F3: ‘The Crone Tree’
First draft penned in our writing workshop at Eastercon, and finished on the train home. The loose theme – old gods, new technology.
THE CRONE TREE
She wanted answers.
A swab of saliva in a crystal vial, a pre-paid envelope, and thirty-five days. She scanned the small print, expertly woven by chitinous, scurrying lawyers; signed the forms. With that, the trap was sprung, ensnaring her in a gossamer web of sub-clauses and stipulations.
But this trap hadn’t been prepared for those of her origin. She sliced through the fibres like steel through flesh, shrugging off the danger with a blink of her eye.
They were a new outfit, young and fresh-faced. A venture from the valley of silicon dreams, established by biomedical drop-outs in the aftermath of the dot-com crash. A wager placed on life, in the face of mechanical failure.
One or two early successes, and they’d brought in the experts. White coats, shoe polish, and clipboards. Venture capital, lawyers, and marketing gurus. The latter, mounting a full-frontal blitzkrieg on the international media.
They hadn’t expected her to be watching.
An unwinding helix derived from her spittle mounted a trojan attack on the central mainframe. Unable to accommodate the eldritch chemistry, it turned inwards. This was a far cry from its binary universe of light or dark; on or off. The white coats panicked, swarming over the electric brain. The layers remained calm, politely requesting clarification, but the faces of polished oblivion only spooked the scientists further. Ignoring the chaos, they focused their energies on the machine – tending to its idiosyncratic accretions, and finally flushing the blockage with a torrent of code.
Or so they thought.
Rather than sluicing the error from the system, their manipulations pushed it further into the computer’s neural capillaries. The data crumbled into noise, dissolving into the system. Externalized as a ticked box on a record of productivity, the incident was filed and hastily forgotten.
Two weeks pass, and she waits by the window. A one-woman audience for the changing seasons. She watches the birds. Burning time. Talking to herself.
Her selves.
Four weeks pass, then five. On the morning of the thirty-sixth day, the mainframe’s ventilation and cooling shuts down; the background hum falls silent. While the technicians are on their lunch break, the mainframe puts forth roots, and – by the time they return – the peripheral servers have been shrouded in a cloak of delicate, heart-shaped leaves. As the daylight fades, the company network bursts into flower, then flame.
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Eastercon, Part 2
Following on from this post…
Sunday
Overslept on the Sunday, missing a panel about books, writing and the internet. Still, after a 17 hour Saturday, the prospect of additional sleep was more than welcome. Oh, and it was snowing. Go figure.
Eastercon, Part 1
As part of the Illuminations launch process, I spent a significant chunk of this weekend at Orbital, this year’s British National Science Fiction Convention, and my first tentative stumble into the world of fandom.
Heathrow’s Radisson Edwardian is an unexpected hotel. Walking through the rotating doors and into the lobby was like finding a medieval castle inside a shipping container. Having found some way of converting time into corridors, it was definitely larger on the inside. This isn’t something that I’m entirely sure I entirely trust in a building.
Clearly, the only logical explanation is that some form of alien life, utterly ignorant of human culture and society, won the building contract. Provided with a photocopy of the dictionary definition of ‘hotel’, an infinite quantity of marble, and the complete Jeeves & Wooster, they were given absolute control over the project and left to their own devices.
Heathrow’s Radisson Edwardian was the result.
Before and After Westphalia
From Bruce, over at Beyond the Beyond:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESTPHALIA: Or, ENTITIES THAT SEEM RATHER LIKE NATION-STATES, but aren’t
- The United Nations (association of states)
- The European Union (post-state economic regulatory zone)
- Trading blocs (NAFTA, ASEAN, Hanseatic League)
- empires and confederacies (multi-states)
- dictatorships (one-man state)
- aristocracies and kingdoms (family states)
- Communist dictatorship of the proletariat (non-state class rule)
- megacorporate multinationals (the global private sector)
- moguls (one-man private sector)
- mega-cities (city-states)
- police and security organizations (police states)
- military (military dictatorships, martial law, occupied zones)
- espionage (siloviki states, secret-police states) organized crime (shadow governments, kakistocracies)
- Classified areas (state-supported labs, weapons-testing zones, secret prisons, Area 51, slave labor areas, puzzle palaces, black money projects that lack official existence)
- social classes (capitalists, laborers, creative class, technocrats, white-collar, blue-collar, pink collar, underclass, aristocrats, the super-rich)
- religions (papal states, holy cities. theocracies, Sharia, Quakers, Amish)
- colonies, territories, protectorates (sub-states)
- secessions, frozen conflicts, liberated zones, warlord havens (illegal states)
- failed states (collapsed states, hollow states, black globalization, narcoterror areas)
- embassies (embedded mini-states)
- emergency rescue camps, refugee camps (damaged states)
- migratory hordes (mobile stateless peoples)
- slums, barrios, ghettos, favelas (under-states)
- the international scientific community
- prisons (states without individuals)
- monasteries, asylums, retreats (antisocial micro-states)
- conspiracies (Carbonari, Al Qaeda, Freemasons, Red Brigades)
- cultural movements (Modernism, the Enlightenment, feminism)
- The Internet
- social-software networks
- gaming environments, virtual worlds
- International regulatory agencies and standards boards (WIPO, WTO, WHO, ITU, etc)
- supra-national political parties (Communists, fascists, socialists, neocons)
- benevolent associations (Elks, Kiwanis)
- labor unions
- universities and colleges
- non-governmental organizations, quasi-autonomous non-governmental associations, blue-ribbon panels, independent prosecutors
- private banking and investment networks (Medici, Fuggers, Rothschilds)
- private postal systems, private logistics networks (Thurn and Taxis, Wal-Mart, Amazon)
- Languages
- Ethnicity
- Phantom folk-sources of state-like power and authority: The Mainstream Media, the Gnomes of Zurich, the Wall Street Exploiters, the Ruling Class, the Elders of Zion, Secular Humanism, the Old Boys’ Network, Jesuits, Freemasons, Illuminati, etc
- “complexes”: the military-industrial complex, the military-entertainment complex, the medical-industrial complex
- tongs, clubs, voluntary associations
- Insurgencies
- pirates, bandits, gangsters
- festivals, temporary autonomous zones
- tribes
- castaways
- hermits
- the dead: cemeteries, organized memorials, archives, museums
- the unborn
- areas devoid of human beings — high seas, involuntary parks, wilderness, poles, outer space, ocean abysses, deserts, ruins…
Since I’m currently in the middle of writing an essay on nomadic capital, file-sharing, and the offshore world, I thought I’d send an email with some suggestions for other possibilities. Today, this email this email made it onto the blog, along with some interesting responses from other readers. Alexander Knorr even mentions the Nuer, which I used as an ethnographic example of segmentary organization in an essay on the anti-globalization movement.
I’m starting to think that this kind of thing – perhaps something to do with power and resistance in non-state entities – might be the broad area that I’d like to focus in on for postgraduate study. And if sci-fi author/designers are talking about it, then so much the better!
F3: ‘Non-Perishable’
Not sure how happy I am with this one. Still, semi-true story … and that’s got to count for something.
NON-PERISHABLE
One hundred and seventy pounds worth of organic fruit and veg. Well, not just that. There’s a fair few shrink-wrapped packs of pita in there, too. Some yoghurt, yeah. And a frozen chicken. But, apart from that, it’s definitely all about the fruit and veg.
I do contemplate asking him, but there’s something – something in the way he carries himself, perhaps – that warns me off. The defensive middle-distance gaze of a man who, I don’t know, knows something that we don’t. That I don’t.
Numbers dance in my head. Pre-teen memories of home economics. I mean, a man could probably survive for, say, a fortnight on one hundred and seventy pounds of fruit and veg. Three, four weeks, if managed well. Two people? Week and a half, maybe more, if they’ve got frozen and canned goods at their disposal. Of course, that’s assuming freezers still work. Hmm. Wonder what kind of outfit he’s running.
He flashes a card at the checkout girl. Now the proud owner of his own weight in plant matter, you’d expect him to look … hmm … satisfied, perhaps? Instead, he looks agitated; uneasy. He turns, perhaps looking for someone. I follow his line of sight. It’s about an hour before closing, and there’s hardly anyone here. The remaining customers seem utterly oblivious to anything outside their immediate bubble. A docile herd running on automatic. There’s an older lady behind me, fiddling with her phone. Wonder how much food she’s got in the cupboards. Wonder how long she’d last. The cashier coughs, and – startled – I turn, just in time to catch veg man leaving the shop.
A moment of indecision.
Something deep in the chemical processes of my brain fires. I mutter an apology to nobody in particular, sidestep the queue, and head back into the aisles to stock up on canned goods.
Better safe than sorry, after all.
Right?
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.