Archive for the ‘Edd Vick’ Category
Waiting for the Day
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Quick administrative note: If you’re reading the Cabal via RSS feed, a number of stories we’d meant to have appear in the future may have come your way already Sunday. This was not a rip in the fabric of Einsteinian spacetime, just an unexpected consequence of a server reboot. We’d like to apologize in advance for cluttering up your RSS readers with duplicate stories, and for any resulting feelings of deja vu this may induce.
About ten percent of the people on the Earth are aliens. That’s not surprising to those in the know. That’s how it’s always been. Daedalus and Churchill were aliens, so was Francis of Assisi but pretty much all the rest of them were here just trying to fit in until the day we get to take over. Half the time you humans think you’re so tolerant, half the time you think you’re so <i>in</i>tolerant. Fact is, everybody in the universe looks pretty much the same, you just don’t have the senses to tell if your friend or co-worker is one of (insert descending crescendo) <i>them</i>.
Does your neighbor smell a bit funny? Are they doing things you don’t understand sometimes? Do they look Muslim?
Those aren’t the ones you have to look out for. They’re just more of you. It’s the ones that look and act completely normally you need to beware. But you won’t.
We’re good at this.
Resting Place
Friday, October 15th, 2010
Time of death: 8:42 and 12 seconds.
Blair heard the beeeeee of her heart monitor, saw the clock on its instrument readout. The sound cut off, and she sat up out of her body. The nurse stood in mid-rush to her bedside, the television froze on an insurance commercial, all sound from the busy hospital was stilled. If she stood just right she could see the faintest sheen of a rainbow reflected from the moisture in her body’s last breath.
For some uncountable time she wandered the halls and rooms of the hospital, flowing through doors and floors at will. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Blair grew used to perpetual stillness. As an afterlife it beat hell or the void, and she’d never believed in heaven.
When she felt she knew every atom of her resting place, she moved on to explore the city. Houses, offices, warehouses, cars, all were immobile and tranquil. The sun occupied its eternal spot low on the horizon. Every person she found was petrified, every animal as still as, well, death.
She ranged farther, finding she could fly if she willed it. Farms, roads, and villages passed under her gaze. Untime passed.
Then she caught a movement out of the corner of one eye. Trudging toward her, feet sloshing immaterially through the ground, was an old woman. Their eyes met, and a look of panic briefly came over them both. Solitary for so long, and now what were they to meet?
Blair flew to her. It wasn’t until she tried to land that she realized the earth was as insubstantial as everything else. All this time, and she hadn’t touched a single thing. Hesitantly she reached out. The stranger held up a hand. They touched.
They touched. A moment later they embraced. Something broke in Blair, and she closed her eyes and cried, holding tight to the only thing she could touch.