Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
System Tour: The Moon
Friday, September 7th, 2007
Cinderella’s castle in Lunar Disneyland is a latticework of thin metal rods with nanodots that cycle through a thousand color changes a day. Right now it’s purple near the base, shading into pink with white starbursts above.
Right now it’s all blue with an animated Tinkerbell swooping in and out the tower windows. That’s how fast it changes.
Park Hoppers are a constant nuisance, teens in spacesuits leaping over the fences. They carry resonating jammers that opens holes in our forcedome just big enough, just long enough, for them to pass through. The computer feels this and notifies me of their trajectory. Usually I’m there before they touch down, zipping through underground tunnels in my bullet car. I read them the riot act about loss of atmo, about endangering park guests, about paying their entrance fee. I tell them a fable about the kid who landed on the Matterhorn tracks and got run over by the bobsled. Then I have my robo-Pluto sniff their DNA and bill their families.
Everybody’s got a robo-Mickey, or robo-Donald, or robo-Goofy. Part tour guide, part guard, part shill, they ensure that no part of the park gets overcrowded. “Let’s go visit Main Street,” they’re always saying. That’s where most of the shops are.
Lunar Disneyland has the largest dome in the solar system. It’s visible from Earth, but of course there’s nobody down there to see it any more. From the outside it’s opaque: white to reflect the sun, cycling to black in the shade. Inside it’s all puffy clouds and flying horse-ladies. Pegasi with women’s torsos and heads. You know, from Fantasia.
Guests come from all over to visit the park. Spindly Martians, half-gaseous Venusians, bulky Uranians. They’re human inside, where it counts, and mouse ears come in all sizes.
Advanced Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath IV: Citadel of the Ghoul®
Monday, August 27th, 2007
His eyes are shut, but he’s clicking faster now, he’s in the zone, the trance engendered by playing a repetitive game well mastered. And now the veil parts and he sees the stair, sets foot on the topmost step, begins his descent.
Long time he climbs, ever downward amidst sepulchral gloom, and he can hear the chittering of the ghouls in the vast space below him. He is no longer aware of his hands, clicking the mouse, only of the dreamworld.
The air is colder here, and he puts his hands in his pockets, his breath forming evanescent puffs of white. At length he sees a glimmering in the red-litten mirk, but it does not seem to be the expected buttery yellow lamplight of the charcoal burners’ village, where he will spend the night.
Disturbingly, the light flickers and, as he draws nearer, assumes a distinctly rosy hue. He smells smoke. In the village he finds the charcoal burners scattered, their huts charred. From the smell, some of the charcoal burners remain in the ruins of their dwellings. He searches, following the paths where survivors fled, trampling their gardens of rare black lilies in hasty flight. Under the eaves of the forest stands Hando, gracious host of previous visits to the dream lands.
“Are you all right, old friend? Who did this?” The traveler demands.
Hando shakes his head. “The ghouls, no longer satisfied with their habitual pungent fare, prey upon the living. My whole family.” He cannot go on.
The traveler swears by the bones of his father, resting quietly beneath the groves of lemon trees near Lasturion the Enduring, on the far shore of the inner sea, that he will not rest until a terrible vengeance has been wreaked on the kingdom of the flesh eaters.
*
“Doctor, he was up here when the power… I called, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t answer.” For a few moments she could not go on. “After a while I came upstairs. I found him slumped over the keyboard, his hand still clicking and moving the mouse. I tried to pry his hand off the horrid thing! I couldn’t. I turned off the computer, but his hand still moves, and he will not wake.”