Jeff Mach's Blog, page 49
October 28, 2020
Susan & The White Warlock
Susan, Chosen One per defaultum, looked up at the White Warlock. If there was one thing this hole experience had taught her, just one, one single critical understanding of her place in the Universe, it was that she was even more tired of looking up at people than she thought. She resolved she would become six inches taller if it killed her. Or if it killed someone taller whose blood might possibly be made into a Potion of Enheightenment; but Chosen Ones probably didn’t think that way.
Or did they? She wouldn’t quite know, after all. She was entirely self-taught, which had its own set of problems.
But no more! She had tracked down the White Warlock, whose search for the Chosen One had begun her quest.
True, he’d never confirmed her. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he’d never confirmed anyone, as far as she’d heard. In fact, last anyone had seen anyone fitting his description, he’d been riding a broomstick, backwards, over what was said to be a Witch’s Sabbat.
(Nobody would tell Susan what that was, which was exceptionally frustrating. Not for the first time, she regretted not being ten years older and full of muscles. But the Keeper of Tomes of the Forbidden Library had taught her a trick for that:
‘Exercise hard, every day, for a decade,” she had said, “and you will magically become older and stronger.”
Susan was going to kill the Keeper of Tomes someday.
(Of course, she had a spell for that, too.)
“Train hard along with your exercise, every day, for two decades,” she replied, “and hope like Hell that I die of old age, because you’re never going to take me out.”
Having a mother figure was basically everything Susan had ever expected.
So there Susan was, making her way towards the ruins of a very ancient tower. Based on her limited exposure, she wasn’t sure if it would be infested with venomous serpents, venomous spiders, or venomous wolves. As far as Susan know, venomous wolves weren’t a thing, but she might possibly be becoming a pessimist.
And standing in front of it was the White Warlock.
He was an imposing figure. I mean, even more imposing than most figures are when you’re 4’5”. He stood there, with something on his face that would really, really look like a smile if one hadn’t just spent half a year trying to decipher the microexpressions of a Dragon.
“Sherman!” boomed the Warlock.
“Susan,” corrected Susan.
“Yes! Exactly! I stand before you, I, the White Warlock, now Grey, for I have undergone things few would understand or survive!”
“Are you sure haven’t just failed to wash for an extended period of time?
The White Warlock looked pained. This was actually a pretty normal way for people to look around Susan, so she paid it little mind.
“I imagine you have come here about your great and glorious quest!”
A half-dozen strange, scaly ravens burst from the clouds. They spun towards the spellcrafter, described a few lazy circles around his head, then sped straight upwards, not even pausing to look in that direction, just headed rapidly towards the atmosphere without the flapping of a single wing.
“I have, yes. I’ve learned a lot, but as far as anyone can tell, it fell to you and the wisdom of your Council to find and teach the Chosen One. There’ve been some rough patches, but…here’s the Chosen One! Let’s DO this, shall we?”
“Ah,” intoned the Warlock, “But the time is not right, for the Influences turn from us, the Gods see not our minds and hear not our exhortations, the Stars have not aligned, the Winds blow an unseasonal, chilly blast, sausages are currently on sale at my local House of Pain, and I definitely need to get a new cloak, and I am very proud, pleased as punch, to see such enthusiasm, but politics is the Art of the Possible, and right now, it ain’t terribly possible to defeat the Dark Lord, so if you’d see fit to let me go and not tackle me again….”
“I think you’re lying,” said Susan.
The Warlock’s slightly unfocused eyes seemed, for a moment, to gain clarity of Sight and Vision. He lifted his staff and sent a blast of arcane energy at her, one which struck her in the chest and knocked her down the side of the mountain…
….well, she was struck by the arcane energy, true, but she’d been knitting a sweater full of runes and the names of forbidden gods since she left the Keeper of the Tomes. She was no Mage, but she was not unprepared.
The White Warlock clearly was not prepared at all; he evidently expected that to work, and to work with some rapidity. He began a hasty spell of lightning, beautifully voiced, evoking elementals of lightning and fire. Susan said a few words under hear breath, moved her walking stave just so, and a bolt of lightning interrupted itself between then.
Susan quickly fell into one of the roles she most hated in this world: that of ‘susan’. But it still fit her. “Goodness, that lightning!” she said, as if she’d been unable to dispatch it with ease. The White Warlock stared at her, and then remembered his dignity. “Yes,” he said, “Keeper of the sacred flame, doncha know, awfully impressive, very powerful, FWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH, that’s what I say, and it means business.”
And then the Warlock was close, in-her-face close, grapping-distance close. He was not smiling.
“You ha’penny half-talented hedge wizard!” he hissed. “All I wanted was a chance to have someone fulfill that damn prophecy, a point you’ve utterly chosen to ignore.”
Susan’s blood did not boil, because that was the kind of improper thermoregulation which got you killed. But her blood pressure hit numbers that would have made most predators say, “I’m sorry, miss; can we help you?”
She grabbed the White Warlock by his lapels.
“You came into my village!” she shouted. “The Cataclysm followed you!”
He shoved her away with an iron strength. “I came to save you! You had all been duped…you, in particular!”
“And then you ran! My parents were eaten by Dragons!”
“You’re welcome.”
She looked up (would she always be looking up, dammit?) and said simply, “How shall I defeat the Dark Lord?”
The Warlock responded immediately. “Go forth, back to the Deathly Forest, defeat the arachnids and the strange pales creatures who will accost you. Find the Dark Heart of the Woods and leap in to know powers hitherto unimaginable. Then will you be ready to face the Dark One.”
Susan regarded him. She had learned a lot—too much?—in the last several months. “Why do I have the feeling that you made all of that up?”
The White Warlock had been scattered, afraid, unsure; he was not at his best. But here, he straightened.
“Not a bit of it. Go there, and you will find the answers you seek.”
“Only, the Dark Heart of the Woods is not usually a desirable place for those of us who seek some kind of light. It’s implied in the name – “Dark Heart”. It’s where some of the strangest and most mutant plants are. It’s a good place to get eaten, more than anything else.”
The Warlock threw his brawny arms in the air. “What is it you want of me?”
Susan looked the older mage in the eye. “I want you to teach me. To train me. To help me defeat the Dark Lord.”
The White Warlock smiled. “Why, of course. I’ll be glad to do that. That’s my purpose in life, you know, bum bum bum!”
Susan said, “I think you’re mad.”
The Warlock smiled. He raised his staff high, shouted a syllable that seemed to stutter in town, and she was struck by a lightning bolt out of a clear sky, and died.
The Warlock danced around, to a song only he could hear, and to which he (sometimes) sang along. And then he began walking back up the mountain.
This was not a good place for a mage of delicate sensibilities to see Susan.
“Leather boots with steel soles,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve angered the Gods, or someone who represented them.”
They were on a slim mountain path. This was to Susan’s advantage; she was much smaller, and any sudden moves raised the possibility that the bigger man would fall to either his death, or at least his multiple contusionment.
Susan got in close. Real close.
The Warlock tried again. “I can show you the Dark!” he said. “I have found it, and oh! It is everything we would dream!”
Susan looked at him with a level of contempt not normally found in those who could not, in our world, ride the Cyclone at a county fair due to height restrictions.
“You can,” she said, “and I think you want me to join it.”
“YES!” cried the Warlock. “Yes! I fought the good fight my whole life, and enough is enough is enough.
Susan pushed him off the side of the mountain.
This would have been more dramatic, but he caught the ledge, and then his cloak began—slowly pulling him level with her. He did not look happy.
“What the HELL is wrong with you?” he asked. “The Dark is powerful, pervasive, and growing. I offer it to you, and you throw me off the ledge like an amateur who hasn’t seen the failings of the light.”
“That’s just it,” said Susan softly. “I’ve seen the failures of all the sides I’ve looked at.”
“So join us!” boomed the Warlock. “Join the rebels! They call us ‘evil, but let’s show them they don’t know the true meaning of the term. I’ll teach you! Stay by my side, and you can be the true Chosen One!”
Susan had learned much in the library. Shift your weight like this, move your shoulders here, and the force which blasts the Warlock off the mountain is purely physical, but it’s also beautiful: so rough, so forceful, so thorough that he’s still falling when he drops out of site.
“I think, if there’s one thing I’ve learned,” said Susan, Chosen One (possibly)—it’s that I don’t trust anyone else’s judgement about light or dark or shades of grey. This decision is mine; I’ll make it and, if necessary, screw up completely—on my own. I’m not compelled by the Dark or the Light. I just want to figure out a job, do it well, and then go to sleep on a heady bed of gold coins.”
She spared a moment for the Warlock, who was still falling (this was a VERY large mountain)—and she went on with her life.
For my darkly satirical fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN,” click here .
This is basically always a link to the Inspirobot.
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October 27, 2020
A Transversal Evocation
This message is an evocation: as of now, the correct timeline is attracted to you.
I do not mean that in an intimate or erotic way, although your relationship with your timeline is, in that regard, a personal matter, as far as I’m concerned. What I mean is, the act of calling up any part of this message, in any form, makes the correct timeline move closer and closer to you, up to, and including, becoming your timeline.
As with most of the magic that I, personally, find most interesting, this is spell is platform-agnostic, which is to say, it does not matter if you see it as a spell, a metaphor, or a story; and, in fact, even if you are opposed to either personal or general use of magic, that’s okay—this spell is programmed to be in a timeline where it appears in a format you can accept, if you choose.
(Besides, there is a word for a spell which affects you directly, possibly in a way you do not desire, and that word is curse. I have no desire to bring about the repercussions of intentionally cursing other people; even if magic isn’t real, it’s both rude and a bad idea to attempt to control someone’s life in a way to which that person has not agreed. Because a sensible person will, quite reasonably, want to smite you for that. And certainly, if you tried to lay a geas upon me in a manner contrary to my will, I would smite you. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the narrator, after all.)
But let me back up.
Quite a lot of people seem to feel that the intensity of reality destruction comes from some fundamental and recent flaw in the Universe. Why do so many people take actions which are visibly contrary to their best interests? Why are news, individual relationships, personal emotional health, and, hell, everything else, basically surreal?
Therefore, we have the concept that our actual timeline is wrong. Wrong, not necessarily in the sense that it’s necessarily incorrect, but in the sense of “We made a series of decisions based on reality, and that reality simply doesn’t exist anymore.” It’s like deciding to bake a cupcake because you note that you have flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and cupcake pans in your kitchen, and then you go switch on your oven to pre-heat it, and when you turn back to your cupboard, you notice that it’s got flour, strychnine, a live octopus, ten pounds of raw flax, and an angry hornet’s nest in it, and there’s dust on some of those things, and they’ve clearly been there for years, and you go to check the Internet just to look up the recipe again, and you see that the recipe now calls for adding a live hornet’s nest to every kind of dessert, and also, obviously, nobody in their right mind cooks or eats dessert ever.
Anyway, I honestly don’t know how the person in that second world (the “live octopus in the pantry” world) is supposed to make sense of things, but I’d like to assume that they’ve got some way that it all makes sense based on their experience. But it doesn’t make sense based on our experience.
So let me fix that for you.
Here’s what happened:
As of right now this minute, the problem is no longer that the Universe is wrong; it’s that our way of understanding has been wrecked by humans, often unintentionally, simply living out the consequences of having vast information surplus and vast ability to alter that information.
In other words, as of this moment, the ability and temptation to change electronic information is actually a fundamental change in reality which alters how we interact with knowledge fundamentally, not actually unlike the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, or the Internet. And while that is, admittedly, a near-nameless primal horror next to which the most unimaginably hideous terrors of myth and fiction become (in comparison) really small potatoes…
…in a broader sense, it’s a massive improvement.
Because it’s difficult to affect the entire Universe. The Universe is vast in a way which might literally be beyond our comprehension. In contrast, the idea that there are benefits to keeping our records intact, to trying to help identify what actually happened rather than trying to present everything in the best possible light retroactively, and that, in general, we might live in a more comprehensible world if we stopped suppressing every truth we don’t like, why, call me mad (you wouldn’t be the first!)—but that don’t sound too bad.
There’s my evocation: temporary sanity. Do with it what you will.
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October 26, 2020
A Brief Rant About The Chosen One(s)
If there’s one thing I’m dedicated to opposin’
It’s fantasy heroes who are Chosen
A trope that I wish frozen and done?
That damned idea of The Chosen One!
The idea that someone’s special for being born
Ain’t no good; ain’t nothin’ but corn
Good plotlines go on vacation
When you bring in predestination.
Are we robots? Automatons?
To have our lives inflicted-upon;
To be helpless tools of Fate?
That’s something to which I can NOT relate.
I’d rather the world be claimed by force,
Than have the stars chart our every course.
The only way to keep Chosen Ones honest
Is to your damnedest, your very doggonest
To kill the bastards with great dispatch
And not allow their schemes to hatch.
The Chosen One is Destined to win?
Not in any Universe
That I want to live in.
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October 24, 2020
The Tiny Dragon
Once there was a tiiiiiiiiiiiiny little Dragon, who was ever-so-excited!
She woke up and streeeeetched all the way, batting at the air around her. The wind made little ripples in her water, and she realized she was thirsty. She went and took a very big drink, and then, the cool water enticed her, and she took a long run and LEAPED right in! Water flew everywhere!
The little Dragon was very happy, and splashed around. She splished over this way, and then she splushed over that way, and she had a marvelous time! She played with some itsy-bitsy fishies, but they were scaredy-cats and swam away. That was okay! She had fun anyway.
Then she decided to have a little snack, because she was feeling peckish. It’s always so lovely to have something in your tummy!
Then she stopped by her doll-house. She was just a little Dragon, so she was a little clumsy, and it was hard to play with all the delicate pieces inside. But that’s okay! Sometimes being a small Dragon means smashing things by accident, and that’s perfectly fine.
Then she had another snack, being careful not to eat the stick. She was hungry. Playing is hard work!
Now, she was already just a bit bigger. And not imperceptibly, like a little Human, who might grow an inch over a few months, if she’s really growing fast, but visibly, because Dragons grow very quickly. Soon, the little Dragon might become a big Dragon and join her family in their Dragon’s Nest. But for now, it was time to frolic!
* * *
Floating high above in the atmosphere, enclosed in the biggest ship the Wizards could enchant, enclose, and lift, the remaining members of the Royal Family watched in silence. The few peasants and townspeople they’d been able to save with them were in tears.
The Nest, an object so vast that it had disrupted the planet’s tides, was on the other side of that unfortunate celestial globe; but the Wizards knew perfectly well that eventually it would swing ’round and find them. When they were devoured, it would be without anything Humans might call malice; Dragons float from star to star, acting as they will, but they do need to consume nutrition, and they crave the spark that lies within sentient beings. We know not why; who has survived to do the research?
The Wizardly shell had taken half a decade of magical research; this was approximately half the time which had passed since they’d first detected the coming of the Dragons, and begun their now-clearly-futile attempts at communication, defense, and, eventually, supplication.
They looked down at the wreckage of the Kingdom: the Knights all consumed; the Sea swallowed and splashed into a puddle, unable to hydrate anyone; the great Castle and its ancient furnishings, now a vast wreck.
Small Dragons are, actually, by Human standards, incredibly, unbelievably, inconceivably cyclopean.
Everything is relative, and most things are edible.
So it goes.
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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October 22, 2020
Villainpunk Is
Villainpunk is foiling James Bond through your quick wit, your careful tactics, and your sheer lust for money, power, and candy; but, to be fair, Villainpunk is also James Bond; the man’s a stone-cold killer.
Villainpunk is how many rapacious CHOMPS it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll.
Villainpunk is letting the Heroes escape because they think they’ve got what they were after, when in reality, the whole thing was just a ruse to blind them away from your other, more significant, more meaningful plans.
Villainpunk is the third-best reason to wear a cape; and no, we’re certainly not going to tell you what the other two are.
Villainpunk is knowing exactly the cost of a smile.
Villainpunk is where you go when the Heroes kick you out and you realize they’ve just given you the biggest gift of your life.
Villainpunk is waffles. It just is. Waffles are great.
Villainpunk is why we CAN have nice things. And we might even share, depending on how you ask.
Villainpunk is what you can get away with.
Villainpunk is tunneling through to the Center of the Earth because it’s there, and letting all the hot magma cover civilization because, realistically, civilization just looks prettier that way.
Villainpunk is what you can’t get away with, but what you do anyway, because it’s better than listening to the bland moralizing of hypocritical know-it-alls.
Villainpunk is very, very suspicious.
Villainpunk is the basic Vogonity of your favorite poetry.
Villainpunk is slightly cheaper than the alternative, and has “Okay, NOW You Can Panic” written across its metaphorical cover in large, threatening letters.
Villainpunk is totally wrong, and that’s just one of the things we love about it.
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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More Villainpunk Toasts
To friendship, which is the very best kind of ship, unless you’re actually trying to get somewhere via sea or space, in which case, it’s actually helpful to have a large, self-contained vessel with appropriate technologies for making sure you can continue to breathe oxygen rather than water or vacuum, so unless the people you like are made out of that sort of thing, choose your ships wisely.
May your Heroes be as doomed as the rest of us.
May the Road rise up to meet you; and may you burrow under it and end up in your enemy’s treasury.
Here’s to those we’ve loved and lost;
thank the Powers they’re gone,
and damn the cost!
Live long, prosper, and steal the Moon.
Let’s hope our hearts are as full of Love as these glasses are full of poison.
May you arrive in Hell about three days after you’ve actually died, which will give the Devil a chance to freshen the guest suite, lay in a stock of good Scotch, and to alert all of your friends, including that one poor sod who ended up in Heaven by accident.
And now, together, we shall drink to a day where no-one in this great nation shall ever call us ‘The Space Cowboy’ again.
May you learn to understand the secret language of terns just in time to uncover their diabolical plot against all of Humanity, but not in time to stop it.
Let’s all drink to whomever installed these handy trapdoors underneath our floors, permitting us to immediately remove anyone who says ‘whomever’ when they ought to say ‘whoever’.
Here’s to givin’ the Devil his due;
for he’ll sure take from me
what he can’t get from you.
No matter what happens, we will always be together, stuck silently screaming in this infinite snapshot wherein time no longer moves and we are like pictures in a painting, our joyous toasts becoming voiceless cries for help as the seconds tick into years which, themselves, surrender into eternity.
…and we hereby promise that we shall love each other forever, or until we run out of booze, whichever comes first, and by the way, is this the last bottle?
May the hinges of Love slide us smoothly through the gates of Happiness and straight down into the depths of the Spirit, at which point, we will enter the alimentary tract, and the rest of the metaphor basically collapses.
Here’s a toast to all those dear friends who have absented themselves from our lives, thereby leaving way more Scotch for us.
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October 21, 2020
Why I’m Voting For Azathoth
This is not an easy thought to pen. But in these highly politicized times, I believe you have a right to know where my heart lies. When asked where my heart might lie, I’ve often laughed it off with a flippant, “On the desk, in a sealed canopic jar, along with most of the rest of my organs”. But those of you who are close to me know that this is not true. There’s just not room on my desk for that many jars; not if I want to have space for the Dream-Catcher and the Soul-Eater.
No, to be honest, I keep all of my major organs in a dusty broom-closet, and even I don’t always know their true state. But in the past weeks, I’ve gone through this in some detail, and now I know for sure: if I ever had a heart, it’s been missing for countless ages, since long before the puny species Man first took its foolish, hesitant steps onto what it pitifully believed was a globe otherwise uninhabited by thinking beings, never realizing that his own reign had, in fact, been long predated by Those whose very names could tear down every shred of human sanity.
And in my lack-of-heart, my path is clear and true: It’s Azathoth for me.
Like many of those who were formerly proponents of Dread Cthulhu, I have hesitated about speaking these things aloud. In part, this is because speaking that dread word which signifies primordial Chaos is to amplify that unspeakable voice which howls hungrily in the strangest recesses of the Void, and partly because, to be perfectly honest, I was afraid.
It’s true. I am afraid of being judged by my friends, my peers, even by strangers. I hear it on the daily: “Azothoth stands for the destruction of the world!” It’s all I see in the media, and it’s all I hear, living in the Green Bubble. But it’s simply not true.
Azathoth stands for the utter lunatic deconstruction of all things, their essential devolution from coherent forms into a peculiar and unformed inchoate ur-existence. It’s perfectly obvious; you need merely look at her record, her public statements, and her actions, as well as her original Necronomicon references. (I will not even stoop to discuss the distressing tendency on behalf of the Keepers of the Tome to change the online translations in ways which show clear political bias; they keep claiming that the words themselves self-alter in ways incomprehensible to those of us who are adrift in time and space, which is perfectly true, but nowhere in my original text can I find the phrase “VOTE CTHULHU OR WE WILL DISCONNECT YOUR INTERNET”.)
For ageless ages beyond recall, I have voted Cthulhu. My family has voted Cthulhu. My friends have all been Cthulhu supporters.
But I can no longer, in good conscience, follow them. This is partly because, as per the heart, I pretty definitely don’t have a conscience at all; and partly because I must follow the dictates of my, um, whatever it is I actually do have inside, that stuff. I need to listen to that, and be true to myself.
I realize that these feelings are likely to cost me associate and supporters, and cause rifts between myself and many of those I hold dear. I am truly sorry for the hurts this will cause. But I likewise feel, sincerely, that all these slights will be forgotten when we insignificant beings are, at last, torn into bits, either physically or psychologically or both, by the dominion of the Elder Gods.
And that, I think, is a message we can all get behind.
The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.
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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October 20, 2020
A Villainly Affair
So I confronted her.. What else could I do?
“It was you!” I shouted.. “You were the Villain the whole time.”
“Yes, but it was just to turn you on,” she replied.
I stopped.. And I just stared at her.
“You did all that…you did all those things…you wreaked all that havoc…just so I would date you? What kind of messed-up, misshapen, twisted—”
“And it worked, you know,” she said.. “You’ve always known.. On some level, you have always known, and you’ve found it attractive.”
“I most certainly have not!” I said.
I could tell, by the look on her face, that I hadn’t convinced her, but that was fair.. I hadn’t convinced myself.. The Villain? The beast? The criminal? The lawbreaker, the unrepentant rogue who’d stood atop the highest building in Cityopolis and shouted defiance at the whole damn stupid smug, self-satisfied city?
That was reprehensible.
That was horrible.
That was so hot.
“So,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “you did it all…for me?”
She nodded gravely.. “I did.
“…at first.”
I must have looked puzzled, because she continued. “It was all for you…or so I thought.. At first.. And then…it started to get to me.. In all the wrong ways.. The beautifully, beautifully wrong ways…” She gazed out the massive glass window of the penthouse suite, at the ruins of the once-proud municipality, far below.
I cut in, perhaps a bit too quickly.. “So you thought I’d find it…desirable?”
She nodded.. “That was my hope.. At first, at least.. That you would finally notice me! Oh, I couldn’t tell you the truth, couldn’t reveal it, not in front of the others, and perhaps not even if we were alone.. But I thought you’d be able to tell that there was something different about me.”
I nodded.. “You became more confident.. You seemed to be taking some kind of new pleasure in the world around you.. You were still fairly untalkative, but instead of being just a loner, you became…”
“I became someone with inner resources.. Someone who was always thinking two steps ahead.. Foiling the team, foiling my rivals, considering the next heist, covering every track, planting decoys.. Oh, I didn’t do all of it all at once.. I had to learn, and there were some fumbles in the beginning…”
“The bank job,” I filled in.. Now it was her turn to give me the nod.. “That was…unfortunate.. Although it did rid me of a particularly annoying teammate.”
I should have been horrified, but, to be honest, I had never liked Maggie in the first place.
“…but I persisted.. And, as you know, I was not simply a killer.. I might have taken advantages of some of the team’s weaknesses, but I never really betrayed its spirit.. The others were simply weak.”
“And I?” I asked.
“You were strong.. And you were everything I wanted.”
My head was pounding with thoughts; it was an explosion in a fireworks factory.
“And what did you think would happen when I found out?” I demanded.. “Did you think I’d still want you? Did you think you could win me over to your side? Do you think I’d ever agree to become complicit with…with…a criminal?”
“I had hoped,” she said.
Images overwhelmed my thoughts; of masks, of escapades, of piles of gold.. And why not? Why not? What had working the other side of the street ever gotten any of us? Sure, having a traitor in our midst was part of it, but she was right: we had too many egos, we thought too highly of ourselves, we were never going to have been a more cohesive or effective team.
“I’m in,” I said.
She looked at me, and sighed.
“Ah, there’s the rub, and this is a bit awkward.
“Villainy is not a full-time job.. Villainy is a way of life.. I’ve realized that now.. It’s everything I want.. Everything.. I don’t have time for love.. I don’t have time for another.. This is who I am, what I am.. There’s nothing left for anyone else.”
And I stared at her for a moment, and then said,
“What if I broke the current timeline? You know, shattered the things that made sense so that old doors close, new ones open, and we shake the world a bit?”
She put her head to one side.
“Go on,” she said.
I’m sorry about the Large Hadron Collider, really I am. But I had to do it.
I hope you’ll understand, but if you don’t, to be honest, I don’t really care.
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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A Tolerant Tale
One day, the author hit a critical mass of “seeing one too many posts on social media advocating the denial of free speech to ‘intolerant’ people, and narrowly avoided a rant on the challenge of defining ‘intolerance’. However, said author was unable to avoid comment altogether, and thus it is that you get this rant about power, instead.
Lucky you.
We finally solved the problem of defining ‘tolerance’. It wasn’t as hard as you might have thought. We just figured out the difference between those who won’t let you talk because they’re bad, and those who won’t let you talk because they’re good. The former are intolerant, and the latter are helpers.
We’d tell you how we solved the problem, but somebody good told us not to. Sorry.
Anyway, that’s really all there is to this story.
I mean, there are the practical parts, like how we muzzled all the intolerant people. And sure, I bet you think that this is some kind of sarcastic thing where the ‘intolerant’ people turned out to be the good ones after all. But nope! The intolerant people really were the bad people.
Trust me.
No, really. That’s not what this story is about. So get over it.
As we were now in a world where our information came from the good people and not from the bad people, we were able to finally have a government that was Good.
I know. That sounds sarcastic. Please have faith.
(The right faith. But that’s another story, isn’t it?)
So the government that was Good started doing Good things.
But then there was a Revolution and intolerant people came to power and they used the rules against us even though we knew it was wrong, because they had the power to compel us, and we had given them the framework to suppress it, never thinking that power would fall into the wrong hands.
This could have been a very unpleasant story, but fortunately, we overthrew the intolerant people. It was a near thing, to be honest. It turns out that being morally correct does not make your weapons any more powerful than those of your enemy.
But we did prevail, and we put a new Good government back in power.
And they were able to stay in power, and even, eventually, stamp out intolerant people.
This gave them a lot of power. Which they used for Good things.
Only, even in a world where you can tell, absolutely and for sure, what’s Good and Bad (and we didn’t actually know that much)—some decisions involve trying to figure out the lesser of two evils.
And, like I said, we didn’t have quite that much knowledge. So we ran into difficulties. Like:
Sometimes, there aren’t any Good choices.
Or the Good choices aren’t practical. For example, “Fire all Government staff in order to have money to feed hungry people” has multiple problems (won’t the ex-staff get hungry? Are you sure it’s better to fire all those people in the name of something that’s definitely desirable in name, but incredibly nebulous in theory?) –
but even if it IS simply the Good Answer, who, exactly, is going to administer the program?
And sure, that’s a silly example, but we’ve seen sillier government and sillier theories, and to be perfectly honest, they often have quite serious and deeply unfunny consequences.
It turns out that the most Tolerant Government, pressed with the realities of day-to-day governance….ain’t that tolerant.
They were the right arbiters of Tolerance until they got good at it and began labelling everyone who disagreed with them “Intolderan”.
Those who disagreed were taken away.
And none could stand against the joys of Tolerance in that enlightened nation.
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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October 18, 2020
Three Short Poems
Unplug that particle accelerator, kid.
I could pull the nether worlds out of your left ear
I could teleport your ass from here to Tau Ceti with the toe
of my boot,
ya ether suckin’ punk.
Listen here, kid:
Smoke the last ray of an age dead sun.
Read the entrails of a protozoa.
Catch for me tomorrow morning a dozen instants fresh from the
Void
and then I will show you the alchemy
of movement from one world to the next
the knowledge that counts
the spaces
between science and dream.
* * *
I wake down.
In the chocolate insanity,
the sweet dark neverland,
I own a small but respectable burger joint.
My fare is decadent and greasy:
the fattening french fries of fantasy
the cholesterolic baconburgers of secret desire
the non lite beer of childhood make believe.
This is what I want to be.
An infiltrator pouring weirdness into the water supply.
A gremlin in the gears.
A toymaker, an eternal space cadet:
a purveyor of rhapsody
a whisperer
of wish.
* * *
Words in motion,
skittering knife booted across slippery pages,
lodging in the eye,
tormenting the cornea with a feather
dipped in battery acid
These are the stories of the coming days,
These are the tales no tongue could release.
These are the Books of Awe,
controller of all human lives,
with the exception of those of us
who are going to wait for the movie.
* * *
[Yes, I clearly can’t count to “three” properly.]
Code Of The Shocking Pink Illuminatus
(To Be Read With Closed Eyes)
Never surrender your Transylvanian soul.
They have the money, the power, the logic; theirs are the
guns, the beer, the air conditioning, and the light of day.
But we have the Mad Science.
We draw the blood of destiny. We autograph madness. We
scribble in the margins of the books of Fate.
We are the professionals.
We are the grand meddlers.
We hum thoughtcrime in barbershop quartets; we throw open the
vast doomgate of Things Best Left Unknown; we penetrate the great
telepathic obscenities of salad (if you use Russian Dressing, you
are one of THEM! Be warned: we know where you hide your tuba.)
We are concealed, but we are by no means gone; subtle, but
strong.
Let them control What Is.
We are the caretakers of What Might Be.
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.
The post Three Short Poems appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
