Chapter 38

NTB

The lone and grunting toad
That peed, on your floor
I saw it squatting there
So many times before.
Don’t leave it squatting there
Kick it out the door…


Many times I’ve heard it croak
And many times I’ve tried
To get my hands around its throat
Or feed it poisoned flies


And still it’s staring back
With those weird yellow eyes
Don’t leave it squatting here
Kick it out the door.

Chapter 37

CUT

Knife-edge:

Macroscopically smooth.

Serrated

Where it counts.

To rip and tear

With the illusion

Of smooth cut -

Sliding destruction.

Permanent

Separation.

Increasing entropy,

Fragments

Of the whole.

Edited…

Chapter 36

Eye wrapped mine uncle own adore

Know won Thera guest

Sew eye win tome

Chapter 35

Dwarf Language Lesson

The word ‘dark’ in the Common tongue of humans actually derives from the Dwarf word ‘darrachk’ (rolled ‘r’, hard and guttural ‘chk’) which not only means “without light” but is also an emotionally loaded term associated with Dwarves who isolate themselves from society and disappear into the darkness of the deep mines and caverns, becoming bestial and degenerate and/or evil. Going ‘darrachk’ is a horrible thing for Dwarves and the very term gives most Dwarves the shivers. The term ‘darrachk’ is also a swear word, like “damned” or “cursed”.

Orcs are, of course, one of the long time enemies of the dwarves. Orcs, for all of their bad appearance and evil behavior, are at least intelligent and have a society or sorts, wear armor, speak, etc. In some circumstances though, even orcs can go darrachk if they are, for example, trapped underground and separated from orc society. Over generations, they can lose the power of speech and become mutated, cannibalistic beasts (orcs are more subject to genetic mutations than other races). These darrachk orcs are the Bogeymen of Dwarf myths and are used to scare children to keep them from wandering off into the dark. They are semi-mythical, however – no one knows for sure if they exist.

The phrase “darrachk orc” sounds funny to most dwarves because of the repeated guttural sounds (and because it rhymes with a Dwarf slang phrase – ‘ach orc’ is a crude slang for penis, literally, “little orc” - so in typical Dwarf fashion, it is usually contracted. Dwarves who have no contact with humans who speak Common think nothing of it, but more social Dwarves are aware of how and why humans are amused by the term and it embarrasses them somewhat.

Either way you say it, d’orcs are the most feared and evil enemy of the Dwarves.

Chapter 34

“I have a lot of trouble writing dialogue,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think I’ve written this exact conversation before, with the same wordy, pretentious meta-jokes.”

“Oh, stop griping. Your dialogues are fine.”

“Part of the problem is just punctuating them correctly. And I never know whether I’ve put in enough ‘he said’ ‘she said’ lines. When you’re writing, they all sound terrible. When you’re reading it later, you realize that you didn’t put enough in. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

She turned off the water and wiped her hands on the dishtowel, then said, “The best thing to do is to make sure the reader knows what the characters are doing. Where they’re located. That makes it easier to picture the scene.”

“I know.” He stubbed his toe on the water sprinkler and cursed.

“Such language,” she said frowning.

“And take cursing. My mom might read what I’ve written for Christ’s sake. What’s she going to think if everyone goes around saying *%&@ and ‘shit’ all the time?” He sat down and started putting on his shoes, glancing up at the sky to see if it was going to start raining soon.

“What about sex scenes?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘What about sex scenes?’.”

“Oh, they’re the worst. If you leave them out, you’re an unrealistic prude. If they are too graphic, then you’re just writing pornography. No matter what you write, you’ve still got to worry about your mother reading it.” He slumped back onto the lawn chair dejectedly.

“Come inside, I need to close the window before it rains.” As she reached to close the window, she added, “Besides, we’ve got the house to ourselves tonight. Let’s screw on the kitchen table.”

Chapter 34

The paint was peeling from the walls, revealing strata of past decorations stretching back three hundred years. The ceiling wasn’t that old, since it had been replaced several times, but it was still water damaged and ugly. The floor, however, once he was finished with the pressure washer, was a beautiful tile mosaic with very little damage.

What he really wanted this house for was the view. In the salon was a huge window facing out into the depths of Valis Marinaris and at night the Strip along the rim, so tacky when you are walking the streets, shone like a string of Christmas lights and the taxis going between the port, the Strip, and homes in the Valley looked like fireflies back home in Mississippi.

After returning back “home” after a trip to Barnard’s Star, he had discovered that in the five hundred objective years he had been gone, Mars was as close to Mississippi as he was going to get. The world of his childhood, just twenty years ago to him, had been destroyed by a buggy nanophage assembler 352 years ago, so his home, his relatives, the pine trees, and the fireflies, and ever other carbon bearing matter on the Earth’s surface was now part of a large diamond shell, two miles thick, covering the surface of the dead oceans. He took an orbital tour after he got over the shock and the planet looked like a low detail world globe. The continents were flat and scoured and the oceans were dark blue and featureless, like a big glass aquarium.

The phage still lay dormant, so there was a quarantine in effect. Silly, since anyone who landed would soon be dismantled and incorporated into the diamond wall with the leftover bits blown away as dust.

Chapter 33

“In the cut, there ain’t no twinning. It’s just you and the ghosts and all you’ve got to save your ass is your wits and your meld.”

I considered this as I watched Gammer string the mesh, lining up the nodes with a sort of techno Feng Shui, guided by the blue laser dots along the rock face. I pulled on my gloves, then secured the hood over my face. I felt the tugging of the cables attached to my chest and the tightness of the piezo-generators strapped on my thighs.

“You ready?” Gammer asked gruffly.

I did a spot check and nodded.

The drug hit my veins at the same time I was snatched downwards into the tunnel and I awoke naked on a pebbly beach under a green sky.

Chapter 32

“Mail me the script and I’ll run it past the readers and get back you”
“It’s pretty big. I takes a lot of data to describe a person, you know.”
“That’s OK, I can handle it. If it all looks OK, we can have her nanomanufactured for you by next Thursday”.
“Can you make it Wednesday? The prom is on Thursday night and I'll need time to buy a dress.”
“A complete designer wardrobe is included in the fabrication price, but Wednesday shouldn’t be a problem. We just have to check the data – you don’t want an eight foot tall prom date with a hunchback do you?”
“Well, now that you mention it…”