no actual physical form, and he was crazy as a shithouse rat.
He had forgotten that he was all five of the personalities, so that he talked to
his split off parts, and they talked to him, as if they were separate
beings.
Posted at 01:56 PM Read More Tue - May 17, 2005(07) High RollersThe fueling rod fit the passageway precisely. It
moved with habitual precision through it and into the chamber, where Legggs and
Jukebox had concealed themselves behind the reactor in the center. The rod
extended itself across the chamber and into the reactor's green door, where
energy began to flow through it and back to the Mother Ship hovering over
Masterson County Park.
Posted at 05:50 PM Read More Sun - May 15, 2005(06) Bye Bye BethausAs soon as Bethaus switched off the AV he knew he'd
made a mistake not checking the logging road again on his way out, and Bethaus
was not a man who forgave himself mistakes. Because of this, he didn't forgive
other people for his mistakes, either, and their complicity in his humiliation
was likely to cost them a brutal beating.
Posted at 03:05 PM Read More Sat - May 14, 2005(05) The Chamber"I can't help it," Legggs said, when the fit of
laughter finally subsided. Jukebox had turned around and looked at her with
the left side of his mouth turned up and the right side unaffected, which had
triggered the laughing fit. "If I don't get rid of the anxiety by laughing then
I have a panic attack, like I did in the cafe when you came in. When I start
laughing like that I can't stop until my stomach calms
down."
"Is it calmed down some now?" Jukebox asked. "Um hum," she said, and another spasm escaped her. "Excuse me. I really am okay now." "Then let's see where this leads," Jukebox said. Ahead of them the tunnel opened into a cavern of unknown size and composition. Posted at 02:12 PM Read More Thu - May 12, 2005(04) Analysts"What the hell is this secret passageway?" Agent
Orange asked. His voice was pleasant but his reputation was not. The two
analysts who had been given the communication between Jukebox and Legggs had
decided that the secret passageway most likely referred to a human smuggling
operation. This analysis was bolstered by former agent Watts', aka Jukebox,
having been fired from Kyle for not supporting the policies regarding
classification of illegals as potential terrorists.
Posted at 04:37 PM Read More Wed - May 11, 2005(03) The Entry"That old jukebox keeps playing, a honky tonk
wedding, with a road house preacher and a four piece country band." Legggs was
laughing again. The song didn't really mean anything to her except that it had
the word "Jukebox" in it, and now every association with Jukebox was getting
increasingly hilarious.
Posted at 12:40 PM Read More Tue - May 10, 2005(02) Core Sample"It looks like something took a core sample,"
Jukebox said. Legggs noticed that from behind he did look like a jukebox, or
like a bulldog. She began laughing and he turned around to look at her, but he
didn't seem to anxious to know, just curious. "You laughing at me?" he asked,
but now she was laughing so much she couldn't speak. All she could do was nod
her head up and down.
Posted at 11:56 AM Read More Mon - May 9, 2005(01) County ParkA man comes into a cafe in a small mountain town.
The waitress looks at him and the moment pauses. He slowly removes his black
driving gloves as the moment resumes. He goes toward the end of the counter.
The waitress scatters schoolgirl charm over a couple of truck drivers and pours
them more coffee so they won’t bother her again before they leave. In
the background she is thinking only of the man behind her, the one she has been
in contact with over the internet.
Posted at 02:38 PM Read More |
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