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The Fall of Isbanir
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Children’s counting chant, recovered from shards of crystal memory cores found in the ruins of the prophets’ quarter, Sarandib city, on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
1 for the citadel, proud and unbreachable
2 for the ion ghosts, crackling at dawn
3 for the sky-rings, lined like the plains
4 for the cinder-general
5 for her ash-gray armies
6 for the Kuiper-kings, in their halls of ice
7 for the emissary, with his gold-foil scroll
8 for the assassin, waiting on the road
9 for the identity mask, stolen and recoded
10 for the masquerade and its merry confusion
9 for the misled Duke, lonely in his garden
8 for the ice stiletto, evaporating after
7 for the ducal court, split between his children
6 for the late alliance, desperate and dangerous
5 for the ash-gray armies, massing on the plains
4 for the armistice, hasty, fragile, brief
3 for the yearlong siege and the songs of hunger
2 for alliance with ghosts, more desperate, more dangerous
1 for the citadel, echoing and empty
The Information Age
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
A holographic movie poster levitated, advertised The Meltdown, made half of New York simmer and boil. Lyssa Vanmaher observed from an outdoor café, sipping a double double espresso She flickered through the response statistics on her contact lenses. If she asked Jasper not to get the viral upload? “94% chance he’d still go.” If she told Jasper she’d marry him? “67% chance he’d still go.” If she knocked him out with a tire iron, stuffed him in her trunk…? “89% chance he’d escape and still go.” Bastard!
“Who are you mumbling about?” Jasper leaned into her space, kissed her nose from across the wrought-iron table. He grinned.
“Inconsiderate jerks.”
He draped his coat over the back of his chair and seated himself with a whuff, which made Lyssa tingle irrationally. Jasper stretched his hands toward hers, open. “Marry me?”
Lyssa flicked a tableside button, canceling out sound waves from entering or leaving their table. She opened her mouth, closed it again. She said, “What’s the point.”
“We’re in love.” He held his hands out a beat longer before withdrawing. “I’m in love.”
“Eventually, I wouldn’t be married to you. You wouldn’t be you.”
“Can’t step into the same river twice.”
“Drop the clichés.” Her face relaxed. “Help me get something out of my trunk.”
“We’ve talked this to death. If you won’t marry, a date. Before I go.”
Lyssa swept back her hair.
“A kiss?”
NY continued to bubble, bubble, and toil.
“A hug?” Jasper stood, scraping the chair’s iron legs across the cement. His fingers arched upon the table like flying buttresses. Lyssa froze as his forearms bulged with the scent of violence.
Jasper shrugged into his coat, drank her in, left.
Alyssa’s lens monitor belatedly informed her: His body language boded not violence but impotence. It never ceased to amaze her how differently men and women viewed the same events. She stood, she sat. New York’s boiling cauldron semi-hypnotized her. How did one violently cook a thing for weeks? There had to be a loop. Nothing goes on forever. Once she spotted the loop and broke the illusion, she could go.
Night fell. Waiters rolled up, asked if she would like a refill. They took it out of her credit chip.
The sun arose. The loop didn’t appear. Maybe it followed the pattern of entropy. Everything decays, comes to an end, breaks down. She’d just wait for that to happen.