SPACETRAVEL's Serial Thing

He cursed himself. More importantly, he was able to finish that curse. Falling a couple of floors doesn't take this long, he thought, noting that he certainly should have died before finishing that.

Here was another reason for the use of Carulean B that he had never seen. It pulled him upward, not enough to stop his fall, but enough to slow it down enough to give him time to think. Not an unwelcome feeling, he thought as he furiously smoothed Kenichi's coat to keep it from being silly and blowing up like a parachute, with only partial success. Like being a bubble. He could stand this for a few more floors, even come to enjoy it, if not for the part where he got flattened under the elevator at the end. He looked up—it descended faster than he did. He guessed the floor number at...low, and pocketed Kenichi's note.

Seeing the elevator doors of the first floor passing his eyes, he threw himself into a horizontal fall, barely catching a cable with the tips of his fingers. After his fingers, he curled his arms around it, feeling it heat with friction in his hands until he came to a stop with the first floor at the level of his eyes. The coat had torn, breaking just a few threads at the shoulder. Kenichi wouldn't be smart enough to notice.

A ping ricocheted off the wall down to Lux; the elevator had stopped above, giving him ten safe seconds to adjust to climbing or jump out the first floor doors to assured safety. He used up two seconds to consider—no. He had come too far to surrender to the self-imposed challenge.

His fall had dulled the excitement of finally climbing the cables; it was only what everyone thinks is about to happen right before they try climbing a rope for the first time. He did not even have to use his legs, his arms being sufficient to pull his reduced weight upward and toward the cubic block of steel coming down again to crush him.

The elevator above manifested as a growing square of black metal, drawing nearer to its true size. It could not have been further away than floor fifteen, and Lux now had to climb three. One and a half now, but it was going to be close. He climbed faster until he could feel the tension in his arms of climbing unaided.

He reached the doors of the third floor while the elevator was stopped five floors above, or maybe four or six; it was dark, and the view was compressed looking up. He ascended the length of a few more arms to give him space to fall; he would have to leap for the door from higher up if he did not want to miss it and tumble back to where he had started. No time remained for mistakes.

He gripped the cable with his bare toes and—with one last ping of closing elevator doors overhead, he pushed off without looking up. The third floor doors blinded him when his hands hit, then his nose, and then his fingers hanging on the edge of the third floor's carpet when the lights Kenichi had left on around the third floor flooded the shaft.

He lifted himself onto the floor a second before the elevator rushed down behind him. After everything, that was nothing. After rolling over a couple of times, again having misjudged his weight, he settled facedown on the carpet, which smelled like bleach and shoes. Filthy.

Without turning over, he slipped one hand beneath himself and undid the snaps on the vest, pulling it off him with one hand and tossing it aside. Even with it off, he felt a strange pressure radiating from his middle. There was no reason for it, he could breathe now. Perhaps it was an emotion. The only thing he could understand feeling right then was shame. He did not know why he had not just taken the stairs like a sensible person; he waited for the shame, but it did not come. Instead, a shudder of his face against the carpet, the corners of his mouth trying to travel toward his eyes. Was this a smile? It had been many years since this had happened, never since his uncle Vox had been kicked out.

An irrational temptation to bring up the elevator and do it again winked into his mind, but he shooed it out. He had to find Kenichi. He had to see Kenichi, or he would have no chance of going back to sleep. Three-forty-six, was it...?

Ce ne pas un post.

Woah. That is how to write an elevator climbing sequence.

Excellent.

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Thanks! (because I cannot pothole the bug with Memetic Mutation, I leave this note)

edited 28th May '10 2:37:28 PM by harmattane

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Superb work once again; I got quite nervous for Lux at some times, so you're doing a good job with keeping the empathy for characters at a good state. Keep it up!

This is this.

That's about the best comment anyone could give me. Thanks, very much.

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Indeed. I was scared for him. That was most excellently handled.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I wonder how that works with stories—readers being afraid for a character around the beginning even though there's tons of story left, and they're certainly going to survive. I try to apply that logic and keep my emotions even while reading, but it doesn't work, even though I know. Why?

Ce ne pas un post.

It means that you've pulled the reader into the story, and they've shoved aside the knowledge that "he can't die yet, there's still 25 chapters to go." It's a good thing — they aren't aware of reading a story anymore.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Short post to separate the chapters and for the lulz. Also, just a note, with people like Aubrey and Kenichi in this thing, there was no way this was going to stay totally safe for work forever, but it's not so bad.

---

At three-fifteen in the morning, Lux knocked on Kenichi and Tama's door, freezing them.

It was not simply a matter of getting out of bed and opening the door for either of them. Firstly, neither of them was wearing anything. Where they had stopped, Tama's hair had spilled into Kenichi's eyes, and he couldn't perceive where the door was. She had his head locked inescapably between her arms, with her hands over both of his eyes, and Kenichi's arms were terra incognita; they could have been in Vontonia—here be dragons. Kenichi's leg was wrapped around Tama's hips, one of each of their legs was twisted around the other leg, and the rest follows.

"One minute—" said Tama, as Kenichi could not speak through a mouthful of sheets.

Lux gave them exactly sixty seconds, enough.

"Is Kenichi with you?" When he opened the door, Tama had sat up with the bedsheets ignored around her waist, chest exposed, but she was not one to care. Lux was not phased in the slightest, waiting for an answer from her face. Something vaguely Kenichi's size deformed the sheets, but he had to be sure.

To Tama, Lux didn't look as sickly as when she had seen him asleep. His hair was a little ruffled, and he had nothing to wear but Kenichi's coat, but there was color and expression in his face. He looked to have made a recovery worth days within a few hours. He hid something behind his back, but it could be nothing too bad.

She batted Kenichi's head playfully, and Kenichi made himself known from where he was hidden. "Need anything?"

Lux paused a second, considering, then shrugged and calmly answered, "No, that was all." He closed the door quietly. That was all he had come upstairs for.

Tama stared at the door, holding back a laugh. "Has he been outside this whole time?"

"No, no..." said Kenichi, still from under the covers. He took several seconds to explain himself, a heavy silence. "I...I think he was making sure I hadn't left."

---

Chapter three end.

edited 29th May '10 6:37:24 AM by harmattane

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As I've said earlier, this is where I move the first spinoff into this thread as chapter 3.5, so that it stays alive as long as this thread exists instead of getting lost. If you've already read it or want to later, go ahead and skip it—it doesn't matter; it's rather separate from this, though it might make the first chapter a little more painful if you do read it. Starting next post:

Chapter 3.5: The Jabberwock

Year = 2039

Star = Aubrey London

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`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, forming colored eddies of the mewing of dainty pistons that wove through the ribcage of their cat. I barely felt it perching on my fedora: the lithe skeleton of a domestic feline made animate by robotic parts made of only the lightest metal. A collar hung loosely around its spine at the neck, bearing a tag that read "Hecate". It had been the dame's. Or someone's.

I could see my regret for asking the witchy dame for a cigarette—it was purple, with smoky red trailing from it up through the cat to the ceiling, where it pooled like blood. I am not afraid of blood.

The smoke that had muddled my head had wreathed the head of Hecate's mommy since I'd walked in her door. She clasped her hands, relaxed, on the desk before her and sighed through her teeth. They were sharpened to points, like a shark's, and I saw them all as she looked into my eyes and grinned wider. She knew—by the size of my pupils, I expect. "Ah...a friend."

The cat mewed approvingly, whatever that meant from a machine.

Now we were seeing eye to eye. To eye to eye to eye...or so I had succeeded in leading her to believe, but I could still see the bullets pointed at me. They all had faces, but that is irrelevant. With the drug climbing to full potency by the moment, I recalled my mission in hopes that I could keep it near me and visible through this unplanned fog.

It was for my niece that I had called on this enchantress of crime with my hair pinned up into my hat to hide the genetic marker of our relation. My niece is Bonesaw. October "Bonesaw" London, and true to her nickname, she is a doctor, though one of a different color. She treats the underworld, those who would face a dose of the law with their medicine if they walked into a hospital. A career choice I may not approve of, but it would be the worst kind of hypocrisy to leave her to the wolves for it. My own mother left the scar of her abandonment of me across my face. I cannot replicate it on another.

Like every doctor, there are some conditions beyond the reach of her efforts. Sometimes, they die on her. So far, the unlucky families, the henchmen, and the kingpins had been good sports—while I watched from the shadows, holding my breath and the trigger of a mark three irradiator beam.

But the inevitable would come.

The morning before my little meeting, it had come in the form of a dismembered feline on Bonesaw's hotel doorstep and above, scrawled in its blood on her armored door, a loopy symbol that would have looked silly if not for the medium. Two days before, she had faced Dementia, the mystic baroness of all things illicit in Cedille's third sector—the city's swamp-laced fringe—and told her there was nothing she could do.

In the present, though the dancing hues of the hallucinogenic, I glimpsed the condition that had stumped Bonesaw. Viscous black liquid lined Dementia's nostrils, pooled in her ears and discolored her eyes. Dementia's desk was stained despite her best efforts—blackened, oily tissues dotted the surface, one uncomfortably close to me. A breeze could have blown it onto my lap. Before the thought had been crowded out of my head by time rainbows, I'd wished I had an emergency biohazard suit stuck to me, hidden and folded up like an inflatable raft. If the tissue starts to move, pull the tab with the arrow. That would have been a conversation piece I'd never tried before.

"I've not poisoned you. Torikae," she mispronounced the Oceanic word, gesturing to her own burning Torikae. "For the initiate. They say it'll make you speak backwards—because," she giggled, "it does. A security measure only. You don't notice because it also gets you bloody hammered." She extended a beckoning finger toward my chin, which I dodged. "You will become used to it, young pip."

I'm forty. Visibly. While I swallowed the question of how old she was, she dissolved into a fit of coughing.

Dementia frequently coughed—true to Bonesaw's account that the liquid was drowning the witch, but for the life of her, Bonesaw could not identify it. I might have joked that the disease was some spirit's retribution for Dementia's black magic had not the survival rate for those she cursed been nil.

I had been there on the next bullet train. The first thing I found out was how they died—I went door to door in the sector like a beggar for information. My gods, the relief when I found that the stories were all the same: that the mark attracted a beast commanded by Dementia, Dementia had taken its soul and planted her will in its place, rising out of the swamp to seek its prey, her lover's "ravished grave", the skulls left empty, "the jaws that bite", "the claws that catch". So, a hitman. Erasing the emblem did no good—understandable. But it was my hope that intercepting the hitman would.

Once Bonesaw was convinced that her impulsive uncle could not be stopped, I sought Dementia's cave, a fortune-telling parlor coming out of the swamp like a crooked tooth, to see if I could talk any clues out of her as to where her goon would be coming from and when.

And when I got there, I had to ask for one of what she was smoking. Fuck me.

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But it seemed to be helping. All Dementia had heard of my story so far was that my name was Akira Hess, and I had come representing the South Cedille Mortuary. Perhaps I had hit on a very colorful password.

I leaned back, trying to look like I had intended everything, as relaxed as I could. The colors around me calmed into cooler shades and regular, lulling motions that helped further to calm my nerves.

"Already getting there, dear, " I said, trying to make my smile look anything but drunk. I blew smoke into her eyes playfully. Complete submission would have looked like fear.

"Now that we have gone confidential, what is my business with your establishment?"

I recited my lines, a story from a chattery neighbor of Bonesaw's who had had the nerve to call on her and give her five pence. An ancient death rite—the coin, placed in the mouth of the deceased, pays the ferryman who guides the souls beyond where the living dwell. To listen to her story was all I could do to keep from winging back the coin and telling her not to come back. When her account had come to a close, I stood up, winged back the coin and told her not to come back. "A woman I've met told me about an employee of hers—she owns a cafe on the sector border, and he was a waiter of hers." It was a bank in the sector center, and the poor boy had been a teller. "I do not know what he did to attract your ire, but days after you marked his door, he was brought to us with half a head. The forehead—" I gestured, "A hole with nothing inside." Our visitor had been just that graphic. I'd wanted Bonesaw to smack her so badly. "And it was not the first time. Many of your kills are mangled even more severely, and for us to retrieve such on a regular basis is becoming expensive in equipment costs. It is a fact—our sector belongs to you, but my employer fears for the business if this must continue."

"Replace him, " she said, "my pretty." Pretty? Ha. Ha ha ha. Not me. I wondered how long she had been smoking.

"You say it like it's easy." With my name and my appearance, I could not even get the menial job at the mortuary necessary to even meet the man. I scare people—not to imply that I enjoy it. Most of the time.

She said "indeed, it is" with her teeth. "Where does he live?"

"Tempting." There, I nearly broke character. She who saw my smiling teeth did not know how tightly they were pressed together. "But hear me out. This was my idea: do you have to smash their heads in?"

"Smash their heads in?" She looked at me like one looks at a puppy who had just eaten something it shouldn't have. Was I missing something?

"And do whatever it is your hitman does with the brain. You leave quite a mess when you take it out. For lack of a better phrase, projectile bleeding." Or so I imagined with my meager knowledge of anatomy. Bonesaw might have laughed. "Masks and gloves are of no protection—with the disheartening number of rogues who dare to disrespect you, my lady, we go through full suits like socks. If you must kill them at all, would you object to switching to poison, perhaps, or a lethal injection? As a favor to us, who clean up after him."

Her laughter surrounded us—it was black and violet red, sinister. I was missing something. "Yes, " she chirped.

"Dear, have I spent my chance to speak to your man myself?"

"Nobody speaks to my Mort. Not even I—otherwise, I would just give him the directions, wouldn't I?" She leaned far over the desk, too close to me for comfort, and pulled down her lacy neckline with one pinky. Slightly blurred and tinted blue with age, a twisted tattoo hung from the tawny, sun damaged skin of her breast. I had seen the shape on Bonesaw's door, in red. "His only memory of me." Her scent hit my face with her breath—tissue and sex. I had no bones. "Death even took his power to speak, but he loved me."

"Yes, what a story—I hear it from the survivors, but if you allow me to speak with Mort, I won't spread a word. Hate to spoil the legend."

She returned to her chair—I breathed again—and pushed a small object on the desk toward me. A blackened bottle that had escaped my notice. It was not of the sort used for medicine. "He says no."

How she looked like she enjoyed my face when the colors streamed from the bottle like ghosts. I could not look; my eyes shifted to the spot on the table where the bottle had sat. A photo had been under it, one of a bespectacled man in nineteenth century clothes. In my confused state, it sent a shock through me—the drug was peaking now. To me, this place was haunted.

A name was written on the photo.

"Mort Wickham is his name. Born in 1880, died 1927. Looked like that. You have archives; use them."

I had forgotten my lines and was grappling. "You don't just send someone dressed like him...? Clever, clever..."

"His grave is in the swamp, beneath the oldest tree round the quicksand flats. Go, if you want. Dig it up and see! If you really wish to speak to his face."

I read on her face that she was trying to send me to my death. It was exactly what I'd wanted. This was over. I put my hand on my coat, which was draped over the back of my chair.

"Going?"

"Yes."

"If you choose to live, take your mortuary to the apartments on Third Street at eight this evening, and bring your oh-so-expensive equipment."

Bonesaw's place. I stood, dropping my cigarette holder. It was afternoon. Two. Sometime in the hours before eight...

"But it is so long until then..." She stood and leaned toward me one more time, and this time, she was the one to blow smoke in my face, making her image bloom with hot oranges and reds and her intentions perspire from her skin like the sludge from her orfices. The black stains of it. Running neglected from her ears, soaking her skirt—she licked a drop that had fallen from her nose. "We need not pass the time alone...Pretty."

I bolted. Left my coat.

Ce ne pas un post.

I stopped fleeing after a block, hiding behind a defunct telephone booth behind a blocky nineteenth century building, struggling to breathe. Running is not my forte.

This sector was the oldest part of Cedille, left barely standing from when the city—then only a town—had looked to the swamp for water. A bad idea; the steaming, rotting sinkhole had been settled by the pathogens first. The stories of that age are not for the faint of heart.

I recovered suddenly. A lone, young watchman had exited the building, whistling. A watch station. Miraculous. With this kind of luck, everything would be all right.

I materialized at his side with my hair in my eyes. My hat had fallen off somewhere, streets away.

"Sir," I panted. "Excuse me, but we are in need of your assistance. There has been a threat against my niece—October London. They say they're coming for her by eight." I did not specify the killer's name. From past experiences, saying "Dementia" made people unhelpful, and I needed help. "Do you need an address?"

The watchman stepped back from me with his head cocked, not looking too phased. I gave him a few seconds of mercy to explain himself. Then he pointed to his badge.

"My...name...is...Wesley...of...the...sector...watch. Do...you—" He pointed to me. "—speak...Common?"

Was I that bad? I wondered if, in my frenzy, I had accidentally drifted into the bit of Vontonian I picked up in the south. I listened to my own words and checked while pinning him to the watch station wall by his studded coat. "YOU KNOW IT'S DEMENTIA! What about her makes you all give up?" I admit that was a bit much, but clearly not Vontonian.

The watchman trembled once behind my hands, not answering me. I thought he was playing dumb.

"Her henchman is coming from out of the swamp. My niece has less than six hours to live unless someone goes out there, even if it's me alone. When I get back, I want to see your watchmen standing guard at the edge."

His eyes flared purple and yellow with fear, and I remembered. Torikae. This was not another language I was speaking. Of course he couldn't speak—wouldn't you be useless if you were pacing the worst corner of Cedille when some white-haired, black-eyed fat bastard ran up and shouted at you in the grating black speech of backwards Mainland Common? I want to know what it is like to be approachable in a dark alley setting. The tactical sin to come could have been prevented.

He started to cry out, "Guys! This crazy foreigner is—"

I silenced him by letting him back to the ground and apologizing for the confusion in as gently a tone as I could, hoping he didn't think I was threatening to go set off the bomb.

"Sir—"

I shook my head and smiled at him. "Gnidnatsrednusim? Yrros!" And made things worse again, but this time, because I had to. My gun had been in my coat pocket. I flicked his out of its holster and ran for my life from the doubtlessly full watch station, shouting, "Ycnegreme!"

Judging by the shouts and the glow of the entire watch station's violet stunner blasts—bright enough to light my way toward the sector's edge—that followed me, I hadn't pronounced it right. Bonesaw would never be able to show her face in Cedille again. But she would be alive.

My light dimmed the second I crossed into the swamp on a molding footbridge—they knew what was out there, too, and they expected it to take care of their crazy foreigner. All the better for me. If I had run any longer, I would have been sick. Instead, I laughed, clinging to a tree from which grey moss hung like Dementia's shaggy hair. I had just stolen a watchman's gun in front of his station. After assaulting him as loudly as possible. Never before had I done anything so stupid. And they had let me go—Cedille was even stupider. If the hitman heard me, good; he would save me the trouble of finding the grave.

And, I was bloody hammered. The forest looked like it was melting.

Ce ne pas un post.

Dementia's drug had entered a new phase now that I had put it down. It wore off harshly—probably very addictive this way. The colors that everything had taken on yielded now to blacks and whites, leaching the contrast from my surroundings that let me see things as they are. That in a climate so humid, the moisture so oversaturates the flora that carpets of moss and beard of lichen will take root in their skin to drink is trippy enough. Now, I could not tell the hanging lichens from the branches they disfigured by their color, and they looked to be sagging extensions of them, as though the trees were losing their shape with age like human skin. Cedille's swamps really are ancient.

I do not know how I kept dry. Where I went was off the webs of unused footbridges, out where one could only walk upon the narrow strips where the plants had meshed together so tightly that they would support human feet. The part of them that would support my feet in particular ought to have been even smaller. When I am alone, I look at the ground when I walk; that may have been how. And I guessed that the quicksand flats I had been condemned to would be to the east, nearer to the sea—of course I couldn't puzzle out cardinal directions in such a state. I had just known that the sea was straight away from the city.

The edge of the swamp was easy to see—the sky's expanse of light grey could not be missed. I could not, however, pick out the flats. Afraid to move for fear of getting my feet stuck in it and doom everything, I slid down against a tree. It was an enormous tree, probably ancient. Maybe that tree. All I could think to do was waiting until the drug worse off. Until then, I was useless. I had no chance of saving Bonesaw going on like this, but I would have a small one if I rested before going on—

—something under me did not feel like plant mesh or sand.

I leapt off of it, jittery, and looked. W-I-C-K-H-A-M. A flat gravestone. Hoping that I hadn't stumbled upon his innocent sister's resting place by mistake, I started digging, brushing away flat layers of the sand with the long side of the watchman's gun. I no longer remember what the point was.

The exertion reduced my vision to black outlines, which were scrambled painfully at a shallow depth by the angular pieces of the lid of a marble coffin. It was shattered like a window, and beneath it, all was blank, unpolished stone. Bones are supposed to last longer than two hundred years. The massacre lay at arm's reach; I could lift away the biggest pieces of the stone. Confirmed—nothing was there. My heart beat slowly. I could not think clearly enough to be afraid. Just one more piece...

I saw the feather, then, sticking from beneath a lesser shard. I dropped the one in my arms and pushed that one aside, reveling the only contents of the grave. Two small objects, one innocuous and the other bearing Dementia's signature as if she had written it. Beside a rusty, dated pair of sewing scissors, half of a cloth doll lay. I picked it up by its one arm, spilling sand from within the body back into the grave. It was Wickham. The feather had been his hair, neatly trimmed, and half a little pair of glasses was stitched around its black button eye.

Indeed—what the hell?

Again, I was useless. So useless that I could not begin to make sense of it. I lay the doll back down slowly, but kept the scissors, laying them across my lap when I fell back against the tree.

The sun hit this spot directly, sapping my last shred of energy. You must understand—at home in Iosethep, I work at night, at an awful-looking little bar and nightclub of my creation that is not even open in the afternoon because that is when I sleep. About the time I went to Dementia's.

In any other state of mind, I would have remembered that sunspots act on me as they do a cat. I thought I could close my eyes for just a minute.

Ce ne pas un post.

My subconscious reminded me that Bonesaw was still waiting for me by leaving me in a place alone, and more defenseless than she. That awful phone booth dream again. By now, after so many repetitions, it was no longer scary in the way of uncertainty. I was an actor; I knew how it ended. I had been there in real life. It frightened because even though I knew, I still made the same motions. Even though I know the phone book is stolen from the booth, I look for it, and with nothing but boredom under my skin, I feel my grip on the phone growing desperately tighter as I listen. The phone booth dream is a memory of the body as well as the sight.

I was twenty-one.

It was a strange day in Iosethep—any day can be strange when you haven't slept for two days. That was how I dealt with being between homes, rather than settling for sleeping on a park bench. My apartment awaited me in the twentieth century district, but no one would buy or sell when a storm was coming. This was my first time learning that, and sleeplessness was the consequence.

It was in that district where I'd noticed that the metropolis had gone quiet. I could hear my ears ringing from having been full of Iosethep's soothing chatter for the last year and a half. The wind had picked up, all that convinced me that I had not gone deaf. It had picked up a lot...I had thought I would be inside at this time, but it had crept up so slowly.

Across the street, a magazine stand blew over and rolled out into an empty railroad track. No one was around to pick it up. How had I missed this? I dropped all shame and ran between the district's every door, trying to outrun the people descending into their storm shelters where they could not hear a young idiot knocking.

All I found open was the phone booth.

In my defense, it was the well-fortified sort made of more than glass—wood and steel painted blue, and a few square windows going up, like a twentieth-century office building for dolls from the outside.

If I called the emergency number, they would send someone outside for me. I had seen pictures of the aftermaths of other tornadoes in and around Iosethep, with the unlucky rescued being led from shattered buildings by watchmen, dripping with slimy shield material. Damn—that was a new coat I was wearing, but better it than my life.

One thing favored the survival of my coat—my fingers hit glass when I reached for the phone book. Stolen, leaving only an empty, cut chain and the outlines of its pages imprinted in the dusty scum in its rectangular canister.

I couldn't hear myself cursing my name for thinking I could manage without memorizing the emergency number. The wind speed outside climbed ever steeper, turning the air grey and the sky as dark as evening with dust stirred up from the ground. It formed a dull film on Iosethep's famed diamond-like windows. Darker yet was what I saw between the spires, a churning wall of black debris from the less well-anchored countryside.

I had never seen a tornado before. Not outside of books, which only put in pictures of the pretty ones, the thin and whiplike ones that don't look like they can tear up more than a square inch at a time with their tips. The other kinds I did not know existed. I did not know until I looked out of the phone booth that the charcoal wedge of clouds did not hang in front of the funnel. It was the funnel. Over a mile wide, they would say afterwards.

Finding another booth was right out. Not after seeing that, and not after hearing about what can happen if, perchance, the storm's path takes it close enough to the northern desert to pick up a lot of sand. In those kinds of winds, each grain of sand becomes a miniature sawblade, or so a very clear-headed hobo had told me. I could have stepped outside the booth and had my bones shredded, my coat notwithstanding. If something could save me, it had to be in here. I checked my pockets—money for two and a half calls, effectively two. From there, my calculations went smoothly, but with a frightening dullness, as though I could not do anything more complex than this. Much of my mind had stored itself away for a crisis it was not enough to handle.

One call had to be the emergency number. The other call had to be to someone who could give it to me, whose number I knew. Most were in Iosethep, not worth it—I was not willing to gamble my life on whether they had a telephone in their storm shelter and whether it picked up any signal underground. Outside Iosethep, then; someone could look it up. I knew one number outside Iosethep.

After using some of my half call on the long distance cost, I dialed home. Listening to the other end ring, I observed a flyer for a lost cat plastered to a window by the storm. After today, there would be no need to search further. Four rings...five rings...I covered my free ear and pressed the phone close against my face to ascertain that I would hear an answer. The wind screamed.

The ringing stopped. I could hear something—my own heartbeat. I spoke first. "Hello?"

"London residence. This is Lucky." Mother. I willed her to listen once I told her it was me. She had chased me with a gun out of our town of Sef, but I was well away from Sef now.

"This is Aubrey." The one who was weird like her family. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have said my name.

"Aubrey?"

The tension of waiting. My voice and my hands couldn't take it; this was when I began gripping the phone tighter, and I mean it—later, I would find bruises on my palm. Please, I thought, please find it in your incomprehensible mind to listen to me. She had expelled me from home because she had had a strange way of counting. When it came to me, every woman I'd had relations with counted for one, but Andre had been part of a different system. Standing for eighty, a hundred, many more, my feelings for that one male pushed things well beyond "my son is a whore" and squarely into "you're a goner—one week". Incomprehensible.

I explained myself. "Mother, all I need is the emergency number for Iosethep. It'll take a second to look it up. I am trapped in this phone booth, and you may have heard about the tornado passing through."

"Sorry, Sir—I think you have the wrong number." No, I didn't. It was her. I knew that lisp.

"This is Aubrey London. You know me. Mother!" I raised my voice in case she couldn't hear me; it was getting closer. Pressed into the corner of the booth to stop myself from trembling, I could see it best. The randomness of the flow of inky debris gave it human anger.

"I don't know one." I understood, I wasn't her son anymore. No, Andre and I couldn't wait a week, angry teenagers. Yes, we had fucked in front of her—by the way, a bad prank. You can't do it. I didn't laugh about how badly I'd faltered at the end then, but I do now. And yes, I knew what "disown" meant, but could she save a wretched stranger's life?

My voice turned shrill—my throat was contracting, but I forced the sound through. "Can I have the number anyway? It's coming this way. Can you hear it?" I raised my voice even further over it. It looked like a thing that ate phone booths.

"You have the wrong number. I'm sorry." And the dial tone.

This is what the limited feeling in my brain meant. One call left and no number—that was more than it could handle. I called home again, hoping for my brother. He would call emergency for me, if allowed to speak to me. But the last of my money was spent on listening to a phone ring on the other end until the booth tipped over and I could no longer hear anything.

That is as far as the dream ever gets—dreams never get to the end. Perhaps because the dream version is a version where I die. Likely, with the kind of logic dreams follow.

It would be nice if, just once, it got to where I came to alive but sideways, looking at feet passing by the fallen booth through one eye. The other had been scratched on the phone going down and had swollen shut. Compared to what had come before, knocking on the outside and smiling, trying to catch someone's eye without looking too scary, was fun. The booth had fallen door side down, and I was unsure whether my spinal cord could withstand punching through the glass, as I could not move my neck. My eye would heal completely; my neck would not.

I didn't have to wait too long for someone to help, another young man, when his dog heard my tapping on the glass. That man was Wilhelm. You'd be pleased, mother.

But perhaps where it cuts off is the important point. The point where whether I was right to expect anything of my mother or she was right to ignore the impulsive stranger, it became certain that I would never do what she did. Today, I could not fail and leave Bonesaw as the only London in Cedille—that was why that dream recurred again. The train fare I could care about later. The fares for my security staff to follow and guard her apartment did not matter, either.

That I didn't realize that my gun only had a "stun" setting until I awoke to the mummified corpse of Mort Wickham breathing into my eyes—I'd have to make do with that, too.

Ce ne pas un post.

Dementia's darling had not aged well.

My mind was unhampered by the drug now, and I saw him clearer than I would have preferred to: the skin that still covered his bones, stretched over them like a film, had thickened and turned a waxy, deep green. That which gives a person a shape beyond that of their bones had shriveled, letting the limbs become sticks with claws at the ends and the waxy skin of his face sink into the shape of the skull underneath, pulling the matted remnants of Wickham's ginger hair into crevices where it should not have been. In particular, the eyes—pits with tufts of hair twisting from within. His rusty, bent spectacles still remained; the tar-like skin pasted their lensless frames to his forehead.

His clothing was barely preserved, in ribbons, with bloodstains in ominous places. Nineteen twenties—tens, maybe—I don't know; I was not in a good place to be identifying clothing by year. He had been dead for a long time.

But back to the important point: that his congealed face was none but a few inches from mine. I could feel one of his miniaturized kneecaps stabbing into my leg as he bent over me, examining me like a vulture before it takes its first bite.

I was still at first, in the face of the creature; two blue lights had hit me in the eyes. The sensation that had woke me was that of being scanned, like at a train station, a subtle wave of pins and needles. In this case, I think I was being searched for signs of life, because once it found them, it began to try to stamp them out.

The beams stopped on my eyes, which had just opened under them, giving me away. I knew there was no playing dead now, so moved my mouth as well:

"Good afternoon, Mister Wickham."

Anything more graceful would have been unreasonable to expect of me.

The beams winked out, leaving only the pits. And something dim inside the skull, tangled with hair but alive and metallic. It had not been breath I had felt in my eyes, but the fumes of a mechanical device within. He was just like Dementia's cat, but larger and better preserved, animated by a robotic framework fused to the bones that let the dead walk, controlled remotely and with no use of curses. That had been a myth spread by Dementia herself.

This was a a machine that had just switched from "scan" to "kill". I heard the switch; the parts inside had rusted from years of humidity, but the parts squeaked into place. Wickham drew back, opened his mouth with a creak, and lunged for my face—

—but he hit my foot first.

I was glad then that I had not been cute enough to charm the watchman; I couldn't have kicked Wickham as far as I did cute. Trailing crushed rib fragments through the air behind him, he flew back into a web of vines that just—only just—held him back from the quicksand flats twenty feet away. I had to get him over there, but first, under my control.

We got up at the same time, and I pointed my weapon at him. I tested, for that second, the story that it was him, Mort Wickham, brought back from his smashed grave by some foul sorcery. That some of him was still there, a part that remembered Dementia's tattoo and that would listen to me. I continued in the conversational tone I had started with.

"My name is Aubrey London. You were sent after my niece." I stepped closer; the vines had entangled him, and he was slow to make a move. He had nowhere to go but back into the flats or forward into my gun. "Be still while I kill you." Stun, actually, but that wouldn't have had the right effect.

He broke free from the vines, but did not come at me. Had he understood? Was he too damaged? The injury to his chest had left him smoking from the wound, but something inside the ribcage still glowed and hummed, anticipating some weapon I could already feel hitting me, but I did not take my finger off the trigger. I had nothing else.

Three seconds to see if he was any more than a machine. One, two...fuck that. He didn't deserve my patience. I aimed for the light in the chest and shot.

Promptly, I found out what it was. The beam dissipated over the outline of something more solid than smoke that surrounded Wickham, a bubble of shield slime that remained connected to the ribcage device that had generated it by a few viscous threads. That was what he had been waiting for—expensive. I was destroying a jewel.

We both charged, me with the wrong end of the gun ready; I could still deliver blunt force through the pliable, filmy shield.

When we collided, I sank my gun into the ribcage, tearing through a layer of mummified skin that gave like paper, while Wickham sank his teeth into my shoulder. It didn't hurt. I was too focused on alternating shooting and smashing the gun into the shield generator, deforming the shield like a transparent balloon. I saw sparks; it was working.

But then the teeth moved to my head. He was trying to pull his favorite move. I kicked him backwards again after giving the generator one last blow. I needed my brain.

The generator was gone, though. As Wickham stumbled backwards again, the bubble collapsed upon him, splashing him with the sticky material, which was not enough to cover the bones. Only thin threads of it dripped onto his legs; they could be broken effortlessly now, and a hole opened up in the now gaping ribcage—my target. If only I had still had the gun. It was entangled in the mess, stuck to the generator and covered in shield and shards of bone.

If the generator had been smoking before, now it fogged up the entire clearing. The initial blast of fumes knocked me over, back into the tree—and within reach of the scissors.

I grabbed the scissors and got to my feet, choking—stealing the watchman's gun had had a shining few hours as the stupidest thing I had ever done, but it was about to be overtaken. With one hand, I covered my nose and mouth with my collar, and with my good hand, I opened the scissors and held them at neck height. If the ribcage was occupied by the generator, the head held what kept him moving. I'd seen it.

I let him come at me again, and when he did, I closed the blades around the spine at the thinnest point, just beneath the skull, trying to slip them between two vertebrae. When I did, my blood was running into my eyes, but he would get no further—I hit wires.

The electric shock blew us apart. Wickham's now immobile body went skidding into the flats, and my back hit the tree painlessly. My pain was concentrated in my head, well above my left eye, throbbing like something was trying to get in. I lifted my hand to stop the bleeding and felt the most likely source of the pain: Wickham's head still attached to my scalp by his teeth.

Yes, that had to be it. I knocked the defenseless head to the ground with one fist. It rolled a few feet, spreading shield material after it like a slug's trail.

Watching it writhe and snap its jaws for a moment, I felt my head—only a shallow ring of tooth marks and blood in my hair. I hadn't let him get far. My shoulder was different. The bloodstain on my shirt was spreading; Bonesaw would have to take care of it. I couldn't wait to hear her chiding me for my recklessness through the repairs. But for now—

I plunged the scissors through Wickham's skull, pinning it to the ground. The jaws stopped. The man was at rest, after a hundred years.

I lay down the scissors and picked him up by the hair—no, I didn't. The hair came out in my hands. Gagging, I picked him up properly and carried his head over to the flats, where I tossed it out next to the body. Things that don't move in quicksand do not sink, either; they floated at the top, still.

It wasn't satisfying.

I leaned as close as I could to the body without touching sand and grabbed hold of the gun, pulling it away from the ribcage with two strained fingers, then stood up and fired continuously at the steaming generator. I wanted my explosion after all that.

The entire body ignited when the generator gave in. A surprise—one would think Dementia would have chosen less flammable embalming materials, and that Wickham would not have lasted so long with all of that machinery inside him. Not a trace would remain to reanimate.

One thing remained—call Bonesaw.

For the first time in this whole affair, my heart raced. I hadn't checked the time since before I had fallen asleep. It looked too light outside to be near eight, but this was summer; the sun stayed out late. I didn't know what I had done if Wickham had got her before coming to me.

I whistled a series of notes that only I knew and spoke her name, trying not to let my voice shake: "October Marie London."

The voice of the operator, not Bonesaw, echoed in the ear in which the speaker had been implanted—it was 2040. Phone booths were for museums. "Password unrecognized. Speak more slowly and try again."

My voice had shaken. I tried once more. "October. Marie. London."

Four rings...five rings...my least favorite part.

"Mr. London?" The voice was too low to be Bonesaw. Nitya Chapal, head of my security from Iosethep, had picked up Bonesaw's remote telephone. Whatever had happened, the Chapals had made it to Cedille.

"This is me. Mort Wickham is dead."

"We know he's dead. Everyone knows. How was the bitch supposed to...reanimate him if he wasn't dead?"

"Deader." As if to affirm my point, the flames spread to Wickham's head, releasing a spray of miniature fireworks. "Is Bonesaw all right?"

She got it—first, she laughed. Then, she stepped away from the phone, and I heard a dim commotion in the background. Her voice came back shouting. "Boss, she's crying. You scared her—you took fucking forever! Talk to her."

"Wait—first, what is the time?" I asked, as close to tearing up myself as I had been in a long time.

"Seven." Further words died in my mouth. "Here."

The next voice I heard was Bonesaw's, as composed as she could manage. "Uncle Aubrey..."

"Bones, darling—it's okay. You were never cursed. There is no curse. It was a machine programmed to recognize the symbol. I broke it—but that doesn't mean Dementia isn't going to send someone else when she finds out. I found what I think is a homing device in his grave. We have to leave Cedille immediately."

"I know. The watchman says so. He also wants money."

"Tell him that I want to speak to him first, and that I say to leave you alone."

"Oh, he's leaving us alone..." She faltered, and I thought she was sobbing, but then I heard her laugh, though quietly and through her tears. "We tied him up. Are you sure you can still pay for that?"

I sighed, but she knew that I often sighed when I felt like laughing. This was her. I was unmistakably talking to her. "Everything."

"And the Chapals' train fares...?"

"Consider them paid."

"I'll pay for yours."

"Don't even consider it." It took her a very long time to speak again. I could hear her breathe, shallowly, trying to. I almost lifted my arm to comfort her. "I don't mind waiting; we have time now."

"You...didn't have to. Dementia was my patient."

"Nonsense, Bones. You're a London. Don't you know we're always running around and decapitating things for each other?"

Oops; I had given away that there had been a struggle. She paused. "Are you hurt?"

"My shoulder is a little bit...bitten. Just wrap it up for now; we can spend more time on it once in Iosethep. But don't pay attention to my head. It's not as bad as it looks. My hands aren't burned very badly, either. Ignore them."

"Come home. I mean to my place. I need to see you."

"Yes. Yes; why am I still standing here—" Because my feet wouldn't move. I looked down and discovered why. "Bones," I said slowly, focusing on staying as still as I could. "You're going to have to send Nitya and Deva Chapal to get me." She gasped. "I'm okay! Just knee-deep in the quicksand flats, past the swamp, directly to the east of Dementia's place. On the edge of the sea. If I don't move, I will not sink—"

"I know. I'll go with them."

Now I knew how she felt. "There is no need," I begged. "Please. You should rest after my giving you such a scare."

"Give up," she insisted. "I'm putting my shoes on. Watch for us."

"Bones—" And the dial tone.

---

Chapter 3.5 End.

Anticipate Chapter 4; no more nonsense like half chapters...until the next one.

edited 29th May '10 6:25:51 AM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.

Sorry for last time's interruption.

Also, briefly pushing the worksafe boundaries again, just so you're warned.

Chapter 4

---

Kenichi woke up when it was still morning out. He and Tama had chosen "the room with the windows"; the muted light perceivable even through his closed eyelids. It couldn't have been many hours since he had fallen asleep—the oppressive silence had kept him awake—but this was not an unwelcome awakening, different.

"Tama?"

"Right here." He felt warm skin and hair against him. "How are you feeling, Kenichi?"

He half hummed and half laughed, impishly. "Like I've been dreaming about you—" A quick breath cut off his sentence, and he pressed his head into his pillow until he felt the mattress underneath—like he was still dreaming about her. "Dunno how to say. Floaty, like—my legs." He opened his eyes and saw no one next to him. "Where are you?"

One finger shut his lips. Her arm extended straight up from under the blankets, bisecting his body from his legs. Now he got it.

Tama trickled her nails back down his neck and down his body, letting him speak again. "So that's what."

Biting a smiling lip, he stole her empty pillow and strapped it over his mouth with his arms. Best not to wake Lux.

---

By noon, Lux still had not left his room or even made a sound.

Tama tried for the second time to get a response. Kenichi had sounded worried that he was gone after the first time. The building had a lot of places to get lost in, some of them dangerous—of anyone, he would know.

She knocked on his door. "Little guy?" Silence. "Lux? Are you there?" He returned no sign that he was. "I saw you last night; I know you're okay." Still, nothing. "I'm going to have to come in—Kenichi's going to worry."

Okay, one last try, and she was opening the door. She wondered if general anesthesia had ever caused complications a night after one awakened.

She cleared her throat and jokingly put on the air of an officer's lady friend. "Permission, Your Grace, to enter?"

Lux gave the first indication that he was even in there. "Enter."

Who she saw sitting on the edge of his bed with his legs crossed, waiting, when she opened the door had none of the life that was in him the night before. He even looked pale again.

Lux's clothes indicated that he had been up for a long time—a black suit that was an inkblot in the center of the garish room, and more than anything, his father's sunglasses. He had found them.

Perhaps the difference was that Tama couldn't see his eyes. "You been okay?"

"If," said Lux, blankly, without moving anything but his lips, "you had any uniform at all, I would send you back to put it on before I would move from this room."

She wore a towel. A large towel, but a towel. The thirtieth floor shower was the ugliest, most interesting shower ever.

The entire universe was conspiring to break Lux's composure with this woman, and the entire universe was going to be disappointed. "Floor protocol—next time, wear anything but that. Where is the watch captain?"

Tama tried not to laugh, leaning against the doorway as she listened. He was a miniature, colder blooded version of his father, but somehow not at all scary. "Kenichi?"

"Bring him to me. In uniform."

"He's downstairs—I can bring you to him." Tama shrugged.

Without a hint of expression to indicate whether he approved of this, Lux stood, mechanically, and found her stepping toward him as he approached her.

She bent down to his height. "Nice glasses," she remarked, touching their black frame. "Are those your father's?"

Lux nodded once.

"We're inside, though. Lemme see those eyes—" She started to push the glasses down his nose, but Lux caught her by the wrist and pushed her arm away forcefully, as if he would die if anyone were to see the state of his eyes.

"Don't!"

"Are you sure you're all right?" Kenichi had described Lux's response to the loss of everyone he knew as "numb", and Tama could see what he meant, but there was more.

Lux's blank affect returned after that second's aberration. "Take me to the captain."

edited 25th Jun '10 5:33:41 PM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.

On the first reading I thought he was just being haughty, but that didn't feel quite right. Now I'm starting to think that he just doesn't know how to interact with people any other way except by inducting them into a hierarchy. Which is sad, but very in keeping with the Langleys.

edited 31st May '10 4:32:41 AM by Haven

Productivity is for people without internet connections. -Count Dorku

It sounds like I didn't make things clear enough. He's also trying very, very hard to take his father's place.

Ce ne pas un post.

Tama led Lux to the ground floor in her coat and skirt from the night before. Her clothes smelled like medical supplies—yeah, he wouldn't ask.

She rubbed her eye with one hand, further blending yesterday's makeup, and opened the pewter door of the ground floor kitchen with the other. The kitchen, with a perfectly fine dining room just adjacent to it. But in her defense, no one ever used the dining room but Lux, always alone and always after midnight. He preferred to wait all day to eat than to eat with someone standing over him chiding him about turning out like Kato Langley XVIII, known as The Corpulent. Never mind that Lux looked like one of the starving children from the Ring District—

Oh, shit. They'd brought in a couch. They had dragged a couch into the kitchen. How long would it be before Kenichi scrambled the skyscraper's furniture enough for it to resemble a funhouse full of functionless rooms?

One bowl covered in foil with "KENiCHi" scrawled on it in pen sat on the counter, and Kenichi himself curled on the couch, wearing a bathrobe over the minimum of his uniform. Almost acceptable.

Lux stared. "He isn't asleep..."

Tama winked. "I have that effect on him." She eyed the mystery breakfast on the counter. "Oo, what the hell is this?" She whispered, "I'll bet he doesn't even know—he can't cook."

Lux rolled his eyes. Neither could he. The quality of his living situation was slipping.

He stood straight at the end of the couch, where Kenichi lay his head, not paying attention as Tama filled three glasses of water and set on eon the counter behind him. "Captain?" He waited. "Are you awake?"

Kenichi nodded against his pillow, eyes twitching. "Mm-hmm...just resting my eyes." He opened said eye slowly, barely, before they fell shut again. Then they snapped back open, and he sat up and threw his arms around Lux. "Lux! I was so worried about you! I thought you might starve to death—do you know how complicated it is to feed a sleeping person? You stubborn little guy; you wouldn't swallow anything—"

Lux remained stiff in Kenichi's arms, like a doll. "Contain yourself, Captain. What are we going to do, and what," he said, pointing to the bowl. "Is that?"

"Did I tell you you can just call me Kenichi?" Kenichi let go, but kept his hands on Lux's shoulders.

"It doesn't matter, Captain." Lux shifted his eyes toward the bowl.

"That...I do not remember what that is. It seems I wrote my name on it, so I got it out to see."

Behind them, Tama laughed.

Lux pushed the bowl away. "I'm not hungry."

Kenichi shrugged and leaned back into the couch. "We'll have something better pretty soon. Listen—sorry for my, er, lack of professionalism, but I called the paper at about two this morning, just in time to put out a want ad for lots of new staff today. We're waiting for calls—let me handle them. You've been through enough already, but everything's about to go back to normal—and I think you'll be a way better archduke than your father."

Lux stepped back and leaned against the counter, picking up his glass of water and taking a small sip. "I see."

"How's that?"

"Brilliant," said Lux, still in his monotone. "I wouldn't have thought of it myself. Assuming all goes well, you ought to be CHARGED FOR MANSLAUGHTER!" He hurled his glass at Kenichi, who ducked just in time, but was splashed by the water from the shattered glass spraying from the wall. Tama held Lux back from doing any more damage, but he didn't try, only standing still, trembling. His composure had broke with the glass. "I'm a Langley, Captain! People don't want to help us—they're waiting for the chance to kill us! Now everyone in Iosethep knows! How long have you lived here?"

Through all of this, Kenichi sat still, blinking expressionlessly. "Not very long..."

"Damn you!" Lux twisted around in Tama's arms, and she was surprised to see that his face was more frightened than angry. She loosened her grip. He knew more about this house than either she or Kenichi. "Get out," Lux ordered her.

"We were just fine coming in here—"

"Then leave through the back door, where we walked. The house is full of traps now. Get out." He seized her wrist and led her back out into the reverse hall and cornered her against the back door. Kenichi followed distantly behind, even paler than usual, scanning the area silently. Maybe he would bait something. Lux stared down Tama, who would not open the door. "Please."

"No, not if Kenichi is staying."

Lux flicked his head toward Kenichi. "Look at him. He's my watch captain. He knows he's staying." And he did...

"Then no."

"You're a civilian," said Lux gravely. "If you resist my order to leave the premises, I have a license to do as I see fit." He whipped out a pocket-sized irradiator gun and pointed it at her. "Go." Tama shook her head, and he flicked on the targeting laser, shining its red dot upon her neck.

"Then I'll try to get past you."

Lux pulled out a second irradiator with his other hand and pointed it at Kenichi, who had stood still, looking up toward a spot on the second floor. This silenced her. "One thing before you go—if we survive, if you ever come back here again, know that the captain is hereby forbidden to reproduce. Be careful."

"He sees something. If you go cover for him, I'll leave."

Lux did not move or even look behind him. He wasn't falling for it. His father's glasses slipped less than an inch down his nose, slipping his notice. It was enough to show her the very edges of the whites of his eyes—red. He covered his eyes because he had spent the morning crying.

Behind Lux, something tapped lightly onto the tiles, perhaps two feet.

Tama gasped and leapt forward. "Kenichi!"

Or, tried to leap forward. With the irradiators still drawn, Lux forced her back against the door, but did not shoot. He did not look back, but behind him there were definitely enough feet for two people moving. Tile scraping, then metal things hitting each other.

Tama pleaded, "Please, please go help him!"

"You'll get out of here if I do?"

"Yes." She opened the door and cried, "Go!" as she left.

Until Lux turned around and saw Kenichi striking at a ninja with a long candelabra, he hadn't planned to actually cover for the captain. But the masked assassin had Kenichi forced against the wall with his own weapon, narrowly dodging strikes with kitchen knives, which lodged themselves in the wall beside him. How dirty. Lux had heard that his father preferred this kind of fight, but Lux himself was too by-the-book to stand watching. And the wall—it was his wall now, and it was getting ruined.

He pointed both irradiators at the foe. "TURN AROUND, DUMBASS! You're looking for me!"

And the foe did turn their goggles on Lux. And knocked both irradiators out of his hands and across the room with one kick.

Lux backed away. In the background, Kenichi didn't notice. Kenichi had pulled down a wall hanging and was messing with it. Trying to retrieve a knife? Or something. "That was a lie..."

The assassin stepped forward toward Lux...and forward...and forward...until until they fell upon the tiles face first, with two slashes crisscrossing their back at perfect right angles, through a thin layer of armor and to the blood.

Kenichi stood over them with a decorative wall sword. Never meant to be used, but Lux identified his grip as perfect. They stared at each other without moving for a moment, watching the body between them for movement. None came. Somewhere in the floors above, an alarm went off, and red lights reflected down off the tile floor.

Lux spoke first. "You studied fencing?"

Kenichi nodded, speechless.

"We're going to die."

---

Well, that was longer than I expected it to be. Did it work?

edited 1st Jun '10 2:32:41 AM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.

And here—this is a link to a different option for reading the story. Downloading the chapters as documents also makes them printable.

Only one chapter is up right now, but I'm working on uploading more.

Eventually, I'm considering just replacing the usual post format with a download link for each update, including the older posts. That would make it so I could share the archive with a variety of sites, including more IRL-oriented ones where I don't necessarily want to be traced back to some forum, or where I don't necessarily want all forumgoers tracing me to. What would you think if I updated like that?

Ce ne pas un post.

I don't mind either way, but if I may ask, why Mediafire downloads, rather than a blog or livejournal or something like that? Don't Mediafire links expire after a period of time?

Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text-Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The Staff

Damn, they do expire after 90 days. The installments are always getting replaced by new edits, though, which, here means, new files, which would be labeled so you can tell they're the latest version. The expiration date, I guess, would serve to clean out old versions. Ideally, though, things wouldn't expire—if anyone knows of somewhere like that, let me know.

No, I thinking of somewhere else. The files will last indefinitely here as long as I keep logging in, so it's fine.

I went to a site like this because it's not as public as a blog. The only people who get to see the content are those I make the link available to, and I prefer it that way because even though this is pretty public, I like a little measure of control over privacy. I didn't want anything that let others comment on the site it's stored on, either—just simple, impersonal storage space.

I wonder if it's possible to make my own simple website that fits those specifications. It would be permanent, editable by me alone, and be nothing but a list of download links.

edited 1st Jun '10 8:37:59 PM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.

Okay, the download archive is up to date now, which means it contains up to chapter 3.5.

Ce ne pas un post.

Yes. Thank you.