B. Morris Allen's Blog, page 7
June 19, 2019
Beginnings 080 – Blue is the Color
It started with a routine flyby. Come within 1,000 km, scan and film, on to the next. In the rare case where there was something valuable enough to justify a Stellar Federation override of the pending commercial claim, we’d land, verify the data, plant a flag. Nothing to it, and the only exciting part of the job. As designated explorer, I usually had nothing to do. Well, chief cook and bottle-washer, but with these new food-syns, it’s all just button-pushing.
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“Blue is the Color”
About the...
June 18, 2019
Beginnings 079 – Chambers of the Heart
Despair and Ecstasy are the simplest. Ecstasy is the small and cozy room of a cottage that looks out on a broad meadow in the forest. In the spring, elk come to posture and to mate, and the wildflowers bloom on every side. In the fall, mist dances in silver swirls framed by gold and bronze and copper trees. It is always spring or fall.
Despair is a vast, dark hall of low ceilings and small windows. In winter, snowdrifts sometimes cover the windows so that they are only squares of gray agains...
June 17, 2019
Beginnings 078 – Susurrus
The wind whispers to her. In its hot, harsh voice, it whispers soft, cool lies. Oh, how it lies. Above the hiss of sand, the murmur of dunes, the wind lies about Shade, and Green, and, most of all, Water.
She can smell it sometimes, the fresh clean scent of water, of trees, sometimes even flowers. Once, there was the sharp tang of citrus. But about her now is only desert, an endless landscape of smooth, shifting sand, of dunes that grow and move and change, but always stay the same. A landsc...
June 16, 2019
Beginnings 077 – Wyrm und Drang
Sure, I can breathe fire. It’s surprising how seldom that comes in handy when you have to change into a two ton dragon to do it. Melt a couple of your were-kin’s barbecues and you don’t get invited back much. It makes for a lot of awkward questions in the neighbourhood, and crackpot journalists hanging around looking for monsters.
The were-pups get all the attention, of course, and they complain a lot, but they bring it on themselves, really, with all that baying they do when the moon is ful...
June 15, 2019
Beginnings 076 – Marshal Law, Ch. 11
Hanging is a terrible way to kill a man. When you hang a man, he jerks and sways and kicks like a dancing puppet. He fouls himself, but his manhood swells like he wants a woman. On all sides, there’s a crowd watching, jeering, crying. It takes a long time to die and most of the crowd leave before the end. There’s no dignity in a hanging. It’s a lousy way to kill a man. It’s not a great way to die, either.
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“Marshal Law, Ch. 11”
NIAD 5
Published 17-Oct-2015
About the story: Novel in a Day i...
June 14, 2019
Beginnings 075 – Fetch
She had died from overheating. It was an unlikely death, in the star-spark darkness beyond the atmosphere, where the outside temperature measured in single digits. Yet temperature in space flight was a tricky thing. In Laika’s case, a part of the ship had failed to separate. Torn insulation and a compromised control system had cooperated to simulate an intolerable summer day. She had died in hours.
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“Fetch”
About the story: The story of Laika is one of the cruelest and most heartbreaking i...
June 13, 2019
Beginnings 074 – To the Wild Sea
The tide seeped away, grey water into black sand. It left her lime-green boots uncovered, anomalous. Just as well, thought Sarosh, turning her back on the sea. This planet could use some color. As it had used Richard, used her dreams; swallowed them whole, and left nothing but little grains of sand that stuck to everything, fell off everywhere. She kicked the sand as she walked, and it spurted grudgingly before her feet.
At her back, the little love-lorn birds took up their plaintive cries,...
June 12, 2019
Beginnings 073 – Graven Image
It’s about impressions. First impressions, last impressions, the creased and corrugated impressions that life leaves on our skin as it wears us down to our essentials, and eventually to nothing. I know about impressions; I’m in sales now.
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“Graven Image”
Metaphorosis
Published 07-Sep-2018
About the story: Sometimes all an alien needs is a little maintenance. Or is it?
June 11, 2019
Beginnings 072 – Blush
I’ve been down in the heart of Wrinkletown, stood in the Blemish itself, with unmasked people as far as the eye can see. You get used to it. Eventually, you realize that wrinklies aren’t so bad. In fact, they’re just like normal people — just more open about it.
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“Blush”
Capricious
Published 29-May-2017
About the story: Who are we beneath the masks we wear every day?
June 10, 2019
Beginnings 071 – I Don’t Care About Clifton Clowers
They say, “Don’t go on Wolverton Mountain if you’re looking for a wife.” Old Claude says that, anyway, and he don’t have a wife, so maybe he knows. He’s been up the mountain, he says. When he was “young and handsome”. So he says.
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“I Don’t Care About Clifton Clowers”
On Spec
About the story: Why go up on Wolverton Mountain?
Inspired by the song.
