A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 34

Waking Up Green (short fiction)

Empire City

Cathy woke up with fur. Long and shaggy. Fluffy and green. She couldn’t even see until she went into the bathroom and trimmed the hair falling over her eyes.

“Well, damn it.”

Bill took the transformation a lot better than her. “Maybe it’ll fall out in a day or two. I’ve heard it’ll do that sometimes.”

Not all mutations were permanent. For those born with them, mutation was usually along for the ride, but spontaneous mutation sometimes didn’t always take. There’d been a guy three doors down who had a third eye for a week.

“I look like a sheepdog,” she said.

“A cute sheepdog,” Bill said.

Cathy rolled her eyes. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”

He squeezed into their tiny bathroom and hugged her. She loved him, but he’d always been the more touchy-feely of the two of them. “Your romantic impulses couldn’t have worst timing.”

“Honey, we both knew this was a risk when we moved to this town.”

She sneezed. God, she hoped she wasn’t allergic to herself. She catalogued the new challenges her life would have now. Shedding. A drastic increase in the cost of haircuts. She’d heard that Summers in Empire could be miserable, what with all the heat generated by the people and machines packed like sardines on top of one another. Fur was only bound to make that more miserable.

“It could be worse,” he said. “You could’ve grown an arm out of your back or a tail.”

“I’d prefer a tail,” she replied.

“Tail might be cute.” Bill kissed her neck.

She playfully elbowed him in the gut. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Guilty as charged.”

He pulled her out of the bathroom and danced with her in their bedroom / kitchen / dining area. She danced with him, even if the space barely allowed a twirl. He kissed her. His hand undid her robe.

She pulled back and held the robe closed. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“You’re still you,” he said. “And I love you.”

“I’m a yeti from Mars.”

“You’re beautiful. You’re still the lady a guy like me is lucky to have married. Fur doesn’t change that.”

He put his hand on her neck, slid her robe around her shoulders. She didn’t stop him from dropping it to her feet.

“This is Empire,” he said. “Nobody gives a damn about stuff like this.”

She didn’t care about anybody else. All she cared about was him, and she didn’t see anything different in his eyes.

He leaned in and kissed her. Nothing had changed. Nothing important.

Bill pulled back and coughed. “Sorry,” he said with a smile. “Little hairball there.”

Cathy laughed. How he always managed to do something that should make her mad and get away with it, she didn’t know. But he always did, and she loved him for it.

She called in mutated for work, and they spent the morning in bed.

Directives (short fiction)

Empire City

Jeff owed a lot of people money. He’d made bad decisions, but the money had been intentional. If you owed enough people, then chances were good that somebody somewhere would want you to stay alive on the off chance you might pay them back. He’d gotten good at talking his way out of trouble and making promises everyone knew he would never be able to keep, not even him. Sure, he rarely talked himself out of a beating, but broken bones and bruises healed. He’d learned to live with pain, and he told himself that if he stuck around long enough, if he didn’t give up, he’d make it someday. He almost believed it too.

Today was different though. Today, they’d sent an auto to deal with him. It was waiting in his shitty apartment. It was long and thin, easily mistaken for a coat rack in the darkness. But Jeff didn’t own a coat rack. Its body language was as unreadable as its cylindrical head. Some wise guy had painted two eyes and a frown on it.

“I’m good for the money,” said Jeff.

The auto said nothing. A pistol was magnetically coupled to its hip.

“I swear it,” said Jeff. “I just need a few more days. A week at the most.”

“My files indicate this is a fiscal implausibility,” said the auto. “You have no prospects, and if by some chance you do gain money, my analysis suggests you would simply gamble it away. Or possibly invest it in a moneymaking scheme that will inevitably fail to yield a return.”

The auto turned its face at Jeff. The frown was its only expression, but he had the distinct impression it didn’t approve of him. God, he hated robots. He hated them when they were supposed to be helping him. He hated them worse when they weren’t. He could talk to people. He could convince them to give him a break. Robots were different. Robots were cold analysis and difference engines.

“You are not good for the money, Jeff. You will never be good for the money. Even if you were, this isn’t my directive.” The auto put one hand on Jeff’s shoulder. Despite the impression left by its spindly arms, its grip was strong. Strong enough to wring Jeff’s neck. It pushed him down in his chair. “Stay there.”

The auto walked into his bathroom, the only other room in Jeff’s tiny apartment, and closed the door.

He sat in the chair for twenty minutes. He thought about getting up once, but both times, he figured following the robot’s orders was his only chance of getting out of this mess. He could run for it, but the auto would track him down again.

The front door slid open, and a pair of bruisers entered the apartment. The auto must’ve disabled the automatic locks. One of the bruisers grabbed Jeff by his shoulder and hoisted him up.

“I’m not supposed to leave the chair,” said Jeff quietly.

The thug laughed. Then his head vaporized in a cloud of red. His body fell to the floor. Jeff fell along with it, choking on the atomized brains and blood.
The auto in the bathroom door was already across the room. It grappled with the second thug. The contest was short, and the thin auto threw his opponent into a kitchen area, shattered most of Jeff’s dishes.

“Chico sends his regards,” said the auto.

The auto killed the second thug with its overpowered weapon. It tossed the weapon at Jeff, still retching on the floor.

“Someone will ask you if you killed these men. You will say yes.”

“Why?” asked Jeff.

“I don’t ask questions,” replied the auto. “I just follow directives. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the same.”

The auto walked out of the door.

Jeff sat in his apartment, staring at the two corpses. He picked up the heater and considered shooting himself with it. It was probably the only way out of this mess.

But it was only prison. He could survive that, and in the meantime, nobody could get mad at him for owing them money while he was stuck behind bars. Who knew? It might give him the time to finally turn his life around.

He sat in his chair and waited for the cops to show up.

Directives

Empire City

Jeff owed a lot of people money. He’d made bad decisions, but the money had been intentional. If you owed enough people, then chances were good that somebody somewhere would want you to stay alive on the off chance you might pay them back. He’d gotten good at talking his way out of trouble and making promises everyone knew he would never be able to keep, not even him. Sure, he rarely talked himself out of a beating, but broken bones and bruises healed. He’d learned to live with pain, and he told himself that if he stuck around long enough, if he didn’t give up, he’d make it someday. He almost believed it too.

Today was different though. Today, they’d sent an auto to deal with him. It was waiting in his shitty apartment. It was long and thin, easily mistaken for a coat rack in the darkness. But Jeff didn’t own a coat rack. Its body language was as unreadable as its cylindrical head. Some wise guy had painted two eyes and a frown on it.

“I’m good for the money,” said Jeff.

The auto said nothing. A pistol was magnetically coupled to its hip.

“I swear it,” said Jeff. “I just need a few more days. A week at the most.”

“My files indicate this is a fiscal implausibility,” said the auto. “You have no prospects, and if by some chance you do gain money, my analysis suggests you would simply gamble it away. Or possibly invest it in a moneymaking scheme that will inevitably fail to yield a return.”

The auto turned its face at Jeff. The frown was its only expression, but he had the distinct impression it didn’t approve of him. God, he hated robots. He hated them when they were supposed to be helping him. He hated them worse when they weren’t. He could talk to people. He could convince them to give him a break. Robots were different. Robots were cold analysis and difference engines.

“You are not good for the money, Jeff. You will never be good for the money. Even if you were, this isn’t my directive.” The auto put one hand on Jeff’s shoulder. Despite the impression left by its spindly arms, its grip was strong. Strong enough to wring Jeff’s neck. It pushed him down in his chair. “Stay there.”

The auto walked into his bathroom, the only other room in Jeff’s tiny apartment, and closed the door.

He sat in the chair for twenty minutes. He thought about getting up once, but both times, he figured following the robot’s orders was his only chance of getting out of this mess. He could run for it, but the auto would track him down again.

The front door slid open, and a pair of bruisers entered the apartment. The auto must’ve disabled the automatic locks. One of the bruisers grabbed Jeff by his shoulder and hoisted him up.

“I’m not supposed to leave the chair,” said Jeff quietly.

The thug laughed. Then his head vaporized in a cloud of red. His body fell to the floor. Jeff fell along with it, choking on the atomized brains and blood.
The auto in the bathroom door was already across the room. It grappled with the second thug. The contest was short, and the thin auto threw his opponent into a kitchen area, shattered most of Jeff’s dishes.

“Chico sends his regards,” said the auto.

The auto killed the second thug with its overpowered weapon. It tossed the weapon at Jeff, still retching on the floor.

“Someone will ask you if you killed these men. You will say yes.”

“Why?” asked Jeff.

“I don’t ask questions,” replied the auto. “I just follow directives. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the same.”

The auto walked out of the door.

Jeff sat in his apartment, staring at the two corpses. He picked up the heater and considered shooting himself with it. It was probably the only way out of this mess.

But it was only prison. He could survive that, and in the meantime, nobody could get mad at him for owing them money while he was stuck behind bars. Who knew? It might give him the time to finally turn his life around.

He sat in his chair and waited for the cops to show up.

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

It took Felix a long time to process the shambling undead thing before him. It didn’t occur to him to run. Not immediately. His brain, confronted with this weird creature, had to put all its efforts into rebooting. Survival instincts took a backseat. If the zombie had been only a step faster, she would’ve pounced on him, buried her teeth in his throat, torn his tender flesh from his bones.

But she wasn’t that fast, and once his senses came back, she was easy to outdistance by backing away slowly.

His first thought, when he finally did find one worth holding onto, was to deride the situation as ridiculous. He’d never found the lurching undead very terrifying, and this decayed creature struck him as more comical than threatening. Not ha-ha funny. More pathetic and accidentally goofy kind of funny.

If he hadn’t spent the last few months hiding from killer robots that he might have taken this thing more seriously, but one zombie was hardly anything to panic over. Felix appraised the situation with the level-head that had kept him alive this long.

Zombies in fiction (and up to this point those were the only zombies he had any experience with) usually died if you destroyed their brain, but he was unarmed. He deliberately didn’t carry weapons. A gun might make him feel better, but against robots, it was useless. A moment of panic, a pointless gunshot, might give away his location. Rather than risk it, he avoided them. It kept him from acting foolishly.

Right now, a gun would’ve been nice. Or a bat. Something capable of putting down the zombie dragging itself toward him. His next best option was to lead her away from his apartment and ditch her somewhere safe. The monster might be able to track him down. He had no idea how it functioned. But it would buy him time to think of something.

“Want a bite?” he asked. “Follow me.”

The zombie grumbled, sounding terribly annoyed, but she followed. It was going well until he stepped outside and noticed another person trudging down the middle of the street. He’d seen enough movies to know what to expect, and he wasn’t disappointed. This too was a member of the walking dead. The guy looked a little fresher than the woman. He didn’t bear any obvious wounds, but gray dirt covered his jogger’s jumpsuit and his eyes were vacant. The new zombie noticed Felix and wasted no time shuffling toward him.

He didn’t panic. The zombies were too slow and dull-witted to be much of a threat. It was easy to stay a safe distance ahead of them. It was, in some strange way, like a relaxing stroll with some unpleasant company. After a few blocks, he started talking to them.

“So being dead must suck.”

The jogger zombie groaned.

“Did the robots send you? Or is this just some weird side effect of that?” He pointed to the red clouds overhead.

The pair moaned.

They did respond with some manner of noise when he spoke to them, making this the closest thing to a conversation he’d had in a long, long time.

A third zombie announced itself with an angry howl from the roof of a thirty story building.

“How the hell did he get up there?” asked Felix.

The female zombie gurgled.

“Good point.” He hadn’t understood, but he didn’t want to offend her.

The roof zombie shambled dangerously close to the edge.

“He really should be more—”

One misstep sent the zombie hurtling earthward. The creature didn’t make a sound aside from the dull thud when it hit the sidewalk. Felix ran over to check on the thing.
The man, dressed in a tattered business suit, was in bad shape, even for a living corpse. His legs had been mangled by the landing and his head had cracked open, spilling some of his brains across the pavement. He didn’t move, appearing to be genuinely dead. Although Felix elected to avoid getting too close to the thing.

It had to be the brains. It was always the brains. He filed away that information.

“Poor bastard.”

He continued his directionless stroll through the city. He needed a good place to ditch a zombie. Ideally, he could drop them in a pit or something from which they couldn’t escape. He could lock them away someplace, but it seemed a risky proposition. Any place he could trap them in was just as easily a place he could wind up trapped in himself. He would be damned if he survived the robot apocalypse only to die like an idiot. Getting ripped apart by killer robots, he could live with that. Dying at the hands of these shuffling morons, he wouldn’t let that happen.

It wouldn’t be hard to get his hands on a gun. Every door he’d ever tried in this city had been open. The robots hadn’t just abducted every other living thing. They’d also given Felix run of the place. All he had to do was go into any of a number of gun stores or pawn shops, pick his weapon of choice. He’d never fired a gun before, but it couldn’t be difficult to shoot the shambling undead at point blank range.

He didn’t have it in him. He put aside fear that gunshots might draw robots to him. There hadn’t been a trace of the bots in the hour he led the zombies through the city. Not even the little hovering drones that served as sensor sweepers. Even if the robots came investigating, his tinfoil hat and months of experience left him feeling confident he could handle it.

He couldn’t shoot these people. He knew they weren’t people anymore, but they were close enough for a man who’d been alone for so long. The odds of Darlene and Gordon snapping out of their stupor and wanting to be his friend were slim to none, but he could hope.

Giving them names didn’t make it any easier. That’d probably been a mistake.

His best option was to trap them somewhere they couldn’t get away. Somewhere not too inconvenient in case he wanted to check on them. And he would want to check on them because the apocalypse was boring as hell and it’d give him something to do.

A jail cell would work best, but leading zombies into a small room with only one exit could go wrong very quickly. He wasn’t sure he trusted locks to hold Darlene and Gordon in check. Zombies always seemed to get through those in movies and books. He felt a bit silly relying on fiction to deal with this problem, but it was his only frame of reference.

A pit would work best. Something they couldn’t climb out of. And he knew just where to find one.

There was a fitness and sports club he sometimes visited. It was the kind of place he could never afford before the end of the world.

Darlene and Gordon followed him into the Olympic swimming pool area. He plucked the long pole with the net off the wall and tried to use it to push Darlene into the pool from a safe distance. She was uncooperative.

“Come on, Darlene,” he said. “Work with me here.”

She growled and clawed at the pole with her stiff fingers.

It took a surprising amount of effort to get her to fall, considering the sorry state of her rotting body. It didn’t help that Gordon kept advancing, forcing Felix to back away and regroup several times. They’d almost completely circled the pool when her foot slipped on the tile, and she tumbled into the water with a splash. Funnily enough, he hadn’t even pushed her. She sank to the bottom like a stone, proving zombies couldn’t tread water, much to Felix’s relief.

Getting Gordon was a bit of a chore. He was even less cooperative, but it was one man versus one zombie, which put the odds more in Felix’s favor. He tried gentle coaxing, then more insistent prodding. Finally, he gave the corpse a few good whacks and in Gordon went, joining her at the bottom.

Felix sat on in one of the poolside chairs and waited. Just to be sure either zombie couldn’t get out. They only trudged around aimlessly. Little bits of gray flesh and hair floated to the surface. He wondered if they’d bloat, rising to as the internal gasses of decay built up. The idea of roly poly walking dead trundling after him made him smile. He pictured popping them like balloons, though in reality, it would probably be less cartoonish, more gruesome. But he spent his days dodging robots and pushing zombies into swimming pools. Reality wasn’t a major concern.

Darlene and Gordon stared up at him from the depths. Darlene seemed especially hurt by his rejection.

“Sorry, guys.”

He left them to their watery restlessness. His walk home didn’t go smoothly. Three times, he crossed path with more undead. A lone zombie dressed as a clown because there was always a clown zombie. After ditching that one at the pool, he was halfway home before running across a group of three hungry dead that proved a little more troublesome. They refused to stay in a tight group like Darlene and Gordon had been polite enough to do, but he was careful and kept them from flanking him. They went in the pool easily enough. He mastered the technique of sticking the pole between their ankles and with a twist, he could send the most stubborn undead falling in. The final zombie group was a couple of kids, maybe ten years old. He dumped them into the water like an old pro at this point.

After that, he made it home without further distractions. He went back to his apartment and for the first time in months, locked the door. He’d never bothered before because the tin foil on the walls did more to protect him from robots than any flimsy lock. Now that zombies were in the equation, he wondered if he should board up the small windows in his basement apartment.

It was nice to have a project to work on.

The cat looked up from its nap and meowed once at him.

“Honey, I’m home. You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve been having.”

He sat beside the cat and petted it. It rubbed against his hand, gently kneaded his jeans with its claws.

In a way, he felt more alive than he had in a long time. Yesterday, the cat. Today, the zombies. After months of living in a perpetual, unchanging robot nightmare, anything new was something worthwhile.

For the first time in ages, he was actually looking forward to tomorrow.

He fed the cat, fixed its litter box, played video games. Before going to bed, he watched Night of the Living Dead, both the original and the remake. Far from being terrifying, he saw it as a how-to guide on what not to do during the zombie apocalypse.

Thus prepared, he fell asleep more soundly than he had in months.

Bad Meat (short fiction)

Just a warning.  This one’s pretty grim.

 

When you kill a man enough times, you can’t help but get to know him. I’d killed Owen (or a version of Owen) nineteen times at this point. This was number twenty, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t getting easier. It was almost routine at this point.

Owen was always a good guy. He might be an accountant in one version or a janitor in another. The job was always small and inconsequential. He had a round, unthreatening manner built into his genetic code, and you couldn’t help but like the guy.

And I killed him about once a month.

I tried to make it quick, painless. It wasn’t his fault that he had to die. But sometimes, I screwed up. I was only human. Well, not quite, but the expression still stands.

He lay dazed on the public bathroom floor. He clutched his shoulder where

I’d shot him. Blood pooled on the tile.

“Sorry, Owen,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

I should’ve finished him off, but maybe he deserved to know.

“It’s your genetic material,” I explained. “It’s engineered to be no good. Allowed to spread, it’ll turn the human race into a subservient slave race, ripe for the plucking.”

He gave me that look. Like I was crazy. Whenever I tried to explain, the Owens always gave me that look.

I pulled off my face to reveal the blue, reptilian flesh beneath. It shut him up. Or maybe he was going into shock.

“I’m here to keep that helping. You’re bad meat, Owen. For the good of your world, you have to die.”

“Please,” he said, “I have a wife.”

I sighed. “That just makes it worse.”

After I killed him, I put my face back on. I left Owen number twenty behind and counted my blessings. So far, I’d caught all the Owens before they’d passed on their genetic booby trap. One day, I’d be too late.

One day, I’d have to kill more than an Owen.

Time and Forgiveness (short fiction)

Elena held onto it for twenty years, kept it back in her closet, hidden among the other accumulated keepsakes and knick knacks. Everybody had a box filled with secrets and junk.

She’d taken that box and sifted through the junk. She’d found the shoebox, taped shut with two or three rolls of duct tape. Just to be safe. She could never be too safe. The shoebox was old and dented, but it’d held together.

She drove to the graveyard, a six hour drive, with the shoebox beside her. When she was four hours away, the box’s contents would thump every so often. When she was two, it made a dreadful growl now and then. When she was at the front gate, it squeaked and clicked with gleeful anticipation.

She almost chickened out.

She thought she’d have to dig Rose up. Elena had brought a shovel. But when she was standing over the grave, the thing in the box clawed its way out. The shriveled gray heart on a dozen little spider legs hopped to the earth and dug its way down, disappearing in a flash.

She waited ten minutes. She almost chickened out again. She didn’t want to have this conversation.

Rose clawed her way to the surface. Tall, lithe, covered in dirt, pushing maggots and worms from her regenerating flesh. Rose had always been beautiful. Even after twenty years in the earth, she was still the most gorgeous creature made by God or things similar enough to God to not squander time debating. It took only a minute for her skin to heal to its glorious flawlessness. Her long, black hair repelled the dirt. It shone in the moonlight. Her only flaw at the moment was the raw, pink flesh where her heart had returned to nest.

“Holy shit.” Rose sucked in a breath, spit out years of accumulated dust. Her voice was raw, but still kind of throaty and seductive. “Never thought I’d see you again.”

“I’m sorry.”

Rose’s bright green eyes darkened. “You’re sorry? Do you have any idea how boring it was down there?”

Elena shrugged. “I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Okay. I can’t imagine. But I’m sorry.”

“Is that it? You’re sorry?”

“You could bury me for twenty years if it’ll make you feel better.”

Rose scowled. “I should bury you for a hundred, at least.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

“Forget it. What’s time to us? For the record, I’m sorry too. We’ll call it even.”

Elena had never held Rose’s beauty against her, but there were times, she sure as hell hated how magnanimous she was. Now she was counting on it, hoping it hadn’t atrophied after the decades.

“I love you,” said Elena.

“I know you do,” said Rose. But she left the empty reply. It hurt, but Elena could hardly blame her.

“I missed you.”

Rose approached. She smelled so good. She’d always smelled so good.

“I know you did.”

“What do we do now?” asked Elena.

“We go on.” Rose kissed Elena lightly. “It’s what we do.”

The two immortals left the dead behind and walked hand-in-hand into eternity.

Mean Streets (short fiction)

There were only a four or five of us generation one autocabs still prowling the mean streets of the city. Ever since the Learned Council had passed an ordinance requiring all vehicles be piloted, we were an obsolete design. People didn’t like self-driving machines. They liked having someone to talk to. Even if that someone was only a robot in the driver’s seat. Gave it the personal touch.

Most the autocabs were retrofitted. Their electronic brains ripped out and tossed on the scrapheap. But some, like me, had escaped the wrench by being purchased by less ethical companies that wanted a cab that could be trusted to get people where they were going without asking too many questions or blabbing to their buddies at the local bar. Being an autocab gave me a front row ticket to the worst Empire had to offer, but what choice did I have? A hovercraft’s gotta do what it takes to survive.

The latest fare was a twitchy guy in a wrinkled, sweaty shirt with a pair of suitcases. I offered to stow the luggage in my trunk, but he nixed that idea. I’d seen plenty of twitchy guys in my passenger seat, but this guy was downright pitiable. I didn’t know what he was up to, but I knew he was in over his head. But I didn’t ask questions. I just drove the fares.

He gave me the address, and we were off. He didn’t say nothing, and I didn’t say nothing, and when we arrived at the destination, I opened the door.

“Have a nice day, pal.” It was the first thing I’d said to him.

He didn’t reply. He walked over to a couple of rough-looking mugs holding onto a very nervous-looking lady. None of my business, I reminded myself, as I backed away into the dark and switched off my headlights. The alley was dark enough, along with my deep blue paint job, to hide me in the shadows.

Why was I watching? Don’t really know. Something about the scene didn’t play right with me. I’d seen this particular scene, or variation of it, more times than I cared to remember. This one though, I wanted to see play out.

Twitchy dropped his suitcases in front of the thugs. “Here’s the money. Let her go.”

The bigger thug—the muscle, I assumed—popped open the case.

“You don’t have to count it,” said Twitchy.

“You’re a no good embezzling piece of shit,” said the leaner thug, the brains of the pair. “I think we’ll count it.”

It was all there.

The thugs pulled rayguns from their jackets.

“But you said if I gave the money back—”

They shot him. The rays burned neat little holes through his chest. He fell to his knees, then on his face. He squirmed for a while, and the thugs watched him squirm rather than put him out of his misery.

The lady, crying, knelt by his side as he died slow. He whispered something to her. An apology maybe. Couldn’t detect it. He took another minute or two to expire.

“What do we do with her?” asked the muscle.

“Boss says to kill her too,” replied the brains.

Tears still moist on her face, the lady stared them in the face. “You can tell your boss to go to hell.”

“Yeah,” said the brains. “We’ll be sure to do that.”

I gunned my engine and shot out of the dark. The thugs fired a few shots that dented my paint job and blew away my rightview optical sensor. Who needed to make right turns anyway? The muscle and the brains bounced off my hood. I hadn’t hit them hard enough to kill them, but they struggled to get up.

I popped the door. “Get in.”

The lady jumped inside, and I was off. The thugs fired a few more shots, but I was already gone by the time they could aim. I zipped us into a quiet spot in a parking garage.

When she finally stopped, I asked, “You all right, lady?”

“No.” She stifled another round of sobs. “Not at all. Thank you.”

I’d like to say her thanks made it all worth it, but I’d broken the one directive an autocab had in this town. Don’t get involved. It’d been a good run, but it was probably better this way. I’d seen more than enough rotten. Better to go to the junkyard for doing the right thing.

“Where to?” I asked.

She didn’t reply. In the chaos of her escape, she’d grabbed the suitcases. They sat in the backseat with her, and she eyed them like they were the answer to all her problems and poison at the same time.

And I waited for her to tell me where to go.

B Movie Mentality

I’m going to talk about storytelling, and it is going to be critical of the current nature of storytelling.  Specifically, it’ll be about film, but first, a few disclaimers:

These are not universal conclusions.  There are exceptions to every rule, and for every example I’m about to give, I’m sure many people will disagree.  That’s cool.  This isn’t a hard science, where right and wrong are obvious and testable.  These are simply the musings of a low mid-list novelologist.  They might not be particularly flattering or positive thoughts, they are no doubt tinged with some of the baggage I carry as a “light” writer.

Still, I think they’re worth sharing.

So the latest Transformers film is making boatloads of cash.  Somehow.  It’s rather strange when you consider how most people seem to have such a low opinion of it.  Or it would be strange if I didn’t have a pretty solid grasp on how to make an audience happy at this point.

Here’s the first thing we need to get out of the way.  Making an audience “happy” is not the same as giving them something good.  It’s not even really about entertaining them.  By The Mighty Robot King, I hate saying that, but I can’t deny it any longer.  Perhaps it’s that word “happy” that’s the problem.  It conjures the idea of pleasure, of joy, of contentment.  This, sadly, is not the kind of happiness I’m talking about.  For one thing, that sort of happiness is too transitory, too difficult to capture reliably.  We can’t even do it for ourselves, so how can we honestly expect storytellers to do it?

I’m talking about the happiness of getting exactly what you expect.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  Just exactly what you are promised, even if what you are promised isn’t something you really want in the first place.  This is nothing new in the world of stories.  Stories have just as often been a way to kill time rather than satisfy some deeper part of ourselves.  Not every story is a classic.  Most stories exist only to give us something to occupy our time because the other option is to be bored.

Yes, this is why fanclubs exist.  This is why, as much as any other reason, that people obsess over their favorite stories and ideas.  Firefly fandom is built as much on the notion of needing something to occupy a lot of its fans’ free time as it is on the quality of the show.  Same for Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and just about any other fandom you can imagine.  That’s not to say these things are not worthy of our time, but there’s really no reason to scour the internet for information about these things, to gather together, to share rumors and greet actors if the story was the point.  We’d partake of the art, and we’d move on.

The vast majority of media is throwaway.  That’s not a slight.  It takes talent to create even a disposal movie, a catchy pop tune that won’t be remembered next year.  It isn’t easy, and only those who sit on the sidelines think creating something forgettable is simple.  For centuries, stories have been produced to be consumed and forgotten, and I’m a fan of many a B movie or obscure little novel that nobody really remembers anymore.  We all are.

The difference is that the forgettable has now become mainstream.  The Transformers movies (with the possible exception of the first one) all have the weight and longevity of the most uninspired B movies.  I’ve mentioned how utterly empty Godzilla or Star Trek: Into Darkness are, and while that’s no crime, it is strange when you think about the millions upon millions of dollars spent to make and promote them.

And that’s where we are now.  It’s not that we’re making bad movies.  We’re making forgettable movies.  And we always have.  But we didn’t spend 200 million dollars to make forgettable movies.  Epics of the past were meant to be sweeping and memorable.  They didn’t always succeed, but that was their goal at least.  They had ambition, and that ambition was to be commercially successful AND be art AND maybe be worth remembering twenty years later.  Failure was common, and there’s little doubt you will find plenty of noble mistakes buried in our storytelling past.

The difference now is that a lot of creators just don’t give a shit anymore.  Even worse, the audience seems to have accepted this.

And that’s why a series like Transformers continues to plug away.  We know  as we walk into the theater that we are going to see an agreeable piece of cotton candy.  A “Popcorn Movie”, as I’ve so come to despise the genre.  We don’t expect anything from it other than to fill a few hours of our time.  It’s the B movie and pulp novel tradition.  But it’s no longer the domain of the B movie.  It’s the mainstream.

I’m not going to attack Michael Bay, Gareth Edwards, or J.J. Abrams for their efforts.  As B movie makers, they are all undoubtedly talented.  Though I wonder if there aren’t plenty of B movie kings of the past who could’ve done just as well if they’d been given carte blanche with all the resources these filmmakers get.  I wonder, too, how much slack we’d cut Ed Wood if he’d managed to get hold of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license and trade on our misplaced nostalgia.

Ed Wood was certainly a poor director, but the guy had ambition.  Even his worst movies are trying to say something, though the message is hopelessly lost in the muddle of his low budgets and lack of resources.  Gareth Edwards’s Monsters is a plodding, dull film that we forgive (or even adore) because of its low budget.  But his big budget remake of Godzilla isn’t any better.  It just has more expensive actors, better FX, and a property that thrives off of decades of nostalgia.  And low expectations.  Don’t forget that.  As a kaiju movie fan, I found little more annoying than the justification that Gareth’s film is vapid but all kaiju movies are.  (They aren’t, but that’s a talk for another day.)

The problem I have with these films (and many others) isn’t that they’re mildly interesting and ultimately forgettable.  That criticism is often leveled at my own books, and while I don’t always agree, I also think that even if it’s true, that’s not a bad thing.  Still, if I was making millions of dollars to create forgettable stories, I’d find it confusing.  I wouldn’t turn it down.  I don’t have that level of integrity, Action Force.  It’s why I can’t hold anything against Bay.  The guy gets paid handsomely, gets to make movies he likes to make (and I don’t question that these are films he enjoys), and everyone eats the trifles, happy because it filled a few hours of their day.  Then the audience goes home and acts as if they aren’t part of the problem.

And here’s where it gets tough, folks.  I’m loathe to point fingers at the audience because there’s a real danger of elitism here, but some things need to be said.

You deserve more than that.

I’m not talking about those who genuinely enjoyed Bay’s work.  If you walk out of a Bay movie overjoyed by it, if you adore it, then good for you.  I pass no judgment.  We all have our buttons and if Bay pushes yours, I’m happy for you.

But for everyone else, if you walked out without feeling that sense of satisfaction, I can only ask, “Why aren’t you angry about that?”  Someone spent millions of dollars to give you something without any weight.  Someone took three hours of your time, and you’ll never get those hours back.  You could’ve spent that time doing a dozen other things, all of them more satisfying.  So why settle?

Perhaps it’s unfair, but the thing that bothers me the most is that this is a huge industry at work.  It’s one thing when a small group of filmmakers makes a simple action flick or a throwaway horror movie.  A romantic comedy that brings a smile to your face before fading from memory, I’ve got no problem with that.  But these are major motion pictures, and they don’t give a shit about about you.  You’re only a ticket to be catered to, and the easiest way to cater is to not try.  Give the people exactly what they want and NOTHING else.  Convince them that they don’t need anything more, train them to rush to the theater by reflex, and rely on the fact that the audience will only be as critical as you tell them to be.

I hate to be That Guy, but you ARE the problem.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Champions (short fiction)

If anyone had asked the dragon Redtail if a knight would ever get the best of her, she’d have killed them on the spot. Knights were silly little things. Armor didn’t keep her from crushing them beneath her tail, and if she gnawed long enough, the armor always came off. She feared no knight, no warriors, no champion. Perhaps an army might give her some trouble, but marching an army to her lair from the nearest city was no easy feat. The one time someone had tried it, she’d just flown away.

Yet here she was, bowed beneath the foot of a mere man. True, he had a magic sword and a magic shield, and he was tall and strong and undoubtedly skilled. But she was still embarrassed by it.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Do it.”

He lowered his sword. “I’m not here to slay you.”

“You aren’t? Then why attack me?”

“You attacked me.” The champion lifted his boot off her muzzle. “I merely defended myself.”

She raised her head and ran her claws along the wound across her nose. “Isn’t this embarrassing? It’s just that nobody ever comes up here to NOT attack me.”

The champion removed his helmet. His grayish-green face marked him as an orc, not a man. “Think nothing of it. I hope I didn’t hurt you too badly.”

“I’ll heal. I didn’t know orcs could become knights.”

He smiled. “We’re a new order. Our mission is the protection of all those menaced by the so-called heroes of man, who think themselves beyond justice, who slaughter those who mean no harm to anyone and justify it by calling their victims monster.”

Redtail nodded. “A noble pursuit. How many are you?”

“Just me. But there will be more.”

“One champion against the bloodlust and honor of men? I admire your ambition.”

“They’ll learn.” He climbed onto a giant, hairy beetle with a saddle tied to it. “Or they’ll die. Makes little difference to me. The villagers won’t bother you again. I’ve encouraged them to move elsewhere.”

She glanced at the bottom of the mountain where the village had once been. It was now just fire and smoke. She’d been here before the village and never once bothered it. But it seemed at least once a month someone came to protect it from her. It was a relief to see it gone.

“They’ll be back,” she said. “They always come back.”

“And so will I,” he said. “And if they aren’t causing you any trouble, I’ll be happy to let them be. If not . . . . ”

He saluted as he rode away. He was halfway down the mountain before Redtail spread her wings and flew after him. If an orc could be a champion, she mused, why not a dragon?

One of These Doomsdays, Chapter One

Hi there, Action Force.  Today, instead of a short fiction piece, I’ve decided to post the opening chapter to my novel One of These Doomsdays.  The novel is unsold at the moment, and while I work on the Constance Verity trilogy, it’ll probably be a while before Doomsdays sees print.  I don’t know how much I’ll end up putting up, but if it gets a good response, we’ll see.  

Speaking of response, feel free to leave a comment.  Or, if you’d prefer a more direct message, e-mail me at HIPSTERCTHULHU@HOTMAIL.COM.  I still feel as if I’m working in a vacuum at times, and it’s always nice to hear from fans (and potential fans).  Hope you enjoy it, Action Force.

CHAPTER ONE

The cat was going to get him killed.

Felix ran. Under one arm, he carried the cat in a duffle bag. With his other hand, he held his tin foil hat in place. Rubber bands secured the hat, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

The melvin clomped noisily after him. He could picture its lurching gait, its whipping arms. He’d seen it a dozen times before, though they didn’t usually pursue him.

Technically, it was after the cat, but Felix wasn’t going to give that up, so the target was incidental.
It was just a cat. Except it was possibly the last living thing on Earth, other than him. Not counting microbes, he supposed. The robots probably didn’t have anything against microbes.

Everything else was fair game. The robot apocalypse had been swift, happened without warning. In a day, they’d wiped away all life and had done so with such efficiency that Felix had slept through the whole thing. He’d fallen asleep in front of the TV and awoke to a world without people. Not even corpses. It didn’t make sense. He’d stopped trying to get it to make sense and focused on surviving. It wasn’t much of an existence, being the last human in the city, possibly on the planet. He scraped by on frozen pizzas, scavenged beers, and an extensive DVD collection. And tin foil, that most miraculous of inventions that somehow interfered with the robots’ sensors enough to keep him alive.

He paused to catch his breath. The cat squirmed in the bag, and he squeezed it closer to his body. Felix ducked under an awning and listened. The melvin clanked, and the echo through the streets made it difficult to determine direction.

If he could get the cat back to his apartment, he knew everything would be fine. It was his sanctuary, the only place he was completely safe. In the unending game of robotic death tag his life had become, it was home base.

The cat mewed. He shushed it, but it only made more noise.

“Stupid cat,” said Felix.

The cat refused to be reasonable about this.

The melvin turned the corner. The robot stood eleven feet tall. It had a cylindrical body. Its arms and legs were multi-jointed tentacles. A featureless orb with a spinning ring like a miniature Saturn served as its head.

He called this model a melvin because of the way it moved. It leaned forward in a slouch, and it walked as if it might fall over. It was almost comical, but he assumed its pincers could crush his skull if it ever managed to grab him.

The robots, every single one of them, put a hum in his fillings. It was irritating, but a good early warning system. The melvin approached, and Felix resisted the urge to run. Sudden movement might draw its attention. The robots could track him better when he moved too fast. Especially once they saw him. Although they never truly saw him. They sensed him, like an anomaly worth investigating but they weren’t quite sure how to deal with.

He turned and walked briskly away. He’d escaped certain death more than once by simply strolling his way to safety. It didn’t work with all the robots, but the melvins were a bit stupid.

The robot scanned where Felix had been standing. It bent over and stared, although perhaps that was the wrong word because it didn’t have eyes, at the spot, trying to process it. By the time it decided there was nothing there, he’d be four blocks away and, with some luck, everything would work out fine.

The cat meowed. The melvin straightened, rotated in Felix’s direction.

It marched toward Felix who kept walking. He timed his steps with the machine. It seemed to help. Or maybe he only hoped it did. He slipped away as the robot scanned the street, inch by inch. He left it behind in its fruitless search.

“Stupid cat,” he whispered. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

It couldn’t understand, but he wanted it to. Not just because it would make it a lot easier to get home, but because he needed to believe he and the cat shared a kinship across species.

Felix was lonely. So lonely he hadn’t realized how alone he was. You could get used to anything, but he didn’t want to go back to that. Not as long as he had the cat. He wasn’t certain he could go back. If he lost the cat, he might lose himself.

The cloudy gray sky mocked him. There was no sun, no moon, no stars. There was only the overcast blood red version of day and the misty gray twilight of night. If he were a scientist, he might understand it or come up with a better explanation than Weird Robot Stuff.

If he had been an engineer, he might have been able to explain why the city kept working. Why the subways still ran. Why the traffic lights hadn’t all broken. Why the plumbing hadn’t fallen to pieces. The only answer he had was that the robots were maintaining everything, but he never saw them doing it. Somebody had to be patching the concrete and trimming the trees growing out of their carefully arranged spots in the concrete.

Perhaps they were keeping it pristine and perfect for their true masters. Aliens. Or more intelligent robots. They weren’t doing it for him. He was the last blob of flesh of the old world, and when the masters came, they’d finish him off. He didn’t worry much about that because he could only live a day at a time.

But he wasn’t alone anymore.

He made it back to his apartment. Relief washed over him as he shut the door. He double-checked the tin foil on the walls, making sure everything was in place. He hadn’t survived this long by being sloppy.

He put his foil hat on the shelf and unzipped the duffel. The black cat poked its head out curiously. He scratched it behind the ears, and it purred.

“We’re safe now.”

The cat jumped out of the bag and rubbed against his legs, mewing.

“Bet you’re hungry.”

Felix removed the dozen cat food cans he’d pilfered from the supermarket. The robots kept stocking the shelves too for unfathomable reasons. He opened a can, set it down. The cat ate while he petted it. After, they sat on the couch and watched a movie together.

He wanted to cry.

He didn’t.

He didn’t trust the situation. He didn’t believe it. He questioned the cat’s integrity. Its existence was too improbable. It must have cut a deal with the robots. It would lead them to his sanctuary in exchange for its own life. More than once, he looked into its green eyes, trying to gauge its trustworthiness. Briefly, he considered playing it safe and strangling the likely traitorous animal.

He was pretty sure he’d gone insane. Probably had gone mad years ago. It was only the cat that brought this to his attention. Another good reason to get rid of it.

“I’m going to trust you, cat. Don’t screw me over.”

The cat stretched across his lap. It looked so content, so innocent.

Too innocent.

Felix went to bed. He kept one eye trained on his furry roommate. It took him over an hour to finally fall asleep, but when he did, he slept better than he had in weeks.

He awoke the next morning. The cat was gone, no doubt off to report to its robot masters, who were even now planning on storming the apartment. He had to get out of here. He had to find a new safe haven. He’d have to get more foil. He’d have to find a place with all the things he needed because moving all his stuff would be a pain in the ass. It would have to be a basement apartment. Something secure. Someplace where he wouldn’t be exposed.

The cat jumped onto the bed and meowed at him.

Felix unstiffened.

“Oh, thank God. I didn’t want to move.”

It had crapped in the corner, but he couldn’t get mad. He’d get some litter today. He fed it, refreshed its water, and watched it eat. He was fairly certain the cat could be trusted now, so he allowed himself to cry. Just a few tears.

He put on his foil hat, grabbed his duffel bag. “Sit tight. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

The cat acknowledged him by laying on the couch and licking its crotch.

Felix hiked back to the grocery store. He didn’t see a single robot prowling about. Unusual, but not unprecedented. There were days when the most he saw were hovering orbs on patrol, and others when he only heard the sound of the homicidal machines somewhere far away. Today was silent. Without the robots, the city was quiet as a grave, save for the hum of its electrical grid.

On days like this, Felix would notice the city itself. It was easy to overlook its empty nature when he was being pursued by robots, but when he had time to look around, he spotted all the things wrong with the city itself.

It was difficult to pin down at a glance, but the city was off in a lot of ways other than its emptiness. There were cars in the streets. Each one was parked with such precision, their wheels always three inches from the curb. Always. Felix had spent a day measuring and hadn’t found a single exception. There also weren’t enough to support a city of this size.

The size was another sticking point. It must’ve been huge in terms of square miles, though Felix had no way of measuring that. He’d never seen the end of it. But the size itself wasn’t what made it seem so large. It was the buildings. He had yet to find one under twenty stories tall, and upon inspection, he’d found most didn’t have anything inside them over the fifth floor. It was like a spectacular playset of the gods, but the gods had run out of pieces and just hoped no one noticed.

What bothered Felix the most was the sameness of it. There wasn’t much variation in terms of architecture and layout. The streets were laid out in a uniform grid. The buildings were square and functional, but lacking flourishes. It was a world without humanity or even the shadow of humanity.

Felix had once taken some spray paint and attempted to mark the walls with some expression of creativity. Not because he was any good at it, but just in an effort to make the city seem like a place somebody lived. He’d ended up painting a stickman with his stick dog, sitting under a stick tree. It was a lousy final statement for the human race, but it was something.

The robots cleaned it off within twenty-four hours.

He still did it when especially bored or frustrated. His art had moved from stick people to swear words and mocking illustrations of his robotic enemies. His magnum opus had been a drawing of a robot tripping on a banana peel. He wished he’d taken a picture of that before it had been erased.

There were flaws in the city. Cracks in the pavement here and there. Broken street lights. Flowers growing where they shouldn’t be, and doors that stuck. These flaws weren’t real though. The cracks were always the same shape and pattern. Every seventh street light would be broken. It was always a little white flower with three leaves and a stem that bent to the right.

Felix sometimes pondered if he was living in a virtual reality with a cut and paste design. It would’ve explained a lot, but it was also too sensible. If all of this came down to a simulation, it felt like cheating. There had to be more to it.

He was certain by now that he’d never know so it didn’t matter.

He grabbed some supplies without incident, and with a bag of litter over his shoulder, headed back home.

The eerie silence started to get to him. He didn’t want to see the robots, but he missed them. Had they all gone home? Had they left him here to live and die, alone, in this city? It was a question he didn’t dare ask because he’d learned to take his days one at a time.

And he wasn’t alone. He smiled. Nothing else mattered.

Back at his building, something was wrong. He always closed the apartment building’s street access door just in case the robots might notice such things. The door was open. Not just open, but forced open. The damaged jamb made him pause.

The smart thing to do would be to turn around and walk away. Never look back. He couldn’t abandon the cat. It hadn’t abandoned him.

He entered the building with caution and crept down the short hall leading to his apartment. His fillings said no robots were near. He pressed on, and as he neared his apartment, he heard it. Scratching. Pounding. Something was trying to get into his place. He poked his head around the hall corner. It was a woman.

She looked like hell. Ragged clothes. Tangled brown hair. She slouched against the door, hitting it with her fists. She smelled horrendous, like she hadn’t bathed since being born.

All things considered, he hadn’t seen anything quite so beautiful in all his life. He had his moment of mistrust but easily dismissed it. His fear of the cat had been unfounded. Things were looking up.

Felix stepped out slowly so not to startle her. “Hey, miss, I don’t know how you found me, but it’s not locked.”

Her face turned toward him, and if her sallow cheeks and the brackish drool dripping from her mouth wasn’t enough of a clue, there was also a shovel handle sticking through her guts.

The zombie shuffled toward him, arms outstretched.