Month: February 2016

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Chores Done

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

I’ve got the days chores done, so I should be able to get to bed early tonight. Good thing, too, as I’m exhausted. I made the beds, which I thought was going to be easy, but I had to go to three different lumber yards to get the right wood, and the stain at the hardware store was more expensive than I anticipated. And since disasters come in threes: Gloria insisted on 300 count sheets, but my sewing machine could only manage 150, so I had to get a new one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with the new one, and I’ll be able to do some things with pants I wasn’t able to do before, I’m just saying, it added to the stress. I suppose I should be thankful I have someone like Gloria in my life, to drive me towards successes like these. She calls herself “your own personal Lady Macbeth, but without all those murders.” She’s a peach.

I made lunch, which isn’t really a chore, except it is when the carrots weren’t the right size and I had to grow new ones. An otherwise good salad can be ruined by wrong-sized carrots, and it’s not just Gloria who says that. Other people do too, I’m sure. Still, it’s not every day that you are required to grow an entire season’s worth of carrots in just a few hours, which I guess is why I can’t call it a chore– chores are daily, aren’t they. The good news is I managed such a great crop that we have appropriately sized carrots for several meals to come, and that’s thanks also to the refrigerator I built. Ever smelt aluminum? I don’t recommend it, as a hobby.

But if you’re going to do something, do it right, I say. I washed the dishes, using good old elbow grease and a sponge this time. No power-washer for me. And I can really tell the difference too. Whereas before, when I used the power-washer, the radio signals we were getting from Cygnus-11 were kind of fuzzy. The computer I was using could see through the fuzz (programmed it myself) but I wondered how many picojoules of electricity I could save if it didn’t have to run those algorithms. picojoules add up when you spend most of your free time strapped to bar running circles to power a generator.

So, got the dishes washed, the signal is crystal clear now, and as we suspected (well, as Gloria suspected, since she’s the smart one, and I’m just grateful that she takes the time to explain things to me– the way she holds the knife helps) the patterns coming from C11 are not random, not if you solve for gravitational waves to the 12th decimal. I admit it, I was stopping at 10, and my excuse, that I had 40 acres to plow by hand was a lame one. Like it takes any mental effort to plow! Two birds, Gloria always says, and she’s right. See the result! At the 12th decimal place the pattern emerges, and so all that’s left is to put together a faster-than-light engine to get there before next Sunday and see who’s talking.

And here’s why I’m going to need to get to bed a bit early tonight. Technically, the laws of physics don’t allow for faster than light travel. Or, as Gloria puts it, the laws of physics don’t allow for faster than light travel yet. It’s really a simple matter of discovering new laws or, basically, new physics. Which is what I’ll be doing all day tomorrow.

Gloria’s a card. I promised I would do exactly that, “work on it all day” and she said “when you find the new laws, you can make it so you only worked on it for a few minutes, can’t you?” I laughed, and she did too. She’s such a good sport. I know she doesn’t like it, much, the idea of a project getting done in only a few minutes. I can see where she’s coming from. Sure, one can “buy” a bed, one can “buy” sheets, one can “read” SETI’s latest findings based out of their own arrays scattered around the world… but easy come, easy go, as they say. If you don’t work for something, does it have any value?

Actually, I’m going to let you in on a little secret– I’ve already worked out the equations, and I can, in fact, manipulate time sufficient to make any project as short as I like. Or as long. Which is why being with Gloria feels like eternity. ‘Cause it is!

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Hather, Crusader

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

Backstory for one of the characters I play in Diablo 3.

fiction by Jason Edwards

Hather, Crusader, born of the unholy union between an Angel and the human woman he seduced. Ludicrous to say he. It fell from the sky, a casualty of war, and destroyed a farm in its falling. A young girl came across the body, not alive but possessed of never-dead, and she was taken by its utter beauty, that touch of God, a shred, a figment, and for itself her sudden awe struck it, too, as a mirror is struck, a wicked kind of incest, rendered it a he in her emerging lust and they locked, she becoming a woman even as it became a man, and for a moment they were as one, and a child was conceived. Nephalem. Of course, the woman was a girl once more and died in child birth.

But before she died she was outcast, of course, and the baby was to be given away, sold, for slavery, for wolf food, for ballast in the dark art of some necromancer’s spell. But the baby was half angel, half possessed of the never-dead, and lived. And grew. Taller and stronger than those around her. Beautiful in a terrible way. Only the blindest of lust merchants were too soul-blackened to be afraid, and they for their efforts wound up broken, sometime in half.

When the Crusade came through on a march from one holy place to the next, she joined them. Despite their strict forbidding. She attached herself to a knight, himself a sad and brooding man having lost his wife and child in a fire, having only joined the Crusade because he was too cowardly to work his own death himself. He barely noticed her, ignored utterly the whispers and gossip that ran through the army and its baggage.

She watched his every move, in camp, in battle, and soon she too took up arms. her size and strength lent themselves well to combat, and when the camp was assailed one night by brigands, it was Hather who stood triumphant over the bloody bodies. Alas, one of these was her master, who had finally won his hard-sought reward.

Hather dressed herself in his armor, took his name, and carried his standard in the wars. After a time, few remembered where she’d come from or that there was even a knight before her. And her deeds in fighting were glorious. This army of holy knights beat back infidels in every dark corner of the globe, their leader taking them deeper and deeper into lands long forsaken for their demonic influence.

The deeper they went, the harder she fought, and though they always won the day, pyrrhic victories whittled the crusader’s forces. The fought devils, demons, hellspawn, and slew them all, until the company was but a dozen men and Hather herself, each of them hardened and honed by surviving terrible engagements to be evil’s greatest fear.

Their leader was possessed of a holy zeal, bordering on the unnatural, and he found passage to some of the most terrible places in existence. The fought the damned’s lieutenants, entire legions of evil incarnate, cutting a swath through hell until they came finally to Lucifer’s throne, Pandamonium, where they faced Diablo himself.

Ludicrous to say himself. Diablo, it, the Prime Evil, fifteen feet tall, razor sharp claws of steel, a mouth full of fangs dripping with poison, eyes of fire, and horns drenched in the gore of those judged wicked. Hather was numb-struck, for all the prime evils have that same shred, that figment of God, but in the devils, corrupted, turned in on itself, a rip in the fabric of God’s universal existence.

In all her years of battle and warfare, Hather had only ever fought through skill of arms and triumphed by virtue of her might and strength. But on this day she found herself ovecome with rage-lust. She flung herself at Diablo and locked with him in terrible combat. As Diablo called his minions around him, the last of the Crusade’s company fell, as did the devil spawn, until only the Prime Evil and Hather remained.

They fought for days, Pandamonium falling down around them. Hather’s sword flashed, her shield slammed against Diablo’s attacks, which grew more and more feeble as the fight raged, and though Hather, too, received grievous wounds, they only made her swing her sword faster, until Diablo’s body was cut in two.

Hather stood over the Prime Evil’s body, and knew that this was only the beginning. For evil never really dies. Hell melted away around her, and she was left standing on a plateau at the foot of Sanctuary. In the distance, a star fell from the sky, a sign that her journey must begin again. And so she rode, this time alone.

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I Started

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

I started. That’s a good place to start. I, that is, me, that is, the person talking to you right now… hang on a minute, sorry. There’s a you, too. I should have mentioned that. I mean, I started is a good place to start, but if it’s a place, there must be non-places, else-wise I would have started everywhere. Indeed, that I started at all indicates that there was a point, and not just an all-the-time. We can go back to that. But, for now, in this vein, what I was getting at was that if there’s an I, there must be at least one non-I, and that would be, ostensibly, you. So, we good? I started. Me, the one telling you this. There’s no other word for you, like there is for I and me. I mean, parts of speech and all that. You does double duty. I can say things, like, I know me, but if you wanted to say that about you, you would have to say, You know you. Which sounds a bit silly. Furthermore: remember when I said we? If I’m not part of the we, but you are, if I want to address all of you, do you know what word I have to use? You again. And just to complete the picture– there’s even another word for we, and it’s us. You and you only get you and, alas you. Which isn’t even fair, because there so many of you! And only one me, only one I. Of course, there might be a whole lot of groups that would use the word we, or us, but, take out the me and or the I, and what’s left? They. I mean, if you aren’t part of them. See? They get another word too! Sure, its an awful lot like they, but still.  And even he gets him and she gets her. Know what It gets? Those. Are you insulted yet? Well you must be. I would be. Who invented this stupid thing, language. Want to know my theory? (By the way, just the one My, so we’re all even on that score). My theory is language wasn’t even invented. It just sort of happened. Which seems pretty irresponsible if you ask me. To just let something as seemingly important as language just happen. I mean, I get the deal with DNA and all that, survival of the fittest. Its a great big complicated world, lots of bits and bobs, and who knows what will happen when they interact and their interactions interact and so on and so on to more and more levels of absurdity. Might as well code into the mess a means by which entities can only reproduce if they survive, otherwise you might end up with all kinds of gluts and plug-stops. It actually works sort of smoothly, there’s a beauty to it. There’s an elephant, great big lumbering thing, and it only got that way because where it was, the bits and bobs interacting called for something to become big and lumbering in order to survive long enough to reproduce. But words, what’s smooth about I and Me and She and Her but only the one You? I’ll tell you what, it smacks of philosophy, if you ask me, and nobody wants that. Least of all me. I can’t speak for you, of course, but then I hardly know you. I don’t know you at all, in point of fact. In point of fact, I don’t even know if you exist. I only made you up because I needed a not-I and if there’s one thing I could never know it’s what I’m not. I think. I mean it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that I could only know me. I mean, I could only know what’s before me, what happens to me, through me, because of me, but never despite me. I am, as it were, only capable of observing things from the center of the universe that surrounds me, and, to be frank, if it ain’t in the center, who’s to say where it is. I tried, when I started, to say that, having designated a start I must have declared it to be non-all-the-time and so not-everywhere. But not everywhere? The only place that’s not everywhere is where I am. And you’re not here, are you. No. You could be anywhere. You could even be anywhen! So who am I to say you do or don’t like philosophy.

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Fol-de-rol-de-ray-do-day.

Daily writing exercise, 750words.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

The puissant knight on his mighty steed. Charges down the hill. At the ogre. The vile ogre. The evil, vile ogre. The real, live, evil, vile, ogre. The ogre that lives, does evils, is vile’s beast of burden, never listens to Elvis, rips veils from maidens, is named Silev. Silev the evil, vile, live, veil-snatching Elvis-hating ogre. At the bottom of the hill. Down which hill the puissant knight charges. On his mighty steed. His steed is a charger, and the knight is a charger, and the steed is mighty, puissant as well. A different kind of puissance. Whereas the knight’s puissance is in the manner of arms and war and saving maidens from ogres, the steed’s puissance is the manner of charging, mightily, down hills, at ogres, with knights astride. Knight with lances. That gleam. In the sun! This steed, with this knight. This knight, with this lance. This lance, with his shiny point gleaming in the rising summer sun. As down the hill they go. Charging. At the ogre. Who was probably, at the moment, not listening to Elvis. Perhaps one of those boy bands. One Directions. This Ogre, sitting at a small table with a maiden fair, listening to One Directions on his iPod Nano. A very small table. The maiden fair, dressed in a gown of gossamer and moonlight. Somehow. In the rising morning sun. The ogre and the maiden. Sitting. Sipping tea. A morning tea, like English Breakfast. Also on the table, breakfast. A rasher of. A scramble of. A toasted. In a glass, Ovaltine. In another glass, Tang. In another glass, a good breakfast drinking chocolate. Something from Spain. Something Spanish. Imported. For this hill is not in Spain. Nay. This knight is not of that land they call Espania. Nay. Nor this maiden fair. The ogre? Who knows. Who knows where evil, vile, etc ogres come from. From where they hail. Maybe Hell. Maybe he’ll hail hell when he hears the puissant knight astride his mighty steed charging down the hill. For now, all he hears is One Directions. Nor does he see the knight. The mighty knight. And his puissant steed. All he sees is the maiden fair, the blush of her cheek, the rosy blush on her breast ‘neath her gown of gossamer and moonlight. For that is all he can see. For the maiden-fair is not exactly the most diminutive specimen in the world. She is not exactly the wee-est lass upon the land. She’s not the smallest gal in the shoppe. She’s actually quite large. In a word, mighty. In two words, very substantial. In four words, a whole lotta woman, right there. She also hates Elvis, but for different reason from the (evil, recall) ogre. For whereas the (vile, to be sure) ogre hates Elvis for reasons sartorial, the maiden fair, gargantuan and practically nude here at the hill-bottom breakfast table, wolfing down bacon n eggs n toast n tea n ‘tine n tang, hates Elvis for reasons conspiratorial. For whereas the ogre hates Elvis and prefers One Directions for the cut of their jibs, the maiden-fair who grows ever larger by the moment is of the theory that Elvis faked the moon landing. If you were to, say, charge down a hill of outrage upon a mighty steed of logic wielding a rather phallic lance of evidence at this maiden fair, making sure in advance that she was not only willing but eager, for it would never do to save from ogres maidens who, in this day in age, are perfectly able to “save” themselves, whatever the hell that means, thank you very much, without express written consent, and only after a period of reflection, mediation, contemplation, and concentration on that classic Zen Koan: “What Does Evil Love.” And who’s to say that, having pierced the maiden-head of her conspiracy theories that you won’t have impregnated her with, one the one hand, the truth, but on the other hand, a babe that bears half her originally-hating Elvis DNA? Such an innocent “bae” as they say would grow up, verily, conflicted. Given to conflict. To, say, fighting. To, say, battles. To which it would become, let us say, accustomed. And acclimated. And skilled at. Knowledgable of. Prepared for. Armed to enage. With, say, a lance. And a horse. And what is a lance, and a horse, without a hill, and an ogre. And what is an ogre, without evil. And what is evil, without Elvis and One Directions, a kind of breakfast. Of Champions!