This weeks story won’t be posted for a little while as I am out of the country on vacation. Yay! đ
It is a bit of a working vacation though, and I have made some headway into some other projects you guys will hopefully get to see in the coming months. Which reminds me: I should do something awesome for the one year anniversary of the blog in a few months. I’ll think about it and report back to you.
âItâs amazing,â he said, âUncanny. How do you get them like that?â
Molly sighed. The conversation had been going so well.
âItâs natural. Freak accident of birth,â she explained.
âNo way. No gene-splicing at all?â He was Centaurian, which meant he was tall and blond by default, and also considered himself godâs gift to women. A lifetime in space made you soft, you just didnât use those muscles, but he was quite buff, which meant he was either new to spacefaring or had some very expensive mods. His eyes were heterochromatic, which was common among people from that part of the galaxy. His left one was brown, and the right was green. But it was her eyes that were the topic the current conversation.
âNo splicing. Not for the eyes. I inherited a few mods, but nothing cosmetic. Just a weird coincidence,â Molly didnât like talking about this. People made too big a deal out of it. She wanted to talk about something else. âHow long have you been out here? Centauri is a long way away.â
He shook his head, âJust a few months, but seriously: your eyes are amazing. Iâm not just saying that to hit on you.â
Molly frowned, ordered another drink, and tried one last time to take the conversation in a different direction, âSo what brings you out here? You on your way to Procyon?â
âOh yeah. Headed out there for work. Inner sphere colonies arenât doing so well since there are no more resupplies from Earth. What about you?â He ordered a drink of his own.
âOh, I live here. I work as an operator for a salvage fleet. Weâre based out of this station,â she gestured to a window, âLot of derelicts drifting out there by the Warp Stream, even today. Gonna take years to get it all cleaned up.â
âOh yeah, saw that on the way in. Pretty grim stuff,â he raised his drink and Molly politely knocked hers against it. A small *thunk* of plastic hitting plastic and they drank.
The small talk continued, and Molly was glad that he was no longer complimenting her on her eyes. Sheâd heard it before. Too many times. From guys like him, who thought they were just the coolest, it wasnât that it was so bad, just annoying. The worst were the refugees. They still came through every now and then, veterans of a war that had been over before Molly was even born. A war that had taken something that could not be replaced. They came through headed anywhere, stopped at the station to refuel and restock, and they ran into Molly. All throughout her childhood people would look at her, and gasp. Molly tried to avoid eye-contact with anyone over 50 now. If she didnât, she just made people sad. They saw her eyes, they did a doubletake, and they started to cry. Not all of them of course, but enough.
She hated her eyes. Simple as that. Just hated them. She thought she might pay for an alteration one day when she could afford it. Other girls looking for vanity mods went in for things like boobs or butts or pheromones that smelled like cinnamon. She wanted her eyes to be a regular color. Maybe plain blue or brown. Anything would do really. Just as long as people would stop crying when they looked at her.
âSo, I hate to ask…you probably get asked this all the time in factâŚâ the guy was saying. The hairs on the back of Mollyâs neck bristled. Sheâd let slip that she lived here on a deep-space station, and now the guy was probably convinced that she was all alone in deep space and was just dying to jump the bone of any half-way decent looking spacer to pass through. One: she wasnât alone, there were, like, twenty people living on station at least. True most of them were out and about usually, and she was often one of only two or three people on a station built to accommodate 100+. Still; hardly alone. Two: she wasnât eager to jump any bones at all. She didnât play that game. Some girls on the station did, but Molly had never really been into it. Heather who lived near the airlocks was. She loved to play that game. Maybe sheâd let this guy down easy and point him in that direction.
âCan I get a picture. Of your eyes I mean.â
Molly slapped him. She didnât know where it came from, but she slapped him hard. Hard enough to throw the Centaurian off balance and send him tumbling to the floor. The other spacers from his ship in the mess hall looked over in silence. The only sound was the whir of a service drone as it zipped over to ask if the Centaurian needed assistance. Molly turned on her heels and stormed out of the mess. Once out of sight she ran to her bunk, near the junkersâ hanger, and locked the door behind her. She threw herself onto her bed and began to cry.
Why had she hit him? Why did he have to ask that? Why did she have to have these stupid awful eyes.
She sobbed into a stuffed whatsit that was once an elephant, shaking with anger and not knowing what to do with it.
After a long time, maybe thirty minutes or an hour, she started wiping her face and her nose, and decided it was time to stop crying. She coughed and sniffled as she choked down the last tears, going over to her small bathroom to clean up. She splashed her face with cold water, letting the tears gurgle down the drain, and dried herself with a pleasantly fluffy towel. She looked up, at the face in the mirror. At the eyes that were mostly blue, with hints of green, and grey and brown. All of it arranged in such a way, that they just might resemble a vibrant, living planet.
One that no longer existed.
He was forgetting his own name recently. No, that wasnât accurate. It was more accurate to say that he was forgetting which name was his. He thought it was Paul, then he thought it was Will. He was certain it was Will, but someone had called him Paul. He was sure somebody called him Paul.
Will (or Paul) was in a mental institution. Not that he was crazy, he wasnât. That much he knew was fact, but he had done some crazy things and people had started to get the wrong impression. It really wasnât his fault, he would say, it was the bookâs fault. The book had used him. It did that. Used people. He didnât know why. Alice didnât know why either, and she was smarter than him. Alice was smarter than anyone.
The book had used Paul (or Will) to bring something here. He had been looking for something (Someone, right? Yes. Someone. Jess), but what had come through was something different. The thing (or was it several things?) had come from Outside. Will/Paul didnât know much about Outside, but he knew enough. He knew it was black as pitch and bright as the sun, that it was blinding how perfectly black and bright it was. That what was Outside often wanted to come inside, and that he had shown it the way. He also knew that Gyartep owed him something, and hadnât paid and that pissed himâŚ.wait…no….no, Gyartep owed Paul, but not Will right? or was it the other way around? Who was Gyartep? Who was Paul? Was there a Paul? Was there a Will?
He hated when he wasnât sure. It made him think he maybe should take the medicine after all. He didnât like the pills, they made him feel sick, but the doctors got mad when he didnât take them. Usually he didnât take them. If he could, heâd sneak them back to his room (âcheekingâ his fellow patients had called it), then give them to James or Alice when they came to visit him. He had been afraid to get them in trouble at first, but when Alice explained why she needed them, Will insisted they try, and Paul reluctantly agreed.
Will sometimes spoke to Paul. Not seriously, but the doctors kept telling him Paul wasnât his name. Will agreed, so Paul must be somebody else, so heâd started absently talking to him when he was alone in his cell. Paul thought it was stupid, and didnât talk back much. That or Paul wasnât real. Or Will was actually Paul and he was talking to himself. He didnât like any of those possibilities.
Every other day it seemed, I would see the ad in the classifieds. It was a small, unusual little ad. It said:
Sid Seeks Alexis
3500.1938.0916
Soon
It had been going on for a few years. When I first saw it I thought it was some kind of covert romantic correspondence, but it never changed. It was the same message every time, it couldn’t be anything like that. When I started working at the paper in town, during the walk through of the offices with Barry, who was bald and spectacled and nicer than just about anybody, he asked me if I had any questions about the paper. I thought of it and I had to ask him. He laughed. He knew exactly what I was talking about.
“That stupid thing. I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea what that’s all about. This guy sends in orders for the posting every month like clockwork. Every month for five years. Crazy right?”
So since I didn’t have a story for you this week, I thought it might be fun to post some sketches I’ve been doodling of the Axle Setting. I’m not a fantastic artist, which is why I got a friend to do some art for my recently, but I did post up that map with Sand last week, so why not.
Note: the scanning process ended up enlarging the sketches from their original sizes, so any notes concerning scales are somewhat misleading. Sorry :p
The Dunloc City of Nakan
This is Nakan, a city deep Inside the Axle, populated by the Dunloc. It sits at the heart of an empire that once stretched from the Shard Field deep into the Lower Axle. Though less vast today, Nakan’s empire is still powerful, and the city remains one of the most important throughout the Axle.
Dunloc Farm
Nakan sustains its people through algae farms and artificial soil farms created through alchemy. Because food is so valuable inside the Axle, farmers actually hold very high social status.
Anatomy of a Sun-Orb
Though the Dunloc have amazing ‘night’ vision, there is still the need to light their city, in particular their farms. The Sun-orb, a small containment vessel for captured sunfire, was invented in Nakan.
Nakan’s Currency is the Crystal Mark
When considering what kind of currency the Dunloc would use, my first thought was your standard fantasy gold coins, but then I balked at this idea. Gold coins are a historical fact, but I wanted something different for the Dunloc at least (give the historical whatsits to the Sundermen). So I came up with these simple crystals that Nakan uses for its currency. The material is relatively common in the Axle, but Nakan distinguishes the genuine article from counterfeits via the precise cuts make on the face and side. The marks are made with a very particular alchemical solvent (the recipe for which is not public knowledge), and as a result, they react in very specific ways that can be tested.
A Student’s Laboratory with View of Nakan Proper
In my original notes on the Dunloc, I inserted the name of a famous alchemist who had invented the sun-orb and who had a university named after him, Acalum Kayga. I imagine this school to be the MIT of the Axle. It’s the school every alchemist wants to get into, and when someone says they studied there, people nod and start paying closer attention.
Ro’pan Community
While I did originally picture Nakan as a fairly isolationist city of Dunloc, that didn’t really jive well with my plans to have them be the heart of a vast empire (even if that empire was in decline). So when I started wondering what the other peoples of the Axle might be up to in Nakan, I imagined those big stalactites hanging down from the ceiling of the great cave. “I bet the Ro’pan would have a blast up there.” So now the ‘Stags,’ as I refer to that district of the city, are home to a thriving community of subsurface Ro’pan. ‘Cause why not?
Ro’pan Waystation
And speaking of the Ro’pan, I also have a doodle of a Shard Field waystation. A stopping point, to rest, relax, and share a story for Ro’pan traveling the Field and the rope-ways.
And finally: Random Sketch!
Good for What Ails You
[Few pages of an idea I’ve been toying with. I’ve got a map, a pile of notes, and these pages of story. Maybe I’ll go further with it eventually. Though the list of projects I’ll “get to one day” is quickly growing out of control. Need to start scratching things off that list.]
Map of the Oases and Wastes
Lod had never seen a Zarâus in person before, and the one they were meeting with was very strange, even when compared to the descriptions of his father and Rados. He had been told that the Zarâus looked more or less like men, and Lod thought that this must only be true from a distance. The creature who entered their tent was seven feet tall if it was an inch, with golden, almost scaly looking skin stretched over its lean muscles. The robe it wore hung loosely from one shoulder, leaving much of its chest exposed, which made Lod very uncomfortable, as he wasnât sure if the Zarâus was a man or a woman. The long and wavy black hair framed a fairly feminine face, but the shoulders seemed more masculine and the Zarâus didnât seem to mind that most of its torso was visible. The creatureâs hips very much seemed to imply a woman, but then again it seemed to carry itself like a man. His father addressed it like a man, and the creature did not object. Lod thought it must be a man.
Alhir Farstrider, Lodâs father, welcomed the creature warmly as it entered. He rose from his seat and clasped arms with the giant, offering âhimâ water and seat on the carpeted ground. Strangely, Lod thought, his father did not convey wishes that the Goddess grant him protection, as tradition dictated.
âThe Zarâus do not like the gods,â whispered Rados, leaning over when he saw Lodâs look of confusion, âThey find piety offensive. Your father is withholding that courtesy, as a courtesy.â
Lod couldnât help but giggle a bit at Radosâs joke, earning him a reproachful look from his father. The Zarâus seemed not to notice.
Theyâre like anglerfish.
Iâll be the first to admit that this book is awful. Evil wouldnât be the right word, as evil implies an agenda, and Iâm not convinced it has one. I think the book just wants to be used. It doesnât seem to care how you use it, but it definitely wants you to use it.
Youâll have to excuse me if I ramble a bit here. I tried to use the book awhile ago, and I…suffice to say it was a âlife-alteringâ experience. I havenât been able to focus properly since then. No, thatâs not right. I focus on some things more intently than I ever would have before, and other things I canât focus on at all. Maybe itâs part of being so tired. I am so very, very tired. I try not to sleep if I can. If I do sleep, I try to be medicated. It doesnât make it any better for me, but at least itâs quieter.
Iâm so tired.
I still think we should look into destroying the book, but James wonât let me of course. He thinks keeping it is worth the risk, which I strongly disagree with, even after what happened last month.
Right. Last month. I was going to explain.
Where was I?
Yes: Anglerfish.
It took me a year to die. A year. Every single day more painful than every day before it, and every single day hearing people telling me to fight.
âDonât let it beat you,â theyâd say, as if it was something that could be beaten. People who think you can beat it, that you ever get âbetterâ from cancer, donât understand how cancer works. You never beat it, you just hope you die of old age before it beats you.
I tried. I really did. But fighting was worse. Fighting hurt more. You can only fight so long, when you lose every time. Same fight, same pain, same failure. Every day.
So I stopped fighting. I told people I was still fighting of course. That Iâd pull through, that I would go to whatever it was I was missing because I was sick, next year when I got better. I knew there wouldnât be a next year. I gave up, and I waited to die.
I knew there wouldnât be anything after. I was certain of it. Iâve never believed in god or an afterlife or anything. It just didnât make sense to me. I would die, and there would be nothing. Given the choice between nothing or the pain, I was ok with nothing.
So I waited for the end, the nothing, the emptiness. No more pain, no more fighting, no more me.
Thatâs how it was supposed to be.
But it doesnât work like that.
I died, and there is nothing. Except me.
It is emptiness, and it is nothing; except Iâm still here.
Just me. Alone. And darkness. The deepest blackest darkness you can imagine, and so much worse.
It goes on forever. As far as Iâve gone, no matter which direction I go. Always more darkness.
For a while, I hoped that maybe, if I could just get far enough, there might be something else. But no. No matter how far I go, there is nothing.
I donât know how long Iâve been here. Longer than a day, less than eternity. There is no way to tell here.
âHello.â
Wait. What!?
âI thought there might be someone over here. Iâve been looking for awhile.â
I thought I was the only one. How did you find me?
âI just kept going this way until I found someone.â
But, I went on for ages, and I found no one.
âI guess I was going longer. Iâve been going for a few years now I think.â
But…Years? Iâm certain I havenât been here that long. How did you know anyone would be here.
âWell, I guess I didnât. Still, what else was I gonna do? Give up?â
Well, yes. I was about to.
âThat seems like a bad idea. I mean, thereâs nothing else here. If you give up hope, what else is there?â
Carl would say, in his own defense, that no reasonable man would have taken such an offer seriously. Carl did not, and he considered himself a reasonable man. He accepted only because he thought it was the opening to a bar joke or clever trick.
Carl sat at his usual stool at The Winnerâs Circle, glancing at his empty tumbler and bemoaning the cost of whiskey. Heâd already spent more than heâd intended tonight, and this was not the first time either. Why, he wondered, does scotch have to be so damn expensive.
âI can help you with that, sir,â said the man on the stool beside Carl. This gave Carl a start, as he had not been aware he was thinking aloud. The man looked worse off than even Carl. Where as Carl merely had the disheveled look of a man who has had too much too early in the week, this stranger had the ragged and tattered quality Carl had come to associate with beatniks. When Carl looked at him, the man had quickly put his hand in front of his mouth, as if embarrassed that he had just spoken. His eyes though, had the quality of a man desperate to show off a skill. This is what led Carl to suspect a bar bet was forthcoming.
ââzat so?â Carl asked.
âOh yes,â the man said, speaking quickly and nodding enthusiastically, âAnd the best part is it wonât cost you a thing.â
Kos ran through the tunnel as fast as he could. As fast as his hands and feet would allow up the rough rock incline. His quarry had a head start, but Kos was a Runner. Heâd been this way a thousand times, and he knew the path well. He knew where he could be quick and where he needed to be cautious. The tunnel went on for a thousand paces like this, rough surface but over all a straight line, then a sharp left. He would stay to the right, thatâs where the floor was the most even for the first five hundred paces. After that, either side was pretty much the same. At the turn, he paused, he got low and he inhaled, feeling along the rock as well. He found it, a jagged stone, wet with something that smelled of iron. Blood. One of the thieves had tripped and gashed a limb here. It was a treacherous turn. The blood wasnât dry or even totally cold yet. He was very close.
He tightened the shroud around his sun-orb so that it was nearly pitch black around him. He proceeded down the tunnel straining his ears for any hint of his quarry. The going was slower now. Even with his eyes trained in the deep deep Inside Kos had to be careful here. His speed would still be better than his quarryâs he hoped.
There were two more turns in the tunnel, and a drop about six feet which was easily climbed, though Kos found a sack that had been dropped by the thieves. Just a sack of odds and ends, trinkets stolen from other victims. Nothing of Kosâs. He left it, taking it would just slow him down. Another five hundred paces ahead, the tunnel opened into a cavern. There had once been a village on the banks of a pond in the cavern, but a collapse had buried half of the village years ago and the other half had since then fled for fear of another. Talton had been the name. It had been on Kosâs route when it was alive.
Kos could see light up ahead, and tied off the shroud on his orb completely. He felt his way down the tunnel slowly, carefully, and silently. He could hear their voices echoing up the tunnel. They were speaking in Faedish, which wasnât meant to be echoed like Nakal, so Kosâs had a trouble making out the words. His Faedish already wasnât very good. He could tell they were arguing though.
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Fred Hesser 