A.R. Jarvis's Blog, page 12

Eggs Unsung v2.0 pt 1

A totally different picture, I swear.

I believe I mentioned a few weeks ago that Eggs Unsung would no long be supported, and would instead be replaced with the updated version Eggs Unsung v2.0. If you don’t remember that, it’s okay, since I think that was back in March or something. Anyway, that time has come to pass, and you will find below the first thousand (only thousand) words of EU2.0.

You should probably throw out most of what you remember from the first version, because, much like your favorite app, 2.0 is very little like 1.0. Mostly I changed the world-setting to something that worked a bit better. It’s still sci-fi, but the aether is…not outer space. It’s something weirder.

Cyrphon is not as whiny or arrogant in here as he should be, but hopefully that will come across in later sections. Ampherdien is probably about the same as he was…and Dr. Saige does not appear in this snippet, but believe me when I say he’s a totally different character (which is for the best, because he was hardly a character to begin with). I even changed his name.

But, all that being said, I think v2.0 will turn out to be a much better read. You can judge for yourself, though:

Eggs Unsung v2.0 pt 1

Cyrphon sighed in relief as he stepped off the aethertrain. Normally he loved travel, especially through the aether, but that was usually coupled with a private cabin and a clear window. The last leg of his travel to Sagia had been on a train old enough to have carried Cyrphon’s grandfather, stuffed full of families returning from vacation, and the windows were opaque with salt. “Tell me there’s some sort of private transport for the return journey,” he muttered to himself as he deftly swerved through the crowd in the land-side station.

Sagia was an older world, and the architecture of the aetherstation showed it. Oh, the station was in good repair, had probably been renovated to keep the spirit of the original alive, might even be a documented historical site, but the echoes off the salt and marble hall made the crowd sound twice as big as it was.

“Timothon! Get your tongue off that pillar!”

“But mommy, you said it was salt—”

Kids made the crowd sound larger than it was, too. Salt my womb, Cyrphon thought, even though he didn’t have a womb.

The emitter in his pocket hummed, quiet but invasive, and Cyrphon pulled it out.

“Have you arrived, Cyrphon?” Ampherdien’s voice was poorly transmitted, and the lower sounds of each word were dropped.

“Just getting off the train,” Cyrphon replied. “See if you can’t find me better transport when it’s time to go home.”

“Oh my darling spoiled egg-singer, was it really so horrible to travel the way the rest of us do?”

“Yes.”

Ampherdien laughed.

“This job had better be worth it.”

“You know I’d never land you a job that wasn’t.”

It was true, Ampherdien wouldn’t. He’d been Cryphon’s agent ever since Cyrphon needed an agent, and this would probably be the job that made Cyrphon’s career. The one that turned Cyrphon from an up-and-coming egg-singer into one of the top singers in the universe, and Ampherdien would rise with him. “Dr. Saige was supposed to send a man, wasn’t he?” Just as Cyrphon said it, his emitter interrupted him with a beep, and a quick glance at the screen showed the position of his ride in the morass of people. “Looks like he’s found me, I’d better go.”

“Call me when you get settled. I want to hear about his mansion and if it lives up to your standards.”

Cyrphon scoffed and ended the call. A few minutes later he was tucked inside a ground-car, of all things, his bags safely stowed in the back. The driver had said it would be a few hours travel, so Cyrphon settled back, and looked out the window.

It probably should have made Cyrphon happy, since now he was in a private cabin, with clear glass windows on every side, and a beautiful world to look out on. Yet where Cyrphon saw trees and mountains, and a bright yellow sun, he found only that he missed the endless glowing swirl of colored mist that was the aether. Oh, sure, these were some impressive trees, and the ability to see so far in the distance was breathtaking as the road wound along hillsides, but the vast mystery of the aether would always hold Cyrphon’s heart.

Pulling his eyes away from the view, Cyrphon opened the files about this job on his emitter. The client was Doctor Edgar Saige, whose family—or himself—had made a huge fortune in pharmaceuticals in the fairly recent past. He’d then bought a world, or just renamed it after himself, and from there set out to find an egg-singer to awaken an egg which he’d had appraised at a thousand years old.

A thousand years old. Cyrphon had never heard of an egg that old. No one had. The oldest known egg was about eight-hundred, and that was the Royal Egg of Nostinghan, which they were keeping unsung until their millennial anniversary—assuming Nostinghan was around for another two hundred years, which was highly debatable based on their current political situation.

The next oldest eggs anyone had ever heard of were in their six-hundreds. Cyrphon had seen one unsung that was five-hundred once, and he’d sung two that were over three hundred years, but a thousand years, that was something new. Or something old, technically.

And how did a beginning egg-singer get contracted to sing—let alone even look at—a thousand-year-old egg? Well, Dr. Saige had wanted discretion, talent and discretion, which were hard to come by together, at least with egg-singers, who were—if not discreet themselves—followed around by the paparazzi almost as much as regular media stars. If The Great Singer Emaltadien went to sing a thousand-year egg, you could bet even the quickest-toed publicist couldn’t keep it from being in the evening news.

But Cyrphon was almost a nobody, known mostly for being the one who sung the Egg of Ambient Crystal after it had been damaged and declared silenced by a dozen of the universe’s top eggologists. He had a few other named eggs on his resume, enough to prove the Egg of Ambient Crystal hadn’t been a flux, though most of the news sources handily ignored that, and despite declaring him a miracle worker, watched his career with skepticism.

So when Dr. Saige went looking for a talented unknown to sing his thousand-year-old egg in secret, he ended up with Cyrphon.

Cyrphon looked up from his emitter and back out the window, tapping the device against his palm. There were reasons no unsung egg had been found that was older than eight-hundred years, and even with the opinions of eggologists—well, look what they all said about the Egg of Ambient Crystal. There was no knowing exactly what Cyrphon would find on the other end of this car ride.

There had been mountains in the distance when the ground car pulled away from the station, but now they were much closer. The road twisted through them, giving glimpses of views that even Cyrphon had to admit were breathtaking. Finally the road turned back in among the foothills, then wound between two hills, which grew steadily closer together and sharper in slope until they were driving through a cliff-sided gully, a modest river running alongside the road.

The gulley narrowed for a short distance, then opened up again into what Cyrphon thought for a moment was a box canyon, until he realized that the far end of the ‘box’ was actually a mansion built right into the gap between the two cliffs, and rising until it towered over the hilltops as well.

The ground car slowed to a stop by the sweeping staircase that led to the front entrance.

Perhaps this planet isn’t as backwater as I thought.

–

More Celtic Fairy Tales

Phew. It’s been awhile since I read a fairy tale book, hasn’t it? I have various excuses (of course), but I think the main one is that I meant to read the Mahabharata before reading this book of Celtic fairy tales. Unfortunately, once I started the Mahabharata, I discovered I didn’t want to read it at all. Also, it was very slow going. I might still go back some day and read it, but since I ain’t doin’ this for no class or nothin’, I will pass on it for now.

Eventually I skipped it and started More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, which I suppose is ironic because I haven’t actually read Celtic Fairy Tales (it’s longer, and I read fairy tale books from short to long).

It’s also a mite strange that I haven’t really read any Celtic fairy tales before. Nor Irish ones. That’s not entirely true, and I’ve certainly read English ones, and Welsh ones, and there was a particularly awful book of “Irish” tales or two, plus some here and there stuck in collected volumes, so it’s not like it’s an unheard of local, but considering their popularity, especially vs. something like Russian tales, I’ve really not read any Irish or Celtic tales before.

I was remarking on this to my boyfriend the other day, and he said that they were oh-so-popular because the stories are mostly the remnants of bronze-age epics, so they seem unusual from ‘normal’ fairy tales.

At the time I wasn’t sure how you would know the difference between a diluted bronze-age epic and a fairy tale, but oh boy, now I do. The bronze-age hero tales are the ones with too many names, especially where we’re maybe supposed to recognize those names from previous tales. And they have more spontaneous reciting of verses (like bronze-age musicals?).

So there were a few diluted epics in here, and a few low-brow fairy tales of typical style, but honestly, overall I felt that this volume was really a complete grab-bag of quality. Like the one story where the grammar took a vacation. Or the one with the venomous shoe (I shit you not). Or the long story-in-a-story ones…actually, those last two might have been the same one, and also included a man taking a second “wife” while looking for his first.

Right. There was some good stuff in here, and I enjoyed reading it, but certainly my enjoyment was much greater at certain points than at others,

SOCKS!

BAM! SOCKS!

Freshly finished, full of flaws, yet fine and functional. I luffs them.

They are a pair of short-row stockinette socks; just the basic stuff, so basic they aren’t actually in the knitting book I settled on as my favorite–but also so simple that they don’t need to be.

I bought two (they were on sale…) new balls of yarn the other day, each of which will get me a pair of socks. I’m not sure yet if I’ll make the next pair the exact same as this one (minus the flaws, of course), or if I’ll try something harder. Probably one more like this, then the next one can be +5% difficulty.

Um, and, just so you know, there won’t be a story post tomorrow. I didn’t work on shit this week, and also I was crazy-busy this weekend, so there’s not really anything to post. If I get inspired, maybe I’ll finish that fairy tale that’s 70% done, but even then it wouldn’t be up until evening.

Shosetsu Bang*Bang no. 48

Actually the same toys from the last picture.

Okay, well, we’ve made it to Thursday, and since my birthday is tomorrow, and I finished all the SSBB stories last night, I need to post this today or stop pretending.

Programming, by Hyakunichisou 13: This one is the sweet tale of a guy who wants all the benefits of a relationship without actually having one. I felt a bit confused by the hacking descriptions, but otherwise it was a wonderful story, and a great note to start on.

Midnight Interruption, by Shiawasena Ryokō-sha: A pretty hot tale of a bored AI and his human. Liked the premise and the smidgen of world-building that made it work.

And All the King’s Men, by shukyou: This one is a political tale of biometrics and AI rights, and also a romance. It’s one of two 2-part stories, and the length just made it that much better.

Through Uncharted Seas, by Aosora Hikaru: This one ended up on the ‘meh’ end of the spectrum. It’s a steampunky tale of a creator and his anatomically correct metal man, which is fine, but it seemed to go on long after it had said all it had to say. Or I got distracted by something else, but even that’s telling.

Nostalgia Night, by Phun Saa: This one was about a pirate radio guy and the officer who keeps trying to catch him. But on Venus. I’m not sure if it fit the theme, but those are optional, and it was pretty hot.

Amphistere, by Koiwa Shishiko: This one was damn strange. I won’t even try to summarize it for you, because I do not know where to start. I liked it, yeah, but…it was damn strange.

At Last, by Midorin: This one was thinly-veiled fanfiction for…well, you can guess it from the first sentence. It was okay. Nothing too deep or fantastic, but nice for a ‘ship of some popular characters.

Multi-Touch, by Domashita Romero: I am unsure if I can look at my smart phone the same way after reading this. It’s, um. Well, it’s something. Sort of a predicted near-future, in a way that’s both fun and slightly unsettling.

Identifier, Bolt-hand, by docktonroad: Liked this one. It is both self-contained, and begging for a follow-up story or two. A guy finds an android wounded, get him some help, and then has to deal with the emotional and moral fall-out.

Tiştên Negotî (Words Not Needed), by Natsumachi: There’s always one that I don’t understand. This story felt like it was split between two time-periods, but it wasn’t. Unless it was? I kept expecting a horrifying twist to tie it into the theme, too, but nope. It ended as confusingly as it began.

Satu Finds Himself, by qui-te: This is a godawful piece of pornographic crap. Even for SSBB it was dropping the bar for crappy pointless smut. Seriously. Who wrote this idiotic–oh. oh, shit. That’s my story.

$LoveStory, by Himawari: This was maybe the best tale. It’s the second 2-parter, and that gives it enough length for some delightful world-building, some lovely character-building, and even some fantastic relationship-building.

So there you have it. Summaries for all the SSBB stories in issue 48! I feel so accomplished! And now I’m going to go to bed because tomorrow is my birthday! If you would like to give me something, I like comments. Here, or on my story, or…on twitter? Seriously, I like to pretend/know that people are reading my shit, and I’m not just babbling to myself. So you’d actually be giving me justification and maybe self-esteem.

Satu Finds Himself

This is the most homo-erotic picture I own. Pathetic, really.

The latest copy of Shosetsu Bang*Bang, number 48, is out today! And I have a story in it!

Yes, because as much as I bitch about not liking to read porn, and as much as I claim I hate writing smut, I’m a hypocrite at heart, and sometimes I write erotic content. Sometimes I even include enough of it in a story to win this:

Which, yes, the SSBB editor totally made for me because of this story.

What is the story you ask? Well, since you brought it up, my story is Satu Finds Himself. It’s another visit to the world that brought us The Book of Myth, and also The Book of Myth: Origins, which was in SSBB a while back.

Which means there are some drawings that come to life, and some horny kitsune, and some utterly ridiculous sex scenes (there’s three distinct ones, but the middle one can count for up to four, depending how you define things).

And at 6500ish words, it counts as your Monday content. So go forth! Read some smut! And I’ll see you in a few days when I have enough time to read and review all the stories. Unless I get eaten by the mice.

Happy Easter

I read both Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman and Spirit’s End by Rachel Aaron this past week. Both were so good I have nothing to say.

Easter was good, there were dark blue mashed potatoes and buttermilk pound cake, and we all ate too much. My parents were crazy, my one sister was stressed, and my niece was adorable. So a typical and fun holiday.

If you don’t mind a ‘children are totes adorable’ story about my three-year-old niece, we were playing Hi-Ho Cherrie-O, and she handed me her cup with a few cherries in it, so I pretended to eat them, and told her they were in my belly. She made me show her my mouth was empty to prove it, and then she got really quiet, looked down at the game board and said, “what a waste.” But with an adorable three-year-old accent. IT WAS CUTE, OK?

Eggs Unsung pt 9

Not this egg-gain.

Yeah. So the secret thing I’ve been working on is an entry for the next SSBB issue. I’ve been working on it lots, and I’d tell you all about it, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

Thus we get another chunk of Eggs Unsung. Which I swear I’m going to work on v2.0 soon. Just not today because I finished the other story, and not tomorrow because I have to help a friend move a thing, and not Weds because that’s date-night, and not…well, maybe Thursday. Unless I end up doing something with my sister. Or vacuuming.

I know. Excuses. I’m full of ‘em.

(first paragraphs repeated to remind you where we’re at)

Eggs Unsung pt 9

Cyrphon, of course, had an edge. His aetherstain gave him a better grasp of where that first note could be heard—he couldn’t get the exact note on the first try, of course not, and often eggs needed repeated or lengthy exposure to that note before they really took to it, but knowing that he was on the right track was doing wonders for his career.

This egg, though, Cyrphon wouldn’t know where to start. Its inaudible vibrations were all over the scales, so there was no telling which note would start the awakening. Not that Cyrphon was going to sing it just yet, but the puzzle of it was very intriguing.

A soft musical jingle drifted through the air, and Cyrphon sighed as he put the egg gently back on its pedestal. He pulled out his Emitter and set it so he could speak with Ampherdien.

“Hello, my lovely agent.” It spoke well of Dr. Saige’s affluence that Cyrphon could make an audio call on this backwater planet, though he would have preferred to see Ampherdien’s image while they talked.

“Don’t start, it’s way too early in the morning. What is this about? You were intolerably vague in your message.”

“With good reason.”

There was a heavy silence on the other end. “No, seriously, Cyrphon. I am embroiled in sorting out three other contracts right now, all of which are rusting under my feet. You know I can’t just drop everything and rush to your side every time the sheets’ thread count is too low.”

“I do know that,” Cyrphon said—he’d complained plenty, but never asked Ampherdien to join him while he was out on a job. “And you know that I wouldn’t ask you to come unless it was important.”

“Then what is it? Is your contract—”

“No, no, that’s sound; it’s nothing to do with my work. But it’s not something that I can discuss over half the universe, and it is something that I need you here for. Please, Ampherdien? You won’t regret it.”

Ampherdien sighed heavily, and Cyrphon could imagine him rubbing his forehead in consternation. “How soon would you need me there?”

“As soon as possible, but this will keep for a bit longer, so don’t ruin anything by rushing.”

“They aren’t contracts for you, nightingale.”

“Oh, well, then I need you here tomorrow.”

Ampherdien snorted. “I think I can make it there within the week.”

“Thank you, Ampherdien, that should be soon enough.”

“It had better. And Cyrphon, if this turns out to be three grains of salt, I will have you singing at the Otmotopeian Egg-Center for the next three years.“

“It’s not, I—” but his agent had already ended the conversation.

“He’s just cranky when he wakes up,” Cyrphon justified to the eggs. He fell silent as he put the emitter away. The inaudible vibrations of the eggs were still tickling his stain, and Cyrphon hummed what they would sound like if they were audible—then he gasped. “You are not singing my damn emitter’s song,” he accused them. But it sure as hell felt like it. Cyrphon hummed the bars again—the eggs hummed them back; the Saige Egg carried the melody, and the statue providing a quiet harmony.

“Shit.” It could have been a protest or an exclamation of surprise, Cyrphon didn’t know.

He tried humming his favorite pop-song. It took a minute, but then Cyrphon could feel it tickling back through his scar. Cyrphon felt his jaw fall open, but he couldn’t bring it closed. Eggs were not—they never—he didn’t even think they could—

Then the music changed again, swelling between the two eggs until Cyrphon whimpered and clasped a hand to his scar, which was crawling with sensation, well beyond a tickle now. He gritted his teeth, but the music—the vibrations, really, since no mortal ear could hear it—continued to grow, until Cyrphon couldn’t handle it and ran out of the room.

The stone wall dissipated some of the sensation, but Cyrphon didn’t stop until he was several rooms away, where he leaned on the wall, rubbing his scar and gasping for breath. That had never happened before. It felt like the eggs were trying to chase him off, or toying with him, or otherwise being malicious. “But that’s stupid.” They were just eggs, even if they were improbably old, and even crazy conspiracy-theorists didn’t pretend eggs were intelligent. It was far more likely that his scar had too much aether build-up, and that little bit more from the eggs had kicked him over the threshold of tolerable sensation.

Cyrphon glanced back to the egg-room, then turned and made his way back to his rooms, because regardless of what the eggs were doing, it was dangerous for him to be wandering around with this much aether in his system.

Closing and locking the door, Cyrphon pulled off his short robe and tossed it on the bed as he passed, followed quickly by his undershirt, as he went for a certain box kept among his toiletries. Usually he didn’t need the treatment more than once a month, whether traveling or at his home on an aetherstation, and he’d done it just before he left, but the old eggs must be giving off a high level of aether—or there had been a small leak somewhere along Cyrphon’s travel.

It didn’t really matter why, though, it just mattered that Cyrphon’s scar was still tingling in after-effects, and Cyrphon needed a salt-treatment.

Pulling out the small box, Cyrphon unlocked it and considered the crystals inside. They were all salt crystals, of course, and any one of them would do the job just fine, it was only Cyrphon’s vanity that had him with five to choose from. Selecting the largest—a perfectly clear square from Talmin IV—Cyrphon ran it over his scar, sighing in relief as it pulled the remaining tingles from his skin.

Salt and aether were…antagonists, or a sort. They always canceled each other out, though no one knew why—which was no surprise; scientists had had a thousand years and more to study aether, and still no one really knew what it was, or why it did the things it did. But salt canceled aether, and everyone knew that.

Cyrphon watched the crystal run over his skin, faint flashes of luminescence glowing through the salt as it drew out the aether. Another thing no one understood was why aetherstains gathered more aether, but at least treating it with salt was an effective and simple method of removing the toxin.

When his front was finished, Cyrphon reached around to his back, scraping the edge of the crystal on his skin and having to adjust the angle. He’d been doing this his whole life, but it was still a stretch to reach the back of his scar. Though he’d had one lover—probably the best of the lot, actually—who Cyrphon had allowed to treat his back. That had been nice. Cyrphon had also once manipulated Ampherdien into doing it—but that had not gone the way he’d hoped.

Cyrphon stabbed himself with a corner of the salt-cube and tossed it back into the box, selecting a softly rounded wand instead, and finishing up quickly.

Replacing his crystals in their traveling case, and the case among his things, Cyrphon stretched and went for his reader; he was still rather shaken up from his experience with the ancient eggs, and surely no one would fault him if he did some research before returning to his study of them.

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