Land of Diskgrinder

below you will find the start of some operatic science fiction I have been trying to write for a while. It's unparagraphed and raw. enjoy amd then tell me, at the end of it, what you thought

The T25 junk banks gently into the shadow of Saturn, what someone called The June Weekend - a vast and desolate tract of push-free hinterland where soul traders rely on chemical reaction alone. The captain flicks an old-school switch (not for him the expense of pre-cog control, where the board sees what he wants ahead of time and actions that task with prescient alacrity) and the autopilot personality boots up: "Hello captain," says the autopilot, "good to see you awake and...", the autopilot senses the environment, "... in the middle of the doldrums." "Hey, personality, can the enthusiasm," says the captain, "and talk to me." "Well, one, I have a name," this flashed in italics across the HUD, "which is Clement' - now in bold- ' and 2, are you on a downer again? Because...' the captain starts to answer but the autopilot increases emphasis both volume-wise and typographically, 'Because' - this in 4...

An ill-lit hall with a big (real) wood desk on a plinth. TC Smith stood before Time Comptroller Martin (renowned prig). "What's my first mission, comptroller?" asked Smith. The comptroller took his time looking up from his reports (green ink, illegible for the most part and written by Time Agents driven to psychosis by paradox shift). "I'm sending you to region 5 of the time base: the Wars of the Ascension." "I know what region 5 is, sir." said Smith. "Yes, you were quite the studious, er... student, weren't you Smith?" Asshole , thought Smith before saying, "region 5 is classified dense-apocalyptic isn't it sir? Do you think you should be sending a cadet on a DA mission?" "Smith," and he paused, more for effect than anything else, she thought, "you'll be taking a low-level bridging brief - nothing to worry yourself over. And you'll be monitored by more, ah, experienced agents throughout ins...

“We have at least two weeks of rock-dodging before us,” says the autopilot, “why don’t you tell me the story from the beginning,” ( again , thinks the governing AI, but the captain has no idea -or real interest in knowing- that the autopilot can think.) The captain takes a cigarrette from the dent in the dash where he keeps them, “ok,” he says, “just after I was unwired into a clone (part of my redundancy package from ImpMark) I was hanging around the Titan-exits...” The autopilot cannot help itself but unspool data from it’s archives, even though it is the 152 nd time it has done so: [unwired: Imperial Marketing (ImpMark) drone-soldier slang for decantation into a new medium. Drone-soldiers are typically waste humans stripped of inessential organs and neurally integrated (‘wired’) into the control systems of gun-platforms. End of tour drone-soldiers are decanted into standard human clone bodies.] [ImpMark: contraction of Imperial Marketing (c.f. comintern), strap-line taking the...

Out of the warp, Smith [edit: archaic- naming convention assumed preserved for sentimental reasons] tail-spins her Z3 into a flat burn across the Saturn solar shadow. [edit: Smith chose a Z3 for her insertion persona - 12 years old contemporaneous, the vehicle is a powerful and expensive classic, and considered fashionable]. "Time-normal achieved," she says for the log, "1.25 hours until contact." Must stop using decimal ,she thinks, this Region still uses babylon time. [edit: babylon time - seconds and minutes cut into sixty]

 "And I have realised that there's no causation in my life", says the captain.  "What does that mean," says Clement.  "Well, it's like this, you think that life has logic - it's a series of if then statements - 'if I do X then Y will happen, and if I do Y then Z will happen' - a cascading series of decisions that  have some ultimate purpose. 'I will and then...', and that's the thing, three dots and I'm onto the next decision in a multiply branched tree of existence - cutting out the options until I'm left with the one thing that all my previous decisions have led me, inexorably, to."  "And it's not like that?" asks Clement. "No, no it isn't." The captain draws on the butt of his cigar. "It's a bunch of disconnected events linked by nothing more than I'm the one there." "That makes no sense," says Clement. "Well it wouldn't to an AI. You're all abou...

"What is the priority-one directive of Time Control, Smith?" asks Comptroller Martin, he waits a moment, "... if you could answer, you would say 'To Preserve The Natural Order of Time As Perceived Until Now', wouldn't you Smith?" and he looks at her. "But you can't answer, can you Smith?" And she glares at him (because this is all she can do, restricted as she is) - fuck off- she thinks. "'Fuck off'?", says Martin, " how very 20th century of you." He looks up for a moment, smiles  -for the cameras - thinks Smith. "You understand that we are are in a mathMeme protected sphere of non-time, that anything that happens downstream cannot paradox us?" -yes- she thinks but cannot say. "'yes', that's good, you do understand. So, how did you think you could hide the fact you did not kill Dr. Carrington?" - because you are a fuckwit, Martin - she thinks. Martin frowns for a moment, "You ...

Corporal Jones and Private Fredericks are floating outside subsidiary lock 12a of the starboard gun-deck of the dreadnought Backward Nelson. "It's all fucking clipboards now, " says Jones, "I know" replies Fredericks. "Marking things out of 10, ticking off," continues Jones, ignoring Fredericks. "I know," says Fredericks again, but this time quieter. "Still..." and he huffs a quick hot breath, satisfied to see his visor mist momentarily before his suit's scrubbers kick in. He looks down and ticks off another mark on his clipboard, gloved hands clumsy with the egg-shaped pen. "Everything has too much machinery in it." says Jones. "Look at this..." and he holds up the pen. Dutifully, Fredericks looks at the pen. Jones releases the pen and it hangs in the zero gravity. He gives it a gentle push and it falls away. "Watch this". A red light flickers on in the base of the pen, and with a tiny burst of ste...

Time clicked, the field coalesced to single bright point and they were left behind, like a cheap magic trick. They were standing in front of a long low building in a run-down borough of Larger-London. It was early morning and the streets were deserted, but the doors were open, and martial music could be heard faintly. Open 24-7 for cannon-fodder , thought Time-Sergeant Smith. Dr. Carrington, obviously still ill with the memory-wipe, staggered against her. "Where am i?" "You're sick, I'm taking you to a place where you can be helped," she said. "Miss Smith, who am I?" "Start imprint," she was careful to pronounce the syllables clearly and slowly; the viral nano-tech she had implanted had had enough time and could understand. "You are a forty year old unemployed technician. You have no social connection. You have decided to enlist with the drones. The promise of a fresh start and an 18 year old clone body after 4 years indenture ...

"Coming screaming out of the sky, orange contrails blazing behind, bottled up inside (irrelevant limbs and organs removed, lightweight payload - just brains and guts for processing information and food). “I see the target below as geometric lights in my eyes (massed telemetry piped through my truncated optic nerve). “I feel the wind like fingers on skin, feel the weight of my bombs inside me, my fuselage. “And then I release, and programmed to orgasm, I pull up and away, electric reward pulsing through edited nerves. “Two Hornets engage as I spiral up, but they are real-captained, human bodies squashed by G, unable to follow my inward spin as I evade, avoid and in turn engage. Two small flares erupt as my seekers find, and the Hornets are gone. But this is small pleasure, the taste of sugar snaps, in comparison." "That's very nice", says the autopilot, "you have a poetic way with words". "It's not me, it's out of the PR, got some poet to w...

"But don't you see, Miss Smith?" Doctor Carrington exclaimed, standing up from his desk suddenly. "Mathematics defines reality!" This exclamation was indeed a surprise to Miss Smith, the Doctor had not spoken for three days, had not slept for three days, and it was all she could do not to drop the tea cup she was about to hand him. "No sir, I don't see sir," she managed, eyes fixed on the tea cup as she placed it firmly on the desk. "And I'd thank you not to startle me so" - not now - she thought. "Piffle," said Dr. Carrington, "you are party to a discovery of great magnitude, and you...", he became distracted,his eyes lost focus, and he slumped back in his chair, "...and you, well, you bring me tea". “For which I thank you," he added finally. "Well, much obliged sir," she said, " I'm sure we'll be most amazed by your intelligence, sir". "Do I detect a note of ...

“Do you remember anything from before you were indentured?” asks the autopilot. The captain starts, he has been quietly ignoring the autopilot, but this last is an unpleasant surprise. “Well, no, I don’t” he says. “but that could be for two different reasons...” “Two reasons?” says the autopilot. “Well,“ and the captain draws on his cigar, defensive, “ apparently I had complete memory erasure when I enlisted” “and there are two reasons for that, “ says the autopilot. “yes”, says the captain, “two fucking reasons - one, I took the ‘fresh start’ marketing literally and had something I needed to forget, or...”, and once again he draws heavily on the cigar, “or I did something fucked up and someone else decided I should forget it.” “That someone else being the courts?” asks the autopilot. “Yes, Clement”, the captain says, “maybe I was a memory-wiped criminal. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?” - constantly- he thinks to himself. Autopilot pauses, “and what was your conclusion...

He looked at her intently for a moment, "Miss Smith, I do believe you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen." He paused, "and I do believe you intend to kill me with the knife you have concealed in your apron." Smith was a little unnerved, "sir, i don't know what you mean", but quickly regained her composure, yes it is a knife , she thought, and I’m not fucking pleased to see you . Dr. Carrington smiled and said, "don't think I haven't realised there's more to you than meets the eye, Miss Smith." He came round the desk, Smith backed away but was brought short by a chair, "Sir, I'm sure I don't know what you mean." "Let me tell you a story," said the Doctor, "you'll have to forgive my ignorance of certain, ah, technical details, but you must realise I have very little knowledge of the wonderful contraptions of the future. Sit down dear," and he pulled the chair towards her. Sm...

My books got burned outside the town hall The things I said got unsaid The ideas I had were crap, and identified as shit But shit sticks, and is translated through common ports Borne on plague ships calling in to bright harbours, and fucking them up This infection gets out, and puts wires in your arms, bursting in your head

That one there, that hid the sun Pushed aside by someone big up there technorati tags: cheap_therapy Blogged with Flock

Blogged with Flock

Blogged with Flock

In this winter night the trees were sentries either side of the road, charcoal drawn on dark-blue paper of the sky washed over from one horizon to the other. There was a bunch of crows arranged around the lowest branches of one tree (someone knows better than me the name of the tree, and what the collective noun for crows is). They called out in the way they have (like they have smoked cigarettes from birth), saying something I would not understand because I am not a crow, or "never more, fuck you". I walked past on the road and the crows called after me. It was too dark to see them clearly (black rags fanned out), only to imagine them looking down their dirty beaks at me. The prison was orange lit with sodium lamps on tall steel poles above the moire-patterned chain link fence (because there are two layers and they parallax as you walk by). I walked past the prison officers' houses and the kennels where they kept the stinky hunting dogs, past the council depot and ther...

It appears that here is a ring of dark matter collared round about a million galaxies all shrugging off within. It's faintly interacting particles that intermediate between the out and the inner There are stars burning there that have burnt and consumed their fire beyond any mortal span Hydrogen and zeroes, vacuum specific, reduced to less than binary existence A background microwave purity, that belies the facile explanations of preists The wind that blows is good enough without animus to explain Isn't it wonderful, without some patriarch inhibitor explaining in terms of restriction and prohibition, that this is a universe boundless and explosive

Like in 50 years am I going to be able to read this (and be embarassed)? I'd also be 92. But, seriously, is this ephemera? Stored at the whim of the googlesaur? Headlines of 2020: "Google wipes the blogosphere pre-2015, cites 'most of it is fucking rubbish' as defence"

rain, grey, cumular nimboid cloudation, drizzle streets in a provincial town. Abandoned British sea-side resort (the last resort of the threadbare salesman on a route, selling plastic water-melons to down-heel hotels). The inside of the neglected cupboard where you stuff the electric plastic detritus of supermarket impulse buys. All finds its home here .

or just one, three thousand miles away

are what you see when gems surface in a swamp. And you have a torch. A torch of something or other. Shit, my metaphor ray has run out of batteries.

I can't afford to have a character. I'm in that drone level of employment where all strengths have to be rounded off to fill the troughs of weakness. So I can be fully mediohcre (kind of mid-brown, beige, the colour of crap computers and cubicle partitions). My SWOT analysis is averaged out.

The highest kingdom is that, in splendour that, like rain diamonds, shines within the clouds. Which shines down through the perpendicular arches, through wet grey stone onto tesselated prisms, penrose-tiled galleries of the cathedral. Malcolm, prince of the outer kingdom, dark and certainly irritable, sits on his throne, his virible sword neglected by his side (and blood of enemies vanquished still not cleaned off). He contemplates at the vaulted roof where the artist (now headless in an unmarked hole) had started to paint his family's struggle and triumph. "Not good," thinks Malcolm, "not finished, not good. Shame that oil-stained arse was not up to the task." There's stone dragons in the marble corners, with glowering eyes and red breath full of new meat.

See, me, I'm a generous and good-hearted pisser. I find the whole communal urination thing funny. If I go to a men's urinal in order to have that urea moment, and it's full (like my bladder) with a retinue of courtiers paying obeisance to the royal doulton (purveyors of fine piss-products, by appointment), then I will find it funny. And, being full of piss and bonhemie, I will comment on it. But some, worshipping at the porcelain shrine, will find this disrespect of the library-silence upsetting, and will be forced (after involuntary exhalation on completion) to answer my happy observation with grunts of dissaproval. Well, "bollocks," I say. Piss elsewhere, philistine. Realise it's the last club no feminist will fight to gain admission. We've ceded the golf clubs, and anyone who wants to be a member deserves it in that Groucho Marx way. We've ceded every last bastion of shithead masculinity. And when the ladies get within the fortifications, they ...

...is all it takes to read and digest some expectoration of spit and mucus from the text nose that is the personal diaries of 1 million (or so) lonely bloggers, punting their hopes and fears, cheese and smears on the river. The shit in the river is different everyday, and if, in some small way, I can contribute to that existential howling flow, then I have achieved a goal. and that is all internal alliteration, or something well, it scans, and that's good enough for me See what I did there? With the iambic thing? Fuck! I've just realised that's blank verse

Which is what we wear when we are most destroyed. Like that Wagner cock Nietzsche said at some point in some philosophic treatise (as with all philosophy, mainly produced by unresolved sexual tension, because philosophers are circumcised wankers in the round)... what doesn't destroy you, makes you stronger Fucking rubbish, if that's the case then I should be able to pick up vans.

I know lots of people. Some are bigger than others. Like some inhabit the whole space in front of you when you speak to them. They have this thing where they can consume your eye-width. Because you are totallly entranced. This happens to me in two different ways: I am in love with I am fightened by And I say to both hey ho That's it.

More poetry from the spam stream.

It's terminally pissing down in Bristol here, now. The rain is beating tattoos on the corotherm siding I have above my self-built awning right now. It's a depressing thing when you see the unfinished corners of what I, many years ago, did make. See, that's shit right there, how that return on the architrave is gapped and spakked full of decorators mate where it should be tight to the inch. Fuck and damn what a blooming farrago of shitology (the study of shit) I have before me now.

I do that vanity thing where I google diskgrinder just to see if I'm intertube neutral (you know, not contributing more emmisions than I should, or something). There must be a better phrase: Web footprint (wank) Web arse print (funny, not likely to catch on) Internet arse print (still funny) <profile/> (geek wank) User 2.0 (really wank) The-list-of-results-I-get-when-I-google-my-name-otron (the winner!) With the unusual spelling the results list is interleaved with the following two: A drunken comment I have made on a forum late one night Misspelt ramblings from DIY enthusiasts My favourite result is "Beware if you see someone fit a post with a gross tool like a diskgrinder." from this guy , a musical instrument craftsman, a luthier . I'd never actually followed the link, imagining that it was something to do with sharpening fence posts with a diskgrinder, which sort of makes sense. But no, she's talking about sound posts (podcasts?). Any...

It's funny (in that kind of not fucking funny at all way) and a cliché that those closest to you hurt you the most and with pinpoint accuracy. Like, I am going to kick you in the bollocks and I'm aiming for that one pube right there, and bang! I got it! More on this after the jump Nothing here actually, I just wanted to say "after the jump", like this blog's got proper asshat 1 advertising in it. 1 my favo u rite american swear-word

part 72 I've been sitting on this rock for 7 years. The rock is about a metre square and polished on top. It's surrounded by other rocks. But they are sharp, and not suitable for sitting on. The sharp rocks stretch for as far as I can see, into the blue haze that doesn't really bound sky from not sky. Occasionally I'll see something medium sized off in the distance, leaping from rock to rock, and I wonder if it cuts its feet; and if it has feet to cut. I've been sitting here for 7 years, and occasionally I'll have a cup of tea. Maybe a cheese sandwich.  If I'm lucky.

As I sit on the rock. It's not a rock, did I say rock? No, it's an planetoid in the Oort Cloud. So far away from you the sun's just another star to me. And I sit here with my metal alien face ticking under the human skin. Waiting for you to come. And you'll come this way out into the dark. I chose my home well; I considered all your avenues, and this is the one you'll use. So when your red-painted space rocket, with big fins and a point, comes silent through my realm you'll get a real surprise. I've waited for half a billion years. I can wait a few years more.

well it is midnight Once luminous, now dim. It burns with cold: sucks heat anti-entropic from anything nearby; so you get warmer as it gets cooler. I keep it in the shed at the bottom of my garden. The shed shelters under a sticky sycamore, and late nights I'll sit inside staring at the thing's faltering glow, hearing, but not listening to, the wind whisper through the sycamore's black branches above. I found it in my bed. I woke one morning and there it was, resting on the pillow inches from my face. It was wet, and damp strings of spittle tracked from me to it, like I'd coughed it up in the night. I don't think I was surprised to see it, the explanation for its presence was in the fading dream I woke with. I can't remember the dream now. I yawned, I stretched, I rubbed my eyes. I reached to touch it - but I heard a hum (like an electric thing overloading, perhaps too full of volts, or amps) and pulled back my hand. The hum went. I reached again, the h...

On three levels: There're no such places as Albonia, Toswania or Svaltwoond Diskgrinder is not my real name And that other level I can't remember right now, something to do with fish