The Factory

Based on a dream. Aside from minor modifications to clarify the story and larger sections to fill in gaps that made more sense before I woke up, this follows it exactly. Sometimes my subconscious alarms me.

The factory hummed like it was alive. It was large, made of brick that might once have been red, but was now a sooty reddish-brown that reminded the viewer, had there been any, oddly of dried blood. Dozens of smokestacks oozed thick columns of black smoke in which the same viewer, if he watched long enough, began to imagine contained hints of a sickly green. The place was surrounded by a good-sized yard, bare except for a few straggling yellowed strands of grass struggling to survive. Around this was a high wall, also brick, topped by barbed wire; there was one gate, through which traveled a sporadic stream of trucks containing unnameable substances, heading to unknown destinations. It was guarded day and night by half a dozen ill-shaven, scowling, almost simian-looking beings one hesitated to grant the dignity of the title “soldier”.

The child crouched furtively over a book ignored the hum, the distant groans and clatters of machinery at work. It was part of her life, part of all their lives, as long as any of them could remember. Sometime in the distant past, some executive, in a fit of – what? Stinginess? Generosity? Efficiency? – had decided that children of factory workers would be raised in the factory itself, in a wing built especially for the purpose. Possibly their true purpose was as hostages; all that was known was that the children were kept to themselves, in a sort of large crèche, guarded and obtensibly taught by a handful of surly men and women who, for whatever reason, had failed in the factory itself.

The one good part of the children’s wing was the library, a large room which doubled as a study hall. Pitifully few and generally poor its books were, but they  were books, a way to escape into a better world. Beyond that, there was a dormitory, a kitchen, and some bathrooms.

The child gave a start at the sound of a particularly shrill, nasal voice approaching. This belonged to an officious female overseer who was more or less in charge of the whole wing. Gathering her book, the girl hastily darted around a shelf of books. Too hastily – she nearly ran into the arms of a pair of older boys, who, at her abrupt entrance, looked up with identical slow, nasty grins.

She tried to back up, but one was already behind her. They began to circle her with a predatory stalk. The slightly taller one purred, “What have we here?”

“If it isn’t our little troublemaker,” the other responded, in a well-practiced duet.

“I wonder what she’s up to now.”

“I wonder where she thinks she’s going.”

“I don’t think she’s going anywhere, do you?”

Suddenly they lunged and grabbed her, each expertly twisting an arm behind her. Simultaneously a shrill voice startled them all.

“What’s going on here?”

It was the overseer. The boys turned to face her with quick bobs of their heads, never loosening their grip on the girl.

“Nothing, ma’am. This creature was defacing Company property. It’s being taken care of.”

“Very well. I know you boys will deal with it appropriately.” The woman strode off as the boys turned back to their prey.

She made no attempt to defend herself. It was futile and would only make things worse.

When they finally left, she lay facedown for a moment, gathering her strength before picking herself up. She took a quick inventory – no broken bones, good. She slunk off, trying to avoid everyone. Crowds were no guarantee of safety.

She heard the sound of laughter coming from a large conference room. That was right; by employee request, the Company had brought in some sort of comedian to entertain the kids’ wing. She edged closer to the door, trying to determine if the audience was sufficiently entertained to ignore her.

The man seemed to be pointing at different audience members. She heard a few phrases: “…face like a donkey’s backside”, “…mother’s so fat that…”, “…too stupid to come in out of…”

She wasn’t watching where she was going again. Suddenly she tripped on some mysterious object, stumbling into the room. She was vaguely aware that the man was now pointing at her, spewing forth vitriolic phrases that sent the audience into gales of tinny-sounding laughter, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered anymore. She turned and fled blindly, no longer caring whether she ran into someone.

Possibly her enemies sensed there was nothing they could do to her. She reached her goal unaccosted – the bathroom. She huddled in her favorite corner, one of the few spots not covered by a security camera.

What was this place? It was all so pointless. The children had no useful purpose, the adults who watched them had no useful purpose; as far as she could tell, the factory itself had no useful purpose. Yet there must be some reason, or they wouldn’t be there. But what?

Her friends found her there, two girls of nondescript age and appearance. They were as powerless as she, but the three of them could and did hold each other, silently offering what comfort they could against the darkness. In the dingy, foul-smelling corner, her decision crystallized.

That night, she wouldn’t go meekly to the dormitory to get locked in as usual. She would go exploring, find the executive’s office, look for any sort of a rational explanation. In quiet, terse sentences she explained to her companions; they smiled, but shook their heads. They would help cover for her, arrange her bed so it looked like she was there, but they would not go with her. She had not expected them to.

She went to the sink and looked in the cracked mirror above it. Her reflection stared back, a face that might have been called vaguely Oriental, if anyone had known or cared. She had the beginnings of two black eyes and there was a trail of dried blood from her nose. Mechanically, she began washing it away.

Her friends had followed her. One silently offered her most prized possession – an old water bottle she had found somewhere, and carried so she wouldn’t go thirsty if someone stole her drink ration at mealtimes.

The door burst open, and an overseer walked in, a woman far too young to be so bitter. Spotting the bottle, her lip curled and she grabbed it, hurling it against the wall hard enough to shatter it. “Keep that trash out of my bathroom!” she bit out, and stalked off.

The two girls looked at their companion and shrugged fatalistically. These things happened, and there was no way to stop them. The two friends darted off like wary deer, leaving the third to curl up in her secluded corner again.

The last hours of the day seemed to pass in a slow blur. She missed dinner. She was hungry, but that was nothing new. Soon the curfew buzzer sounded, and she heard the guards make a final round, checking for strays. One looked perfunctorily in the bathroom, but didn’t see her in her dark corner. Finally the lights went out, leaving only the dim red emergency lighting. Even the cameras turned off. From outside, she heard the grinding of the gate opening, letting everyone leave except the guards at the gate and one more inside. Deciding it was as safe as it was going to be, she crept out of her hiding spot.

The building is bad enough in daylight. At night, it is eerie. The constant background noise of distant conversations is gone, leaving a silence only underscored by the never-ceasing sound of poorly-oiled machinery. The moaning, grinding sound is made even more unnatural by the night; at a time she instinctively associates with peace and quiet, it brings a sense not of life, but of unlife, a grotesque parody of natural movement where there should be none.

As the girl tentatively creeps through the factory floor, a small speck inching between giant rusting pipes and vats full of mysterious substances, she notices something else. The lighting seems stronger than the dim, flickering red bulbs can account for; the giant room seems lit by a faint, unhealthy phosphorescence, bringing the open maws of machinery and lever claws out of the merciful darkness into her sight. They seem to crouch, motionless while she looks at them, but merely awaiting the opportunity to jump at her the moment she turns her back.

She ascends a steep set of metal steps, flinching as they groan ominously under her feet. She knows where she is going; the children are given regular tours of the working areas of the factory, their guide extolling the virtues of working for the Company. But the executive areas are at the top of the building, and she has yet to traverse the maze of ladders and catwalks.

She flinches as a rustle passes swiftly overhead, like the wings of a bat. Her imagination conjures up a bloated, winged fiend, fangs glistening as it waits to pounce. It could not be a normal bat; surely no healthy creature could exist in a place such as this. But when she dares look up, she sees nothing, only vast metal surfaces lit by the unnatural glow. She does not know if this is better or worse than the feared monster.

Halfway up, she pauses for a moment beside a control station, a large vertical panel filled with unlabeled buttons and switches interspersed with flickering colored lights. Suddenly there is a clanging approaching from an intersecting walkway ahead, heralded by a circle of light so healthy and normal-looking that she involuntarily takes a few steps towards it before the guard emerges, turning towards her.

As the beam from his flashlight hits her, she jerks back to her senses and begins backing away uncertainly. There is no challenge, no demands of “Who are you, and what are you doing here”. He simply draws his gun and points it at her.

She dives down the nearest hallway and begins running. She hears the sound of boots pounding metal as he pursues. Her heart hammers, her breathing is ragged, her feet hurt from the metal surface, but she cannot stop; he follows behind, each step as inevitable as her own. She turns down one walkway, up a set of stairs, from one passage to another, down a ladder. She makes each decision instantly, instinctively, yet it seems she is being herded by unsensed beings, each step guided, predestined.

At last she is brought to bay. The walkway dead-ends in a circle around the lip of a giant vat. Frantically, she looks around; failing to see any way out, she backs up against a large pipe coming down from unknown reaches above. The ominous figure approaches, slows as it sees she is cornered. Deliberately, menacingly, it raises its gun once again – pulls the trigger once, twice, three times.

She does not pause to see where they land. In terror and desperation, she leaps off the walk; hits, stumbles, regains her balance. She glances down only long enough to see that the pipe took a right turn not far below the catwalk, before running for her life along the perilously curved surface. As the pipe runs under yet another walkway, she scrambles up and turns back to see her implacable pursuer.

He stands beside the pipe. He must have hit it; it leaks thick smoke that appears bile-green, partially concealing his shape. He appears to be inspecting the pipe where she ran. Slowly he looks up; his unseen eyes fix on her. Once again the gun’s muzzle rises. Terrified beyond terror, she is still too fascinated, almost hypnotized to move. He fires.

There is a loud explosion. She jerks her arm up, protecting her eyes. As the smoke clears, she sees a large hole where the pipe used to be. Of the guard, nothing remains but a few blackened chunks.

Her reason gives out for a moment in shock. Slowly her mind clears. She finds herself curled up on the cold metal, sobbing. Her feet hurt, her lungs hurt, her heart is still racing. She feels sharp pains in her chest, and dimly remembers gunshots. Was she shot? Was it merely a nightmare? She raises her head, half-afraid of what she might see, but there is nothing. She cannot see the pipe, cannot see the guard, or whatever remains of him.

Slowly her shuddering sobs subside. Weary, she forces herself to get up. Terror or no, she must know what it means. She will not be cowed.

At the top of the tower, there is a door, marked “Executive”. She does not know what is behind it; none of the tours included it.

Hesitantly she touches the handle. It does not move. Locked! She grasps it in sudden fury, rattles the knob, kicks the door, tries with all her strength to turn it – and there is a crack, and the knob turns. She pushes the door open.

The corridor beyond is more elegant than anything she has ever seen. The faint luminescence seems stronger here; it reveals a long corridor, with pale walls with delicate wooden trim, the floor covered in a luxuriously thick carpet with an abstract geometric pattern. At regular intervals the wall is broken by elaborately carved wooden doors, all closed. Some bear a golden plate inscribed with, presumably, the occupant’s name.

The girl jumps nearly through the roof as a light turns on in a room with an open door she hadn’t seen before. Hollow voices float down the hall.

“What are you doing? What kind of cigars are those?”

“Oh! I wasn’t expecting you, sir…”

“Let me see – are those dollar bills in there?!”

“I…well – sir, I can explain…”

“Your problem is that you think too small, boy. Those should be $100s!”

“…Sir? You think so?”

Fascinated by the conversation, the girl has drifted down the hallway, just beyond the stream of light from the door. Gradually the light fades away, as do the voices. Cautiously, she peers around the doorframe. The office beyond, while elegant, is as empty and as dimly-lit as the rest of the factory. There is no place a person could hide, except behind the desk. But her nerves fail; she backs away from the doorway, half-running down the hall, towards the door at the end labeled “Chief Executive”.

The double doors seem immense. The rich, dark wood is carved with what appear to be human figures, but it is oddly hard to identify them or what they are doing. They seem to shift in the corners of her eyes.

She cautiously, almost reverently pulls down on the golden handle. The door opens, its silence almost eerie. She flinches as the door swings closed behind her. This office is far larger than the other, with a massive chair behind an even more massive desk. She feels like an insect crossing the vast expanse of carpet. The walls are lined with enormous bookshelves and grand paintings of stern-faced old gentlemen.

The desk is almost bare. There is nothing but an expensively engraved fountain pen in a stand on one corner and a gleaming nameplate on the other. The drawers are empty too; there is no sign that anyone uses this office.

She whirls at the sound of a knock at the door. She has no time to hide before a robot enters, a tall, angular humanoid figure. Its movements are subtly wrong; there is nothing definably off, but no one who saw it move would mistake it for human. It speaks. The tone is a warm, comfortable baritone, but the words are jarring.

“Good afternoon! I am a Good Humor robot. Is this a good time? I hope I am not intruding. It is a pleasure to meet you, sir. Would you like – “

Suddenly, shockingly, it smashes its head against the corner of the desk. It lifts, comes down, again, and again. Slowly it comes up. There is a deep groove in the metal skull. One eyedisk has come off, leaving a glowing, bloodred socket. It turns its head, its eyes boring directly into her.

“Afternoon – Good Humor…bzzzt…pleasure to meet, would bzzzt like – “

The now entirely inhuman voice continues, but she no longer hears it. Her eyes glaze as a long-forgotten memory resurfaces. She hears the metallic, erratic voice, sees the glowing eyesocket…sees blood, blood everywhere, hears screaming. She dimly identifies it as her own. She sees a kindly older face, receding in her vision. The same face, a mask of blood. The crackling of flames, a bonfire shrinking, dying down. And over it all, the ghastly broken robotic laughter.

She has forgotten where she is. She is once again in the past, reliving that terrifying time. She is not aware that she is hunched over, shambling in grotesque imitation of that awkward uneven tread. Eyes glazed and unseeing, she follows the creature through the door, the elegant hallway, the maze of catwalks beyond.

The pair approach the gate. The guards take no notice, eyes staring ahead seemingly as unseeing as the girl’s own. The gate looms ahead of them, closed and locked for the night. But the robot walks through them unheeding, and behind him the girl. The gate flickers, and for a moment, had she looked, she would have seen a bare patch of ground. But she does nothing, sees nothing.

The robot continues down the pitted, broken concrete. The girl follows blindly. Abruptly her foot lands in a hole; she falls, twisting her ankle. Her head lands hard on a fragment of pavement. Coming to herself, she looks around in confusion. It takes her a moment to recognize the gate behind her; she has never seen it from this side before. She approaches tentatively. Again, the guards ignore her. Suddenly terrified, she only wishes to be safely in bed again. She tries to take hold of the fence, to climb the gate, but there is nothing under her hand; she falls through.

The factory now glows almost blindingly with the greenish phosphorescence. She walks back to the children’s wing. Strangely, it seems much dimmer. By habit, she approaches the door; but when she walks through, she finds the door as insubstantial as the gate. Inside, nothing is real. She touches the walls, the shelves; she tries to pick up the book she had been reading, cast aside and forgotten during the beating. It seems to gain substance under her hands. She draws them out quickly, oddly afraid they would be trapped in the materializing book.

She is startled when she tries to walk through the dormitory door and bangs her nose. Inside, the room is filled with the quiet sounds of breathing, refreshingly wholesome. She flicks the light on. Rows of startled faces appear in the beds. She speaks. Her voice is empty, exhausted, drained of emotion.

“The factory is a lie. There is nothing real here except us. I am leaving. Maybe I can find people who exist, a life that is real. You may stay, or you may go. I am leaving.”

She turned and walked out. She did not look back. But behind her were the rustling of many footsteps, the murmur of hushed voices. As she walked through the gate at the entrance once more, the susurration rose in astonishment, falling behind for a moment. She turned at last. First one, then another child stepped through. In the end, every last one of them had come through. Even the bullies looked strangely subdued. The murmuring rose louder, growing into real voices, filled with awe and a strange new tone – could it be hope?

She turned forward and began to walk down the road. It must have led somewhere once. Maybe it still did. Behind her, the children marched.

The dream ended here. Maybe once they walked far enough, they found normal humans, who told them the story of the haunted factory, and how its ghostly minions raided anyone who settled too close for children whose belief could maintain some level of reality. Or maybe the children are ghosts too, doomed to repeat this cycle of suffering, realization, and escape, only to be drawn back into the rut, forever. Who knows?

Sonnetization

Some experiments with romantic poetry.
-----
I wandered through a bleak and dreary land,
Seeking without hope – I knew not what.
My spirit, like a waste of sun-scorched sand,
Awaiting rain to wash away the ruts.
But soft! the rosy dawn comes to beguile
My weary soul with its soft, loving light.
Approaching with bright eyes and sudden smile,
My love hath banishéd the sullen night.
His sweet caress hath made the desert bloom,
His tender lips doth set my soul aflame.
Naught else exists while he is in the room –
His beauty puts the fairest flow’r to shame.
My love, that art enshrined in my poor verse,
I fain would take for better or for worse.
-----
My darling, apple of my eye,
Of rosy cheek and curling lash,
Without whom I would fade and die –
Would you mind taking out the trash?
-----
My love is a deep yellow rose,
The sweetest of any that grows.
With petals so gay,
Much brighter than day –
Quick, pick him now, before it snows!

If I Only Had a Brain - 1

This started off as an attempt to see how well I could write a straight romance-type scene with a twist, and took off rather unexpectedly from there. It is now some 6 (progressively longer) chapters long, and still developing. I will post them as I get them typed up.

From the moment he saw her, he knew they were meant to be. Caught up in the midst of the roaring, surging, faceless mass, scarcely able to hear his own voice, some instinct made him turn his head. And there she was, standing by a doorway, gazing calmly over the crowd. Their eyes met, and suddenly time was no more.
Around him, Samuel knew, the crowd still surged and screamed its defiance to the world. But for him, all that faded into meaninglessness, leaving only the peace and stillness of her deep blue eyes.
Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he moved toward her. He dodged the screaming, shoving mob as in a dream, knowing only that the distance between them was shinking, shrinking...gone.
Now he stood close enough to touch her, yet he did not dare - all he could do was watch her, marveling. She was different from the others; her eyes gazed fearlessly into his soul. Before this perfect, ephemeral little being, he was helpless, helpless as an infant - and strangely content to be so.
Suddenly, her beautiful eyes flashed a fearful warning, a moment before he was knocked aside by a burly, snarling man. As the newcomer reached for her, she turned to flee. Driven by a deep imperative he could not have named, Samuel grabbed the newcomer’s arm and yanked with a superhuman strength born of fury, pulling him in a stumbling arc that ended abruptly with his face being driven into the wall. The man immediately started to fade from his memory as he turned once again to the girl.
She had turned to observe the aftermath of the brief fight, with wonder and gratitude in her eyes. Shyly she stepped close, hesitantly raised her hand and laid it in his. His fingers closed around hers as he marveled at this gesture of simple, childlike trust. And hesitant in his turn, careful not to alarm her, he gently raised the small, pale hand. He turned it over, wondering at the soft palm, the graceful, delicate fingers, the white wrist with its pale blue tracery of veins.
She merely regarded him with those fearless azure eyes. She offered no resistance as he lifted that ivory wrist to his lips. And she made no sound as his teeth tore into the soft flesh; only her eyes, still fixed on his as she crumpled to the ground, betrayed the agony inside.

Butterfly of War

I don't really like the ending, but I've been working on it on and off for almost a year...enough is enough. Besides, it's depressing.

Sgt. Morris ducked back into the foxhole as a shell exploded nearby. She felt the ground shake under her; that had been a close one. Yet even the sudden pulse of adrenaline seemed oddly muted, its effect blunted by familiarity, terror become an old, comfortable friend.
How long had this war been going on? She couldn’t remember. It seemed a lifetime - an endless blur of years whipping past in these trenches, in those bunkers, in the other foxholes. She remembered pauses, brief respites in one or another identical field hospital, poked and prodded by interchangeable medical personnel until she was declared fit to fight again and sent off to another front. It could have been the same one; she didn’t care. The faces were always different, but they might as well have been identical. Sooner or later, they, too, would be blown to pieces or carried off by the interchangeable medics.
She vaguely remembered the occasional “pep talks” they were required to attend. Most of them she had managed to doze through, but she had a couple faint memories of the officers calling the soldiers on the other side of no-man’s-land different names. It didn’t matter; to her they were simply “the enemy”, the faceless mob trying to blow her up and that she tried to blow up in turn.
The fresh-faced, overeager young private next to her poked his head up, presumably to try to get a shot. Reflexively, almost habitually, she turned away enough to avoid getting splattered with his brains when the enemy snipers caught him. Turning back, she picked up the weapon which had fallen from his still-warm hand, made a futile attempt to wipe a little of the mess off on his uniform, and made a quick check of the battery. Still full; he hadn’t even gotten off a shot. Shrugging, she ejected it and added it to her collection of spares.
She wondered briefly why the boy had had to die, but quickly dropped that train of thought. The politicians talked about “technological advances” and “making the world safe for freedom”, but the politicians were always yammering about something. Their excuses for the endless war didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was staying alive, surviving for one more day, one more night.
She suddenly noticed the shells hadn’t been pounding the ground for a while. She pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it out - no need to risk getting her brains blown out if the enemy had been sneaking up on her position.
They had. She stared dumbly at the grenade for a moment as it bounced back in, her numbed brain unable to comprehend for precious seconds. By the time she turned to dive the other way, it was too late. Her last thought was “Finally…rest at last…”

She gasped and sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering. As her pulse slowed, she looked around.
She was in another of the endless hospital wards. She must have had some serious damage; she had her own room - admittedly small, but better than the mass wards for normal injuries. There was just enough room for a cot, an IV stand, and a small table. It was a real building, too, not a tent; she must have been out quite a while this time.
She wondered what had happened. She had a vague, fading memory of a grenade, but that had been too close to survive…it occurred to her that she had been fighting too long when the war even invaded her dreams. Exhausted, she sank back into sleep.
When she woke up a second time - more peacefully - nothing had changed. She was still alone. The room had no windows, so she couldn’t even tell what time of day it was. She did, however, discover that she needed to use the bathroom.
She pulled the IV line from her arm, wincing. Standing up, she almost fell over - she felt fifty pounds heavier than usual. She cautiously crossed to the door and pulled on the handle.
It ripped out of the door.
She was too startled even to notice the door that swung open in its wake, bouncing off her toes before swinging back to hit the doorframe. She glared suspiciously at the metal in her hand.
It looked like an ordinary handle, only slightly twisted by its abrupt dislocation. There was, however, a large, ragged hole in the solid pseudowood of the door. There was a smaller one in the doorframe; apparently the door had been locked. Experimentally, she squeezed the edge of the door; a shower of wooden flakes drifted down, then a medium-sized chunk of door came off in her hand.
Huh. They were really skimping, to use such shoddy materials in hospital construction.
She stepped out into the corridor and glanced around, mentally cataloguing details. Institutional whitewashed walls, rows of closed wooden doors identical to the one that had just broken, cheap fluorescent bulbs spaced far enough apart to leave shadows between the pools of light. It stretched into the distance in either direction; about ten doors to her left was a sign with the universal male/female stick figure “restroom” symbol, to her right was nothing but empty hallway.
She headed to the restroom - about the same size as the room she had just left, with scarcely room for a sink, toilet, and hand dryer. Glancing at the mirror above the sink, she paused, arrested by the unexpectedly unfamiliar sight of her own face.
For a moment she stared uncomprehending, trying to make sense of the slightly different contours. Only then did the metallic sheen over the upper half of her face, masklike, sink in.
Fully half her face was made of some kind of metal, a blindingly bright alloy she couldn’t identify. The sculpted features were stern and forbidding, with her own natural eyes set incongruously in the sockets. She hesitantly reached up to touch her face; the metal was cool, unyielding and unfeeling. She moved down to the skin of the lower half - warm and pliant, but with a hint of that same stubborn resistance underneath, hinting at metal where bones used to be.
Tearing her gaze away from the mirror, she took stock of herself. As far as she could tell, all her bones had been replaced, as well as large patches of what used to be skin. Her hands were still covered in skin - probably fortunate, since the metal appeared to be entirely nerveless. Most of the major muscles in her body responded with a faint hesitancy that made her suspect something had been done to them as well.
She almost jumped through the roof at the sound of a brisk knock on the door - probably not just a figure of speech now, she thought with a trace of wry amusement. The knock was immediately followed by an equally brisk nurse, who ordered, “Follow me,” and strode out again without waiting for a reply.
Like a good soldier, she followed in silence. They were going to tell her whatever they told her, and in their own good time. She knew how the system worked.
Ahead, the nurse had stopped by another unmarked door. Turning around, she stated: “In here,” and hurried off in the opposite direction without a backward glance.
The room inside was furnished in standard military décor - functional and utterly boring. It appeared to be an office; the most prominent piece of furniture was a desk piled high with papers. At the sound of her entrance, a head rose up from behind the pile, revealing a harassed-looking young man sporting a captain’s bars. She wondered briefly how old he was; he looked barely into adulthood. Officers of every rank were young these days, so young…
She shook herself out of her musings and saluted, briefly wondering what would happen if her new, unruly muscles had slammed the hand into her head too hard. After a moment, the captain returned it, then gestured her to stand at ease and began rummaging through various piles. She briefly caught sight of a nameplate declaring this to be the office of Captain Stanton before it got shuffled behind a stack of papers again.
Abandoning his search, the captain turned his attention back to her. He began, “Well - ah - Sergeant Morris, I presume.”
She nodded. She had met some officers who would have demanded a properly respectful verbal response, but this one merely nodded back to himself and continued.
“No doubt you are wondering how you have come to be here. This is - ah - an excellent question. There is, however, a - ah - simple explanation.”
He paused, as if expecting an answer, or possibly collecting his thoughts. She waited.
“Some time ago, as you may remember - it was, ah, some years after you were drafted - you were assigned to a squad which was sent to the Fredericksburg hospital for a - ah - very special procedure. The details are - ah - classified, but the essential fact is that there is a, for lack of a better word, recorder at the base of your skull. When you were - ah - killed two years ago, the surgeons were able to freeze your remains until they could repair the damage and use the recorder to - ah - restore you.”
He cleared his throat and began rummaging again as she digested the information. Finally she said, “Sir?”
“Hmmm?”
“May I infer from this that wh - if I die again, the doctors will be able to repeat the procedure?”
“As long as the device is intact, yes, you will be able to continue fighting. You will be reassigned after two weeks’ recuperation. For family and freedom!”
“For family and freedom!” she managed to say through clenched teeth, with the ritual salute.
Alone in her uncomfortable military-issue cot that night, she thought. She saw the future - an endless wave of identical battles against faceless enemies, once again waiting for death. But this time even death would be no relief. There was nothing, no faith, no hope.
She would fight, of course. What else could she do?

“Recuperation”, he called it. “Training from hell” was more like it. Two weeks of twenty-hour days, learning her new abilities - learning to move again, to compensate for the unexpected weight; learning to work around the more limited range of motion on her joints; learning to use built-in weapons. Apparently someone in charge had decided new, unlimited physical strength equated to no need for sleep. By the time she got the orders to ship out, her only thought was that she’d better be able to rest on the way, or she’d fall asleep in the trenches.
Her new foxhole-mates were green recruits fresh from Basic, who regarded her with unmitigated awe. She was theoretically in charge of them; in practice, she could only tolerate their ineptitude - ignorance, she corrected herself, when she was feeling generous - for so long before she had to go shoot things to relieve the stress.
They discovered very quickly that she was a lot tougher than they were, and tended to hide behind her if they had to leave the trenches. This did not protect them when they were ordered to make a frontal assault on an enemy weapons storage hole. She survived, projectiles and energy bouncing off her metal skin and bones, leaving painful scars on the human skin covering those bones. No more than two of her flock of ducklings made it. They were promptly replaced by a new flock.
She estimated they had gone through at least a hundred identical fresh-faced recruits by the end of three months, when she was sent on a raid to destroy a new weapon the enemy had supposedly made. They had. Whatever it was, it emitted a golden beam that carved straight through her metal. She blacked out.

When she woke up again, it took her a few minutes to remember she shouldn’t have. She groaned, throwing an arm up to cover her eyes. She jumped at the feel of her skin.
Eying the golden fur that appeared to be covering her arm, she hauled herself out of bed. Once again, she was in a military-issue hospital, so she found the restroom quickly. No problems with smashing doors this time; her strength seemed to be about what it was before.
She examined her face critically in the mirror. The metal was gone, replaced by a pelt somewhere between sparse fur and thick, if ordinary, human hair. Her pupils were oddly shaped, her facial structure seemed subtly off, and there was a distinctly mane-like appearance to her hair. She examined her fingers, but no such luck; though her nails were narrow and unusually curved, there was nothing under them. She rolled her eyes and turned away.
This form only lasted a month before a land mine took her out. After that, she lost track of the time that passed and the number of changes they put her through. There were cyborgs with an incredible variety of weaponry built into them. There were hybrids with varying degrees of animal genes. There were animals with mechanical augmentations. There were monstrous creatures that were part computer, part insect, part mammalian, part aquatic, part plant, and all horrifying. There was even an insubstantial ghost-like form. (It turned out to be remarkably vulnerable to electricity.) She didn’t know how they managed to attach her recorder, or how they ever managed to retrieve it from some of the situations that killed her. But they did.

The morning of the last day of her life, she woke up on an uncomfortable cot just like all the others. But for the first time, she was not alone. An older man with an impressive number of stars on his uniform was seated by her bed.
As soon as he saw her eyes open, he said without preamble, “Your country needs you.”
Oh no, not again.
Ignoring the way her head fell back onto the pillow with a barely-suppressed groan, he continued, “We have an urgent mission. We have discovered that an enemy commander will be staying in a certain hotel tonight, almost completely unprotected. We need someone to move in and take him out. You have a long and stellar record with stealth missions, so we feel you would be best for the job. The helicopter leaves in an hour. Good luck.”
He saluted and marched out without waiting for an acknowledgment, or any other kind of response. This was probably a good thing, as her first response was unprintable and would probably have gotten her severely reprimanded if the officer had heard it.
Her current form was so normal, it felt strange. She seemed to be an older woman, mid-50s maybe, with dark brown hair plentifully sprinkled with silver. She was dressed in what she guessed was a hotel uniform - soothing blue jacket and skirt, with a nametag pinned neatly to one side of the jacket. She supposed she should feel uncomfortable that someone had dressed her while she was unconscious. She didn’t. It didn’t feel like her body.
Testing nerve combinations that in other bodies had produced hidden blades or other fun toys, she was startled when her right index finger began leaking a clear fluid from under the nail. Cautiously, she touched a drop to her tongue. It didn’t taste like anything in particular. She guessed it was poison. There seemed to be no other hidden secrets to this form.
Shortly a bored young private came to lead her to the plane and give her a folder. During the ride, she browsed the few sheets of paper it contained - a layout of the hotel, a picture of her target, and precise instructions on where to go and when. The final paper contained the specs of her new form. As she suspected, it was completely ordinary aside from the clear poison, which seemed to be a fast-acting neurotoxin. She was mildly interested to note they’d made her immune to it.

Her entry went exactly as planned. She walked into the staff entrance, found a cart bearing covered plates which emitted a tantalizing odor, and pushed it through the hallways to the target’s room. The two guards he had were flanking the door. As she approached, the smaller one - only the size of a wall - curtly motioned her to stop, then waved a wand of some sort over her while his companion tested the food. He pulled an official-looking badge from her pocket and ran it through a scanner. Apparently everything was clean, because they both stepped back to their places and motioned to her to proceed.
The room’s sole occupant, the target, looked up as she entered, with an alert expression that turned rapidly to interest as he noticed her cart. He was younger than she’d thought, early 20’s at most. As she began to put plates on the table, he put aside the screen he’d been studying and came to sit down. He smiled as she handed him a clean plate and silverware, saying, “Thank you.”
She started removing the covers from the dishes. “Would you like something to drink with that?”
“What? Oh yeah, sure. Just grab a bottle from the fridge.”
She found a bottle of what appeared to be wine, opened it, and poured out a glass. As she carried it back to the table, she concentrated, and three drops fell from her finger into the glass.
He smiled as she placed it in front of him. “Thanks!”
“No problem. Anything else?”
“No, I’m good.” He paused, then added, “You know, you remind me of my grandmother.”
“Thank you.” And thank you, scientists, for engineering this form to hit a weak spot. “That is, assuming you liked her.”
He laughed. “Mostly, yeah.”
He lifted the cup to his lips, and a ring on his right hand started blinking red and producing a high-pitched squeal. Instantly he dashed the cup to the ground, pulled a gun from some unseen pocket, and pointed it at her.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
She gave him a level look. “I was sent to kill you. Wait!” she added as his finger tightened. “I have one last request.”
He tilted his head slightly, but the gun did not fire.
She carefully knelt in front of him. “There’s something in the back of my head. Once you’ve killed me...please take it out and destroy it.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Something?”
“A recorder. I’ve had it for...what year is this?”
“2538.”
“Since 2349.” More softly, she continued, “Almost two centuries I’ve been fighting...I’m so tired." She looked up, directly into his eyes. “Save me. Please.”
He bowed his head in assent. There was something like compassion in his own eyes as his finger tightened again.
The gun fired. Everything went black for the last time.

Vambi

(Note: This was the result of taking "What do you get when you cross a vampire and a zombie?" and adding the result to the game "Kiss Me, Deer" from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. At an unreasonably early hour of the morning, probably.)

Melanie padded through the forest like a gentle breeze, leaving about as much trace of her passing. Small animals scampered past her, unnoticing and unnoticed, as she sought her next victim. Her senses automatically sifted through the normal stimuli of the woods, checking for anything out of place.
There! Fresh deer tracks, so faint on the winter-hard ground as to be almost invisible. She began to follow them, leaving no tracks of her own. Studying the traces, she smiled; the creature could not be more than half an hour away.
She jerked her head up as a sparrow sang some distance away. With a trace of annoyance, she pursed her lips and responded with a robin's call. Giving a last longing look at her tracks, she turned and crept towards the song.
It wasn't fair! She was a better hunter than Gwen. The two of them were neck-and-neck, with four each. The next target would decide the winner. It should have been hers. But rules were rules, so she obediently ran towards the sparrow with her customary caution, taking care not to alert Gwen's prey.
A swallow sounded, almost in her ear. Marie had arrived. She quickly located her sister's covert and quietly entered. Once the three of them were concealed in the stand of young saplings, she could see the potential victim.
The buck grazed quietly in the adjacent meadow. He was pointed upwind, facing almost directly away from them, but they could see his splendid rack. From time to time he jerked his head up and scanned for danger before returning to his dinner, but failed to see his hunters.
Gwen glided out behind him and began her cautious approach. Once she dropped to the ground a fraction of a second before he looked directly at her. Even knowing where to look, Mel could barely see her sister's carefully patterned dress.
Suddenly Gwen stood up, right at the deer's shoulder. Grabbing his horns, she yelled, "Kiss me, deer!" right in his ear. Mel winced.
Gwen tried to wrestle the buck's head around to face her. He was writhing and lashing out frantically with his front hooves, but for a moment it looked like the girl would win her contest - both of them. Then the deer made a last frantic thrash just as Gwen overcompensated for his last movement, his antlers twisted out of her hands, and with a flash of a white tail he was gone, knocking her to the ground.
Gwen slowly stood up, gave a resigned shrug, and returned to the hunt, brushing past her sisters with a glare that dared them to say anything. Mel held her peace. Time enough to gloat when she had won.
She retraced her steps to the tracks. She found the deer sooner than she had expected; he had taken cover in a little thicket, bedding down comfortably on a layer of leaves. All she could see was a patch of fur on his hindquarters. She found a convenient bush, gave her robin call and waited for her sisters to respond.
Without the slightest sound to warn of their approach, they were simply there. Giving a brusque nod, Mel moved out.
The approach was almost textbook routine. Her prey didn't so much as flick an ear in her direction. She paused by the trees, looking through the screen of leaves to determine the buck's exact position, then with a practiced dart secured his antlers.
As he pulled back in alarm, she said, "Kiss me, deer", in a low, calming voice barely loud enough to reach her witnesses' ears. Then she twisted her target's head around to hers.
All she could do for a moment was stare in horror. Then she snatched her hands away as if they were on fire, and backed out into the clearing, towards the safety of her sisters. The deer followed her out into the sunlight, until they could all see him clearly.
The...thing was a mass of decaying flesh. The hide was falling off in tatters, revealing the wasted muscles underneath. Even as he moved, gruesome bits of flesh were falling off. The eyelids had rotted away, revealing the filmy balls underneath, as had the lips, revealing...
Suddenly all Mel's attention was on the gleaming, razor-sharp, not-at-all decayed fangs set incongruously in the herbivore's mouth. The rotting facial flesh pulled back in a hideous parody of a smile as the thing said quite clearly, "Kiss me? If you insist."
She sat down suddenly as her heel encountered an unexpected hole. She drew in a breath to scream - realizing as she did so that it would be quite pointless; none of them carried weapons - and gagged on the fetid stench of the thing. The mocking smile drew closer as the oddly mellifluous voice said, "Would it be impertinent of me to enquire the name of the one who rather freely seeks this liberty? Yes? Well, I am Vambi, the vampire zombie." She flinched as an almost skeletal foreleg swept towards her in a sort of bow.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance. It has been...a pleasure." She stared, mesmerized by the dripping mouth moving closer, closer. Her last thought before she felt the terrible pain of her throat being ripped out was surprise and, strangely, a sort of resigned amusement at the thing's mocking echo of her own words:
"Kiss me, dear..."

The Hunting of the Mouse

8/23/11
It was a Tuesday night like any other. I was beat, and ready to crawl into bed and die. I tossed back the rest of the book I’d been nursing, and hit the lights. But then the door burst open, and she came in...and all my plans for the night came crashing down behind her.
“She” in this case was my cat, Felice - better known as Squeaky, though the Brainless Wonder would work too. She fancies herself a great huntress, though she couldn’t catch a cold in the pouring rain - which is a good thing, as she wouldn’t have the sense to come in out of it. She’d just done something loud; I don’t know what, and I probably don’t want to. But I came bolt upright out of a sound sleep with the sound of the crash still echoing in my ears.
I checked the time; it was 4:30 or so in the morning. I groaned, listened for a moment, but the sound wasn’t repeated. I started drifting off again.
Then I noticed something weird. The cat was alternating between silence and brief bursts of rapid scuffling. Slowly the thought percolated through my sleep-deprived brain: “The last time she sounded like that was when she’d cornered a mouse...” This was followed, in short order, by the realization that I was sleeping on a plain mattress on the floor - only a few inches above ground level...
I think I levitated upright. It certainly didn’t involve conscious thought. I turned the lights back on; sure enough, the cat was staring intently under my backpack, occasionally reaching a paw under to try to grab something, albeit fruitlessly. With a certain amount of resignation, I lifted the backpack enough to see a small brown mouse, who stared up at me for a moment before I put it back down.
I headed out of the room with the vague intention of finding a box or something to trap the thing. Sometime while I wasn’t looking, the mouse had abandoned the backpack in favor of hiding underneath a small bookcase in the hallway, still followed by the cat. I returned from my quest with a flashlight rather than a box. What can I say...almost 5 am.
When I located the mouse and started poking at it with something long and relatively sturdy that was close at hand, with Squeaky occasionally lending a paw, it decided enough was enough and scurried into a large pile of boxes, where the cat lost it. The mouse, not her mind; she never had that in the first place. I poked around for a while, then gave up and went back to bed. Not that I slept; fortunately, dawn wasn’t too far off.

8/24/11
3 am the next night. This time, it took me approximately three tenths of a second from the sound of scuffling to go from “asleep” to “OMGOMGKEEPITOFFME” while standing up and fumbling for the light switch. I must have been sleeping more lightly. Gee, I wonder why.
This time Her Ladyship had it cornered under the laptop. I lifted it to check and the thing promptly scampered off into another corner, the cat in hot pursuit. This time I actually managed to keep my wits enough to locate a small box.
I returned to my bedroom, armed and ready for battle. I looked for the cat to see where the mouse was; she was staring in confusion at a completely different corner. I checked it...and it was completely empty of murine life.
The cat had lost the mouse. In my bedroom.
THERE WAS A MOUSE SOMEWHERE IN MY BEDROOM!
I poked into one pile of stuff after another. No sign anywhere. Squeaky was no help whatsoever, making no attempt to locate the mouse herself, though she watched my explorations eagerly. It wasn’t in the closet, around the laundry baskets, behind the mattress, in the blankets - which last point I checked repeatedly...
Finally, as it was an insane hour of the morning and getting worse, I shook my blankets out one last time and set up the bed in the spare bedroom. I left the cat in my room. Let her dig out the creature.
At some point while I was sleeping, my father went hunting and found the mouse (still in my room). Yet once again, it managed to evade both him and Felice, allowing him only a brief glimpse before vanishing into the bowels of the room. Despite a microscopic search of every nook and cranny, the only trace that remained was an occasional ghostly snicker.
(Okay, maybe that was my dream. But still.)



8/25/11
Enough is enough. Two nights of severely interrupted sleep is unacceptable. No more Mrs. Nice Cat.
Over the course of Thursday, I gave my room a complete cleaning. There is nothing remaining on the floor for an intrepid mouse to hide behind. I’ve added another couple mattresses to the stack, putting me a slightly more comfortable distance from floor level. And to complete preparations, I set up by the door a nice mouse-sized cave of boxes...with a trap inside. (Don’t worry, it’s the humane kind. Unfortunately.)
Now it’s all up to the Mighty Huntress.
...We’re doomed.

9/21/11
Fast-forward almost a month. We had about given up hope that the thing was coming back...thought it might have finally come to its senses and stopped taunting the cat. I was starting to use the floor again, and in fact had put a box directly in front of the trap arrangement.
But then our less-than-welcome nocturnal visitor emerged once more from whatever deep, dark hole it was dwelling in.
Once again, I was awoken by the sound of thudding paws - at only 12:30 AM this time. I reached for my bedside lamp, discovered it was no longer there, and walked - rather jumpily - across the room to find the lightswitch.
Once again, the cat was dabbing a paw at the space under the backpack. I spent a few minutes debating how to corral it before it got tired of its cover vanishing and returning repeatedly, and started to make a break for it. The cat moved one way. The mouse moved the other. A moment later, Squeaky was poking hopefully into one corner, while the mouse crept quietly behind her and made for the nearest small, dark passageway.
Which happened to be the area between the trap setup and the box I’d put in front of it, which - completely unintentionally - was perfectly mouse-sized.
So when I picked up the cardboard on top to check, there was the mouse, curled up quietly in the trap. I put the trap in a box, yelled at the cat until she left it alone - at least until 5AM, at which point she got kicked outside - and went back to sleep.
Now the hard part: what to do with the thing.

What? I was hungry.

You can eat
Every piece of the pie that caught your eye -
Your repast tonight,
You can gorge
Chow down each cheesy treat piled high with meat
In its box so bright.

But don't forget who went to the store
And on whose card it's gonna be.
So darling, save the last slice for me.

Musical Mayhem

You know, I probably should have taken warning when the first piece the choirmaster gave us, something nice and easy to start off the semester, was "Poor Wandering One". Oddly enough, though, each piece just has one peculiarity.

Some advice for the songwriters:
Incantations #2: You should screw the lid back on your accidental container. If you want it in a certain key, just write it that way; you don't need to sprinkle sharps and flats everywhere to get that result.
Psalm 23: Not every measure needs to contain a triplet. Many songs are perfectly content with twins.
Sail Away: Measures are not islands, nor will they run away if not connected. You do not need to to bridge them all with tied notes.

Pretty songs, though.

Young artists

Nice thing about college, you get weird graffiti. Currently there are slogans ranging from the educated - "We hang petty thieves and elect great ones to office" - to the random - "Welcum [sic] to your DOOM!" - to the just plain incomprehensible: "End the Fed", "Defeat is (not) bitter sweat - unless you swallow it".

I also kinda like the stencil of a cat with a hand choking it, saying "HALP!"

Why sleep is important

Don't ask why the car would be pointed along the railroad track.

Ode to a Rusty SUV

That fateful night the car was stalled
Upon the railroad track
I did not see the train approach,
It smashed into my back.

Rust Angel, will you bear me?
Rust Angel, will you save me?
Will you keep me from above,
And save me for the ones I love?

The car went flying through the air,
And flipping end to end.
It landed by the tracks, and rolled
Down from that fateful bend.

Rust Angel, will you bear me?
Rust Angel, will you save me?
Will you keep me from above,
And save me for the ones I love?

The car was smashed beyond repair,
The wheels spun fitfully.
But I was only bruised and scratched,
As I crawled from the debris.

Rust Angel, will you bear me?
Rust Angel, will you save me?
Will you keep me from above,
And save me for the ones I love?

Profitable careers

Glazier at Crystal Lake
Starbucks in Springwood
Purveyor of explodium to Hollywood

Braaains

I know, I know...gleeful mutilation of a sacred classic.

O country stalked by terror plague
By waves of undead grain
Your mountain heights no refuge prove,
Yet less your open plain!
O Zombieland, our Zombieland!
More shotguns do we need,
Or they may overwhelm us yet,
And on our brains soon feed!

O trampled now by undead feet
That leave a rotting mess,
And mutilated chunks of meat
Still wrapped in shredded dress!
O Zombieland, our Zombieland!
How long can we survive
When zombies round our walls abound,
With hordes yet to arrive?

WoW...

Dashing through the town
Seeking things to slay
See me hunt them down
Slashing all the way
Spells fly everywhere
Making flashing light
What fun it is to hack and slash
And murder things tonight!

Oh, swords and spells,
Swords and spells,
See me gleefully
Hack to pieces anyone
Who crosses paths with me!

How to scare a parent

Walk out of a pathogenic microbiology lab involving playing with disease-causing organisms (obviously...) with your hand dripping red.

I'd forgotten how messy Gram stains were. Emphasis on the "stain". I spend the next few days with hands decorated with large purple, red, and brown blotches.

Observation

It's mildly embarrassing to be scarfing down pizza during a lecture on healthy eating.

Phrases I can no longer hear without snickering

Gazebo/spatula/tuberculosis
Two, four, six, eight
He's dead
Que sera, sera
I hold your hand
It could be worse
Ramparts
Tracts of land
Fjords
Who's next
Warehouse
Tequila
Everything is going to be all right

And more...

Live and learn

Today's lessons:

Snow is wet.
Wet glasses are slippery.
Sledding down a bumpy hill imparts fairly severe jolts to aforementioned glasses.
Glasses coming off in mid-slope is somewhat distracting.
And a distraction while going downhill very rapidly, on an unsteerable sled, while suddenly finding oneself unable to see, is somewhat...painful.

Are we feeling enlightened yet?

Been done, I know...

But these two were practically made for each other.

You better not fear, you know it's your fate
Edward is here, and he thinks you taste great
Sparkly vampire's coming to town.

Fixated on you - you've nearly died twice
He's baring his fangs; is he naughty or nice?
Sparkly vampire's coming to town.

He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He watches through your windowpane -
Close the drapes, for goodness' sake!

He says that he's changed, he wouldn't hurt you -
Are you that naive, to think it's all true?
Sparkly vampire's coming to town.

Sleeeeep...

This is your brain.

This is your brain on finals.

Any questions?

Blackboard Evolution

Most of the honors classes use the same classroom, which is somewhat...peculiarly designed. Among other things, there is one large chalkboard up front, which some of the instructors use, and one in an awkward corner in back, which nobody uses. This semester, some students apparently noticed that.

Near the start of semester, someone sketched Plato's Cave on it, complete with a guy holding up a rabbit's head in front of the fire, which was reflected on the wall. Over the course of the next few weeks, the rabbit shadow grew more and more complex, as people added details.

Next, the whole thing was erased and replaced with a remarkably detailed sketch of a horned, bat-winged creature looking off to one side. Eventually, someone added a stick figure of a big-haired, beflowered, crazily grinning woman in that direction. Next time I saw the board, she was blowing a kiss to the creature.

Honors students are strange.