Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Remade
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Mechaieh programmed corpses. Lesser mancers raised simple zombies to wreak vengeance or sow terror. Mechaieh’s Choice Cadavers brought the highest prices, those that could only be paid by governments and corporations. Her corpses, their memories and abilities intact, ran Fortune 50 companies and commanded armies of diplomats.
Money and power flowed to Mechaieh, the power behind every throne. She grew, and learned the hard way never to trust anyone human. Lovers, friends, family, she saw how each of them tried to use her, to twist her to their own ends. One by one, she had them killed and raised them again to be her bodyguards, her army. It became easy to convert everyone in her way into another puppet, trained to obey, trained to love her.
Peace reigned.
She aged. One by one her reanimated creatures died again, taken by decrepitude. A new generation rose that did not worship her, did not trust, did not honor, did not abide her. She retired to an estate accompanied by those of her creations still above ground. Surrounded by presidents and prime ministers and her twin sister, she lived a life of ease and complete miserable isolation.
Mechaieh sat before the fire, half-listening to viola concertos. The world had returned to its cherished chaotic self. Still, it might only take one war, one corporation seeking stability, and she could once more take the reins. It was the only right thing to do; the world deserved her.
And vice versa.
Yet, she grew so old. One day soon she would die. The thought of programming one of her corpses to resurrect her seemed vaguely wrong somehow. It would no longer be her.
Months passed as she pondered this quandary. Was there a chance, ever so slight, that what she could do, had done, was improper? Perhaps even unethical? Surely not. And yet.
Finally one day her unvarying routine was broken. Two of her corpses escorted a young intruder to her. Aracal, she said her name was, and she was here to apprentice herself to Mechaieh.
The old programmer sat, and thought. Here was opportunity, the chance to carry on her campaign. Here was danger, for had not everyone human proved fallible? Here was Aracal, and a middle road.
And here across from her was Mechaieh. She leaned forward, and said, “It remains to be seen whether I will teach you. Wisdom demands we learn about each other first.”
Thus was the world set on a different path from any it had traveled before.
The Road Home
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
We drove. No light outside but eye-reflections of hedgehogs in the road, around which Sotehn swerved. No light inside except the speedometer and the yellow-dim beam of the flashlight I held on the copy of the Psalms of Enoch which my master, Lulnon, read aloud.
We didn’t want any other light. On the dashboard stood a figure of the Baptizer made of pale plastic that glowed in the dark. It was nearly three in the morning, and its glow had faded hours ago. If it brightened again, that meant a nephalim really was pursuing us, as Sotehn had said, and it was gaining.
I leaned from the back seat to keep the light shining over my master’s shoulder. The car smelled of sun-cracked vinyl upholstery. Most days, I was content learning distilling, compounding, and the rest of the alchemist’s craft. Ever since that bridge over the dry streambed, and the voice that came out of the water that wasn’t there, I’d wished I’d been apprenticed to a cobbler or a wool merchant like my brothers.
An hour later, while Lulnon read haltingly from a copy of the Psalms of Noah with very small type, I thought I saw the figure begin to lighten.
“There,” said Sotehn before I’d found my voice to speak.
We’d be fine once we reached the city. The priests had renewed the designs on every road leading in just last week, retracing the protective geometry with chalk I’d helped my master compound from the bones of animals sacrificed at the temples.
Setehn touched the sigils painted in a ring around the Baptizer, invoking each planetary angel by name as he touched its sign. The yellow-green glow went cloudy for a moment, then came back bright as before. Maybe brighter.
“A strong one,” Setehn said. “Probably newly wakened.”
The glow intensified as the city drew closer. Even with sodium lights along the road now, I could see it. Ahead of us, the chalk designs just visible against the road black.
We passed over them. I slumped back in relief.
“No,” said my master, “we are betrayed.”
The figure still glowed. The bones hadn’t been blessed after all.
“I’ll lose it in the market,” said Sotehn, and, knowing how familiar he was with the maze of alleys there, I had no doubt he would.
But an unholy creature walked the city, and someone had opened the way for it.