NANOWRIMO, Part the Third
Nov. 11th, 2004 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
benchiladaAs usual, I have only written it tonight, I won’t go back to edit it until at least noon tomorrow, so as not to fuck up what I’ve done so far. As such, be gentle with grammar and excessive commas. ;()
His fingers tightened on the trigger yet again. Fuck. I may have blown this.
“Please, Sir, don’t be alarmed by the apparition before you. Think of this as a hologram, a simple graphical representation of your right palm. To be honest, a portion of this is mere indulgence on my part; I wouldn’t mind seeing the fates and fortunes of the man who has finally bested me.”
Open jar of flattery, apply liberally and thickly to ego. The faster and more ridiculously it is done, the more likely it is to succeed.
“Well, I suppose this is going to sound terribly Bond villainish of me, but sure, I’d love to have my palm read by a man of your obvious skills. Best to do it fast, though, Superspy, for the police should be here in about five minutes. In addition, I have enough surveillance cameras in this building that I could make a short film of your recent escapades, complete with DVD extras like alternate angles of the same scene.” He looked down at his gun and the rod with great confidence.
“And if all else fails, you’re have blind and I’m a damn fine shot.”
I bowed until my hands were flat on the floor and my forehead touched the ground between them.
“But of course, Sir.”
“You may begin.”
“Yes, Sir,” I smiled humbly as I raised my head. “I’ll make it fast.” I pointed at the golden hand, to a spot between the thumb and forefinger.
“This,” I began, “is the Line of Life. And I must say that you’re pretty well set here.” I slowly traced its arc down to the lower center of his heel and beyond.
“It’s long, it’s deep, there’s not a single stretch which is corded and there are no breaks on the thing. Suffice it to say that you’ve got a sweet and lengthy life ahead of you.”
“Naturally. Go on.”
“Okay, up here,” I continued, pointing between his first and second fingers, “is the Line of the Heart. See, when it starts here and slopes down and to the right – staying clear of any contact with the Line of the Head, you’ve got another auspicious characteristic. I’d say you have a ridiculously even disposition, neither amorous to an obscene degree, nor aloof and cold.”
“If I believed in this hoodoo, I’d be astonished at your accuracy right now.”
“Thanks, I think. Ooh, and this’ll be the last one, this one is your Line of the Head,” I said, and directed his attention to where his Line of Life had also started, equidistant from his thumb and index finger in the valley between them.
“Look at how it’s long and clearly cut, straight across your palm. That’s a sign of vast intellect, natural intuitiveness, and massive creativity.”
“Three for three, Superspy. But for all I know, you’ve lied about every single line, just to butter me up.”
“No, Sir, I would never lie about something I take as seriously as I do Palmistry.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, Sir, it’s true. I mean, let me give you an example. If your Line of the Heart had started a bit to the left,” I tugged at the golden cord, repositioning its point of origin to the base of the index finger. “and if it had dipped low, very low, into the Line of the Head,” again I demonstrated on my floating chart, “then you’d be quick to love and even quicker to jealousy. You’d never find a love that you were satisfied with, even if you were to encounter a soulmate.”
He opened his mouth, but I kept speaking as though I hadn’t seen.
“And if your Line of the Head had been broken in two here,” I quickly wiped away every part of the line to the right of his middle finger, forking its new end with a quick flick of my hand, “and your life line stopped here,” I grimaced, erasing it from the center of the palm to the wrist, “and you hand one…two…three small parallel marks to the right of it, then all of these things would point to an unhappy life, ending abruptly at, say…” I did some quick calculating on my fingers.
“...probably about forty-six years old. Oh,” I finished, “that reminds me. Happy birthday, Mr. Harper.”
He shot me twice in the chest before dropping both rod and gun to begin furiously scratching the rapidly shifting skin on his right palm.
My eye was rebooting even as the force of the bullets kicked me onto my back. After a few seconds of lying there, I was able to carefully stand back up. I could feel bruises spreading under my shirt as I made my way to my feet, muscles protesting every inch of the way. The flattened slugs slid off of me and onto his perfect mahogany parquet floor.
“If it’s any consolation, Sir, I’d intended to finish this the moment I walked through your…well, what used to be your door. I’m afraid that your tricks – and do please pardon the pun – forced my hand.
“How,” he paused and spat as the blood streaming from his nostrils flowed across his lips, “did your shirt do that? You haven’t got a vest on…I can tell.”
“Oh, right, that. I’m sure you’ve heard of those crazy new spider goats, Sir? The ones that can produce a number of grams of silk per day? They call it biosteel, we just call it goatsilk, you know, like goat milk. In any event, we’ve had them for rather a number of years before the process was leaked to the general public.” I tugged at the cuffs of my smooth red shirt, “tough like steel, supple like Armani.”
He started coughing up bloody lung tissue onto his desk blotter, so I followed his earlier advice and sped things up.
“Mr. Gregory Harper, you have been tried, in absentia, and found guilty of the following crimes: contributing dangerously high amounts of electronic innovation per annum, allowing for an excessive simplification of the average person’s life, with the added side effect of stifling individual creativity through your own output.”
“This has resulted in an inappropriately high rate of mental and social evolution of the human race and little or no accompanying physical improvements. All the while, you have done nothing to reduce your own industrial waste, curb population growth, or inspire stellar exploration to alleviate the burdens on our own planet.”
I walked over to his desk and gently lifted his head by his chin. His bloodshot eyes rolled and twitched, desperately trying to focus on my face.
“Sir, it’s people like you that have us moving too fast. What good is a computer in my brain and a car that hovers above the street if the water is too sick to drink, the air is too polluted to breathe, and we spend our daily lives wading through mounds of our own refuse? Time to slow down, Sir, all of us.” His eyes ducked back under his eyelids and the whites glared accusingly at me.
“Gregory Harper, aged forty-one years,” I dictated, “occupation: CEO and Head of Developmental Sciences for SmarTech Unlimited, the same founded by him twelve years ago. Time of death, 8:46p.m., August 12th, 20__. Cause of death: massive cerebral hemorrhaging,” I gently lowered his head back to his desk, “and flights of angels, et cetera, et cetera.”
Realizing that Mr. Harper’s five-minute warning was nearly up, I put my gun and recorder back in my pockets and grabbed his metal rod while I was at it. I pulled a small EMPulser from my hip pocket and placed it, one after another, on the three computers on his desk. I then pulled out a very small plastic bag from my jacket pocket and unfolded the instructions that had come with it.
“Please read carefully before using,” I recited aloud, “This Ring of Gyges is extremely delicate and…skipping ahead…avoid wearing the Ring in the rain for extended periods of time…umm…do not lick, place in mouth, or ingest the Ring…oh, honestly…do not eat fish while wearing? Okay, screw this,” I decided.
After breaking the red biohazard tape that had been sealing it shut, I tipped the bag and dropped the ring into my hand. The ring was heavier than it looked and seemed somehow unbalanced. The stone set into it was about as unremarkable as a driveway pebble.
“Jésus passant...par le milieu d’eux...s’en allait...” I read from an inscription that encircled the stone. I continued reading the instructions.
“To activate properties of ring, place ring on right ring finger with stone facing out. Should you wish to temporarily negate its effects, rotate the stone towards the palm of your hand. If, when looking in a mirror, the ring is not visible upon your finger, it is functioning properly.”
I slid the ring on and opened Mr. Harper’s curtains, holding my hand before me, palm open. In the dark reflection, my hand was completely unadorned.
“Well fuck me backwards,” I laughed, “I do reckon I’m invisible. Bless you, Plato, and all the magi you have thusly inspired.”
I tried my best, dodging policemen as I went, not to grin and skip merrily back down the hallway to the stairwell.
I failed miserably.
I can send you the current work, edited, in its entirety, if you so wish.
benjamin sTone
Urbana, Illinois
1:05 am, 11/11/04 (that’s Glico’s self-declared Pocky Day, since 11 11 looks like four Pocky sticks)
WRITTEN DURING: A show at Café Paradiso, with The Like Young, Bishop Allen, and The Mates of State (who kicked all asses present)
MAILED DURING: “Bachelorette,” by Bjork, playing on the computer
LAST BOOK I READ ANY PAGES FROM: “How to Tell Your Friends From the Apes” by Will Cuppy
NEXT MOVIE: “Soshun” (Early Spring), Japan, 1956
---------
My hypershort fictions and non-fiction commentaries go to http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/compositemolecules
and http://benchilada.livejournal.com
---------
Flickr photostream of my bizarre photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/benchilada/
His fingers tightened on the trigger yet again. Fuck. I may have blown this.
“Please, Sir, don’t be alarmed by the apparition before you. Think of this as a hologram, a simple graphical representation of your right palm. To be honest, a portion of this is mere indulgence on my part; I wouldn’t mind seeing the fates and fortunes of the man who has finally bested me.”
Open jar of flattery, apply liberally and thickly to ego. The faster and more ridiculously it is done, the more likely it is to succeed.
“Well, I suppose this is going to sound terribly Bond villainish of me, but sure, I’d love to have my palm read by a man of your obvious skills. Best to do it fast, though, Superspy, for the police should be here in about five minutes. In addition, I have enough surveillance cameras in this building that I could make a short film of your recent escapades, complete with DVD extras like alternate angles of the same scene.” He looked down at his gun and the rod with great confidence.
“And if all else fails, you’re have blind and I’m a damn fine shot.”
I bowed until my hands were flat on the floor and my forehead touched the ground between them.
“But of course, Sir.”
“You may begin.”
“Yes, Sir,” I smiled humbly as I raised my head. “I’ll make it fast.” I pointed at the golden hand, to a spot between the thumb and forefinger.
“This,” I began, “is the Line of Life. And I must say that you’re pretty well set here.” I slowly traced its arc down to the lower center of his heel and beyond.
“It’s long, it’s deep, there’s not a single stretch which is corded and there are no breaks on the thing. Suffice it to say that you’ve got a sweet and lengthy life ahead of you.”
“Naturally. Go on.”
“Okay, up here,” I continued, pointing between his first and second fingers, “is the Line of the Heart. See, when it starts here and slopes down and to the right – staying clear of any contact with the Line of the Head, you’ve got another auspicious characteristic. I’d say you have a ridiculously even disposition, neither amorous to an obscene degree, nor aloof and cold.”
“If I believed in this hoodoo, I’d be astonished at your accuracy right now.”
“Thanks, I think. Ooh, and this’ll be the last one, this one is your Line of the Head,” I said, and directed his attention to where his Line of Life had also started, equidistant from his thumb and index finger in the valley between them.
“Look at how it’s long and clearly cut, straight across your palm. That’s a sign of vast intellect, natural intuitiveness, and massive creativity.”
“Three for three, Superspy. But for all I know, you’ve lied about every single line, just to butter me up.”
“No, Sir, I would never lie about something I take as seriously as I do Palmistry.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, Sir, it’s true. I mean, let me give you an example. If your Line of the Heart had started a bit to the left,” I tugged at the golden cord, repositioning its point of origin to the base of the index finger. “and if it had dipped low, very low, into the Line of the Head,” again I demonstrated on my floating chart, “then you’d be quick to love and even quicker to jealousy. You’d never find a love that you were satisfied with, even if you were to encounter a soulmate.”
He opened his mouth, but I kept speaking as though I hadn’t seen.
“And if your Line of the Head had been broken in two here,” I quickly wiped away every part of the line to the right of his middle finger, forking its new end with a quick flick of my hand, “and your life line stopped here,” I grimaced, erasing it from the center of the palm to the wrist, “and you hand one…two…three small parallel marks to the right of it, then all of these things would point to an unhappy life, ending abruptly at, say…” I did some quick calculating on my fingers.
“...probably about forty-six years old. Oh,” I finished, “that reminds me. Happy birthday, Mr. Harper.”
He shot me twice in the chest before dropping both rod and gun to begin furiously scratching the rapidly shifting skin on his right palm.
My eye was rebooting even as the force of the bullets kicked me onto my back. After a few seconds of lying there, I was able to carefully stand back up. I could feel bruises spreading under my shirt as I made my way to my feet, muscles protesting every inch of the way. The flattened slugs slid off of me and onto his perfect mahogany parquet floor.
“If it’s any consolation, Sir, I’d intended to finish this the moment I walked through your…well, what used to be your door. I’m afraid that your tricks – and do please pardon the pun – forced my hand.
“How,” he paused and spat as the blood streaming from his nostrils flowed across his lips, “did your shirt do that? You haven’t got a vest on…I can tell.”
“Oh, right, that. I’m sure you’ve heard of those crazy new spider goats, Sir? The ones that can produce a number of grams of silk per day? They call it biosteel, we just call it goatsilk, you know, like goat milk. In any event, we’ve had them for rather a number of years before the process was leaked to the general public.” I tugged at the cuffs of my smooth red shirt, “tough like steel, supple like Armani.”
He started coughing up bloody lung tissue onto his desk blotter, so I followed his earlier advice and sped things up.
“Mr. Gregory Harper, you have been tried, in absentia, and found guilty of the following crimes: contributing dangerously high amounts of electronic innovation per annum, allowing for an excessive simplification of the average person’s life, with the added side effect of stifling individual creativity through your own output.”
“This has resulted in an inappropriately high rate of mental and social evolution of the human race and little or no accompanying physical improvements. All the while, you have done nothing to reduce your own industrial waste, curb population growth, or inspire stellar exploration to alleviate the burdens on our own planet.”
I walked over to his desk and gently lifted his head by his chin. His bloodshot eyes rolled and twitched, desperately trying to focus on my face.
“Sir, it’s people like you that have us moving too fast. What good is a computer in my brain and a car that hovers above the street if the water is too sick to drink, the air is too polluted to breathe, and we spend our daily lives wading through mounds of our own refuse? Time to slow down, Sir, all of us.” His eyes ducked back under his eyelids and the whites glared accusingly at me.
“Gregory Harper, aged forty-one years,” I dictated, “occupation: CEO and Head of Developmental Sciences for SmarTech Unlimited, the same founded by him twelve years ago. Time of death, 8:46p.m., August 12th, 20__. Cause of death: massive cerebral hemorrhaging,” I gently lowered his head back to his desk, “and flights of angels, et cetera, et cetera.”
Realizing that Mr. Harper’s five-minute warning was nearly up, I put my gun and recorder back in my pockets and grabbed his metal rod while I was at it. I pulled a small EMPulser from my hip pocket and placed it, one after another, on the three computers on his desk. I then pulled out a very small plastic bag from my jacket pocket and unfolded the instructions that had come with it.
“Please read carefully before using,” I recited aloud, “This Ring of Gyges is extremely delicate and…skipping ahead…avoid wearing the Ring in the rain for extended periods of time…umm…do not lick, place in mouth, or ingest the Ring…oh, honestly…do not eat fish while wearing? Okay, screw this,” I decided.
After breaking the red biohazard tape that had been sealing it shut, I tipped the bag and dropped the ring into my hand. The ring was heavier than it looked and seemed somehow unbalanced. The stone set into it was about as unremarkable as a driveway pebble.
“Jésus passant...par le milieu d’eux...s’en allait...” I read from an inscription that encircled the stone. I continued reading the instructions.
“To activate properties of ring, place ring on right ring finger with stone facing out. Should you wish to temporarily negate its effects, rotate the stone towards the palm of your hand. If, when looking in a mirror, the ring is not visible upon your finger, it is functioning properly.”
I slid the ring on and opened Mr. Harper’s curtains, holding my hand before me, palm open. In the dark reflection, my hand was completely unadorned.
“Well fuck me backwards,” I laughed, “I do reckon I’m invisible. Bless you, Plato, and all the magi you have thusly inspired.”
I tried my best, dodging policemen as I went, not to grin and skip merrily back down the hallway to the stairwell.
I failed miserably.
I can send you the current work, edited, in its entirety, if you so wish.
benjamin sTone
Urbana, Illinois
1:05 am, 11/11/04 (that’s Glico’s self-declared Pocky Day, since 11 11 looks like four Pocky sticks)
WRITTEN DURING: A show at Café Paradiso, with The Like Young, Bishop Allen, and The Mates of State (who kicked all asses present)
MAILED DURING: “Bachelorette,” by Bjork, playing on the computer
LAST BOOK I READ ANY PAGES FROM: “How to Tell Your Friends From the Apes” by Will Cuppy
NEXT MOVIE: “Soshun” (Early Spring), Japan, 1956
---------
My hypershort fictions and non-fiction commentaries go to http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/compositemolecules
and http://benchilada.livejournal.com
---------
Flickr photostream of my bizarre photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/benchilada/
