Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
Tales of the Future #2: The Actuary and the Mothman
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
Once upon a time, some years after the Unified Realities treaty opened up immigration from one dimension to another, an actuary and a mothman were neighbors. They got on well enough, nodding and saying “hi” when they passed each other in the hallway or in the hovercarpark, occasionally trading opinions on the weather or the local sports teams.
One day, the actuary’s vendo/disposo unit broke down and, as he was wrestling with all the very, very tiny parts and swearing very loudly in the dialects from several alternate realities, he was interrupted by a knock at his apartment door. It was the mothman, carrying a toolbox.
“Heard trouble,” said the mothman. “This always work for me.” He handed the actuary a nanospanner the size of a particularly skinny hair.
The vendodisp was soon fixed. The actuary was so grateful that he invited the mothman to come over for dinner and he made his specialty – a stew with precisely cubed vegetables.
When the mothman was leaving, he said, “Very good. Grant three wishes.”
The actuary hadn’t expected this, and puzzled over the mothman’s words while he vacuumed vaguely luminous dust from the chair where his neighbor had sat. He’d heard that the mothpeople could influence reality – the mothman must have been saying that he’d make some changes at the actuary’s request.
That night, the actuary tossed and turned, trying to decide what to ask for. By the time his alarm rang, he’d narrowed it down to eight things. He had it down to five by the time he heard the mothman’s door close. The actuary threw on his clothes and ran up to the roof, just in time to see the mothman getting onto his car.
“I can’t decide,” said the actuary.
“Not worry,” said the mothman, with a twinkle in his multifaceted eyes. “Already do.” And off he went.
While the actuary watched the mothman merge into traffic, the building super came up behind him and said, “Wishes?”
The actuary nodded.
“Don’t stress,” said the super. “Mothfolk live outside of time. Whatever it was, was likely taken care of before you were born. You’ll probably never know what it was.”
That all made sense, but the actuary knew that he still had to make lists of what he’d wish for. He might not sleep for a week, but he’d figure it out.
The Diplomat Complains about Rice
Friday, December 14th, 2007
The Diplomat didn’t like rice. He told me why in the first village we stopped at, the first village that didn’t know my village had exiled me, and that didn’t call him “Gaia rat,”–the first village that feasted us instead.
He said that rice reminded him of growing up in the monastery back on Gaia. He was adopted into the monastery like many other hungry boys. There was little else to eat but rice.
“Earth was having some population problems,” he said, which was odd, because by now I knew that he called each thing what it was, and what had happened on Gaia had been a disaster. Maybe my village had feared that he brought the disaster with him.
“The rice was never very good. It always had maggots in it.”
I love rice, one of the few foods from Gaia that we like here. It’s an honor-food. But I hate maggots. Now I could understand.
“We were desperate for the protein, so that was not so bad.”
I didn’t understand again.
“Except for the boiling,” he went on. “I hated taking those little lives. It wasn’t their fault that they looked exactly like rice grains.”
He turned his bowl round in his hands.
“They reminded me of the soldiers always marching through. Soldiers like those little lives, caught up in a rice bag that wasn’t their fault.”
He paused.
“My metaphor is not good. Of course rice is a living thing as well. But for me eating rice is like eating grief.”
He had never complained about anything before. At last I ventured, “Then why, Elder, are you eating it now?”
Together we looked down the rice in our bowls, the honor-food of the feast.
“Surely they would make you another dish if they understood?” I pressed.
“On the other hand,” he said, “Maybe I need to learn to eat grief. Maybe I could do with more patience. Besides, they are only trying to be thoughtful. I wish to be a good guest.”
I wish to be a good guest. I have spun those words around and around in my mind many times since. Sometimes I wonder if I was exiled for being a bad guest in my own home, perhaps being ungrateful when I was fed something I didn’t like.
“The maggots and the memories aren’t their fault,” he added.