Archive for the ‘Edd Vick’ Category
This is not a Story about Greed
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Six days ago I rubbed the lamp Jenna brought back from the East. I knew what I was doing. She would tell me at night of the experiments they were running on it and the other munitions left over from the Mana Wars.
Five days ago the Djinn brought me every magical lamp he could find. A few, he says, are hidden even from his senses. Each contained one of his brothers or sisters. He was eager to serve once I explained my goal to him. His laugh was a subsonic rumble.
Four days ago my first aide and two others finished sculpting the Moon into Jenna’s headstone. To say there is panic would be an understatement. I am being sought.
Three days ago my agents fought a new magical war with the world’s remaining mages and magical beings. Battles raged across the globe from the stroke of one midnight to the stroke of the next.
Two days ago we counted our dead. A Djinn can grieve as powerfully as any man or woman.
Yesterday my remaining survivors caused the seas to rise. They melted the glaciers and blew up a rain that will last the weeks it will take to drown a world.
Today I stand on the now-airless Moon in a clever suit of Djinn-design. I look up at a world shrouded in white, clouded from pole to pole.
The surface of the Moon rumbles faintly through my suit’s boots. It is, I imagine, the rumble of laughter. Tomorrows there will be, but tomorrows without Atlantis.
Protected Sex
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
The knock comes just after sundown. Melly gets up from the table and opens the door, laughing about it maybe being Flora back from her date early.
Instead, the taller of the pair flashes a badge. “Agent Blakely, SIAA,” he says. “Amelia Ranning?” When she nods he pushes past her and sees me. “And John.” He consults a photo on cheap printer paper. “He’s the one.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach. The chicken, the potatoes, the broccoli in front of me lose all their allure in a second. I stand. “What’s this all about?”
“When it’s us, sport,” he says. “There’s only one thing it’s about.” He looks me up and down with too much familiarity. “This you?” He holds out the photo.
I glance. He’s got me, all right. I nod.
“John?” It’s Melly. “John, what are they saying?”
“Copyright infringement,” I say. Congress long ago criminalized copyright piracy. “They’re with the Sexual Industry Association of America.” Don’t eff with the Mouse, as someone said back in the 20th.
“Sex?” she says. Melly and I only do it in the dark; it’s safer that way in this age of ubiquitous cams.
“Not just sex,” says Agent Blakely. “Protected sex.” He laughs at his joke; he means ‘protected’ as in ‘copyrighted’. Most sexual positions are public domain through long use; through prior display in various manuals and movies. It takes imagination or luck — bad luck, in my case — to get on these guys’ radar. He whaps the photo with a couple of fingers. “Caught on webcam and posted to MyFace at fourteen-oh-two hours day before yesterday.”
Melly frowns, looking from me to the agents. “Fourteen? That’s, what, during the day?” She’ll have it figured out soon.
“You’ve got me,” I say to the agents. “Let’s hit the road.”
Blakely moves to the window by the front door, twitches aside the curtain. “It won’t be long now,” he says.
Melly and I hear it at the same time. The distinctive sound of Flora’s motorcycle. Her date’s over.
Blakely’s partner moves a little to place himself between Melly and me. Blakely opens the door for Flora. He glances down at the photo, then back up to her.