WoPoWriMo stands for World Poetry Writing Month – I have written quiet a few writing exercises for the community which could easily be used by prose writers as well.
So I thought I would link to them 🙂
Happy writing.
The world was covered in a plague, the bi-pedal apes had spread out, there was not enough food for them and they ate like locusts destroying entire swaths of the bueatiful forests Demeter had planted, Hephaestus was given a task to make new arrows for Apollo to deal with this glut of men.
Apollo had tried to teach them how to be a farmer, a shepard, how to be guardian and not plunder of their world but nothing worked when their bellies grumbled and begged to be filled. I condensed out of his sorrow, he took up his loot and played a sad still song, an anti-creation. I shimmered and looked at the creatures I resembled so. I was as nothing yet and hovered in almost existance. A dirt encrusted animal with matted hair stopped it’s gorging on flesh ripped from the young lamb buttered moments before – it looked at me, dark eyes and I saw something there.
It did not step back from me and yet it could percieve me. It’s blunt nailed claws, sticky with blood reached out to me and I reached back a mirror of form. We fell into each other, a mind that sort but did not know how to learn, shuddered at my touch but saw the fit and kept it snug. I felt the pressure of a body, pressing at me, hemming me in but then the mind was all I had been and it was not chained, I was simply something I had not been before.
Standing up straight I saw how these creatures could be like the gods, I spotted Apollo still sitting unobserved by the creatures benieth his tree, he was packing his instruments away and stringing his bow.
I walked up to him he chose not to notice me, he was not normally apparent to the apes, I twisted my throat and lyranx, they created the sounds they always had the potential for but it hurt and the mouth tripped over language.
Fear solidified his limbs as he stared, ‘you can see me?’ he asked slowely, shaking his head trying to decide if I was some deamon of his uncles making.
‘They are missing the song, the poem, you did not finish them off, they have curiosity and cunning but can not think and this makes them angry.’
‘What are you then?’ he spat in disguest.
‘I am your song, I am the ape child, I am… something new… something like you.’
Pain burned my dust ingrained cheek as he struck me down, ‘you are nothing like me,’ he hissed but his blue eyes searched me, took in my form not cowering and low nor agressive with fear.
‘You will come with me,’ he said and held out his hand, I looked at it, a burnt gold, stength resonated from him, mine were slim and richly brown – the pink pads of my fingers stained with blood.
‘Why?’ I asked.
Anger filled him then and he seemed to grow taller, the part of me that remebered the trees and the fights and the ways of men who are the biggest wanted to turn my dark eyes downwards, but the bit of me that had swam in the cosmos stood and stared down the anger and saw the puzzelment fill his face. What ever he did he could not touch the me that was, that bit within.
‘You should not be’
‘I am a solution,’
‘You are a muse! An accidental muse who had no corporal form awaiting you. These creatures can not sustain you!’
‘But they can, they are just dormant, not switched on, you gave the language but it was just noise for hunting commands, they need to think, to feel, to see beyond the creature they are… you forgot empathy.’
He laughed, ‘you want me to bestow art on them?’
‘Creativity,’ I breathed.
He shook his head, ‘that would give them fire.’
I nodded ‘both will feed the other and great things will be arise.’
‘It is forbidden, but I will give them my secrets, Hephaestus is more guarded of his metallurgy and science.’
I smiled and he took my hand gently, the grim and muck slide from me, my skin shone and my hair Fell in a wave to my knees. ‘Poetry! I shall give them that for you,’ he breathed. I watched as he took his bow and extracted an arrow, whispering to it he placed it upon the bow and pulled back, his muscles buldging and gleaming, he shot a cowering ape I recognised. Glassy eyes shone bright and he stood up tall, I turned to run to him, but Apollo’s grip flung me back into his own arms. ‘He can not see me like you can, they will still not be like you are – it is just a beginning.’
I felt the gulf between me and the man-ape, he looked around a worried frown playing on his face as he watched the filth and turmoil of those around him. He tried to speak but it roared as a scream. Gentle fingers gripped my attention and a quiver was thrust into my arms. ‘Lets make him some friends before he dies of loneliness’
I nodded and passed arrow after arrow until their were no more.
‘Sixty-four is not enough’ I cried a pain shooting through me for he was right not a single one of them had been like me.
‘We will go to my uncle and get more arrows,’
The betrayal of the unique swollowed me, he drew me near, ‘there will be others like you, your numbers will be few but grow, you.. the ape you didn’t need my song, it had one of it’s own, that is why you were drawn to it.’
I nodded knowing the truth.
‘Lets go and get more arrows and this time they will be golden sun studded with the gems of stars but first..’
I savoured the taste of sunshine and wondered about planting an apple tree.
Ebb stood at the Edge, under the dirty purple sky, her little lantern glowed feebly in the mist that poured onto the land from the void sea beyond. Black shapes fluttered above her head – the bats roosted in the roof of the rickety house she lived in. It too was cast in a purple and black smudge but was in fact a lovely red brick affair or so her father told her – Ebb had always lived in the twilight of Murklight, the sun was setting, it would not be dawn for another hundred years.
She hung her lantern on the post and took out a little flute, it was smooth and creamy coloured, she whispered into to it and it played sublime, the sound washing away from her in a musicality that lingered on the ear and the mind. The mist began to stir, it swirled and danced in lovely patterns and then she saw what she had been hoping for, two large eyes the colour of magenta glass, glowing as if a candle were lit within.
The eyes swivelled independently on fleshy stalks emerging from the head of something Ebb thought of as a sea slug, the mottled flesh looked purple-ish pink and move in the purple twilight. It opened it’s mouth and gargled a greeting.
Ebb smiled and scratched it fondly behind the eye stalk, ‘dear Tsu we need more fish to dry for the long night ahead of us.’ The creature fell back to the void sea and a fan shaped tale fin was visible for a moment. A noise behind her made Ebb turn, Wane her bother stood there with the offering for Tsu, a lovely carved emblem showing the world encircled within the coils of a creature very much like Tsu.
‘Oh! Wane she will love it!’ Ebb whispered and took the gift in her hands.
‘I carved it myself!’ he said proudly and truly it was a beautiful piece of work.
‘It must have taken an age!’ he nodded and she hugged him.
A silken splash told her that Tsu was returning, a rain of fish fell from the fount of water the serpent was jetting from her flexible rubber lips. Eddi and Flow emerged from the house with pans to collect the fish, they were laughing and skipping. The fish were still pouring down is purple sliver flashes.
‘Oh thankyou Tsu!’ Ebb cried and hoped to the very edge of the void sea, leaning out over the dark depths she hugged the monstrous creature, it gently nudged her back to safety and turned it’s large eyes upon her, tilting it’s large head to the side in an almost patience. Laughing Ebb showed the serpent the lovely carving, it gurgled and flapped it’s little side fins. Ebb understood the creatures joy and using her sash dress she fastened the emblem to it’s neck. Tsu licked her and disappeared into the swelling mists beyond.
Sighing Ebb turned to her family and helped her siblings to collect and smoke the fish, there were less each time she called the creature but her family had been stocking food for the night for a long long time. She was sure they would be fine, she wondered if there would be a moon to light the night.
The ether was swirling in patterns beyond perception of the uninitiated and even those priests of the dark veil who had risen to the most exalted rank struggled to see what lay beyond but it was there. The banished prince from so long ago, floating in the chaos of another world a breaths stroke away from them, sometimes he screamed in their dreams.
Tonight after thousands of years the alinement was right and the veil between the worlds could be torn, this was the purpose of their sect, they had waited and taught the acolyte and each died in their own turn though the oldest of them was ancient in his own right. They were the fathers of death.
Machtishal was awaiting his induction and would be the youngest in rite. A red headed lover lay at his feet her throat slit and her blood drained into the cut glass basin, he would miss her if he lived through the night. The elders ran sticks around the rims of bronze bowls that hummed the resonance of creation and he stepped forward to bathe in crimson. A mother of perl scoop set upon a silver ornate handle ladled her life essence onto his head, his white shroud matted to his chest hair in the soaked liquid. His long dark hair gleamed in greasy tendrils that slowly dripped. Chanting pulsed into him and he roared at the sky as the fire dragon was branded onto him.
The sinews of his arms stood out as he pulled his fists in pain and stood as if crucified. They placed the heavy black leather cassock upon him, unlike their’s it did not yet have a hood nor the silver adornments, those would be earned once priesthood was obtained. A pale thin imitation of his lover, her twin half starved and whipped to a pathetic shadow, she placed thick souled boots upon his feet carefully doing up a myriad of buckles and checking the composite of the heel were correct and suited to purpose.
The priests now stood awaiting him, each with a light wand ready to scrawl the signs on the sky itself, they nodded to him and then one by one shot into the sky. A trail of orange after burn left in their wake. The last of them had gone and he clicked his own heels together and felt the nauseating acceleration as he speeded sky wards. The congealing blood turned to flaking ice upon his skin, bitting into him a thousand little teeth gnawing but he saw the sky sign. An orange circle and star, writing and symbol, swirling in and through the clouds and he stopped at his appointed position, the centre.
This was were the heavens and the worlds beyond the veil would choose weather he lived or died. None of them knew what would happen, the veil was thinner this night than ever before in their practice with the Prince lurking and waiting just beyond. They scrawled themselves shields in the ruddy light and he waited heart pounding in his ears, would he pass out? The smell of tin and copper filled his nose.
They pointed their lightwands to wound him, to slice through his mortal flesh, when the veil was thin the cosmos itself would sometimes intervine and save one such as he, filling them with light and something else. He closed his eyes and the pain began to bloom, knocking him this way and that, and then silence, he looked out of a death mask now, his own blood dripping into the clouds to land as rain below.
And then the Master the eldest of them did something that was not scripted, or rather it was something that should not have have happened then, not at that point, he flipped his light wand and ripped the fabric of the sky, calling in strange undulating tones, singing the dark lullaby to the Prince’s soul, telling it to come and be born once more.
‘NOOO!’ Machtishal cried as the ghostly embers coiled themselves around him, fog solid and thick with annihilation pushed its way into his eyes and nose and mouth, flooding his ears with the scream of eons unhead. He lulled in his floating void and then thought with another’s thoughts.
The magi had not planned to make him corporeal, this he knew, they had wanted a deamon wraith to control and plunder the earth with, this was not the task appointed them. Red light blazed out of every wound they had inflicted on the lamb they had always had tagged for slaughter, the Master himself knew though and had built this moment, he screamed in anguish and ground his teeth, the World was not as he remembered it, it was bendable to his will now. He reached into the end space he had known and plucked a dark bow with arrows of cold death and it glowed ruddy and beautiful and he breathed a sword of ethereal flame, made of the same sky sign power and he blasted their shields. Meat, festering with ancient death fell to the ground. He turned to the Master.
‘Father?’ he inquired and the old man smiled, it was unpleasant.
‘Of you and the corpse you ride!’ it was a gloating boastfulness the Prince let it slide for now, he was new and vulnerable but a day would come when he was the King of Dark Star though the inhabitants had forgotten that was it’s name.
One of the things I find incredibly useful for inspiring my writing, is going for long walks or outings with my camera. I started off with a £30 digital that my mum bought me and it lasted about 2 yrs of being dropped in mud and the like. I know have a more expensive camera so I can do more with it – like zoom!
The joy of using the camera is three fold for writers:
1) You get out on your own and walk around and think – thinking like this in invaluable to a writer and is a good way to incubate stories.
2) You have lots of pictures you can use to write from or make story boards with – I actually have a sort of web comic with some of mine called Wiggly Pets.
3) You go places specifically to take photos of stuff and find/see things that inspire you.
I now have a photo a day blog as I take so many photos and occasionally end up writing – writing exercises for other people from them.
Jessie sat on the school wall, she knew she would get into trouble but so far none of the teachers had noticed her. As an extra sign of rebellion she was banging her heels repeatedly into the wall, knowing it would scuff her shoes badly.
She didn’t care – she was annoyed with her mother but couldn’t remember why.
She sighed, ah, there was Gabrielle, but she was annoyed with her too. She’d been soooo…. odd the last few… was it weeks? Ignoring Jessie or crying all the time. Jessie was hurt after all they where supposed to be best friends. She couldn’t think what had got into the girl.
She waved at Gabby as they all lined up in pairs, same as every morning but Gabby just stared wide-eyed at her, face pale, too pale. Then to Jessie’s annoyance the other girl looked away from her.
Gabby must be in a sulk, well Jessie could sulk better. She stormed back to the wall, startled that no teacher had stopped her. It was strange she could have sworn that the bricks had been red but now they where grey. She prodded the crumbling cement between the bricks but to her frustration couldn’t make it crumble further.
She sat there moodily watching as the other kids wandered past. Gabby turned her head and stared stony faced at Jessica, so she stuck her tongue out. The other girl squeaked and looked away almost tripping in her eagerness to get away.
Surprised that still no teacher had said anything to her, she got off the wall and followed the last couple of kids through the gate.
Strange they must have repainted the gate, it too was not the bright blue she remembered but a dark charcoal grey instead.
Then they where at the classroom, they where top school now, next year they’d all move to the Junior school instead and be big kids. Great! She thought, Sally the girl in front of her had just dropped the door on her like she didn’t exist but then she was always doing that type of thing. Jessie was just relieved that she must be a lot better at dodging these days as the door hadn’t hit her for ages now.
Grrr! Gabby had put her bag on her seat, what was going on with that girl? It wasn’t like they’d had an argument or anything.
‘Gabby, move your bag please,’ Gabby looked at her, her round face once again looked frightened, what was up?
‘Go away.’
‘Gabby what’s wrong?’ She could see the other girl was on the verge of tears.
She’d had enough of this so she grabbed the bag and put it on the floor, a whimper escaped Gabby. Jessie gave her friend a sidelong look, Gabby looked scared, she wondered why.
‘Gabby, is everything ok?’ The teacher asked.
‘Gabby we’re in trouble now! What is wrong with you?’ but the other girl was resolutely ignoring her.
‘I’m ok Miss,’ she said softly.
‘Well I know things have been very hard for you the last few weeks but it will get better, if you need to see the nurse or you get too upset just let me know.’ Jessie looked at the teacher’s concerned smile, what was going on?
The class settled to writing and drawing about what they had done at the weekend.
‘Hey, Miss, Miss,’ Jessie called, ‘You haven’t given me any paper!’ But the teacher just kept writing on the board.
‘Miss?’ She asked again. Puzzled she got up from her seat even though she didn’t have permission. ‘Miss?’ she said pulling at the teacher’s cardigan. Wow Miss was wearing black; this was strange, as she always wore bright colours. The teacher looked round uneasily but somehow failed to see her.
‘Hey Miss, I’m here!’ What was going on? She looked around to see Gabby staring at her in horror. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her seat. Perhaps Gabby would share.
‘Wow, that was odd.’ She said to the other girl, ‘What’s going on? It’s like none of the teachers can see me,’ she laughed but stopped at the look on the other girls face.
‘Don’t… Don’t you remember?’ Jessie’s breath caught, as she heard for the millionth time the squeal, the scream, the crunch and the tinkle of broken glass.
She wrinkled her forehead, ‘I… I remember something but not very clearly,’ she whispered scared in spite of herself.
‘Jessie you shouldn’t be doing this, you’re not here, you’re not real, go away. You shouldn’t be here!’ Gabby’s big eyes filled with tears.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Miss, Miss,’ came Sally’s annoyingly enthusiastic voice; Jessie knew that they where about to be dobbed in, she sighed it was always the same.
‘Gabby’s talking to herself again,’ came the too sweet tone.
‘Huh, shows what you know,’ said Jessie, silly girl was she blind?
The teacher came over, ‘Gabby?’ she asked gently. ‘Gabby are you talking to Jessie?’ Gabby nodded. The class was silent. ‘Ok I think you should go to the nurses office, don’t you?’ Gabby nodded again.
‘Why’s she got to do that?’ asked Jessie but no one answered her. Confused and angry she sat in morose silence until break time, but it was no fun without Gabby. Everyone else was ignoring her.
Gabby came back after break but wouldn’t even look at her, so the girls sat in a miserable silence until lunchtime.
They cued up outside the canteen, singing the normal, ‘Why Are We Waiting’ and ‘Soggy Chips’ at the tops of their voices. Jessie had almost forgiven Gabby when Sally came up.
‘My mum says you’ve had a mental breakdown and that means you’re mental,’ she smiled at them, with one huge tooth and one gaping whole where the other had not yet grown.
‘Push off,’ said Jessie; she’d noticed how pale her friend had become.
‘They say you keep talking to her, she’s dead Gabby, so you cant be and that’s why your mental. Mental and weird!’ She laughed and turned away but Jessie knew it was just to rally the other kids to some cruel song.
She turned to her friend, ‘Who’s dead Gabby?’
Gabby didn’t look at her, ‘Don’t you know?’ she asked quietly. Again those sounds echoed in her head, screaming, crying, broken glass so pretty as it caught the light from the street lamps. She shook her head.
‘No, who?’
But Gabby didn’t answer; she was too busy using her lunch box as a shield as rubbers and crayons pummelled down on them. Jessie wondered briefly how she hadn’t felt the attack before.
The afternoon passed in the same strange, strained silence between the two girls. Jessie spent it tracing patterns on the desk with her finger and watching the spiders in the corner, they need a new alphabet chart she thought, this ones all faded, she missed the bright reds and blues. On the way out of the gate she tried to start another conversation but Gabby just put her hands over her ears, ‘I can’t hear your, your not real, go… go away please!’ Perhaps Gabby was mad.
She had run to her parents, Jessie looked for hers but they weren’t there. This upset her but then she remembered that she was angry with her mother and decided she didn’t care. Yes she was angry at her mother but she still could not remember why. This worried her slightly. Perhaps Gabby’s parents where going to take her home, that happened sometimes, she sighed and ran up to them too.
‘Hello Mr and Mrs Teesan!’ she said enthusiastically but they just stared right through her. She was starting to get really annoyed with this.
‘Mr and Mrs Teesan?’ Came the teachers voice from behind her. Gabby’s parents jumped like frightened rabbits.
‘Yes?’ said Gabby’s father.
‘Erm…’ she began hesitantly, ‘well Gabby’s been talking to Jessie again I’m afraid.’ Gabby’s dad closed his eyes, Jessie was completely bewildered.
‘Gabby honey this has got to stop ok?’ he said. He looked so pale to Jessie like the colour had been drained from his face.
‘She wont go away,’ sobbed Gabby, Jessie was now very hurt why wasn’t Gabby supposed to talk to her? What had she done wrong?
‘You know that’s not true though don’t you Gabby?’ he asked sounding slightly panicked and his eyes kept flickering to his wife.
‘Honey,’ said Mrs Teesan, ‘We’ll go and see Jonathan at the hospital, how about that? That would help wouldn’t it?’ her voice was too cheerful. Jessie looked at them all, tears pouring down her cheeks. This wasn’t right.
‘Jonathan?’ she asked quietly confused, ‘baby squdge! Why’s he in hospital?’ her baby brother – something was wrong, very wrong. She ran to Gabby, ‘Why’s he in hospital?’ Gabby looked at her. Hadn’t her eyes been green not blue? Not that cold steel blue?
‘Because he was the only survivor,’ the girl burst into more tears.
The world seemed to fade into a cacophony of sound and light, so confusing to Jessie. Sirens and tears. The light so pretty on the broken crystals of scattered glass.
‘No!!! No… no… no…’ She screamed and closed her eyes, when she opened them again she was still outside the school gates but everybody else was gone. She wanted to cry.
Sad but not sure why she went back to the wall and scrambled up into her customary position. ‘Mummy,’ she whimpered, she felt so cold and alone. She looked at the world, hadn’t there once been colour?
‘Jessie?’ came a soft voice, she looked up.
‘Mummy!’ They hugged and her mother kissed her forehead.
‘Do you remember now?’ she asked. Jessie nodded; her mother smiled then gently lifted her from the wall.
Lucy (Opening to this story appeared as a writing inspiration on Blue Monster)
Lucy put down the phone and looked at her reflection, she sighed, as always she had a smattering of red sore looking spots, oh well. Justin had still asked her out and would be picking her up about seven. It was now five and she hadn’t even showered. She hurriedly rushed off to the bathroom to become presentable. Her stomach gave a flip as she thought about it. A first date! Was it even a date?
What actually counted as a date? Never mind, she thought, it’s still something. Should she wear lipstick? Should she wear a dress or jeans? So many things to think about. She had never considered that meeting up with someone she saw every day at school could be so hard.
She sighed and opened her wardrobe door. How could it be so full and yet she have nothing she could ware, frowning she selected pale blue jeans fitted at the top and flaring into a slight boot cut at the bottom. A white fitted top with a sparkling star pattern and the blue stone necklace her mother had bought her for her sixteenth. She knew it wasn’t a precious stone but the way the clear turquoise and milky blue blended together seemed so lovely.
She got dressed and applied some make up squinting critically at the mirror and sighed – it always made her face look so… well heavy and on top of that it looked like her hair was going to dry frizzy. She did the best she could and then sat and stared at the clock, time seemed to be going extra slow just to wind her up.
Eventually it was time. She stood at the front door trying not to be nervous, her hands were slick with sweat. But the bell didn’t ring, and now he was late, ten minutes, fifteen, should she phone his house?
Half past and she picked the phone up but a wave of doubt hit her, what if he had just been joking? Winding her up? If she phoned then she would be a laughing stock the next day at school but what if she’d been supposed to go round there and he thought she was standing him up?
She decided she would just pretend she was phoning about homework or something. ‘Hello?’ came a cool female voice.
‘Erm is Justin there?’ she asked trying not to sound too eager.
‘No he’s gone to his friends house.’
‘Oh which one?’ Lucy asked sadly.
‘Lucy Edwards I think.’
Lucy panicked, ‘but he’s not here!’ she wailed.
‘Are you Lucy?’ asked the woman who was probably Justin’s mother.
‘Yes’
‘He said he was meeting you at 7 at you’re house?’ there was an edge to the woman’s words.
‘That’s what I thought but it’s nearly 8 now!’ she paused, ‘I’ll get my dad to take me out and check the lanes!’
‘Ok let me know when you’ve found him please? I let him with my mobile I don’t understand why he hasn’t called.’
She promised she would and then she assembled the search party, brother and Dad and her, mum was maning the fort incase Justin found his way there whilst they were out. It was raining and the driveway was a mud slick, they headed out in the old truck, Lucy wondered briefly if he was using her as a cover story to go and see some banned friends or something but then it would have been stupid of him not to tell her.
And then they saw him, soaked to the bone and wandering down their lane. Lucy hoped out and jogged to him, mascara running she embraced him in relief. ‘Thank God we were so worried!’
‘My car broke down,’ he said his teeth clinking together with cold. Her Dad wrapped him in a blanket and made her bother ride in the back.
‘Shame you didn’t have one of those new fangled mobile phones on you,’ her Dad said much to her embarrassment.
‘I did but there’s no reception here.’ Her Dad made a hurmph noise but said no more.
Shyly Lucy bought him a cup of tea, he was in a set of her brothers spare clothing, ‘are you ok?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, my Mum is going to kill me though!’
‘Erm… she’s coming to get you in half an hour,’ Lucy confessed.
‘What?!’
‘Well I phoned your house, you were an hour late and she made me promise to phone when we found you.’
He seemed to slump, ‘some date this turned out to be sorry Lucy.’
A warm feeling spread out within her and she smiled, ‘what about tomorrow straight after school?’
He grinned back and nodded, ‘less chance for stuff going wrong I suppose!’ She sat next to him feeling the warmth of him returning. What would she tell the girls at school tomorrow?
The world crystalised round a thought, a mountain grew, quantazised and grainy. ‘It looks like Mount Shamish’ I whispered in a voice that echoed pixilation.
‘It is constructed from your memories’ the ghost beside me said. Her voice was clear and strong but there was no reverb, the air swollowed the sound leaving me with a deathly after taste.
‘Am I dead?’ I asked.
The ghost smiled. ‘You don’t have to think like that anymore,’ I nodded but the sky was making my mind squirm. I could feel something beyond – a chittering. Voices of thought, not my own but pressing at my existance.
Feelings wrapped around me like ribbons, thoughts and snatches of songs. I tried to grab them back. Fear choked me as I watched the sky swollow them.
‘Do not fret so,’ said the apparition next to me, ‘they are not lost to you, they surfaced from you and are simply being… shared.’ The ghost seemed realier as if my thoughts were being absorbed into her. She blushed and stared at me with eyes less transparent. A little crooked smile appeared on her face as if I’d blinked but I was sure that I hadn’t, ‘I knew it!’ she announced.
The burn of embarrasement stemed my fear as I examined my errant thoughts, daydreams and fantasis, every stray desire I had had for her… before and after her death. These danced in coloured blurs around her. A loathsome shame filled me and I fell on my knees, a sadness seeped into her.
‘You saved me and I saved you,’ she said gently, ‘those rules do not apply here,’ her voice had turned to a brittle ice at the end of the sentence.
‘I saved you?’ I asked and shocked my head, ‘no I condemned you, I broke my own heart because it was what you wanted! I am wrong to have had such thought but love I can not control. My actions I could have’
She snorted, ‘alot of those felt a lot more carnel than love.’
I stood out of shock though the process by how I came to be back on my feet had blinked out of existance, ‘You felt them?’ it was almost a startled cry half anxiety, half excitement.
‘Of course’ she shrugged, I was dismissed by the gesture but an unease within was growing.
‘You rescued me?’ I asked at last having processed what had been said.
‘Your brain was dying, they hit you hard’ She was no longer making eye contact with me but staying into the distance.
I looked around me properlly for the first time, ‘I am… inside?’
‘Yes I controlled the cables’ An image shimmered in the air, layers of curly hair, blood oozing and a cable of lights snaked around and entering thought the nose, my nose.
‘I’m still alive!’ I felt horror grab at my gut.
‘Not in that body you aren’t’ she said quietly.
‘No! Not possible,’ I felt giddy as if I had climbed up the mountain too fast.
‘It is’ was all she said infuriating me.
‘But I am a Flesher! I have no implaints! We’re not even allowed replacement organs. This…. this is impossible’ I was boiling with rage but curiousity was burning hotter.
‘Fleshers still drink the water and eat the food. Implants can be ingested and grow in place. Don’t get the rage,’ she said carmly as if it were no more than an arguement over her borrowing my coat ‘Did you really think Virtualists would allow all that waste of life?’
My indignation was growing and I hated her, ‘Fleshers believe in the WHOLE soul you know that!’ I spat, ‘to do this! To force them to live virtually…. I should have helped them’ I stood bleakly staring at her.
And she? She was still smiling calmly, staring away at the distance.
‘You missunderstand, it is for them who ask, for those who cry on their death bed, for those who regret not having the implants.’
‘And if they are right?’ I asked acidically.
‘Then such a creator will be over thrown by their own slefish childness.’ she paused, ‘you refer to them not us?’
I hesitated and then shrugged, ‘I would have liked better eyes, I was going to convert to a soft flesher once my perants were gone.’
‘And yet your friends were not even born again fleshers were they? I always wondered about that.’
I sighed, she was right my friends had been virtualists plus two AI’s though even she did not know of them. virtualists could be funny about Coder-Life more so than fleshers ever were.
‘But I didn’t ask Jacks’ I said eventually.
‘I know and I was forbidden to intervien, they will come for me soon,’ she said quietly and far too calmly.
‘Come for you?’ I asked fear gripping my non-existant stomache.
She nodded and pointed to the mountain, bits of it were breaking off and scuttling towards her. I felt a revolution, the system would attack her, destroy her.
‘No it will not do that… I will be… isolated’ she was quivering with fear now and I felt helpless, I couldn’t let anything happen to her, I felt her emotions pulse into me, obliterating my own thought stream.
‘Isolated?’ I asked, ‘you are part of the Collective?’ I may have been a Flesher by upbringing but I was a mathermatician bu nature and the worlds of computers and AI’s and the Collective could not have remained completed segregated from me even if I had tried and I hadn’t I’d sort it out hadn’t I? So juicy and forbidden was it, something to intrigue me. I’d studdied as much as was permissible and stollen moments of what was not and gleaned as much as was possible for one with out implants and a jack into the info archives.
‘Always’ she said ‘even before… transition.’ I nodded that ment there was an awareness of everything else within the system for her, something akin to our ancestors idea of telepathy. Jacks had responded to my thoughts not my words, my inner musings, they were after all just information for the decoding. I felt sick.
‘I thought once you were connected removal was impossible? I thought there was always a back up?’ I almost choked on these words so blasphamous to me, the idea that a copy was you but now I was a copy. Surely that was what I was, it was however not all I was, I was… a ME.
‘They can shut you down and leave you dormant or… or they can isolate you, oh sure there will be dormant copies of me which they may decide to release to process within the system but they wont be me,’ she laughed, ‘never thought I would have so much in common with you fleshers!’ she sniggered unpleasently, it was tinged with mania, ‘you see you fleshers were sort of right you know. Copies are new versions – new lives. That’s why implants are so important, they are not just models of the brain they slowely become the brain!’
I shuddered sickened to my center of being but not for the reason I felt I should be, not my Flesherness but the thought that an enterty that had been ammalgameated into such a pan-councousness how would it feel to be small and individual once more?
‘You go insane!’ I mumbled.
‘Yes’ she replied
‘Why! Why did you do it?’ I sobbed.
‘Why did you defend the base?’
‘Because you were in it! Because I… I love you!’ she smiled and nodded.
‘And you’she said ‘knew they would hurt you! At the very least you would have been Ostracized from your family’ I found myself nodding though that discription made it sound like I had thought about the consequences of the whole affair. Something I most definatly hadn’t the whole thing had been pure reaction, well all of it except conforming to Jacks’ will, that I could have stopped. I could have sort help and easliy found it, I could have prevented her from being uploaded. I had wanted too but it was not my decission to make.
‘No’ she said sadly, ‘you could not have stopped me being uploaded, you may have thought you had if you’d tried but the implants, the bits with the important stuff on can survive the temperatures of insinerators. I would have just laid dormant until a recovery crew found me. She turned a too bright smiled on me, it hurt, she was more than solid now.
‘What matters is that you didn’t try,’ she said gently.
I nodded distracted by great distorted shapes that had reared themselves uo and were cantering along the binary horizon. ‘You can’t let them take you!’ I shrieked grabbing her hand.
‘There is no where to run’ she said slowely.
A groteques head loomed at them it was sat upon a gelatonous mass. It opened it’s mishapen mouth and uttered light shafts, these seemed to be streaming into Jacks and she was pulsing with it. She turned to me and with a desperate sensation I felt the words ‘I did it for love’
‘Stop! Stop!’ I screamed, ‘I told her I wanted to be uploaded!’ It was a desperate lie but I could not take this, I could not let her go but a lie in the Collective can not work. She held out a glowing limb to me, I clutched at it but it seemed such a frail in substantial thing.
‘Don’t leave me!’ I horseley exclaimed, fear sliced my mine, this place for eternity without her… that… now that truelly was worse than death.
A crab legged baby sidled up to me, ‘Do you choose exile?’ it asked, the tone was strangly echoey as if other words were being said but the idea of all the varients I could… taste, were the same.
‘To be with her?’ I asked my throat dry in a place of no water and no throat, my mind spun, ‘I need’ her I whined.
The creatures seemed to stall, to freeze momentarily and then they were dimming, Jacks was floating pulling me up. I reached up my other hand and pushed off from the non-existant ground and we were dancing in warm light that bathed us to the core. Fearful I dreamt of a kiss she smiled and touched me lips with hers ‘no boundaries here.’ she whispered, I fell into her and we became a we, we became a silken moment of thoughts weaved and meshed, never to be seperated. Horror landed us, ‘The Fleshers’ I cried into the isolation, ‘They will destroy us!’
‘No’ she said simply, ‘They do not have the eternities of within – time is different here. Plus there are back-ups’
‘But they still could…’ I began
‘It does not matter’ and she showed me time for us stretched through out the machine, eons in microseconds, eternities within eternities. We would live lives, extreme and subtle and the landscape of our thoughts stretched out before me. I wondered if I would resent the Collective intruding after such an isolation. Here and now and always me and Jacks were the universe.
All the council were watching me, as if I could refuse, as if I would, then I remembered that Elder Cantor had been an eminent explorer.
‘Really but Cantor…’
‘Is old,’ Cantor replied, ‘we need the younglings to help us out of this and I have no idea how the Cho-Lo’s work were as we know you suggested improvements to the current models.’
I swallowed, ‘but I only submitted the final copies of that a week ago!’ I wailed, as in I actually wailed and then fell silent.
‘Yes we know – we have several prototypes out there with the locator team as we speak.’ I paled, was this part of why I wasn’t included because I’d been working on something they needed? What if it didn’t work properly it was a brand new concept. Somehow I had ended up on my feet now I collapsed back down to the too ornate chair.
‘It’s untested,’ I said dully, ‘I never thought it would be used like this,’ I felt a deep frustration and a heaviness pushing down on me, the survival of our people could well ride on something I’d been working on purely to finish my education and as a fun thing. It seemed nightmarishly desperate to me and then I took in the grave and wrinkled faces around me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me things were this desperate, I could have put more time in, done it better or…’
‘Or burnt out with stress and fatigue, you have a good brain on you but you never did do well with exam stress.’ I looked up and saw my mother smiling gently at me, it was the first time in years. I had not been an exemplary child I had taken a round about route to achieve what I had.
‘I..’
‘Go and do your best, we know you always have,’ I nodded but stared at the table.
‘Jenleg will help you find the team and give you the paper work.’
I almost laughed at that – here we were trapped in the bowls of the earth using a piece of student work to try and find a way out and that didn’t even begin to cover the plight we found ourselves in and they were bothering with paper work? Would there be anyone left to read it?
I followed Jenleg out listening to them bicker over latrines and the issue of not enough composting vats having made it down, it made me conscious of the stim liquid having made it though my system. ‘Talking of toilets?’ I said playfully, the older woman nodded to me and lead me through to a series of tall thin conical tents, the sort I would have previously expected over babies beds to keep the midges and other biting insects away. They were suspended from a bar that had been fixed across the roof of this little side cavern. It already smelt pungent. It had already had two weeks worth of use, though only by the council members.
‘We have a cleaning and emptying rotor – everyone is expected to do latrines and site maintenance stuff unless too old, ill or young.’ I nodded I would not have expected anything else. I pushed my lips out in an expression of mild disgust and made myself go forward.
It was… an ordeal, the Suma are naturally clean animals, but we need space and water to be so. Here we had neither, not even soil to bury to proto soil as we thought of it. And I knew instinctively that this was going to be the best set – the council were fair but if there were limited numbers of compost vats and toilets to go with them then the council area would be the ones with the clean loos. They couldn’t afford to be sick. If sickness got them then it was a nasty future however short for everybody else.
Jenleg, led me through a labyrinth of canvas and too my surprise wooden planking, until we came to a little chamber set out for eating, ‘you will be hungry and have a lot of reports to read – we have these facilities set up as stop points going further into the cave system, the general population do not know about all of it, and that is the way it has to be if any Suma are to survive this – do you understand?’ I nodded dumbly knowing that those words would be hurting Jenleg, she was after all a medic.
She dumped a wodge of reports and schematics and data in front of me and then began to prepare me a cold cuts sandwich. I wanted something warm, the chill of the cavern was starting to get to me. ‘It is cold food until the fresh stocks have dwindled I’m afraid, we have chest freezers full of meat and milk and bread but we also have the fruit and salad and cheese and cold cut meats which must be eaten first. Lastly we have tinned and then dried foods. We have to prioritize I hope you understand. Stim on the other hand is available in vats as we are going to need it and the vats help to keep it and us warm with minimal fuel use.’
I nodded dumbly and began to process data, the portion of food placed in front of me was about two thirds of what I would normally have eaten and I hadn’t eaten for over 24 hours, ‘I am also reducing everyones rations, a bit at a time but we can survive on a fifth of our normal intake.’
Yeah I thought nastily, if we weren’t being expected to go off and do heavy duty stuff like building structures and emptying latrines. I ate and read and seethed, a deep gut ache that was hatred for the Nesu was beginning to build within me. I wondered how the general populace was taking this and the sniveling kids I’d seen queuing with me came to mind. I blinked away tears and hoped that there really was some way out of this cave.
I have a subscription to New Scientist which is a magazine publication focused on science, technology and medical innovation. Similar to how I use the National Geographic mag, I read the articles but I actually end to jot down story outlines and themes as I work my through the mag.
I make lists of article titles that I think sound like story titles which I leave for a while. Once I have forgotten what the articles were called etc… I look at the list again and begin to write one liner story starters from them, sometimes a story will want to develop then and there so I will jot it down quickly and often in my own short hand! But mostly I end up with a list of story starters – some of which I share and some of which I don’t.
Over the next few weeks I will steadily flesh out these first lines – sometimes a third look is enough to get the creative juices flowing and I get a whole story out, other times I will get a half or third of a story or suddenly realise that I am 4000 words in and that it wants to be a novel. But most of the time I manage to right the first paragraph from that first line and then later expand from that.
The publication is also full of interesting photos and images, once I’ve finished reading and what not I cut the pictures out and make story boards with them which I then use to construct stories. The remains of the mags I use in various craft projects etc…
They too have produced some good books which I have found funny and inspiring.
