Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Lunch with the Great Barrier Reef
Friday, December 4th, 2009
A pair of human eyes float in a glass cylinder of bubbling water on the center of our big conference table. I don’t like the way they stare. The way they are always watching. They have been here often enough that I can make out the gossamer tendrils connected to their trailing nerve endings. I follow the wires and tubing from the back of the cylinder to where they disappear into the wall under the window.
It is a bright sunny day and the ocean is sparkling, but I don’t enjoy the view. I can only think of the wires and tendrils running snaking out to the blue expanse and the Great Barrier Reef submerged beneath.
“How is the schedule proceeding, Mr. Abarax,” a tinny, synthetic voice asks through small laptop speakers next to the cylinder with the eyes.
I asked it once, why human eyes? Why not a camera or synthetic lens?
We want to look on you as you see yourselves, they answered.
The board is assembled around the table. They shuffle papers nervously. We’re behind schedule.
“We’re having trouble with the second set of Co2 scrubbers online,” Jones says. “But the new tree plantation is going as directed.”
I want to smash the cylinder and tell that damn reef to shove it. But a set of those gossamer tendrils are in my house and at my kids’ school. We’re never very far away from stinging range.
“Here,” the reef says, through the laptop speakers. “This set of schematics might prove helpful. We expect progress next meeting.”
The eyes go blank. They look exactly the same as before but I can just feel that they are empty.
I don’t care about the temperature of the ocean or the coral reefs. But those tendrils found their way into my son one night. With his four-year-old lips, the reef informed me of its plan. Of my new orders. And it is everywhere. Pulling our strings with gossamer stingers. So the board listens. And when the meeting is over, I will get to work.
-END-
Androcles Again
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
The little girl awoke, unbound, aware of a great rolling movement of musculature beneath her. Shapes and curves resolved into the structure of an enormous pachyderm. She’d been sleeping on the back of an elephant.
She looked over one side; its ponderous walking took them both across a frighteningly narrow tree branch hundreds of feet above the ground. She let out out a small squeak; the elephant’s trunk periscoped over its head and seemed to look at her.
“You are awake.” Its low rumbling voice sent vibrations through Anya’s legs and up into her teeth. The beast did not halt in its ambulation.
“Yes,” Anya said. “Where am I?”
“My realm. I am the Olifanz.”
“Don’t you mean elephant?”
“Did I misspeak?” the Olifanz said.
The little girl was quiet.
“Madame Spider delivered you to me.”
“Will you show me the way home?”
“No. But I will bring you to the Turtle, who will. Now be silent, or I will change my mind and eat you up.”
“But elephants are herbivores. I learned it at school.”
“As I said before,” the creature boomed, turning its massive head and fixing Anya with one harsh green eye, “I am not an elephant. I Am The Olifanz.”
“But why are you so grouchy?”
“Because I must deal with incessant questions from little girls who do not belong here. Plus, something behind my right ear has been causing me irritation and pain for months.”
Anya gently lifted the flap of the Olifanz’s right ear, and discovered a wickedly sharp-looking black object lodged in the skin. Tri-cornered, a bit like a shark tooth, and the darkest fuliginous black she had ever seen. Without a further thought, Anya reached down, gripped the tooth in her hand, and gave two quick tugs. The tooth came free, and in the process, one acuminate corner shallowly bisected the fate line on her palm; both she and the Olifanz cried out in unison.
“O! O!” trumpeted the Olifanz, then sprinted forward. Anya stuffed the tooth in the pocket of her jumper and held on, hand stinging. The Olifanz abruptly leapt forward into thin air. Anya screamed as they soared through the spaces between space, a lateral dimensional shift, vibrant colors blazing past her eyes, until, just as suddenly, they stopped, surrounded by a dense bamboo forest.
Before them stood an ancient tortoise, its skin fathomably wrinkled, its shell whorled and swirled with rune-like arabesques.
“As promised,” said the Olifanz, reaching up to snare Anya with its powerful trunk and then place her on the ground, “this is the Turtle.”
“How did we get here?”
“A moment of pure joy,” the Olifanz said. “We would have gotten here eventually, but your way was much, much faster.” Then the great beast lumbered away without another word.
Previously:
00: Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall
01: The World, Under