First seen on the Space Trash Blog.
Dreaming of reality (Get Inspired, week 9)
It's cute how people try to break everything down into manageable chunks. It's like watching a five-year-old doing a jigsaw, and turning that last piece of sky around five times to get it to fit in a four-sided hole.
I especially love listening to them on the science of dreaming. 'Dreaming is a mental filing system.' 'They're metaphors for your repressed sexuality.' 'Did you know that every face you see in a dream is the face of someone you've seen, at some point in your life?' Actually, by sheer dumb luck, that last might be the one point they aren't wrong about.
I suppose everyone has to get lucky sometime...there's a thought I'd've lived happily without.
Anyway, thank the Consciousness, dreaming isn't a mental filing system, so I won't have to face the images that calls up some night.
Dreaming is what the conscious mind remembers when you travel between realities. There you go. The big secret, Guide for Dummies style.
Because the human mind is basically an thin skim of intelligence (very, very, very thin in most cases) wrapped around a consciousness that started out remarkably recently as a kind of slime with ambitions (you've heard this story, yes?) - essentially, it can't contain and process what it experiences.
When you fall asleep, you travel between realities. It happens to everyone. Your only solution is never to sleep again, and we know what the experts say about that.
Ever had to deal with people who can't remember to how to tie their shoes or that they had an appointment scheduled? Chances are good those people are falling through this reality, have no idea why they're here or what they're supposed to be doing, and consequently aren't coping well. (Don't worry, they'll wake up - with some odd memories about odder dreams.)
On the flip side, if you're one of those people who has dreams like immersive films, complete with sound, smell and every other sensation, and you can actually remember them once you wake up...well, you're wasting your life at whatever you think you're doing. Give me a call, we'll do dinner. If you're one of those rarities, you have the ability to travel realities intentionally.
Seriously, give me a call. We need you.
This one turned up because I talk to so many people who can't remember dreaming, or dream in black and white (I remain impressed that you can do that, when you see in colour), or whatever. Maybe it's a side-effect of writing too much (not actually sure that's possible), but dreams are hella fun if you're me. Knife fights on the back of old-style steam trains, tigers in storm drains, fighting giant robots, and storming alien factories are just some of the awesome shit that happens when I go to sleep.
Since the usual explanations bore me, I figured I should come up with a better one.
First seen on the Space Trash Blog.
Invocation error (Get Inspired, week 8)
Error: you have cast an undefined invocation.
"Told you the pentagram was too wiggly," Toluk muttered. I glared in his general direction. The damned neon error message that had engraved itself on my retinas meant that I didn't have a precise directional lock, but I did my best to sight back along that self-righteous comment.
"You were the ass who said clockwise, schmockwise."
Frankly, anytime I actually need the blood of a real virgin for something, Toluk's the one I'm going to use. With that attitude, no way he gets laid. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure I'd have queues of volunteers to hold him down.
Anyway, the decidedly icky topic of Toluk's virginity aside, I wasn't any closer to Frogs in the Bogs. The way this invocation was going, I might just about manage to give someone with a particularly bad case of diarrhea a mild French accent for half an hour.
Whichever idiot said magic was a shortcut should try powdering bulrushes; I swear I laminated my sinuses with them after the first few minutes.
Oddly enough, this one was inspired by work.:)
Yeah, no, my work isn't that interesting, but like pretty much every other company we have a team who looks after our computers. They call it upgrades, I call it bi-monthly opportunity to find out about error messages that I didn't know existed. Including: 'You have cast an invocation in error. Please contact your administrator."
First seen on the Space Trash Blog.
Valentine's colours (Get Inspired, week 7)
I hate those pink and white balloons in the stores around Valentine's Day. They always remind me of blood on the snow.
I was trying to run, but the snow was so deep that all I was doing was exhausting myself. Now, that memory feels like one of those dreams where you can't move, and all I really have are flashes; the metallic taste in the back of my throat; the dark splashes that could have been shadows, but were my twin's blood; and the sound of my lungs clawing for air.
I'd found the note in her schoolbag. An anti-Valentine, if you like. It had probably seemed funny to whoever had stuck it in there, because I was the only one who knew that Carrie had been cutting herself for months. It was the only outlet she had for the defiance, the anger, and the bone-deep exhaustion that she sometimes showed only to me, her brother. Everyone else, because my sister should have been in goddamn Hollywood, just thought she had a thing for retro bangles to the elbows.
By the time I finally found her, she'd stopped bleeding. Because we were both just fourteen when she died, I didn't go to jail for what I did to that boy. It would have been a waste of time, anyway. I know what I did was wrong, and I don't regret it.
Yes, I am a real cynic when it comes to Valentine's Day. At best, it's a way for Hallmark to make money. At worst, it could be renamed Singles' Awareness Day. Like diamond engagement rings, to me it feels like a 'buy me things to prove you love me' exercise. While I'm fully aware this is a really unpopular viewpoint, if you need diamonds and pink bows to prove you love someone, you may have bigger relationship issues.
First seen on the Space Trash Blog.
Commuting. Always a problem (Get Inspired, week 6)
Ever had to queue for a bus while the Wild Hunt rides through? Not a metaphor.
They say that if you can't see the Hunt, the Hunt will ignore you, but there's only so much interest I can pretend in Facebook at the best of times. Even when I really need an excuse not to get chatted at by the guy ahead of me who inflicts his conversation on everyone unfortunate enough to get within range. Even when not seeing the things I'm not supposed to be able to see has saved me thousands in medical bills.
While that guy really does annoy me, I'm not sure he deserved the sword stroke that lopped the bald top of his head off like the top off an egg, leaving a gray fringe of hair around exposed gray matter.
The moment of frozen shock saved me, because I blinked, and the man ahead of me was perfectly whole again, the undoubtedly girly scream still trapped in my throat. Unfortunately, blinking hadn't made the hunter who had coalesced out of the half-seen, half-felt stream of shapes whirling around and through the bus exchange and the buses any less solid. If anything, he and the Hunt were becoming more real by the second, while the hunched shapes of my fellow commuters drained of colour around me.
The flat of the sword was very real under my chin, reeking and sticky with blood, forcing my head up to meet the narrow stare of the rider. It certainly felt solid. Unlike the eyes of the hunter looming over me, which were empty holes in his head.
"As you wish, so mote it be, my lord, Lucas Main, otherwise Lugh ap Gywn," he said. "The most determined of us can only deny our true selves for so long."
Like almost everyone with a full time day job, I commute. Like most people commuting on public transit, I've occasionally entertained less-than-charitable thoughts about idiots who will not STFU, or who really think that their testicles are so impressive they require them to spread their knees across three seats. This one showed up in my head when I was standing amid my fellow zombies commuters, watching the crescent moon over the trees, and thinking about Celtic myths, because by and large those are preferable to thinking about Monday in the office.
First seen on the Space Trash blog.
What they don't tell you about biometrics (Get Inspired, week 5)
My boss was lying on the floor. Not a problem in and of itself; given the layers of security on this station, it should be reasonably unlikely that anyone who didn't know her would be in a position to report her to the powers that be.
The pool of blood and the missing hand, on the other hand, were problems, and unfortunately they were all mine.
I rechecked my helmet display, admiring the clueless series of green reads. Whatever or whoever was in here collecting body parts was apparently something completely outside our security program's experience. It seemed like a lot to expect that my heads-up display wouldn't be equally clueless if my mystery guest decided to add my head to their collection.
Happily, unlike my very ex-boss, neither my head, my hands, or anything else I need to do my job are vital to getting into anything important. I'm a firm believer in the first rule of biometrics: never use a part for identification you can't do without. I slid out of my boss's office, heading for the only thing on this station worth this much trouble, carrying the largest bit of my own personal collection out and ready for use.
My name is Shayanna Willow Anstrim, because three of my parental units were dancers. I chose the Special Forces, instead.
Believe it or not, this snippet showed up in my head by way of my job. I work for a financial institution, and there's currently a lot of noise about biometric identification being the wave of the future. The largest part of the enthusiasm sounds rather like 'because there's no way some idiot can forget their own fingerprint'.
The flipside to that is, to my sci-fi inclined mind, that the future of the annoying bastards who currently only hack files for passwords, birth dates or PINs, will likely at some point progress to hacking fingers, or eyeballs, or whatever else secures something they want badly enough.
First seen on the Space Trash blog.
I'll take Death over the Tower any day (Get Inspired, week 4)
My living room windows blew in, less than a second after I hit the deck under my table.
Sadly, this kind of thing happens often enough that my reaction is reflexive. The howling and the light show, those were new.
I should stop reading the Tarot. I tell myself this often - almost as often as I read the damn things. The problem is, I have to wonder, if I didn't read the cards...who's to say the same crap wouldn't still happen, but without any warning?
I'm Maurice Ferland. I read the Tarot. I also listen to the dead (try and get a word in edgeways and you'll see why I put it that way), know enough about herbs to sound convincing, and can draw really cool shit with coloured chalk. Because I'm...who I am, these things are a little more effective for me than the other gris-gris totin', rum-drinkin', chicken-frightenin' types you can find taking easy money off tourists.
They say my grandmother sold her soul to the Devil, but frankly, I doubt it. A devil, maybe. The Devil has nearly as many layers of flunkies between him and the public as the President, and I doubt grand-mère would have had the patience. Still. I wish the old bastard a good morning every time I turn over his card...just in case.
So where did this come from?
Spending my formative years in a well-run boarding school ensured that I made the acquaintance of the Tarot, ouija boards, and almost anything else that was forbidden by the school rules on a regular basis, and the Tarot have always struck me as a goldmine for an author looking for trouble to get into. Pick a card, and you have the germ of a story right there.
First seen on the Space Trash blog.
Immortality doesn't mean you'll live forever...(Get Inspired, week 3)
The peaches of immortality ripen only once in every three thousand years. If you find and eat one, you're guaranteed near-immortality. Not unnaturally, the business interests whom I represent would like the opportunity to acquire some. Imagine Hollywood able to buy everlasting good looks? Hell, we could buy some more property. Mars, maybe.
I took another look through my scope, and sighed. Why do people always imagine that immortality means that they're invulnerable as well? Of course, I would never threaten to shoot the Jade Emperor, but this guy wasn't him. Not the Heavenly Grandfather, and most definitely not one of the Three Pure Ones. If he were, the apparent age of the scantily-dressed schoolgirl in his lap would've disqualified him on the spot. This guy, I wouldn't have any qualms about threatening, although not actually carrying through might be tough.
I spent a moment meditating. Fine. I spent a moment remembering how much I stood to make by not shooting the old pervert. Ancient pervert, if the rumours I'd spent the last few years chasing were slightly more accurate than the last ten or twenty times. About 2,983 years old, to be precise. My little pep talk motivated me to fold up my shooting perch and drop down to street-level like a good girl, rather than leaving brain particles ingrained in the wall behind him that someone would have to clean up.
After all, if the guy temporarily still in possession of his brain matter wanted another 3,000 years of fondling teenagers, he was going to have to pick up some supplies soon. When he did, perhaps I could persuade him to take me along. Persuasion is my business. Being part-siren helps. Carrying enough metal on my person to never be able to fly commercial often helps more.
Where did this one come from?
Actually, the initial line came from Pawn In Frankincense by
Dorothy Dunnett. I'd been meaning to research that particular reference
for a couple of decades, and finally got around to doing it. The
underlying story of the peaches of immortality was so adaptable to a
modern urban fantasy setting that I couldn't help myself.
