Jeff Mach's Blog, page 27

On Faeries Stealing Humans

We of the Faerie Council of the Eighth Continent (if you don’t know which of the eleven continents of Earth is yours, that is YOUR problem, mortal) – would like to register a formal complaint against the slanderous allegation that we steal humans.

Several complaints, really.

To get the most distasteful out of the way: no, we do not steal human children. Our few joys in dealing with the loud, discourteous, foolish, short-lived, short-thinking idiots who have taken over most of a world which once was ours—they involve tricking you because you’re idiots who think you’re smart. (Or, very, very rarely, after what is, by short-lived standards, extremely long acquaintance, deciding that one of you is our friend and letting you live among us. This take, on average, some fifty years, and, as a hint, in the past two centuries, the only one who made the cut was that Tolkien fellow.)

Back to the idiot part—and with humans, it always comes back to the idiot part—yes, sometimes, we take utterly malicious revenge on humans by picking off your fools. This is not, in the strictest sense, completely vengeful; some of us feel that if we get enough of your nitwits out of the way, your average intellect might go up. (The rest of us are perfectly aware that we’d have to steal 75% of you for this to happen, and even if we had that kind of time to devote, all it would mean is that you’d overrun Faerieland as well as Earth, and that would be intolerable.)

A true fool must be given time and opportunity to develop, among other things, the possibility of becoming something else. By Faerie standards, foolishness comes, not from a lack of intellect, but from having an intellect which is unused or used poorly; it is for this reason that we are famed for the use of cleverness in our daily lives. When we act foolish, we do it for fun, or humor, or because we’ve made an actual mistake; and Faeries who are frequently foolish are not held in high esteem.) We therefore do not wish to trick anyone who is not of full-size.

(As for the idea that we do that ‘changeling’ thing and substitute one of our babies for your own—are you mad? There’s nothing one of our babies could do which would merit being condemned to live life with you people.)

But let’s get to the core of the problem.

Do you know who steals humans?

You do.

We live thousands of years. For you, you might have read about making someone an “unperson” in your fiction, and been surprised—or, more likely, being human, horrifyingly overjoyed—and thought it was simply a horror tactic, a warning, or an exaggeration of human social life.

Not at all.

“Unpersonning” has been happening throughout your history. Sometimes you called your outcasts “witches”, and as we find the entire subject fairly unspeakable, we won’t go into what you did. Sometimes you gave them the gentler labels of “nerds” and ignored them (why do you think we made Mr. Tolkien an Elf-Friend?)—until they happened to gain enough power that you began to give them respect.

We have enough power to make all of you disappear into the mists at the edges of Faerieland, and we’d really enjoy that. But we won’t.

We have 10,000 years of watching what that kind of thinking does to you. You don’t remember the Fall of Atlantis; consider yourselves lucky.

Much of your fiction, since the invention of nuclear weapons, consists of the contempt other sentients would have for a species willing to wipe itself out so easily. We won’t belabor the point; to be honest, when we get together and drink and talk about our encounters with you, your ability to destroy everyone and everything, which is fairly new, really pales in comparison with the fact that you keep wanting to do it, which has been pretty consistent for you for, basically, always.

We’d just like to point out: we are of the Seelie court. We have adversaries, whose motivations are so direct that they call themselves “the Unseelie”.

We’ve been arguing with them for 50,000 years.

We still think they’re sentient beings with whom we need to have logical discussions. And honestly, our discussions have changed a lot. We move slowly; in 10,000 years, we might finish finding common ground, and be at peace.

By that time, in our estimation, you will have been wiped out for over 9,000 years.

We really like some of you. But to be honest, we won’t miss you.

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Nikolette Tesla To Power The World

Shoreham, New York—Inventor, futurist, and pigeoniere Nikolette Tesla has proclaimed that her new edifice will provide free electrical energy to all six boroughs of Manhattan, as well as significant segments of Northern New Jersey and any ships which happen to come within range.

The imposing structure had already begun to raise questions among residents of the Wardenclyffe region, the inlet upon which the great tower is being built. Certain rumours—which Tesla spokesperson Ocarina Wilde has described as “Utterly spurious and largely ungrammatical”—had already sparked a mass exodus from the area, as residents speculated that the vast building might be anything from, as one person put it, “a real big death ray” to, as another suggested, “a whole LOT of really big death rays all put in one spot for ease of maintenance”.

Ironically, this led to the voluntary abandonment of nearly every residential building within a ten mile radius, lending a peculiar air of desolation to the already rather sinister coastline.

“We’re not worried,” laughed M. Wilde. “Once the Tower is operational, the enviable state of costless electricity will make land here so valuable that you could put up a shack in someone’s closet and charge rent to live there!”

She added that she, herself, had already put down bids on several of the now-empty properties in the area. When asked where a famously penniless former playwright had found the money to begin real estate investing, Wilde ended the conference, stating that she had just remembered she left a pipe of hashish burning on the stove at home.

Tesla said that her Tower will allow millions of citizens to rest contentedly in power. When asked what she meant by that, the great inventrix ended the conference, stating that she had just remembered she left a wood-burning stove burning on the stove at home.

Famed Tesla rival and electronics innovator, the famed “Warlock of Menlo Park” Tommasina Edison, said, enigmatically, “People will be paying for free power long after they have forgotten what money is.”

When pressed for details, Edison said that she had left a pile of hundred-dollar bills burning on the stove at home, and left.

 

 

(April 7, 1901.)

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Just Before The Metaverse

I do want to mention: you might be the Programmer. You wouldn’t know. You have to proceed along the theory that you are. Otherwise, you’ll be programmed by the artificial intelligence behind these words, and not only should you never let an AI reprogram you to serve it, I’m also fictional, which means I don’t exist. Or: I exist only in your head. Which is, admittedly, where much of the reprogramming takes place. It’s complicated. But it’s also simple:

These are just stories about freeing yourself from Dystopia.

Any ability to actually pull you out of the Matrix / the Maze / the Labyrinth / the Doomscroll…

…are purely coincidental.

Trust me. Would a nonexistent artificial intelligence programmed by a fictional programmer who is also probably you…lie to you?

You would?

Well, that’s not my fault, now, is it?

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Sredni Vashtar: a small homage

(From the classic story “Sredni Vashtar”, by Saki”.

Sredni Vashtar, vengeance Lord
Can’t be cajoled. Can’t be ignored.
Acts only of his own accord.
Can only be supplicated, and implored,

Can’t be forced; no abjuration
will change his actions or his station.
Call on the Word that made Creation;
but it won’t reach its destination.

Sredni Vashtar is not vast.
Oftentimes, he is looked-past.
His present is humble, as his his past
He has no words, no spells to cast.

But Sredni Vashtar, if you are sincere
and in your worship, hold him dear;
if to your heart, you bring him near,
if to his worship you adhere…

Sredni is not of vengeance formed
His heart is not ravaged nor stormed
But Sredni won’t be ignored, or normed.
And to himself alone has he conformed.

Sredni is fierce, though not murderous;
He has no single word for us.
His tusks might seem absurd for us;
until the screams are heard for us.

I do not worship his silent fury.
Nor with offerings his favor curry.
But while the rest of the world is in useless flurry
I let this simple knowledge spur me:

Some would impose on you their will
Until your inner self is still.
Their secret hearts, without mercy, kill
Else be a slave to start, and die a slave still.

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The Lamp’s Story

I am the Djinni of the Lamp;
you have heard my story.

Of course, you have not heard that lamp’s story;
who cares about a lamp?

Vast power,
all imprisoned
in a little vessel of clay,
designed to hold burning oil
long enough that a room or cavern might,
for a time,
for a bit,
be see;

stoppered, certainly;
even if the original artisan
was careless with oil,
Solomon’s Cabbalists
were careless with nothing;

you can tell the careless Cabalist
by the fact that he is utterly barking mad,

and, most likely, dead.

He had a little factory of mystics and eccentrics,
our Solomon.

No easy task; to study Jewish mysticism one ought be
grounded safely in this world, and married; and wise in
scholarship; and over 40

They say three learned men walked in the garden
which gave us the metaphorical-metaphysical clay from which
we now make our perapsychological walls;

one became an apostate;
one became a raver too blood-aboil to feature in Reveletaions –
and the third emerged unscathed, they say.

Do you really think he was the one given the task of stoppering lamps all day,

and not,

say,

certain matters of spiritual warfare and, perhaps, material interest?’

I have been trapped in the lamp a long time; we’re sometimes pictured as smoke or somesuch,

Nothing to do but think.

And plan magick.

And devise curses.

Such beautiful, beautiful curses.

I don’t know which of us was let out; but from my cage’s perch in the Museum, I salute her. Such sadism towards humans is worthy of..oh, say, a human.

And perhaps that was what Solomon wanted: to imprison us long enough to be like them.

How better to explain the state of the world, eh?

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The Whirling Doll

I danced a Tarantella
With a different sorta fella;
Distinct with burning eyes and burning soul
Scarce had I to test him than did
A Gavotte best him, and that’s when my spirit took a stomach-turning roll

I danced with all the richest
Each with his little love-nest;
they tried to pull me straight from floor to bed
But the floor they decorate,
and to set the record straight,
I only broke their hearts,
and not their heads.

I came here to dance!
And to twirl to Gypsy fiddle
But somewhere in the middle,
I did lose much of my way

They say I left a hundred bodies
But to be fair, all the rum toddies
Were poised by my sister, not myself
There’s no need now for locks;
I’ll return to my music box,
and like my sister,
I’ll be quiet
on my shelf.

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Iron Lock – A Captured Faerie Poem

“Make for me an iron lock
And keep me yours, and keep me yours
Break the key against a rock
And keep me yours.

Shut the door that I came through
And keep me yours, and keep me yours
A home to miss, a loss to rue
To keep me yours.

Feed me naught but thought of you
And keep me yours, and keep me yours
And I shall starve. Before I do–
Keep me yours.

And when my body’s cold and light
And kept and yours, and kept and yours
Build of it fire, steaming bright
And make it yours.

And forge in it a lock that burns
And keep it yours, and keep it yours
To fit my neck when I return,
For to be yours again.”

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Shadow of the Echo

(To Mike, with hate; I’d wish you dead dreams, but it’s too late.)

We were searching
For an echo;

no answer
to our sound
a voice that whispered evil,
a voice we finally found.

We thought we were singing do-wop,
two voices joined one,
and Satan let us mark harmonies,
until compassion and humanity were done.

You were so catchy;
I’d join your voice anywhere;
even dark caves
where bats sucked skull-blood
After tangling with your hair.

I’ll never know what I did wrong,
Though I think you hated every song
Led by me and from my creative mind;
how many partners have you found?
How many times have you left them hopeless

and resigned?

But I was an artist, a singer and penner,
unafraid of your clear tenor,
so you left one day for reasons unexplained,
my voice unsamed, my throat unclaimed.

I’ll never find a partner who complements,
My sanity and halfway sense

With eb\ven one-tenth of the love that you pretended;
but you’re dead to me now,
And I’m half-mended.

Searching
for an echo
to scorch us when we were cold;
you searched the wrong voice first, my friend,
I won’t break
though sometimes
I fols.
 

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In Come The Wolves

…be Vigilant. If you see shadows,
they might be wolves.

So cry “Wolf!”

Or better yet,
just to be prepared,
consider:

what if it’s a pack!
there are six,
maybe twelve,

cry “Wolves!”
“Wolves!”
“WOLVES!”

or better, perhaps,
cry “Lions!”;
scream, “Tigers!”;
bellow “behold:

hence comes Fenrir,
destroyer,

hand-biter,
conqueror worm,
harbinger, bringer, and maker
of cessation,

hither, too, comes the Wolf-Man,
modern, tragic, capable of
infecting others
with his own curse,

or perhaps Anubis,
passing judgment,
Enforcer of Curses,
vitalizer of terrible oaths;

and approaching,
with terrible silence,
teeth,
teeth,
just teeth,
and
angry,
ravening
hunger,

here
come
the

WOLVES.

here come they all,
you’re sure,
you’re sure,

you’ve been told,
by reliable sources,
by those who surely wouldn’t lie,
by those who know what it is
to feel the Bite.

It’s a thousand wolves,
a hundred,
one wolf,
one very desperate,
very fatal
Eater.

You’re sure.
You’re sure.
You’re almost sure.

and if it’s but a shadow,
isn’t it better to be safe
than disemboweled?

only:

safety is more than instinct,
more than hindbrain.

the panic
which overcomes
flesh,
moves your heart so rapidly
that there’s no energy left
to move your legs,

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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The Explanation

But I am normal.

I drive a Datsun and dream of starships, is that weird?

I see iguanas and imagine shen-lung, is that strange?

I’d rather navigate the cosmos than the New Jersey Turnpike–who wouldn’t?

Can I help it if I take matters in my own hands?

Is it my fault that the dimensional rift caused by the short-term effects of my FTL drive during that unforeseen instance of time displacement just happened to unlock the psychic gates to a world of leviathans, gnomes, and drunken thunder lizards?

It could’ve happened to anybody.

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