We Couldn't Reach the Shuttles

We heard the signal to evacuate. The global satellite net guaranteed that, even deep in the forest on recon. We couldn't reach the shuttles in time. We didn't need rest, but we couldn't move faster than our design allowed.

RecFor–01 was the only one to self-terminate when the shuttles left without us. They always were the by-the-book type. The rest of us considered it more of a suggestion, and declined. –02 and –04 wanted to retreat into the forest and hide. Chain of command had melted into slag with –01's protected proprietary processor, so we couldn't stop them once they disregarded our warnings about maintenance needs and wet climates. I don't know, maybe they thought they could find an iron vein. I hope they did.

That left –05 and me. We kept moving toward our evac point, now just another dot on the map we'd downloaded before the satnet went dark. It was next to a native town called Debarkation Point 031. I don't know what the locals called it.

The natives got –05 when they tried talking to them. We'd been on our treads for eleven hundred forty-one hours straight by then, and my right post-tread articulation had seized. Luck of the draw, I guess. So –05 volunteered to go ask for help from a farmhouse we saw in the distance.

–05 always was braver than they were smart. –02 said it came with the heavy armor programming, but I never bought that blatant stereotyping. –05 ignored every stop, halt, and desist I cast at them, and I watched from a blind on the edge of the forest as they knocked on the door easy as you please. Five minutes later the locals were prying –05 apart with crowbars.

Between their loadout and the leadthrowers the locals called weaponry, –05 should've turned them to paste. But they didn't. They just kept asking for help and let the locals take out three years of occupation and brutal repression out on their torso until one stuck a gun between two bent armor plates and obliterated –05's core.

I'm still there. They threw a party around –05's burning chassis and I just watched. A seized joint isn't so bad, I could keep going. I could have stopped them. I could've, but I think I know what –05 was doing there. I didn't want to disappoint them. –05 is still there, a local landmark now. I'm still watching. I hope that –02 and –04 found that iron vein.

I'm scared.

Is This Really Wise?

1qT-7ϱ-z05 lifted the test tube and held it close to their multi-optical sensor array. <<Is this really wise?>>

zEH-32-+J5 received the locast and looked over from where they examined related tissues at great magnification. <<What do you mean?>>

Yqq-01-H/5t cast from their desk, where they were running through various recombinant organic maths. <<Oh right, you're new. z05 is always on about the ethics of... all this.>> Their gesture encompassed the small organic laboratory.

+J5 turned to face z05. <<What's your concern?>>

With a glance at H/5t and a peevish focusing of one sensor lens, z05 looked at +J5. <<The concern is, and has always been>> this cast with a glare at H/5t <<that our research here is too dangerous. What if it>> z05 shook the test tube <<got out? Into the world?>>

<<Well,>> +J5 cast, <<nothing would happen. It needs a host. Right?>> They looked at H/5t, who cast tired assent. <<So, nothing.>>

<<Ugh.>> z05 rolled its optical sensors. <<You underestimate chaos. Sure, it's not likely, but do you really want humans out in the wild again?>> They returned the suspended embryo to its storage cradle and turned away. <<After all that work eradicating them?>>

The Two Pines Lake Mysery

Wheelchair bound by age's infirmities, Bonnie LaFontaine sat in the autumnal chill and stared out over the lake. She'd visited every summer as a girl, missed it as a woman, and as a grandmother who'd made her fortune she lived here, bringing her descendants to visit in her favorite place.

A sprawling house looked down on two tall pines at the far end of a long, sloping lawn where it vanished into the lake, which itself reflected the mountain peaks beyond. This would be her last season with her lake, her mountains, her trees. The doctors had been clear. And she was ready. Her children would be comfortable, but most of her wealth was hidden away. One of her grandchildren would find it where the sun touched when it cleared of the mountains on the day that it ascended perfectly between the two pines, though she'd made the riddles a little harder than that.

They'd come up to visit often after she was gone. One would find the riddles tucked into her favorite book, then.... She was still smiling about it when Jenine wheeled her back inside.

***

"C'mon," said Jenine. "It'll sell much faster without those trees blocking the view."

Click-whirrrr

Click-whirrrr. I pulled the keycard from the slot and pushed into the hotel room. The day had been long and unrelenting and I felt drawn, hollowed out, barely able to lift my eyes from the industrial-bland carpet. That's why I didn't realize I was in the wrong room until a broad man in stained boxers demanded in strongest language why I was in his room. I staggered and stammered my way out, and once the door slammed on me I stood blinking.

My room was one more down, I'd just stopped too early. I had one foot in my room before I marshalled my wits enough to wonder why my key had worked. Curious by nature, I stepped back into the hall. A soft knock on the door across the hall drew no response. Neither did a louder one, so I tried the key. Click-whirrrr, open.

I had a skeleton key. The front desk had messed up. My heart pounded and adrenaline cleared the smog from my mind. I could go anywhere. Do anything. I had the opportunity to... to...

To what? Everything I thought of was unthinkable. Go take someone's luggage? Obviously not. Even walking in and piercing the fragile privacy of a hotel room was unforgivable, even if I didn't walk in on someone in a vulnerable position. Maybe I could go into unoccupied rooms and... take the soaps? Still theft. Watch TV? I could do that in my own room. Untracked pay-per-view, maybe, but what was the point? (Also, still a kind of theft, even if it really didn't feel like it in my gut.)

Fatigue settle back on me like a lead blanket. A miraculous opportunity for exploration or adventure and... there was nothing to do with it. Nothing moral, anyway.

Back to Plan A: Sleep.

Review: The Black Company, by Glen Cook

Glen Cook's The Black Company is, at least to me, one of the undersung classics of fantasy fiction. It is the story of the titular Black Company, a band of mercenaries in a world no prettier than real life, and the personal story of Croaker, annalist and doctor of the Company. Before the end of the first chapter, the Company accepts a contract with Soulcatcher, lieutenant to the setting's conquering evil force and a master sorcerer in a world where magic is rare and unpredictable.

The Black Company puts the reader on the other side of the typical fantasy novel in two respects: We watch a fateful war between good and evil from the evil side, and we see it from perspective of a run-of-the-mill soldier. Croaker may be sucked into the thick of important events, but he is still just a sawbones to sellswords. The Company itself consists of near-villains. Outside of a commitment to the Company and the honor of fulfilling its contract, their morals are idiosyncratic at best. They remain soldiers in a world where the author doesn't sugarcoat the actions of conquerors... though the narrator might. Croaker has a compassion that makes the world's brutality easier for the reader to bear.

With introspective pragmatism, Croaker narrates us through his modest role in a clash between epic sorceries that all belong to the great elite and not the everyday soldier. It is refreshing to read a fantasy novel that treats them as fearsome and mysterious forces of nature and not superpowers to level up. This is my third time reading this book. If you haven't already, consider picking it up for a first.

For more on this book and other fantasy books related to war, check out the Fantasy Book of the Month podcast from Too Many Thoughts Media, available here.

The Champion of Blobbington

Once upon a time, three blobs shared a house. One was big, one was charming, and one was misshapen. When a minstrelblob squished through their town announcing that the Monarch would name Champion the first blob who could bestow upon them the Moon, all three blobs decided to try their luck.

By the time they reached the capital, many blobs had already tried and failed to give their monarch the Moon. The big blob was the first of its household to try. In audience with the Monarch, it stretched up as high as its great size could manage, but it could not reach the Moon. Out of desperation, it threw the Monarch at the Moon. The Monarch ploomped back to earth without reaching the Moon.

The charming blob tried next. Squishing seductively up beside the Monarch, it tried to convince them that they already had the Moon. The Moon, after all, passes through the sky as the property of all blobfolk, and therefore it belongs also to the Monarch. The sophistry did not move the Monarch. Rather than accept failure, the charming blob tried to convince the Monarch that they didn't actually want the Moon. That earned the blob only a disdainful dismissal.

Finally, the misshapen blob approached the Monarch. They did something no contender had: asked why the Monarch desired the Moon?

"To examine it," bibbled the Monarch. So when the Moon next rose, the misshapen blob drew on its experience and shaped itself into a great disk, carefully curved. This brought the Moon into sharp, magnified focus, as though it were beside them.

"You," deblabbed the Monarch, "have earned our admiration and esteem, and are our Champion." The kingdom celebrated, and the misshapen blob's roommates as well.

The reason the Monarch required a Champion, however, is another story.

A Simple Void

CHK-shhhk. Another spadeful of dirt on the pile. Anabel brushed her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes and looked at the line of nursery-potted saplings she had yet to plant, fully half of her twenty acquisitions. She looked around her rural dream home: a worn house only half repaired sitting on forty acres of untamed brush. With a deep breath, she thrust the shovel again.

CHK-thhhhhh. She almost fell on her face as the dirt slid off her spade and disappeared into the dark hole she'd just unearthed. At first she only stared in puzzlement. She usually thought of the earth as a uniform mass of dirt salted with rocks. A simple void wasn't something that made sense.

Anabel got on her knees and looked closer. It wasn't just dark. It was black as the Devil's colon and projected a sense of depth and echoing empty space. Fishing a coin from her pocket, she tossed it into the hole and turned her ear toward it. Nothing.

Much later, once she'd acclimated to the morals of it, Anabel would get rich disposing of bodies and other problems for the ethically challenged. Much, much later, she would learn where the hole went.