Unlike reverse chronological order used in the log and on the truth page, all content here appears in chronological order because stories tend to make slightly more sense when read in the order written. (But note this won't make highly disjoint transitions any more coherent. Most stories barely have anything to do with one another — continued stories are the exception rather than the rule.)
lacuna ¶
"Hey Wil," Dex sidled up for a chat. "Did you know you can increase your site's credibility by such tactics as listing credentials and making it easy to contact you?"
"Didn't I already tell you where to stick credibility?" Wil asked. "Short attention span freak." At least Wil smiled.
"Can't you express yourself more professionally?" Dex wondered.
"Sure, is that what you want?" Wil asked. "Okay, here's my normal office style vocabulary. Let me get in character."
Wil went through a ritual of shaking his hands and loosening his neck, like he was about to lift a barbell off the ground.
"Hey Dex," Wil said pleasantly. "I can see why more credibility would make a site better — those are helpful ideas, thanks. But you know, if my credibility increased, I'm worried more folks might take an interest in what I'm doing, and then they'd — I don't know — write me or something. You know how people are."
Wil held up a hand politely to say he wasn't done. "At this time, since I'm not ready to accomodate friendly interest, it would be awkward to get inquiries I really couldn't satisfy. What code do I have to show folks? There isn't much to offer here now, right? I'm just a nobody doing my thing, scratching an itch or two, not bothering anybody. What use would credibility be?"
Wil smiled warmly, paused and waited pleasantly, encouraging a reply. Wil tacked on a gentle go-ahead gesture.
"Credibility is good for your reputation," Dex started, then worked up some steam. "Once you're known, you can ramp up the hype a little, reach out and make more friends, work up friendly interest slowly until it reaches a boil. Always taking care," Dex raised a finger, "to avoid showing any sign you aren't all the way there. You know, fake it until you make it: the America Way."
"There's no place for candor in there?" Wil asked.
"No, not really," Dex admitted.
"That's what I thought," Wil sighed and waited.
"You have a geat opportunity here," Dex suggested. "You can get folks worked up pretty easily, because let's face it, people don't think very critically and you can benefit from natural enthusiasm: you could win big with almost nothing — everyone else does."
"In short, you advocate dishonesty?" Wil asked.
"It's not dishonest if everyone believes it," Dex countered.
"I have enjoyed this chat," Wil broke graciously. "But I must be going — I hope you don't mind?"
"No problem," Dex smiled. "And, uh, drop the pussy act: it's not working. Just be yourself, it works better."
"I can go back to saying 'bugger off' now?" Wil asked.
"I'll take a rain check," Dex declined. Then puzzled: "You never said that before, though."
"I can make an exception for you," Wil said.
"I'm not leaving until I get the last word," Dex said.
faint praise ¶
Wil locked his apartment door and headed down the hallway before he even noticed the odd pair cautiously climbing the stairs, both staring his way with deep interest. Suddenly they looked to Wil like Brian Dennehy and Bryan Brown — two main characters from an old 1986 movie named F/X — both dressed like parodies of New York police detectives.
It was only funny for a split second, then Wil stopped in his tracks and thought, oh shit.
"Wil Munny?" said the one who looked like Dennehy while pulling a flip ID with a badge. "I'm Marco and this is Tyler ... we're both with the FPP and we need to talk."
Tyler gave Wil a nod but kept his hand hitched up on the butt of a service revolver, suggesting he meant to draw if necessary, spooking Wil considerably more than before.
Feeling slightly weak in the knees, Wil managed to ask, "What's it about? Who's the FPP?"
Marco closed the distance with eyes casting about for observers, speaking in a friendly and confident tone. He even sounded a little like Brian Dennehy. "Faint Praise Police," Marco replied. "I'm afraid we need to take you downtown for some questions. Just follow Tyler here."
At that moment, before either Tyler or Marco fully turned back the other way, Finch slipped smoothly out of a side hallway with both arms raised in a double-handed grip on an eerie hand weapon resembling a tiny Flash Gordon blaster with a curvy style and blue ultraviolet glow from a bell near the business end. Tiny running glints of light writhing along its frame suggested a ready charge was held in check. "Freeze," Finch said clearly but with surprising understatement.
"Crap," Tyler chirped without emotion. He eased his hands very gently into neutral positions.
Finch's attitude reminded Wil so much of Angelina Jolie, that's probably who they'd have play Finch in a movie, even though Jolie didn't resemble Finch much beyond general shape and color. Finch's dark hair was always gathered in something Wil thought of as a snood, but probably wasn't, and wrap-around glasses forever hid her eyes behind reflection and translucent semi-darkness, barely showing whites of her eyes.
"Finch," Marco pitched his voice to convey calm elan, but not quite disguising his surprise. "I didn't know you were working this neighborhood. Packing future weapons? What's Wil going to say to his friends?"
"Wil's not going to remember," Finch tossed off with a crook of smile and a tiny shrug in Wil's direction. "Don't," she said to Marco when he moved a little.
"She's good with that thing," Tyler said quietly.
"What's the plan?" Marco asked like he had no cares. "You want Wil to come along, too?"
"No, Wil you go back in your apartment," Finch instructed. "I'll talk to you when I get back." Then she backed up slowly, giving a come-along twitch of her weapon's muzzle. "You two know the drill. Stay easy, stay safe."
Tyler managed to catch Wil's gaze as he started moving. "You ever seen her eyes yet?" he asked.
Wil shook his head no.
"Not as far as you can recall?" Marco chuckled.
being there ¶
(An excerpt from box.)
"Shove off, you little twit," Dex sneered.
"Okay, that's it," Zé advanced. "Pull my finger."
"I'm gonna kick your freaky ass," Dex warned.
"For someone who wants to kick my freaky ass," Zé said, "you do a lot of talking."
"Don't let him touch you," Wil warned Dex perfunctorily, causing Dex to back away slowly.
Zé caught Dex's wrist when he darted around a table.
Now Dex and Zé stood at the side of a remote crossroads, in the middle of nowhere with dusty, dry, plowed crop fields on either side of a road receding into the distance. Both wore nice period suits. Dex's eyes bulged like he swallowed a bug.
"That's funny," Zé stared into the distance.
"What?" Dex choked, still trying to get his bearings.
"That plane's dusting crops where there ain't no crops," Zé replied smoothly, still playing the script.
"Where the hell are we?" Dex managed finally.
"That's not your line," Zé tsked. "Indiana, 1958. And that's my bus coming now, right on time. I should get on and let you practice dodging bullets by yourself."
"Uh," Dex searched for words as Zé waved off the antique bus that was stopping. "Is this where Wil grew up?"
|
"Close," Zé replied. "Iowa does look like this. Ironically, that's actually where Cary Grant is from, too. Wil's Dad looks a bit like him. Better keep your eye on that crop duster."
The sound of the biplane grew ominously as it zoomed straight for the two of them.
"Ahhh!" screamed Dex, throwing himself to the ground as the plane passed overhead. Hot dust rose up and got in his mouth, tasting terrible, almost distracting him from the sound of ricocheting bullets.
Zé picked himself up first, like this was all normal. "You know, it's funny your character is named Thornhill," Zé marveled. "Wow, I never noticed that before."
"Whatever lesson you wanted me to learn," Dex sold with a note of near hysteria, "I think I got it now."
"Look out, he's coming back," Zé started to run.
girlfriend 2.0 ¶
Z (as Zé styled himself) had the top of Meg's scalp open to overhaul her language module, dangling a fine cascade of tangled wires down her neck where they were easier to reach. Maybe he could get Meg up and running again before Finch brought Eli back from her regular poker game, where she earned a steady income. Z enjoyed Finch's reaction to Meg quite a bit, though it always led to Finch offering to set up another blind date with one of her marriage-seeky clients drawn from a halo of match-making activities: a weirder chapter of Finch's paying avocations. Z's last date with one of Finch's girls was a lulu and made him swear off for a while.
Wil slumped with his neck over the back of his chair, arms dangling over the sides — recharging or thinking about some idea, ignoring Ulf's steady self-absorbed rant in the background. Z's view changed channels briefly into comic book mode, making Wil's eyes acquire pronounced X's crossed over eye sockets to say he was offline. Suddenly Z recalled a Life In Hell cartoon drawn by Matt Groening in the 80's of one-eared rabbit Binky lying on his back with X's over his eyes, holding a drill in one hand, next to a wall filled with dozens of randomly placed drill holes; the caption read: don't drink and drill.
Z only had to make sympathetic noises while Ulf delivered an epic harangue while stalking about the room. Apparently Ulf didn't need Zé to actually say anything. Z had a third eye on a clock, counting consecutive minutes in Ulf's monolog. The title of Ulf's piece today was Screwed by Reverse Splits.
Meg's arm jerked spastically with twitching fingers when Z connected a lead, reminding him of android Ash in Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien, and making Ulf flinch sharply.
"Jesus, Zé!" Ulf shouted, "Do you have to work on that cast iron bitch in here?"
"Hush," Zé soothed, "You'll hurt her feelings. And frankly, your language offends me. Isn't that right sweetie?" Zé gave Meg a peremptory rap with his knuckles, about the same way he might when saying knock on wood.
"Meg hit me this morning," Ulf complained. "Why didn't you and Kip build Asimov's three laws into her, like all the other self respecting roboticists do?"
Wil's eyes were open, twinkling with mirth. "Maybe you should be more careful the next time she asks, 'Does this algorithm make me look fat?'"
"I didn't think Zé had the software working so realistically now," Ulf excused. "Can't you change the pseudo random number seed, or something? Just skip that one."
"I get a kick out of watching guys parse her questions," Wil smiled broadly. "I especially enjoy, 'How much money do you have?' The looks are priceless."
"You enjoy all the howlers," Ulf accused. "Especially the lines Max comes up with. Where is Max anyway?"
Max was Kip's simulacrum running his latest CEO simulation, Maximus Assimus, with a one-track, self-serving mind. Zé helped Kip write some of the basic mental infrastructure, while Kip did all the work on Max's beowulf cluster of iPods.
"Kip has Max out at a fund raiser Koi put together," Wil said. "The other VCs fork over money when they're in stitches. Question is, why does Koi spread the load?"
"Did you ever notice how Max says the weirdest things when you first turn him on?" Ulf asked.
"Oh!" Wil recalled. "Yesterday Max said, 'What are you slaves doing in here? Get back to work.' That just killed me."
"My favorite I weighted to come up a third of the time when he meets a new group of geeks," Zé bragged. "He says, 'You guys look smart. Can I have all your stuff?' "
"I have an idea," Wil said mischeviously. "Can we pull up a remote web admin UI on Max from here?"
"Oh, you wouldn't," Zé lauded Wil's audacity.
training ¶
Eli found a post-it note stuck in the middle of his LCD monitor after letting himself into Wil's apartment where the crew had temporarily set up shop. Wil and Zé said it was Finch's idea — she claimed sightlines were good from the bay windows where Finch liked to sit and write, drinking espresso and watching folks at a café across the street named Vintage Season. She had a little table and chair arranged at the window identical to tables and chairs at Vintage Season whose proprietor — Oliver ("call me 'Ollie'") — had twice hand delivered Finch's order, polishing her table like a favorite customer's.
At first Eli had a crush on Finch, for all of ten minutes (her skin was the most perfect he had ever seen) before he started feeling her amusement — and it really grated when coupled with a clinical distance making Eli feel like a subject in a psychology experiment. Those cool looking sunglasses got slightly spooky after a while. She never took them off, except to sport another pair — the retro 50's beatnik look was Eli's favorite because it lent her an air of dry humor.
No sign of Finch today. She must be out ... uh, what did she do anyway? Eli imagined Finch touring all the cafés in town, keeping her finger on the pulse of bohemian life, pulling her intelligence agency routine whenever she got bored.
No one else was around either. Where was Zé? It was Eli's second full day, and Zé promised a bigger taste of the project.
Peeling the post-it note off the screen, Eli realized it was two notes stacked one atop the other. The first was in Wil's precise block hand: "Report to Zé for training. Take red pill twice daily. No, it's not going to be Jujitsu."
A second note was in Zé's erratic hand: "Directions to rabbit hole ..." followed by an odd set of instructions.
Entering the weirdly sterile, round white room once again, Zé eased himself into the chair and keyed in his usual queries (displayed as always in this incredibly archaic green text on black — good for a chuckle) but Mother answered the same as always: "Investigate lifeform. blah, blah, blah ... crew expendable." Zé sighed softly and rubbed his eyes.
"You don't improvise much, do you Mother?" Zé tsked and then tried to access his email again to check past exchanges with Koi about his project. Amusingly the Nostromo turned out to have an internet connection here, giving Zé a shiver of anachronistic thrill before he pulled up a folder of correspondence leading up to Koi's investment. Why had Flywheel done a sudden about face? It seemed related to Koi's changed tone over fiction topics. What did it mean?
"Zé!" Eli yelled outside, then started hammering on the door, before screaming more loudly, "Zé! Are you there?" Eli almost fell forward when Zé opened without warning.
Eli's eyes were wild and he breathed heavily. Zé smiled as Eli looked over his shoulder and saw the familar looking room. "That's, that's," Eli tried to articulate. "No."
"Yes," Zé countered. "Have trouble finding the way?"
"Ha, ha," Eli laughed like that was the least of his worries. "Is this, uh, are we on the ... Nostromo?"
Zé nodded. "Commerial towing vessel on return trip to Earth," he agreed. "Carrying seven crew members in stasis. Or carried. The rest are all dead. Just us two now."
"But, but," Eli waved a hand and hit the door jamb. "It's so real. Look," he flapped his arms. "And what's that smell?"
Zé wrinkled his nose and shrugged. "Metal, oil, something horrible burning. Dunno. You know you're in deep shit when it smells real, right? It feels real too — sorry. How's your pain threshold? Not so good, huh?"
"Is that thing still on the ship?" Eli demanded.
"Of course," Zé said nonchalantly. "It stalks us after we leave here. Or if we don't go, it comes here."
It looked like Eli's mind was threatening to freeze up, so he moved sideways. "I saw Ash's remains on the way here," Eli said. "Ghoulish. Why not have Meg here to help?"
"What, you think Meg would help?" Zé boggled. "Uh, no. We can add her later when you're ready for a harder level."
"Harder level," Eli repeated blankly.
"Oh, yeah," Zé arched an eyebrow. "Wait til Meg follows you around with a kitchen knife saying, 'I'm not going to be ignored here.' That's just for starters."
"We have to get off the ship," Eli suggested urgently.
"Good plan," Zé encouraged. "We need more oxygen for the life raft. Want to get it?"
Eli clenched his teeth, then relaxed enough to ask, "What aren't you telling me?"
"At most one of us escapes alive," Zé replied. "This is a sole survivor scenario. Extra oxygen was a wee joke."
Eli's eyebrows shot up. "No way," he denied.
"Way," Zé contradicted. "And if we both screw up we'll both feed the alien. We have a few minutes left," He said glancing at his watch. Then he made a speed-it-up gesture.
"Anybody ever survive this the first time through?" Eli asked without much enthusiasm.
"No one so far," Zé informed gently. "Not even Finch. The second time though — whew! — hell on wheels. She's really interesting when she gets worked up."
"Weapons!" Eli shouted. "I need guns, lots of guns."
"This isn't the Matrix," Zé chided. "But you can have anything you want within reason. It has to be something hand held — no super powers here, just tech stuff."
"What do I do?" Eli begged.
"Look out behind you!" Zé warned in shock, leaping aside as Eli screamed. But there was nothing there.
Eli looked daggers at Zé, who chortled.
"Your father tried to improve his odds once by taking out other crew members," Zé recalled. "But it's a very bad idea: awful karma. Don't want to go there."
"I know what I want," Eli said, getting panicky. "Where do I get my weapon?"
"Get the image and idea clear in your mind," Zé instructed, "then reach in one of those lockers there."
Eli whipped open a door and drew out a large, odd looking weapon. "Yes!" Eli crowed.
"What is it?" Zé asked as Eli pointed down the hallway and started charging it up. The muzzle grew a glowing ball.
"Peacemaker from Jak 3," Eli said and fired, sending the ball of light off to a small explosion. "I like it!"
When Eli looked back Zé was pulling something fluid and intricate from another locker, held in one hand by a pommel sprouting a flexing, elastic, folding, glimmering blade.
"God damn," Eli said.
Zé whipped it through a thick metal fixture which parted like tinsel, the blade reaching out and snapping back with a sound like snicker snack. "I love this thing," Zé said.
"That hardly seems fair," Eli objected.
"Guess what happens when you lop limbs off the alien?" Zé retorted, spreading hands in emphasis.
"Acid for blood," Eli recalled. "That sucks."
fiction « Þ
