B. Morris Allen's Blog, page 5
July 14, 2019
Beginnings 105 – Cinnamon Sticks
The slime had been a problem. “It’s not slime. It’s a podal lubricant and message deposition vehicle.” With some saliva mixed it. When you ate with your feet, it was hard not to leave a bit of drool around. Even in these sterile metal corridors. Even when your heart was broken. Irredeemably broken.
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“Cinnamon Sticks”
The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis
Published 06-Dec-2018
About the story: Slugs in space!
Written specifically for a Julie Czerneda anthology.
July 13, 2019
Beginnings 104 – Adjectives of Annihilation
My parents could never describe it. The ravages of an increasingly stratified world, of bitter philosophical division, of a climate run amok. The devastation of war. The nightmare of departure.
“Nothing survived,” said my poet father.
“Probably nothing survived,” amended my mother, who’d been a particle physicist, and more comfortable with uncertainty.
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“Adjectives of Annihilation”
About the story: Settlers have to make the best of what they have.
Inspired by a Marillion song.
July 12, 2019
Beginnings 103 – 3 Ghosts, Ch. 12
Lucas could feel warm satin sweat against his cheek, and his fingers curled slightly, moving through slick stickiness to a little node of firmness. It was curiously cool, curiously crumbly. Crumbly? But… already it was gone, the details of the dream fading with the night. It had been so clear, so vivid – so real. And now nothing but a lingering feel that something important had happened, something life-changing.
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“3 Ghosts, Ch. 12”
NIAD 6
Published 17-Jun-2017
About the story: My secound r...
July 11, 2019
Beginnings 102 – Loose Change and Nothing to Say
“Hi. Is your food preservation device operative? Better go stop it.” Zorknord pulled both tentacles back into his tiffle, and let the input integrator fall to the console.
“Dude, your sperm-contributing lifestyle indoctrinator is going to be pissed.” Garlaw’s lesser dome pulsed with awe.
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“Loose Change and Nothing to Say”
About the story: Will humans get alien jokes?
Inspired by a Gillan/Glover song.
July 10, 2019
Beginnings 101 – Punctilio
The man moved doggedly onward, pushing ever toward the faintest of lights on the horizon, a light more sensed than seen, and which illuminated nothing. From behind came the sounds of laughter and conviviality, a bright chatter of conversation carrying with it the occasional lover’s murmur and the promise warmth and friendship and more. In the cold dark emptiness, he paid no heed, only pushing forward toward the faint suggestion of light ahead. Around it swirled the tantalizing odors of mushr...
July 9, 2019
Beginnings 100 – Cupernicity
The center of the universe shifts. When you’re young, it’s all about your principal carer, and food, and bedtime snuggles. As you age, gravity intervenes, and the center moves further away, to cliques and clans and who’s gone furthest into the danglepods. Then you learn about the dark matter carers always try to hide, and the center gets focused, intimate. For me, it was Carsa Ubiye.
I wasn’t the center of her universe, of course. The Fifth Law of Thermodynamics is ‘For every cool girl that...
July 8, 2019
Beginnings 099 – The Plural of Die
It’s ‘dice’, not ‘dies’, but this godforsaken planet is as short on grammar as it is on everything else.
Come back to life more than once, and they give you a nickname. Names are something we have plenty of. Names, myths, rumours, theories, we’ve got them. I’d trade any two of those for a thimble of hope, if there were such a thing.
Anyway, after I came back the second time, they started calling me Dies. Naomi Dies. Has a hopeful ring to it, doesn’t it?
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“The Plural of Die”
About the story...
July 7, 2019
Beginnings 098 – Tumbler
A spider hung across from me, the barbed spikes of its legs dug deep into the walls of its prison. It was caged in a network of tunnels and tubules that wrapped around and through each other in an immense tangle. Trapped. Just like me.
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“Tumbler”
About the story: Sometimes love will surprise you. The details of an alien lifecycle.
July 6, 2019
Beginnings 097 – He Don’t Love Nobody
I was nobody. That’s why I did it.
They always ask, when they come in their school and church groups. “Why did you do it, Mr. Mbonyumutwa? Why did you share Blue Star’s revolutionary plans with the True Government? Weren’t the rebels your friends? Weren’t you a rebel?”
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“He Don’t Love Nobody”
About the story: Betrayal, and why to do it.
Inspired by a John Hiatt song.
July 5, 2019
Beginnings 096 – In the Thick of Time
Time was uninterrupted. It extended down the hill in one direction, while in the other it was lost amid a line of septs that streamed down like ants. The septs were brief, momentary, clans stretching across a handful of generations at best. They faded in and out, overlapping, conflicting, forming thickets and tangles that thinned out into broad reaches of individuality and isolation. At the peak of the hill they formed a great clot, and after that were gone forever.
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“In the Thick of Time”...
