Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 24

Clean Evil

…or “Ghost Decon”…

The heads of the press swung to follow him as Rutger walked through the door.

Cameras like glaring eyes and microphones like accusing fingers. Rutger could feel the hatred. Three deaths and more than a billion dollars, and it was only Tuesday morning.

The CTO of the ReVeil Corporation reached his podium. Clutched it. Bowed his head. “Let me first say that I’m sorry.”

Silence from the press.

Rutger pressed a button on his remote control. Behind him, the ring-shaped ReVeil logo vanished, replaced by a satellite image of streets and cul-de-sacs.

“The Aspenwood Ectogenic Power Plant,” he said. “At 5:25pm yesterday, October 21st 2019. Circled in red is the Manifestor, previously the home of serial killer Steven R. Shoenburg, who died there in 2008.”

The next slide showed the Manifestor from street level, still looking very similar to the two-story house it had once been. Then a cutaway, showing the new heat shunts and electromagnets.

“At Aspenwood, we pump waste heat into the home of a diseased, immoral individual, then anger the spiritual remains of said individual by means of a team of on-site staff trained to simulate the activities of a middle-class American family.”

Rutger breathed out, allowing the well-polished spiel to spool out of him like fine titanium chain.

“The spirit absorbs ambient heat and converts it into poltergeist activity…” He managed to choke off the end of sentence: “thus providing clean energy to homes and businesses in three states.”

Rutger met the eyes of a reporter. “The problem began with a trash fire in the house’s half-bath lavatory. CCTV footage indicates one of the on-site staff members was smoking in there.”

Against regulations, but the security team routinely overlooked it. Interviewed, they’d said they thought the poor woman deserved whatever stress-relief she could get.

“We have known since the Begay Process was invented that the spiritual remains of a deceased individual do not constitute a ‘person,’ any more than do the physical remains. However, spiritual remains do appear to pursue goals.”

Rutger took a drink of water.

“The door between the lavatory and the kitchen/dining room opened. Burning trash flew toward the other two on-site staff members, who were seated there for simulated dinner.”

Click. CCTV footage of a burning table cloth.

“Normally, this would provoke a strong fear response, which would lead to more poltergeist activity. Ectogenic potential would decrease, temperatures would equalize, and the system would self-correct.”

A slide of the staff calmly standing.

“However, the team-leader’s undisclosed usage of prescription anti-anxiety medication dulled his fear, and the other team members took their cues from him. We believe that they each went to find fire extinguishers or other means of dousing the flames. This would have been wise in a real house, but…”

A graph showed the room’s temperature suddenly plunge.

“The ghost – that is to say the spiritual remains – entered an unusually pronounced chill-phase. Technicians in our control room tried to increase heat in-flow to prevent temperatures in the room from dropping below spec, but the secondary heat shunt under the lavatory did not open. Ice crystals had formed inside it.

“Meanwhile, temperatures in the northwest corner dropped below 300 Kelvin, reducing the electrical resistance of the stators in the walls. The result was a strong attraction between the walls and the neodymium vests worn by the staff. The staff did attempt to free themselves, but now the haunting entered its poltergeist phase.”

Rutger clicked the projector to the next slide. “This is a photo of the Aspenwood Plant taken by a high-altitude drone at 6am this morning.”

The Manifestor had been converted into serrated silver and black wreckage: the worst ectogenic feedback loop ever in North America.

“Further human deaths were prevented by the immediate evacuation of the Aspenwood Plant. However, the loop continued to spin, generating more heat from friction, which was converted into ectogenic potential and re-deployed as more torque.

“This was likely deliberately engineered by the…” Rutger took a breath, “by the spiritual remains of the now-deceased on-site staff, working in collaboration with those of Mr. Shoenburg, combining their technical knowledge to his…that is to say its…”

Hell. What was the jargon word for “evil”?

“…value tension,” Rutger sighed.

New slide.

“The loop continued to grow until 1am today, when our emergency cold lines absorbed enough energy to stop the growth of the loop.”

But not reverse it. The next slide was the latest drone footage, a video showing queasy rotation within the wreckage. Contraction, as of a monstrous, iron-gray iris.

“Resonances in the thermal fluctuations of the loop are consistent with the persistence of three distinct ghosts.” Rutger stared into the darkness over the press’s heads. Shoenburg, Mathew, and Stephanie? Shoenburg, Stephanie, and Kyle? Thank God at least one of the staff had managed to escape into oblivion.

Rutger blinked back into the cameras. “I’m a mechanical engineer by training. And my training, even after the discovery of the Begay Process, was all about entropy. I was taught that no matter what you do, there’s always waste.”

Despite everything, Rutger couldn’t help but smile. “Then came ghost power. It is…I have no other word for it. It’s a miracle. Perpetual motion. The ultimate free lunch.”

Except recently, Rutger had wondered whether entropy had found a way to increase after all. Moral pollution. The efflux of evil.

Well, so what? Don’t businesses harness greed? Don’t politicians use the bigotry and envy of their voters to support important programs? Anger in the army? Lust in marriage! Evil didn’t taint any of those institutions, why should ectogeneration be any different?

“I know that I have abused the trust placed in me,” said Rutger, “but now I have no choice but to ask for yet more.”

And there was the deeper problem. How to die and leave no spiritual remains?

Rutger had never told a living soul, but he believed that the key was to die with no regrets. He stretched his his hands toward eternity and pleaded.

“Give me another chance.”

The Centuries Unlimited Epsilon is done!

The Centuries Unlimited
More thoroughly combed version (epsilon draft) finished at 87,000 words (down from 92K!).
Begun (revising) at 8:56am on Monday, November 30th 2020 in the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy.

First line: “The utility fog hung thick over Black Chicago.”

Finished at 11:10am on Thursday, January 14th 2020, still in that tower.

Last line: “‘All right,’ I said. ‘Good idea. Let’s wait. Let’s see what happens.'”

Now I’m going to dive into Indo-European Language and Culture: an Introduction by Benjamin W. Fortson. And then, on to Wealthgiver. This one, other people will be able to read.

The Greenhouse

“Come in,” I said. “Thank you for coming.” And because I’d been in Bulgaria for a long time, “sit down.”

Predictably for early summer in Sofia, the day had begun with clear skies and fluffy white clouds, then opened up with monsoon rains at exactly the time my guests had shown up.

I released the hand of Ali, the last member of our conclave, and waved him to his chair.

Six people in the greenhouse was a bit of a squeeze. Once again I caught myself wondering if organizing the meeting this way had been a mistake. We could be in the house or in a cafe, or not meeting at all.

I am worrying about whether my guests are comfortable.

Narrating my thoughts to myself didn’t change their content, but their chattering urgency evaporated. I could feel the breeze through the greenhouse’s open windows and smell the rain. Orchids peeked between fig and banana leaves, although none lower than five feet – the reach of my younger daughter Mikhaela. Somewhere a confused cricket chirped. My guests were smiling awkwardly at each other.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Dimitar, this is Ali. He’s another medical student.”

Ali and I had met through a volunteer organization that helped refugees. It was full of British medical students like Ali and Sada, American gap-year kids like Madison, naturalized refugees like Mohammad, and people like me, who are uncomfortable being called ‘expats.’ The organization had its Bulgarians too, of course, but I hadn’t clicked with any of them, so I’d expanded our circle with my friend Dimitar.

“Who wants coffee?” I asked. “Tea? Cupcakes? My daughters helped decorate them.”

They were pink, with unicorn sprinkles.

“Oh!” said Sada, who had waited all this time, waiting for a cupcake to be offered. “They’re light.”

“They’re chocolate souffles. Julia demanded them and Mikhaela helped whip the egg whites.”

I am worried that I’m showing off. I’m worried that my kids are watching TV instead of entertaining our guests.

“I want to talk about balance,” I said. “I want to do more good, but I always want to be a good father and husband, and I can’t quit my job.”

It was hard to say. I waited for someone to say “you poser. You just want to make yourself feel better, but you’re not willing to sacrifice your comfort.”

Instead, Sada said, “Yeah. I’ve got classes.”

“I’m not learning to be a doctor or anything,” said Madison. “I can spend more time volunteering than you guys, but, you know, I’ll be gone in a year.”

“Kakvo kazhete?” asked Mohammad. His Bulgarian was better than his English.

“Um, iskame nie da napravime…dobro…za organizatsiyata…” I stumbled through the beginning of the sentence before I remembered that Dimitar was sitting next to me.

I am afraid that I look like an idiot, showing off my Bulgarian skills in front of a native speaker who is also a professional translator.

Dimitar swallowed his cupcake. “…no nyamate vreme,” he finished the sentence.

Mohammad bobbled his head and said something to the effect that a hundred people doing a little was better than one person doing a lot.

Dimitar translated for the benefit of the other three while I thought: I am worried everyone will think I’m an arrogant asshole for taking charge like this.

But was the one who had invited everyone here. If I didn’t get to the point, they’d just sit there smiling awkwardly at each other.

“I want to work smarter, not harder,” I said. “I want to leverage the little that we can do into a big effect. Do you know what I mean? Like, I’m an English teacher, so I teach English at the camps. But wouldn’t it be better for me to teach other people to teach English? Stuff like that.”

Dimitar edited down and translated that for Mohammad, who said, “Ima nuzhda za drugo osven urotsi po angliiski. ” We need more than English classes.

He counted things off on his fingers: help with immigration and medicine, professional qualification, child care during the day.

I took notes until my phone buzzed. It was a message from my wife.

“Your 30 minutes are up. Time to switch.”

I started at my phone.

We’d planned to both be part of this meeting, but then it had rained. The girls couldn’t play in the garden while we ate cupcakes and solved the world’s problems. We couldn’t cram them into the greenhouse with our guests, not unless we wanted to anesthetize them with phone videos.

I’m angry at myself that I insisted on doing this in the greenhouse.

I’m afraid that it’s not possible to juggle all these tasks and our jobs and lives.

But you do what you can with what you have. We were on a roll, and I didn’t want to pack everyone upstairs at this point.

I pushed back my chair. “I’ll get Bozhidara and you can talk about this with her,” I said. “But I think we will need a manager. At least one person who’s focused full-time on this project.”

Dimitar pointed up. “You mean Bozhidara?”

“God, no. But maybe someone who could be Bozhidara’s client.”

“Well, we’re already volunteering at an NGO,” Madison pointed out.

I’m scared that this is too big.

I took a deep breath. “What if instead of an NGO, we had a social business?”

“Ha!” said Mohammad. He knew the term. “Iskash da zvanesh Mohammad Yunus?” Do you want to call Mohammad Yunus?

“Who’s that?” asked Sada. “What sort of business?”

My phone buzzed and a voice called from inside the house: “Daddy! Mommy says! Mommy says!”

“Uh. Bozhidara will explain.”

I hopped up the short flight of the stairs from the greenhouse and into our dining room and slipped out of my shoes. Bozhidara was waiting for me and gave her hand a slap as passed. “Tell them about Mohammad Yunus. And bring them inside.”

“Clean up the living room first,” she said. “It has a dolly hospital in it now.”

“I want to see if I can contact Yunus.”

“Fine,” as if I cold-called Nobel laureates every day. “But first move the dolly hospital.”

“Those are Mikhaela’s dolls,” said Julia, who was watching TV from the middle of a pile of toys and sofa cushions.

“Mommy says I’m not allowed to play in the virus anymore,” said Mikhaela. She had no pants on. “You have to wipe my bottom.”

“Mikhaela tried to bite me,” said Julia, “but I bit her first.”

Laughter from the dining room. They were coming.

I am scared, I thought, and angry. My kids won’t go away. Neither will the work I have to do.

That’s probably a good thing.

I told my older kid to clean up and took the younger by the hand.

“I’m not your servant!”

The hand was very damp.

December newsletter: the Pit and the Telescope

A couple nights ago, Pavlina came out of the shower with an idea about ideas. She had been having shower thoughts as one does, when she remembered something she regretted saying. Or maybe it was a fight she’d had with her family or a conflict at work, or money. Now I’m feeling bad that I wasn’t listening to her more carefully, because I don’t actually remember that detail.

But anyway, the point is that Pavlina felt a difference between these gnawing doubts and what came next, which was an insight:

Some thoughts are pits. Others are telescopes.

Some thoughts, when they come to you, funnel you ever downward. I think today is the first work day of 2021, and it’s much harder to follow that up with I’m going to write something great this year, than here we are in lockdown again. And once I’ve thought about the lockdown, it’s much harder to ask myself how can I make this situation work for me? than when will I finally be free again? Having asked that question, the answer comes automatically: never.

That’s the pit.

To the mind, bad is stronger than good. Bad thoughts exert a force on the stream of consciousness, narrowing and strengthening the pull until we are swept away. Pavlina and I, with our five years of major surgeries one after another, feel that current more strongly now, but I can see that it washes past everyone.

Thinking the other way is as hard as climbing up a waterfall. I will be free at some point. I am already free enough to do all the things I need to do. I will become freer, either by my own efforts or by events beyond my control. There’s nothing I can do to make it safe for my kids to go to school, or to get myself vaccinated sooner. All I can do is continue to grow as a writer, a teacher, and husband and father. How can I grow? I don’t know yet. There are many more possibilities than I can imagine.

That’s the telescope.

That’s the image that occurred to Pavlina in the shower. Some thoughts allow you to see connections that your previous vision could not contain. They create something that was not there before. They solve problems.

Finding those thoughts and using them takes extra care, skill, and effort. But what else are we going to do? We look up. We climb.

So, how will you grow this year?

I really do want to know. Please tell me in the comments or by replying to this email or by recording a video and sharing the link.

That’s going to be one of my experiments this year. I’m going to try to gather together or create materials for my English classes on the subject of communication and mental health. In order to do that, of course, I need to learn more about the care and feeding of my own spirit. And, yeah, let’s see if I can write two publishable books per year. Those are my goals.

But anyway. The future is only half of the story. How about the past?

The big news of course is Interchange! It’s off at the printers, with a cover and everything. You can pre-order it! If you’ve beta-read it, you can leave a review on goodreads. If you haven’t read it yet, tell me and I’ll see if I can get you an Advance Reader Copy.

Or, if you want to write something longer, Inklings Press is preparing to publish a new “Tales from Alternate Earths” anthology. I’m going to submit a story, and maybe you should too. I’m thinking good thoughts about Vasil Levski.

In other alternate history news, I need to wrap up Thracian because my next project will be a new draft of Wealthgiver. That is, after my current project…

The Centuries Unlimited is an interesting example of the pit and telescope. I started writing a book about the future, then got caught up in the ways I’m angry about the way other people think about the future. And, let’s be honest, my own fears about the future. I got so stuck in that pit I almost gave up on the story, but I found a way to swing it around and use it to look upward again. The result makes me feel pretty good.

Anyway, getting Interchange ready for publication interrupted my work on getting Centuries ready to shop to publishers. So that will be my project in January. Wish me luck with that

Interchange cover reveal

Guess what I found today

[image error]

“A year ago, Anne Houlihan uncovered a wormhole to Junction, a patchwork planet of competing alien biomes. Now, she and Daisuke are going back to investigate “The Howling Mountain,” the possible location of a wormhole into space. Her mission headed by an eccentric millionaire, Anne believes she will have a chance to learn more about the origin of Junction and its varied ecosystems. The mission has purposes beyond what she knows, however, and so does the planet. As the expedition tears its way across the alien landscape, Anne must fight to protect its lifeforms, herself, and the Earth.”

publication date is July 20th

Simon & Schuster: https://www.simonandschuster.com/…/Fictio…/9781787584679

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55892282-interchange

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/…/B08N…/ref=dp-kindle-redirect…

November Newsletter: Facts are Bones

So there I was, done.

I could feel it. The out-breath as I saved the file and shut down my laptop on Friday, yes, but more than that, the lack of the in-breath on the following Tuesday. Theoretically, there was more I could do with Fellow Tetrapod. The climax-ish scene I’d written on Friday was not perfect. It might not even be any good. But still, I’m done with the alpha draft. For the first time, I can feel it. Or rather, for the first time, my anxiety about the future isn’t occluding my understanding of the present.

The final manuscript might not contain anything like that scene I wrote on Friday. It might not contain anything of all the other scenes I wrote between the middle of September and the middle of November, either. That’s okay. That’s the point. This entire project is a leap of faith; an experiment to determine how, when you fling yourself at the world, it catches you.

…huh. I didn’t set out to write this newsletter about faith. I was going to write about listening to your feelings. I had all these other examples…but I’m having a feeling a now. I’m scared. So let’s push against that and see where we end up.

I was in the hospital, walking down the hall. Imagine me with tubes everywhere. Legs as skinny as my arms used to be. My guts sloshing like a sack of sausages. I’d been cut open in a hurry and stitched back together twice now. And I was exhausted.

They hadn’t gotten that day’s shipment of the banana-fish slurry that was all I could digest, and I’d missed a meal. Maybe 250ml, but I could feel it. That pull of my demand, and my body’s inability to supply anything. It was familiar. I’d felt that way for a year, pressed up against the ceiling as my body sank into the cold water.

But they’d cut the tumor out, right? I should be fine. Yeah, that’s what they’d said that before. They’d sent me home, from this very hospital, and less than a week later, I was back. “Complications.” I spent four days comatose on an operating table, my intestines too inflamed to fit back into my abdomen. The surgeon started talking to Pavlina about “what to do next.”

That’s how she found her faith. The balance of evidence at the time pointed in the direction of my death. That was the most reasonable prediction, and yet, I woke up. A miracle.

I didn’t buy it, though. There was no need to invoke miracles; I knew my statistics. If my chances of recovery were 4%, and 400 people in the world were in medically induced comas with their guts hanging out…

My mind crashed. I stood there in the corridor, supported by that 40-pound wobble-wheeled IV hat-rack, unable to go on. What were the chances of internal adhesions after the successful removal of a tumor? What were the chances that I’d develop this tumor in the first place? And that after four years of surgeries for my daughter? Well, I told myself, statistically, there had to be somebody with such a run of medically-themed bad luck.

Why not me?

I didn’t smoke. I hadn’t been exposed to industrial chemicals. I couldn’t reasonably blame anybody, which was a problem because blame would give meaning to the surgeries. I’d have a cause, which would suggest steps to take next time. If I could blame someone, even myself, I could make sure that this would never happen again.

And yet I knew there, in that corridor, that it would happen again. Why not me? It would be me, at least once more. Because death does come. That is the fact of the matter.

I realized there that facts are bones. Alone, they cannot move. Evidence and logic pointed in only one direction, and I would not follow. Animal that I am, I cannot walk toward death.

So, then what? At first, I could do nothing but avoid thinking about it. I edged around the pit that had opened in the center of my mind. I pressed myself to the walls.

I actually listened to The Book of Joy in the hospital, but this particular message didn’t hit me until months later, when I happened to walk in on Pavlina while she was listening to it: “Hope is the antidote to despair. Yet hope requires faith…”

Hope requires faith. Not “faith” as a synonym for Christianity, or even for religion. Faith as a belief in something despite lack of evidence for it.

When death is the most reasonable prediction, how do we go on living? By convincing ourselves, somehow, that we will.

That’s what Fellow Tetrapod is about, and also what it is. The story keeps surprising me. This newsletter surprised me. I’m glad it came to me. Thank you for reading it.

Whew! After all that, how could I tell you to go out and buy my books? Good news is, I don’t have a new book out.

Fellow Tetrapod alpha is done, Interchange is waiting for its editor’s notes, and The Sultan’s Enchanter is still spiraling around in some publisher’s slush pile. If all goes according to plan, The Centuries Unlimited should be ready for my agent to send out in January. Then, I have plans, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Otherwise…here’s some books I liked in November!

Confucianism and Taoism by Julia Ching – a very straightforward and no-nonsense introduction to Confucianism and Taoism. The audiobook was narrated by Ben Kingsly, too, which was nice.

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury – a collection of essays about writing, focusing on the author’s process and the cultivation of muse and career. It was a good fit for me; Bradbury was a joyful and experimental writer, which is how I want to be too. I tried his stream of consciousness method, too! It was interesting.

Starship Grifters by Robert Kroese – a good job of work. This satire of Star Wars often pretty funny, and occasionally very funny. “A secret military facility working on cloaking technology? We’ve surveyed the entire planet and found no sign of any facility. – Exactly!”

The Politics of Diplomacy by James A. Baker III – an interesting perspective on the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The Long Result by John Brunner – Rather cozy as books on interstellar politics go. Recommended.

Trojan Gold by Elizabeth Peters – VERY cozy. The characters literally drink hot cocoa while wearing fuzzy sweaters and petting cats after a day of skiing while snow falls in the Bavarian mountains outside the window. I enjoyed it but I really wanted to know more about that damn Thracian gold!

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams – whoof! Adams did not want to write that book. This book (and an interview I recently heard about him) made me not want to write like Adams. I’ll write like Bradbury and enjoy my life, thank you.

The Book of Forgiving: by Desmond and Mpho Tutu – very healing. I still haven’t done all the exercises in the book, but the text and stories helped me a lot. It’s interesting that I finished this book the month before I wrote this newsletter about my cancer. I didn’t have anyone to blame for that, but I certainly do have people to blame for other problems in my life. Nice to think I can get to those problems now.

Talk to you in January!

Fellow Tetrapod alpha is done!

Fellow Tetrapod alpha draft is done!

This was a funny one. After a few false starts, I successfully wrote the first draft by sitting down every day, writing what I was inspired to write, and stringing the resulting scenes into some kind of order. I anticipate lots of fun slapping the resulting mess into shape in the second revision. But that’s a mission for another day.

Anyway, time of writing: September 14 – November 20 2020.

Wordcount: ~34K

First line:

“On one Earth, eastern Africa dried, which was both a problem and an opportunity for the local apes.”

Last line:

“What it means to be human, though! That’s much more exotic.”

Next project: The Centuries Unlimited epsilon draft. Let’s hope it’s the last one.

Well, Boom

I just had the honor of participating in the NASA/Caltec Exoplanet Demographics conference, where I wrote a short story inspired by Will Misener’s presentation: “To Cool is to Keep: Residual H/He Atmospheres of Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes.”  The name of the story, which combines the oxygen production of photosynthesis with an atmosphere rich in hydrogen is entitled “Well, Boom.” (pdf link)

You can find all of the ExoDem conferences short stories, poems, and artwork here.

October Newsletter: Prickly Pear Juice

So there I was, having another panic attack in the car.

Yeah, it’s been a while since I wrote about something hard. Here we go!

For context: 2 sets of PCR tests, quarantine, stomach bug, let’s all drive to Greece! I mean, we’re working from home anyway, right? Why not?

I did not relish the thought of injecting even more chaos into my schedule. Let’s say, in fact, that I resented the hell out of the whole idea of going to Greece. I wasn’t sure if we’d have a good enough internet connection to support the work/school/cartoons of four people at once, if I’d be able to write, or that Pavlina respected my work.

A ridiculous suspicion! And ungrateful. Pavlina makes her own mornings much more complicated in order to protect my writing time. I knew that, so I didn’t push back against this Greece trip. I told her I was okay with it. I told myself I was okay with it.

But once the two of us were alone in the car, my nose closed up. We headed north out of Sofia, the cane-laden canal and village houses of Chepinski rolling past, and I tried to take a calming breath. It wouldn’t come. Pavlina was talking to me, but I don’t remember about what. I was busy hyperventilating.

We turned onto the highway that would take us south and my nose and belly were tingling. It wasn’t safe for Pavlina to stop the car, but she had to stop the car. I had to get out. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. My hands were cramped into claws. It was the Irish Embankment all over again. And, a peak into the future, I would have another panic attack on the way back from Greece ten days later.

Here’s what I think is going on: chaos is scary. I usually cope with the uncertainty of the future with my google calendar. Problem solved! Except that when that calendar was threatened, I freaked out. I reacted as if to an attack.

What attack? We had a spectacular time in Greece! We found this skinny green grasshopper with a super-long nose! Uh…this one! We took a walk in the hills with a stray dog and found some prickly-pears that I turned into juice. I collected, peeled (oh my good peeled!) and boiled up those glochidiferous bastards, even though there were a bunch of other things I could have been doing. “Make prickly pear juice” was nowhere on my schedule, but I’m glad I did it anyway.

What a lucky man I am, to get this lesson taught to me over and over again. Order is fine, but so is chaos. You can construct good things with care and perseverance, but you can also spread your arms and let them come to you. My calendar should be a story, not a set of instructions. Let’s see how well I can remember that in November.

Right, so what about that NASA story, hey? The 2020 Exoplanet Demographics conference, hosted by NASA and IPAC/Caltech, has a scifi track this year, where they sent writers and artists the abstracts of presentations and told us to create stories/poems/etc based on them. I got mine on Friday the 30th, and I had until Friday the 6th to submit something. I ended up spending about 6 hours over the course of the week, making something that I thought turned out pretty good. I’ll share it when and if I can.

At the beginning of the month, I participated in Eurocon Futuricon with my speculative biology panel, and I helped organize the launch party for First Knife. Man, what a great party that was. Uh, no access to the videos yet. You guys will just have to keep your eyes peeled for my next announcement.

Fellow Tetrapod alpha draft continues. Every morning I do a 15-30 min exercise thing on Headspace, meditate, and write about whatever inspires me. It is very rarely the notes I left for myself from the previous day, which means that the story is developing in a very different direction from what I envisioned. But if I knew exactly what the book would be like, writing it would be boring. Bam! Lesson reiterated.

And here’s what I read this month:

Washington’s Dirigible by John Barnes — more bloodthirsty killing of bad guys, but then the hero thinks “…should I be enjoying this so much?” It works pretty well, and I am a sucker for lovingly-described anachronistic motor-carriages!

Heaven’s River  by Dennis E. Taylor — honestly, I was disappointed. The moral theory was very shallow, and the big questions didn’t get answered. There were a few moments of insight though. I sympathize with the feeling of society mutating out from under you.

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett — One of my read-in-the-bath books. I didn’t like this one as much as the other Guard books, but of course it’s still Pratchett’s work, and therefor excellent. I suspect that it was originally two books.

Wintersteel by Will Wight — The 8th in the Cradle series, and you really have to read 1-7 first. Go do that now. They’re short. Okay, done? Oh my Kung-Foo-Space-God! Wasn’t it great? I mean, finally, right? You know what I’m talking about

Earth With Heaven

Earth with Heaven

The storm was roaring,

lights flashing.

The temple of Nippur,

the storm was roaring,

Lights flashing.

Heaven with earth

was talking;

earth with heaven was talking.

— The Barton Cylinder. Surface A. Column 1. Lines 7-14.

The king stood at the rim of his tower and looked up, back the way he had come.

The night sky glowed yellow-black. The dust of the tower’s descent had dissipated, but clouds reflected the lights of the city below, obscuring the stars.

Only a few bight points twinkled around the face of a single celestial body. An earth-world. Giant, pitted, impossibly close, it gleamed like old teeth.

Ki An-da, King of the Tower, Emperor of All Worlds, the Pinnacle of Achievement, turned his face away from that hoary light. Twelve twelves of Beads clattered in their gold-wire cages, and swinging on their strings from neck to navel.

The high astrologer flinched back, lest he touch a Bead and die.

“Where are we?” Ki An-da’s voice rumbled like the motors at the base of his tower. Dead now, their Beads passed to their apprentices, now training for war.

The astrologer licked his lips. “Well…”

“Surely you know.”

Ki An-da’s hand went to the Bead at the center of his second necklace. The Bead-that-Called-Rainbow-Stars rattled in its cage, no longer warm as it had been, pinched between the king’s fingers for nearly a year. Most inscrutable of the Beads.

Ki An-da had expected Rainbow-Stars to guide his tower to a new world, a world he could remake for the pleasure of the gods. Instead, the gods had brought him and his settlers to an already inhabited world. A world whose men had displeased the gods, and required to be remade again.

But more importantly, a world whose sky had already been charted.

“The stars are very faint, sire,” said the astrologer. “The lights from the city interfere with our observations.”

Ki An-da’s hand strayed out to his fifth necklace, and a Bead-that-calls-Force. Flanked as it was by two Beads-that-Restrict, it would project a flat sheet of force, a cleaver that would slice this fool in two if he did not please his king.

“Even I can see that giant world in the sky,” Ki An-da said. “Do I need astrologers at all?”

The astrologer bowed very low, hands swept back and fingers splayed to show he held no Beads. Sweat beaded on the man’s bald pate.

“Yes. Sire. The world. It circles this one. It is certainly distinctive, is it not…?”

Ki An-da brought his fingers around the Bead-that-Calls-Force and the astrologer barked: “the Moon, sire.”

“The Moon.” Ki An-da had never heard the word before.

“We can’t be sure, sire. The legends are fragmentary. The prophesies,” he swallowed, “vague.”

“The prophesies.”

The king did not ask questions. His advisor answered anyway.

“Yes, sire. The Gods’ reward, sire. The wages of man’s toil. After we have made enough worlds bloom for them, the Gods will return us to the garden from which — ”

“Silence.” If the astrologer continued, Ki An-da might begin to tremble. He looked back up at the Moon, and felt an emotion he had not known for decades.

Gratitude.

The king stared up at that cratered face for long minutes, mastering himself. Finally, he spoke.

“After five thousand years, our work is done. The Gods have brought us home.”

“I think so, sire.”

Ki An-da brought himself back to business. “If you’re wrong, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Thank you, sire. To be certain one way or the other, we must see the other stars. The lights from the city…” The man, looked out over the rim of the tower, past his monarch. “…those strange lights.”

Ki An-da grunted. Strange lights indeed. They did not flicker like flames, stars, or the Beads-that-Call-Light. They shone like bronze or silver in sunlight, unwavering. Nor did the natives seem to posses weapons, or defenses, or any Beads-that-Spoke in anyway way Ki An-da’s alchemists had been able to recognize. They only flew around the tower in funny little air-boats or simply gathered around the foot of the tower and shouted in an incomprehensible language.

Weaklings, then. Or else fools who refrained from striking first. Let them be strengthened, then, let them be taught.

“Very well.” Ki An-da turned on the pinnacle of his tower. He faced the city, and his hands went to the Beads that hung down his chest. “Summon your men to the observation stations. I will put out these lights.”