Matt got out and put on a new, clean shirt out of his clothes drawer, and against his original intention he changed his pants as well. After changing, he looked around to make sure that he wasn’t forgetting something. Seeing that he hadn’t, he walked out the door with staff in hand.
Matt couldn’t leave the outpost area without first talking to the Headmaster, so, he retraced his pattern through the halls back to the commons. Coming out of the hall and into the commons he happened to notice something on the ground. That’s odd, he thought. He bent down and picked it up. It was a small green, hard thing with golden lines all over it. It was very small and very light. It was very rare for anyone to find something on the ground like that, so he put the thing in his pocket. They were supposed to give anything that they found to the Headmaster, but Matt had broken the rules before and felt no guilt keeping something from the greedy Headmaster.
No one would mention it, for fear of expulsion or worse, but the Headmaster was a very greedy person. He had been at the outpost since birth but unlike his companions, he knew that if he stayed, he would be able to get what he wanted. He stayed at the outpost hording the best linens, bathing frequently- something that was not necessary- and always taking the best food for himself, rather than going out into the world.
As far as Matt knew, Greediness was his only flaw, except maybe for being ugly. The Headmaster’s skin was pail and drooped at his cheeks, making him look very old even when he was younger. Some of the disfiguration really was from age but most was there since birth. Personally- anything about the Headmaster was kept personal anyway- Matt thought that that was the real reason the Headmaster stayed: he was too ugly to have an opposite. Though greedy and ugly, the Headmaster was a nice person; inquisitive but nice.
After putting the thing in his pocket, Matt looked over at the sunrise sun-slit in the east wall. The sun wasn’t there. He found its golden rays coming through the ten’ o’clock slit above it, telling him that he needed to get going.
Their time keeping system was very simple. There were long sun-slits, each separated by a short piece of rock, on both the east and west walls and the ceiling of the commons; one for each half hour of the day. Next to the column in the center of the room, there was a half sphere on the floor. It had markings all over it that when shined upon turned bright red, telling the time.
He quickly walked past the column, time sphere, and entryway and entered the southern wing where the Headmaster, the teachers, and other helpers stayed. He didn’t go into the southern entryway very often; only when he had to and really he didn’t have to. It was an option to go see the Shaman and he usually chose not to but he had told Kyle that he was, so he was going to. He didn’t want to have Kyle doubting him.
There were no teachers in the Southern part. Lessons were just starting and Matt really wanted to be there. Today was the day that the girls came and sat with the boy that they were considered most compatible with. The most compatible person was found by a system of question and answer. The girls and boys would think of a question and then write it down on a piece of paper. After writing the answers on the back, the teacher would take the questions and distribute them to the class that they were combining with. Everyone would answer each question and it was taken note of who answered it the same as the person who asked it. If Matt knew what class they were switching with, he would think of the girl from that class that he most wanted to sit by. He would then write a question and write the answer based on what he thought that girl would say. It was cheating really but Matt didn’t care and besides, he always got the girl he wanted.
Today Matt especially wanted to go because he knew the class that he was going to be switching with and in it was a the only girl that had ever liked him. Her name was Cindr and the last time she had seen him she had promised to try and find his question. He wrote a very obvious question that only she would know the answer to. He had written, “I’m not a chicken. I’m not a cat. I am a fighter and I am a what?” She had gotten it for sure but he wouldn’t be there to see her. She probably wouldn’t even talk to him again for not staying. I don’t care, Matt thought. She was going to have to sit with one of the boys whose question was too easy. She probably doesn’t care anyway, he thought, trying to console himself. Those words echoed back and forth in his head and his attitude became very dark.
Walking through the southern entryway the Headmaster’s room was straight ahead and to the left and right there were two other hallways. Matt walked to the end of the hallway and knocked on the large wooden door set there. The voice of a youthful man cam from within, “Come in!” Matt walked in. The room was not much larger than his but much more lavishly decorated. There were silk drapes over the window and the blankets on the bed were satin cloth. The bed was huge and fluffy; just right for the huge ego that slept there. The owner of the voice
11 May 2006
The old man sat awestruck because he couldn’t think of anyone that could have known of his dream. He stared at the fire; which was not far from gone, and thought of the truth in the note. He had always wanted to write but was too intimidated to try, so he became an editor, sentencing himself to a career of servitude. Besides, he got to work with the thing he most admired. There’s nothing wrong with editing unless of course that is not what you feel in your heart you’re supposed to do. In fact, many of his friends were editors. My friends! he thought, They must have… but then he realized that none of his friends knew his secret dream. When he was young, he would start a new story almost every week. He would write a chapter or two but something or someone would always come along and stir his confidence enough that he would stop. Though he had sold the rights to many beginnings, with considerable profit, he had wasted his childhood dreaming. Dreaming of other worlds and places far away, never staying asleep long; always being sadly awoken and brought back to the real world by something “important”, like getting a job or going to school.
Hidden in a drawer somewhere he had all of his failed attempts at writing books and stories. Eventually it became a habit not to finish a work but to just cut it short and accept the facts. He got used to it. He wasn’t sure if it was natural inspiration from the fire in front of him that somehow seemed to be speaking or from his heart, but he felt a small glimmer of hope. Maybe I should… he thought.
Now he stood up and put the book down on his desk. He sat down to continue reading the larger black leather book he had been reading but then remembered that the fire needed more wood. He stood up and walked out of the room and into the hallway. Turning to his right, he walked down the connecting hallway to the kitchen and cellar. The kitchen was only a small thing, with a sink, a two burner stove-oven, an icebox, a pantry and oddly placed drawers that seemed to have been made and placed by strapping an explosive to a tree. There was hardly any counter space and no cabinets. Entering the kitchen he flipped on a switch powering a small electric light on the ceiling. The old man walked to the end of the kitchen where there was a door to the cellar, his feet tapping on the wooden floor. Opening the door, the man flipped the switch on the wall, illuminating his way, and went down the steps to the cellar.
The cellar wasn’t much, just a small space for his extra food, his wood, and his newspapers when he had finished reading them. There was a trashcan at the top of the steps, which he would have to empty every week and take to the curb, unlike his newspapers, which he would take to the curb once every two months. Sometimes he would even get a young man from his church, a small-town church that had a different pastor preach almost every other Sunday, to come and take them to the curb for him. His name was Wilcon Samser, Niftie’s great nephew or something of the sort.
Wilcon was a nice boy and he didn’t talk much, which the old man greatly appreciated. He was strong and liked books; a good quality. The old man couldn’t refuse a fellow reader without reason, so after scaring the boy with threats, he allowed him to borrow one and to return it the next time he took out the newspapers. “Only on one condition,” he told the boy, “if you do any harm to the book, you are in debt to do this job and any house maintenance I would need until I die.” The boy reluctantly agreed and had returned every borrowed book in perfect condition.
One time, the boy had returned a book in such good condition that the old man had only to assume that Wilcon had taken the book and had it refurnished in fear that the old man would blame him for the damage. It was an ancient book about dragons dated fifteen-o-three, whether or not that was credible or not couldn’t be determined. It was found in the attic of the house when the workers were renovating it. They had brought the book down and given it to him. The worker had said, “Here, Mr.. I would have stolen it if I could read a darn thing in it, the letters are all swirling like (cursive).” The old man had been outraged at the ignorance of society to allow such unintelligence to go without being confronted.
When the old man returned from the cellar, he brought an armful of wood with him. With some struggle, he managed to flip both switches on his way back to the study. At first, one of the switches hadn’t worked but knowing from experience he bumped the wall with his hip and the light went off. He didn’t get the cellar door shut but he could always do that in the morning.
The man blindly made his way back to the study where he walked over to the fireplace and put the wood on. The first three logs caught rather quickly. He was going to add a fourth but realized how tired he had become and decided he would go to bed soon. After placing the rest of the logs in the log holder, one of the exceptions of a "thing" that was only kept for its use and despised for its size and odd shape, he sat down at his desk. He set his eyes on the first word, and then stopped. He had forgotten to throw away the box package that the book came in. While starting to get up he looked over his chair, as to not waste time, to see where he had thrown the box, but it wasn’t there. He sat back down dumbfounded. I know I put it there, he thought. Secretly being glad that he didn’t have to waste another trip to kitchen trash (his small study trashcan was too small for such a large package), he dismissed the whole thing and put his attention back on his book. He didn’t even find the word he was on this time before his thoughts were interrupted yet again, this time by his new book. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that it was open to the first page. He looked up at it and stared while he placed his elbows on the polished desk and sat his head on his hands, gaze unwavering. I know I closed that, he thought in wonder, There’s something very strange going on tonight... I know what! he exclaimed in his mind. Then crossing the barrier between internal and external speech, he whispered, “I’m just going to go to bed.”
He took the thick book that he so badly wanted to finish, got up and put it on the shelf where it belonged. “I guess God just doesn’t want me to read this and go to bed. Though that seems very contradictory.” he said with obvious exhaustion in his voice, though one could tell that he was trying to hide it. He pushed in his seat and leaned over to blow out the candle. He took a breathe in, formed his lips, but didn’t exhale. A word from the note was echoing around inside his head - Write! His eyes glanced over at the black velvet book as he held the awkward position of blowing out a candle. He sighed and put his hands on the back of the chair and gripped the aged animal skin (which unbeknownst to the old man was lion hide illegally used for furnishings); his old leathery and wrinkly hands always felt better to know that there was another something old, leathery, and wrinkly. He pulled his chair back out and sat down.
Reaching over, inside of the pull down compartment of the writer’s desk he opened a drawer full of pens and pulled out his favorite; an expensive thin-line ball point pen that he had gotten for his twentieth birthday from his mother. She probably bought to congratulate him for getting his first editing job and to encourage his skill, but he would never know. She was deceased or blatantly put, which is how the old man would have put it: dead. He personally had never married; never found time to and knew time well enough to know what it did with things you loved.
Sadly all of his older relatives were deceased and buried away. His father, a great businessman was killed during a bank robbery at the age of fifty. Most people thought it was from a great heroic action to stop the criminals but in fact he had been walking into the bank unaware when the robbers ran him over in their get away car. The strangest thing was that he had made a will that was dated with the day he died, even though he had written it fifteen years before. It was written like he had known exactly when he was going to die, just not how. They wrote about it in the local newspaper and the old man could still remember the gossip that trailed on for weeks.
He uncapped the pen and leaned over the open book, hoping that he still had it in him. Remembering an old story that he had come up with in his youth, which of course he had never finished, he wrote: Shant was a very playful cat. His coat was of two colors, white and black. He was white in the most odd places: above each eye he had a small slash resembling eyebrows, a spot on the back of his hind left leg and the most odd of all, the bottom half of his tale was all white. Even with such an odd coat (odd coats are more respected in the social world of a cat), Shant took the most pride in his eyes. They were emerald green and shimmered like the sea. And sometimes if you looked right into them, opened up and listened, you could hear the occasional whisper of feline wisdom. Many times in the form of riddle or proverb but always just the right wisdom you needed to hear. He stopped. The old man capped the pen and put it back where it belonged in the drawer. He bent down low and blew on the ink to dry it, even though he knew that there would still be an ink stain on the opposite page the next day. Life is so predictable, he thought, but in the back of his mind he was thinking of the strange day he had had. “In the future I really should use a different pen. One with less ink.” he commented lightly when he noticed it was dry. “Well,” he said, “I think that looks pretty good.” He closed the book and stood up. For the last time that night he pushed the chair back under the desk. He said a quick prayer, remembering his sister Mavery and her illness, bent over and whispered, “To be continued.” and blew out the candle, with one quick puff. The invisible smoke of the candle rose in the darkness and started to swirl and sway in the presence of a magic at work.
As the old man went into his room, he thought for a second he had heard a faint mew, but decided it was just the squeak of the door playing tricks with his head.
03 June 2006
Hot rain hit the skylight above, and the over populated moon made it’s way across it illuminating the steam. In the darkness below lay sleepless eyes, attentively watching the rain fall before a starry sky but seeing an older story. Astronaut Neton Sedimae was sailing the stars and the past. He lay coldly on a large, flat bed with his right arm stretched above his head, short wavy brunette hair reflecting the moon light. He wore no shirt but was half covered in a silver blanket made from solar silk.
The room was large and vacant; the bed was the only thing resting upon the polar bear carpet which floored the room. There were three huge windows for a wall opposite the bed, each separated by a small stainless steel beam, and on each of the two adjacent walls there was a sliding glass door smaller than the windows. Beyond each sliding glass door hung a black balcony made from spiraling metal and beyond that the emptiness of a night’s dreary rain which fell silently through the unobstructed air.
Neton had not slept but five minutes when he had first lain down. His thoughts—his dreams—were elsewhere, beyond space and time, a distance which could only be overcome with his mind through memories. He had tried every possible position of comfort, and some not so comfortable, to try and sleep. None had worked. Of course, he had pills in the bathroom for such instances but he didn’t trust himself, especially with how tired he had become, to wake up if something were to go awry.
“Sir* Sedimae,” came an urgent voice from inside his bones. “Sir Sedimae!” His skeleton shook with the sudden increase of volume. Neton gritted his teeth and refused the voice a reply. It didn’t wait for one. At a more tolerable level it said, “Sir Sedimae, there are people rapidly approaching and they seem to be using no mechanical device.”
A flash of yellow light appeared around his head and then was gone. Neton threw back the covers and was on his feet running for the left side of the room. “Clothes,” he said as he slowed to a stop before the stainless steel wall.
“Now, what would—” the wall began to ask.
“Suit.” Neton replied.
Something began to make a humming noise behind the wall. “And which s—” the wall attempted.
“The suit!” Neton interrupted, his fists quivering at his sides. In less than two seconds Neton had grabbed the suit off its rack that had erupted from the wall and began to put it on. His legs were in the boots of his black solar suit when he asked in a loud voice whether or not those approaching had weapons.
“That is currently unverifiable Sir.” the voice answered with the clear female voice it was programmed to use.
Neton quickly opened his eyes wide. “Let me guess. You won’t be able to tell until they start shooting,” he said in an aggravated tone as he started his arms in the sleeves.
“Correct. Unless their weapons need charging,” the bone-vibrating voice said with no emotion.
“Thanks.” he replied. “CPs.” he said to himself as he rolled his eyes and zipped his suit. He buckled his belt with a click and then turned and reached for his helmet that sat atop the still open suit rack half way across the room. He furrowed his brow and the helmet came flying to his open, gloved hand. He grabbed it and put it on. “Seal,” he said, and the helmet hissed, conformed to his head, and connected to the neck of the suit. He checked the zipper-seams where his gloves and his boots were connected to the body of the suit, and then he said “Retractors on,” and pushed the center of his belt buckle. His belt began to hum, and six golden circles, retractors, which looked like locking mechanisms of some kind, started to glow white. “Prefa, release the remaining elemental plasma,” Neton announced.
“All of it?” Prefa asked cautiously. The vibrations were so gentle and unexpected that they startled Neton.
He jumped and had his one-handed plasma rifle out of its holster on his back and in his hand before even he knew it. “Yes, all of it,” he said with adrenaline prematurely coursing through his veins. A deep rumbling came from above, where three openings large enough to stick his fist into appeared. Neton looked down at his belt. The first two retractors were already full and had begun to glow yellow and the third was just changing. “How close, Prefa?” he asked.
“Approximately thirty four seconds until they’re visible,” Prefa’s bone jarring voice, literally at times, came in loud and clear. They used specified vibrations as often as possible rather than radio or any other type of wave to prevent messages from being intercepted.
“Approximately! What’s approximately when you’ve got thirty four seconds!” Neton shifted uncomfortably. “Open windows,” he spoke confidently, and the windows rose upwards and back like a garage door, but only a glass one. Neton now looked out at a black inky sky filled with clouds glowing and rain glittering with every lightning bolt, a scene hidden by the windows. “Status,” he said.
His helmet responded, “Five out of six retractors full. Plasma rifle at full energy. AAIMM** (aim) at full energy. Solar energy input, zero. Helmet at full energy. No damage.”
“Helmet, ready,” he said as if it were his first time saying it. His helmet buzzed and came to life; the scene in front of him changed to an infrared and night vision hybrid and he began to hear everything around him with selected hearing, things that the helmet deemed as noise, such as the rain falling, were filtered out.
“Time?” Neton asked impatiently.
“Visibility in ten seconds.” Prefa replied.
Then his helmet chimed in with a small beep, “BEEP. All retractors full with excess elemental plasma.”
Oh, great, Neton thought. Extra elemental plasma could aid the enemy if they were indeed magic users. “Prefa!—”
“I can’t. There’s not enough time.” Prefa interrupted, predicting his thoughts; an awkward action for a computer. “Five seconds. I’m powering off surrounding plasma shields.” Neton nodded. A blue then yellow, watery light flowed around the whole house and then disappeared. The cold wind that had been blocked by the shields now made Neton sway. The wind whistled in his ear, magnified by his helmet which caught and filtered out the sound the instant after it appeared, and behind him he could hear his bed being moved back into the wall. “Three seconds,” Prefa announced. Neton readied himself to run. “Good luck. Entering visibility...now!”
That last vibration of Prefa’s voice vibrated his whole body right into a sprint for the edge, where a window had just previously been. As he soared off the edge, he saw them; three shadows hurtling towards him.
*Sir is used rather than Mr.
**AAIMM- Anti-gravity Actuator Inertia Mass Machine
7 April 2007