Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 27

In Which I Discuss a Serious Topic

I don’t usually discuss real-world events on this blog. This is partly for purely mercenary reasons. I want people to read and enjoy my stories. I also want people to buy them. ��(Which you can do on Amazon! And if you order right now, I’ll throw in a free set of Ginsu steak-knives!) ��I decided to go the self-publishing route, because, why not? It worked for Fifty Shades. On the other hand,��that series was a unique circumstance (it caught the tail end of the Twilight boom, right when e-book readers were coming up, so lots of people could read it without letting other people know they were reading it). Also, I can’t write that material. If I tried to write that sort of thing, or even the standard stuff you’d find in romance novels, I honestly couldn’t do it and take it seriously. Moral objections aside (and I do have those), I’d probably be giggling all the way through, and it would sound horribly stilted. It would be like the Ember Island Players version of a romance novel. “OH I’M TEARBENDING!”

Anyway. Getting back to the point, I naturally want people to read my work, and once you get into serious discussions, you lose people reading it for the sheer joy of reading. Instead you either have people reading what you write in order to attack it (That person said a Horrible Thing! Shun the non-believer!), or people reading what you write uncritically and praising it to the skies (That person is on Our Team! They must be defended!). You get the idea. I mean, I do have political opinions, but I prefer to keep them to myself in online formats, and mostly discuss them offline with people who I know will still be my friends afterwards. It’s more difficult to maintain civility online. (He said, somewhat obviously).

However, there is now an issue about which I cannot keep silent. I must speak out.

The dress is white and gold.

There. What I have written, I have written.

Afterwards

“Okay, mum. I’ve poisoned the apricot. One bite and the princess is done for.”

“Excellent. Finally��I shall ascend the throne!”

“Then what, mum?”

“Then? Well. I’ll have the flags switched, naturally. And there’s that trade agreement with House Charming that needs signing.”

“You’re not going to ruthlessly oppress the populace? Imprisoning innocents, burning things down at a whim?”

“Honestly, Sludgepipe.��I’m evil, not a fanatic.”

This post was written for Grammar Ghoul Press and the Chimera 55 challenge. Thanks for reading!

Empire of Dirt

There was nothing to do. She had the whole place to herself, and she was bored. Incredibly, wildly, out-of-her-mind bored. And she just hated being bored.

She thought about watching a movie. But then, she’d watched them all. Five times. She was out of popcorn, too. Time for another grocery store raid, she��decided. She flew over to the nearest one, stepping through the shattered glass of the automatic door. Popcorn was near the soft drink aisle, she vaguely recalled. There was only one box left. “Crap,” she said, her voice muffled through her respirator mask.��She’d have to fly to anther store soon. This one was about picked clean.

She left the store, and hovered above the crater that had been the parking lot, musing over her fate. She had popcorn, but what to do with it? She’d run through her movie list. Maybe there was a television show she hadn’t seen yet. Perhaps the library- then she laughed. She��had almost forgotten that she’d torched the library a year back. She’d been bored back then, too.

Maybe something had survived? She flew over just to see. She had nothing else more pressing. Just as she remembered, though, the library was a wreck. A cockroach skittered out from beneath the shattered remnants of a wall. “Oh, hey!” she��said. It was the first living thing she’d seen in… a while. Easy to lose track, these days. She gave the bug a friendly wave. It ignored her, going on about its roachy business. She��was offended, and squished it. When it twitched, she flamed it with a white-hot��blast that left nothing but a scorch mark in the dirt. That had been fun. Now she was bored again.

“Y’know…” she said. “This planet stinks. I need to leave.” It was an idea that had been growing in her mind for several months. One of the last scientists she’d seen had said something about other worlds. She’d flamed him shortly after that, down by the river. Or had it been the park? No, she��remembered, she’d already vaporized the park before that. It had been the river, surely. All that steam and boil had been so fun. The scientist had turned red. She liked red.

Now that she’d settled on the idea, it took a while to get it moving. She had to find the military base again. The scientist had carried an ID badge from there. She hadn’t been to the military base since she’d lighted off the atmosphere. That, she��figured, was probably why she was so bored now. There was no one else around anymore. Setting the planet on fire would do that. Oh, well, time for the next one.

She flew over the remains of the military base. The science part was beneath the largest crater. She had to dig through rubble for a bit, which proved an interesting if somewhat laborious distraction. And there it was, the portal thing the scientist had been blathering about. He’d had friends too, and they’d fought hard to save the portal.��She giggled. Now��that��had been fun.

The portal beeped in the silence. Oh, good, she thought, it was still running! She would’ve hated to fly all this way across the burnt landscape for a portal that didn’t work. She spent the next two days eating popcorn and puzzling out the controls. There wasn’t an instruction manual. She’d probably torched it when she’d come before. Oops.

Finally, she��figured out how it worked. If it went right, she’d find herself in another Earth, one she hadn’t wiped out. There might even be an alternate version of herself, one who saved people instead of flaming them. That didn’t seem fun. Maybe she’d have to flame the alternate. And then replace her! And the innocent civilians wouldn’t know the difference! Sweet.

With a push of the button, the portal fired up. She stepped through. As the burned-out old Earth faded out, and a shiny green new one faded in, Madeleine Smith laughed, high and cold. She wasn’t bored anymore.

This was written for the Grammar Ghoul Press Mutant 750 challenge. It’s also a bit dark, as you might have noticed. The mind of a supervillain is a scary place, let me tell you.

Stamper Alone

It is generally acknowledged that when one is on an exploding spaceship, the thing to do is to get off it as quickly as possible. Sarah May Raxenpaxerflirk had lost sight of this fact, having rapturously fallen into the tentacles of her one true love Domingo. Mr. Stamper, by contrast, was not distracted. He very calmly keyed in the coordinates for his shuttlecraft, grabbed the entwined squidlings by the first tentacle that came to paw, and shoved them onto the teleport pad. As the pad fired up, Sarah May detached herself from Domingo long enough to realize that the space otter hadn’t joined her. “Hey!” she squeaked. “What-” Then she and Domingo vanished in a spray of teleporter energies.

Mr. Stamper was alone again. He liked it that way. Now he could set about the real job. Mr. Stamper had promised to retrieve the Orb That Should Not Be Named. He was not an otter who failed in his word.

He ran swiftly back to the Shadow Vault. Panicky aliens ran past him, and several times he had to switch to different corridors because the one he wanted had exploded in fire. Just as he reached the Vault, the lights around him flickered and died. Mr. Stamper almost smiled as he produced a flashlight from a pocket on his belt. This was perfect.

Ordinarily it would’ve taken months to assemble the technology necessary to hack the Vault’s extra-dimensional pocket security system. But that pocket was maintained by Mark V Tardisian Flux Generators, the same ones that powered the lights. When those generators failed, the pocket collapsed right back into realspace. And so,��when Mr. Stamper shoved the Vault door open, he saw the Orb lying conveniently��on the floor in front of him.

It was round and shiny, as Orbs are wont to be, and had a faint outline of a stylized purple Whangdoodle in its center. Mr. Stamper did not pause to contemplate its��ethereal beauty. He snatched it up from the floor and bolted. Now, he just needed to get��back to the sickbay teleporters-

Then he saw it. He had just rounded on a corridor with a long viewscreen that looked out on open space. A stark warship floated by, bristling with all sorts of deadly weapons systems with which it was tearing the��Charlotte’s Moon��apart. One of those weapons systems had caught Mr. Stamper’s attention. He recognized it instantly. It was a mass driver, a device used to hurl asteroids from orbit��at a defenseless planet, usually with devastating results. Mr. Stamper had never seen it in action himself, but he had reviewed videos, reviewed them over and over again. He knew that weapon. He knew that��ship.��That ship had taken his only love.

He forgot all about the Orb��he was carrying, all about Sarah May and Constance the angel, all about his mission.

It was payback time.

Previous stories in the ongoing adventures of Mr. Stamper can be found here. Thanks for reading!

Plots

“Well, Sludgepipe, my trusted minion, how shall we do it? Apple? Enchanted spindle?”

“Er, sorry, mum. They’re inspecting apples since that White business. And the princess has got a thimble. Yellow Fairy gave it her, I think.”

“Curses! How can we murder the princess now?”

“A sword, mum?”

“A sw-what?”

“We take a sword and hit her in the head, mum.”

“Sludgepipe. How gauche.”

“Sorry, mum.”

This story was written for the Grammar Ghoul Press Chimera 66 challenge.

Doppelgangfight, Part Two

Several summers ago, one of Gaseous Girl’s friends had undertaken a journey across the United States in a Winnebago in order to “find herself.” Madeleine had never understood that. Now, she had found herself in a painfully literal sense; she’d found multiple herselves, in fact. Three versions of herself had just materialized outside the Edison City Public Library. On the bright side, there hadn’t been multiple versions of Behemoth Bob. Gaseous Girl didn’t know if she could cope with that eventuality.

She now faced an awkward moment. What did one say to knockoffs of one’s self? Madeleine wasn’t great with small talk, especially with people she didn’t know. Usually she muttered something about the weather or the crime rate before making an excuse and running for it. “So…” Madeleine said to the other Madeleines as they assembled on the library steps. “Bit chilly, isn’t it?”

“It is a standard temperature for this time of year,” Lady Madeleine Smith-Harrington observed, after checking the heads-up display on her violet mecha-suit.

“Kinda sucks, though,” Mad Maddie said. “I like summer weather, m’self.”

“Indeed?” Lady Smith-Harrington said.

“Yep.”

An awkward silence ensued. The fourth Gaseous Girl said something querulous in Latin. It might have been about the weather.

“What’s her deal?” Mad Maddie said.

Madeleine shrugged. “Maybe she’s from a ‘verse where humanity never got to the industrial age. She’s the medieval version of me.”

“Like Gargoyles? Sweetness.” Mad Maddie hummed a few bars from the cartoon show theme. The medieval Gaseous Girl didn’t appear to get the reference.

Madeleine finally decided that she hated small talk, and that it was time to get serious. “Look, I don’t know why you all are here, but-”

The medieval Madeleine cut in then, apparently having also grown weary of small talk. She spoke very fast, and gestured wildly with her hands, and at several points appeared on the verge of tears. She wound up with a desperate exhortation, which no one there understood.

A second awkward silence ensued. Fortunately, this one only lasted a few seconds. “One moment,” Lady Smith-Harrington said. “I’ve finally managed to activate my translation matrix.” She read the words spidering across her faceplate’s internal screens. “She calls herself Princess Madeleine of the Grey Castle. She says that… she was fighting a heroic battle against a swarm of terrible dragons when she was suddenly brought her. She wants to know what strange sorcery has done this. She also wants to go back, very much. Apparently…” and here Lady Smith-Harrington’s electronically filtered voice wavered, just a bit, “She was not alone. She was with her love, a certain Prince Patrick. Patrick has a sword, but no magical abilities. She is deeply concerned for his safety.”

Mad Maddie sniffed. “That’s rough, girl.”

“I don’t exist,” Madeleine said. “That’s��rough.”

“Course you exist. You’re here now, ain’tcha?”

“Oh, never mind,” the original Gaseous Girl said. “Okay, so we’ve got to get the princess back. How?”

“Perhaps we could construct an Einstein-Selvik bridge?” Lady Smith-Harrington asked.

“A wha’ now?” Mad Maddie said.

“It’s a remarkably simple concept.” Whereupon Lady Smith-Harrington launched into several minutes of technical discussion that went way over Mad Maddie’s head and of course was completely incomprehensible to the princess. Madeleine, on her part, vaguely understood that there was some sort of Outer Space Thing near the Eagle Nebula that, if they all flew out to it, would get everyone back to their own universes. She disliked outer space things almost as much as time things. Outer space things usually involved��nasty aliens who wanted to eat your head, or else sprawling galactic empires who wanted to strip-mine your planet or build a hyperspace bypass over it. Madeleine much preferred dealing with ordinary human bad guys on Earth.

“So…” she asked, when it looked like Lady Smith-Harrington was winding up. “How do we get to, ah, whatever it is?”

“I have,” Lady Smith-Harrington said smugly, “a Superhero Corps Century Comet starfighter in��orbit.” She produced a small device from a pocket in her mecha-suit and pressed a button. “I have engaged the teleporter.”

“Wait, you did what?” Madeleine had no time to object. In a flash, all four Gaseous Girls had disappeared.

Silence reigned near the library. Then a ghostly figure appeared above the library’s steps. Its translucent face curved into a sneer. “Excellent,” it said, in a high, cold voice. “Ooh, I love it when a plan comes together.”

This post was written as part of the ongoing adventures of Gaseous Girl; it was also written for the Grammar Ghoul Press Mutant 750 challenge. Thanks for reading!

Love Gone Wrong

He never had said why he left the Corps.

Some thought it was because it didn’t pay.

He might have just got tired of the war;

The endless fight; new evil every day.

But Stamper wasn’t tired, didn’t care

That pay was somewhat less than it could be.

It wasn’t just that thing with Alistair;

It wasn’t just the coup on Magel Three.

It’s her; just her; Natasha Hammersmith

An otter whose eyes shone star-fusion bright;

She’d pleaded: could he wait, or take her with?

He could not, so he left her��late one��night.

And so he wasn’t there next afternoon,

When someone dropped a comet on her moon.

This story features characters from The Angel and the Space Otter. It also comes by request of Meg, who wanted Mr. Stamper in a sonnet. Also, I was somewhat morbidly inspired by an episode from Babylon Five where an alien superpower uses asteroids to bomb a planet and��just about��kill everyone on it. It was a dramatic��episode, and a powerful scene. This is also another attempt at a sonnet for Yeah Write’s poetry slam. My sonnets, so far, seem to involve apocalyptic disasters. I wonder why that is?

Symbolic

Rob needed��a symbol. Superheroes had to have symbols. He would strike fear into the hearts of the evil-doers plaguing his city. He��swore to assume the appearance of the first creature to appear in his dorm room. ��He hoped for a bat.

But then his roommate Sam walked in��with��a leftover oyster from a university��dinner.

Oyster Man struck fear in no one’s hearts.

This was written for the Chimera 66 writing challenge��at Grammar Ghoul Press. Thanks for reading!

Doppelgangfight

Gaseous Girl was hoping for a straightforward fight. Fly in, smash the alien behemoth monster rampaging through her city, fly out again. She liked those kinds of fights. Once in a while, it was nice not to worry about unraveling a tangled mystery, or sorting out the ramifications of time things,��or worrying over the personal��implications of the latest superhero legislation muddling through Congress. Once in a while, it was nice to just fly in and smash stuff. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, here’s the key to the city. It was simple, and it was fun.

It started out that way, at least. Behemoth Bob had just flattened a local playground and was bearing down on the library. Defending libraries was fun and heroic, and earned a lot of good press. Gaseous Girl planted herself in front of the modern art sculpture on the library steps, readied fire blasts, and waited for the monster to attack. He appeared to be taking his time. She occupied the seconds by trying to make out what the sculpture was. It appeared to be a spastic octopus fighting its octopus friends for possession of a volleyball. Gaseous Girl never had understood modern art.

Then Behemoth Bob rumbled around the corner. He bellowed something incomprehensible at her. Some supervillains you could try to reason with, maybe offer a chance to surrender. Alien behemoths, on the other hand, didn’t run that way. Gaseous Girl launched herself from the steps, prepared to crash into his side and knock him over, then pummel him with flame blasts until he saw reason or went unconscious. Either one worked, really.

Then a woman in a flame-pink uniform and spangly glitter boots slammed down in front of her, blocking her way. “Stand back, y’all!” she cried merrily. “Mad Maddie’s coming through!”

“Say what?” Gaseous Girl said. She didn’t have the chance to say anything else, as lightning blasted from the new arrival’s outstretched hand and thoroughly zapped the astonished behemoth.

“And boom goes the monster!” Mad Maddie exclaimed. Then she spun enthusiastically towards Gaseous Girl. “Hi!” she chirped. “Maddie Smith, Mad Maddie to my friends, nice to meet ‘cha.”

“But…. I’m Madeleine Smith.” Gaseous Girl swiftly put two and two together. “You’re a parallel universe��version of me. Wonderful. I just��hate��time things. ”

“I’m a wha?” Mad Maddie said.

The behemoth meanwhile, had only been stunned. Now it came roaring to its feet again, anxious to smash the person who had so tormented it. The two Gaseous Girls prepared to fight it, but now a cool electronically modulated voice cut in. “Step aside please. Thank you.” A whoosh, and a��whump,��and a rocket had slammed into the behemoth, laying it out flat. Madeleine and her alternate turned around.

On the step just next to the spastic octopus stood a figure in��violet��metal armor, replete with guns, rocket thrusters, and glowing eyes. Gaseous Girl almost thought it was a robot, but then the metal faceplate popped open. “Oh, no,, you’re not-”

“Good evening. I have the honor to be Lady Madeleine Smith-Harrington, alias Violet Heartfire, of the Superhero Corps. Whom might I be addressing?”

Gaseous Girl rolled her eyes. “I’m Madeleine. So’s she. So’s you. This is getting fun.”

“I beg your pardon, miss?”

Mad Maddie giggled. “Lookit Downton Abbey over here.”

Lady Smith-Harrington’s faceplate slammed shut again. “There is no call to be rude, whomever you might be. I was only inquiring-”

“Okay, let’s calm down here,” Gaseous Girl said, trying to get hold of the situation. “Look, Lonely Heart-”

“Violet Heartfire. Vi-o-let. Heart. Fire. I did not imagine this would be difficult to remember.”

“You ain’t even got a heart on there!” Mad Maddie observed.

“It’s symbolic,” Heartfire said frostily.

“Symbolic my-”

The behemoth chose that fortuitous moment to stagger up for one more go at it. “I’ll handle this,” Gaseous Girl said. She took one step. Behemoth Bob suddenly vanished in a spray of red light. In its place, a little gerbil skittered around on the ground.

“Was that horrible creature just transformed into a gerbil?” asked the bewildered Lady Smith-Harrington. Then her question answered itself, as��a figure cloaked in deep indigo abruptly materialized in midair above the gerbil. The figure threw back its hood, revealing a horribly familiar face. She yelled something in words that sounded vaguely Latin.

Gaseous Girl really,��really��hated time things.

This post was written for the Mutant 750 challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press, and is part of the Gaseous Girl Mysteries. Thanks for reading!

Love in the Time of Laser Cannons

Chaos reigned aboard the��Charlotte’s Moon.��Aliens ran screaming everywhere, as klaxons blared like heart-stricken moose over their heads. The casino gaming ship was under massive laser cannon attack, and judging by the way the lights kept flickering and the deck kept bucking under everyone’s feet or tentacles or repulsor-lift chairs, the ship wasn’t putting up a great defense. It had been a former warship; it had once pulverized small moons. If it was being hurt this bad, what did that say about the attacking ships? The various beings on board, gamers and security staff and waitresses alike, drew swift conclusions, and decided the thing to do was get the heck off the Charlotte’s Moon as fast as possible.

In all the commotion, no one paid much attention to a random space otter and his squidling companion. “You know,” Sarah May yelled as they ran down a corridor, “I think we might be in mortal danger! Didn’t Constance say she could help if we were in mortal danger?”

Mr. Stamper didn’t answer her. He’d made his own plans. When they came across an empty turbolift, he grabbed Sarah May, flung her inside, dived in after her, and barked “Sickbay!” The turbolift dutifully raced off.

“Why-” Sarah May asked, wincing. She had landed wrong on one of her tentacles. Sarah May rather wished escapes didn’t involve so much flinging about of one’s self.

“They’ve got emergency teleporters,” Mr. Stamper said shortly.

The turbolift screeched to a halt outside sickbay. A staticky voice said something incongruously chirpy about having a nice day as the doors whooshed open. Mr. Stamper charged into sickbay, and cut his way through the crowd of panicking medical assistants to the emergency teleporter. He was about to key in the coordinates for his shuttlecraft, parked on the planet’s surface below, when Sarah May let out an overjoyed squeak. “Domingo!”

The medical squid had indeed discovered them. He didn’t look happy. “That���s for authorized medical staff use only. And you, sir, you assaulted a ship’s medical officer. I’ll have to report-”

Sarah May rose to the occasion. “Domingo,” she said, throwing herself in between him and the space otter, “you remember that night��on Magel Five, don’t you?��With the sunsets and me?”��

“Of course I remember,” Domingo said. “But-”

“You said forever,” Sarah May insisted, her tentacles waving in agitation. “Forever and��ever,��you said. And then you��left.”

Domingo looked down at the floor. “I couldn’t say goodbye,” he said chokingly. “It hurt. I missed you. All through medical school I missed you. Then I tried, but I couldn’t find you again, and-”

“Forget all that,” Sarah May said. “I’m here now. You’re here now.” She surprised herself with her own boldness, but what did she have to lose? Imminent space annihilation concentrates the mind wonderfully. “You said how you felt about me before. What about now? Domingo Kirrexanvex, do you love me?”

She waited for two agonizing seconds.

���Yes,��� said Domingo.

Sarah May leaped at him. Tentacles interlocked. There was a distinct smerp.

���Huzzah,��� said Mr. Stamper. ���How romantic. Can we leave the exploding ship now?���

This story is part of my ongoing series,��The Angel and the Space Otter.��It might also have been influenced by Valentine’s Day. Thanks for reading!