Fall Ceramic Dm™ - Winner!
tadk
Explorer
Round 2 TadK posting In Periphery
In Periphery
© 2004 CW Kelson III (Tad) All Rights Reserved
For the Ceramic DM Contest September 2005
Breathe in breathe out
Breathe in breathe out
Breathe in
Breathe in
Breathe in
Got a machinehead
better than the rest
Green to red
Machinehead…
I walk from my machine
I walk from my machine
Bush "Machinehead"
Winter
The sign says a world and nothing all at once there at the edge of the sprawl.
Welcome To Periphery
Population 2000 Census
50,000
But that does not tell the entire story of the city along the oceanfront. It does nothing to indicate who or what comes to visit in the dark of the moon. In that time of the year when Uncle Ice hands the unwary their head on a platter, when Sister Moon is absent from the sky and only the cold stars are out for comfort where there is none to be found. This is the time when things come up to the surface, wander down from the far frozen plains to the north, where nothing ever thaws, things that come to the lands of man to prey and cavort.
There are 3 Men on the Cold Promontory or perhaps not men after all. The wind whips snow and ice shards around and up and down the granite faced from overlooking the white caps down far below. Granite knives appear and disappear from between waves crashing. All along the way to south and north it looks the same. Storm water lashed landscape where man is no longer welcome till spring comes to visit again.
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22227
Now
Ice Storm
There might be spying
It might be a Tech-no-logical device perhaps
Faceless things standing around on shear ice concrete slab
Black outfits all alone
Vision
Visionary
Ice reflects past and future
Overture
Fog shroud
Funeral silence
Rolling in off the Northern Atlantic seaboard
Granite Etched stone monoliths tortured spirits moan, betraying their fate on the unforgiving deep
The trees are all dead, covered with ice and cracked limbs wishing spring would come and the hope for life once more. Unless Old Man Winter wins out this time and then nothing changes. An Ice Age come in a hurry at his behest.
Fog, towers lurking in the distance glittering in the light, secrets, flesh and skins personas and the end of relationships
This is the land the three have come to visit once more, down from their home of unforgiving nature.
This is winter, it is just past the Winter Solstice and their power is at the peak. Soon, within days, it could come to fruition. Patience rewarded finally.
All the while the winds come down from out of the Noreast.
It is a blizzard of salt water and hypothermic winds racing along.
This is the heart of winter when spirits and aliens walk the land in search of what it is they think they want.
Spring
There is a Modern Home sitting alone.
The house sits there along the walkway covered with ice from the drizzle and snow of the night before.
Rotunda-like house, encircling a dead garden of plants
Filled with wrap around windows
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22228
Suze & the house locked away all alone on the promontory
She is a recluse, an artiste, painter sometimes sculptor and performer.
A Mime, a clown, ala Cirque du Soleil performance artist
Red in China Wealth, Prosperity, Feng Shui, facial decorations making a
Triangle, Triad, 3 of a kind, the first stable geometric figure
The first third of the New Year devoted to her kindness bringing forth life and love to the new growth.
It symbolizes the 3 Shadowy figures lost in time and ice. They are alone as she is, even with each other they are alone while the winds whip away their thoughts leaving only the empty garments that they are.
She is unaware of this all. Still for her, all alone, in the 3 by 3 space allowed in her mind, she moves in fluid grace
Sculpted brows over smiling eyes and lips parted ever so little while she dances to the howling winds outside waiting for spring to arrive.
There is a rose of crystal water hanging start in the air suspended by the weight of devotion. It spins crazy in the twisting dervishes of convection and tree altered courses. The woods are comforted with the sounds it makes and the expectations is ensues with.
Far away the city lies to the other direction, up towards Providence way, not that close to Portsmouth, the three Ps so to speak. There is Periphery. Sitting all alone in the dark.
“Old Baso knows the way there, but ain’t going this time about no sir, no sir.”
His thick local drawl, coming out past rotted gums and gold tooth stark exposed when he speaks. The throat of his thick with mucus made severe from chronic bronchitis and a nervous twitch to the eyes. Ash gray face from parching wind wrapped up in thick scarves all around, trousers damp on the ankles from wading through foot some deep snow. Old Baso knows the ways around the lonely places, but no one seems to hear him speak.
Peripheral, being or having or part of, constituting the periphery, out of the way and on the fringes.
Summer
Crazy ballistic dance of life
Echoes off the ceiling, sensory bound
Overload of lights and kinesthetic ballet
Toe to toe, fingertip to fingertip, dance the life away,
Old Baso in the background of memory pasted on the mind’s eye, a cornucopia of disjointed digits.
Fingers spayed out in supplication to eroding fate
The three are not kind, kindred to their home a fourth of the time extant on the earth
Spirits of the laments of eternal white and frost bit. Not allowed here now with the sun high in the sky and temperatures well above the freezing mark. No they are only allowed down here when the cold wraps the land in a cocoon of deadly cold.
The radio is playing now,
The words epic in relation
The children stop playing in the street and begin to cry
Only knowing something bad has happened.
“no bangs, no yells, merely the sea
is Mr. Freeze inside of me
no bangs, no yells, merely the sea
is Mr. Freeze inside of me”
Sitting there on the radio in the background of the house music from somewhere
Shipwrecks in the Arctic Circle leading to death. Drowning after slipping under the ice. A
Grip of Glacier, they are coming home again
The Daughter of Spring was ambushed and with her discarded vitality, the three there, only two seasons, six some months or less, remaining till triumph is possible. The ones in black that live in white using the weak to bring it around again. The plans continue to enfold.
A cold stone seat in the heat of summer, holding onto the promise of winter and her aching grip on the joints. It is a promise to the powers of white lying in wait.
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22229
Fall
No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes
Rolling Stones Paint it Black
All alone
Lost in the park waiting till the snow comes again to keep it company
Worried over
Old
Aged
Pocked and torn town
In summers lament
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22230
The photo place far down the street is lit from the street lamps that are left of the nightlife.
Winos sitting along side the alleys, marking the hours till morning comes and the agony of life with the drink starts all over again.
There was Old Baso squatting outside, marking time till the shortest day comes back around again, leading towards the longest day not so long past.
His thick local drawl, coming out past rotted gums and gold tooth stark exposed when he speaks. The throat of his thick with mucus made severe from chronic bronchitis and a nervous twitch to the eyes. Blacked skin made darker than usual in the wake of the summer months. Now that the season has turned, and the way lies open to things to return to the world once more, his step is slower and measured.
Black and White folding into the night
Walking all alone, down the deserted side walk
A circle of life, darkest winter till spring summer falling
Into night strident pastiche of Kaleidoscope
In Periphery
© 2004 CW Kelson III (Tad) All Rights Reserved
For the Ceramic DM Contest September 2005
Breathe in breathe out
Breathe in breathe out
Breathe in
Breathe in
Breathe in
Got a machinehead
better than the rest
Green to red
Machinehead…
I walk from my machine
I walk from my machine
Bush "Machinehead"
Winter
The sign says a world and nothing all at once there at the edge of the sprawl.
Welcome To Periphery
Population 2000 Census
50,000
But that does not tell the entire story of the city along the oceanfront. It does nothing to indicate who or what comes to visit in the dark of the moon. In that time of the year when Uncle Ice hands the unwary their head on a platter, when Sister Moon is absent from the sky and only the cold stars are out for comfort where there is none to be found. This is the time when things come up to the surface, wander down from the far frozen plains to the north, where nothing ever thaws, things that come to the lands of man to prey and cavort.
There are 3 Men on the Cold Promontory or perhaps not men after all. The wind whips snow and ice shards around and up and down the granite faced from overlooking the white caps down far below. Granite knives appear and disappear from between waves crashing. All along the way to south and north it looks the same. Storm water lashed landscape where man is no longer welcome till spring comes to visit again.
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22227
Now
Ice Storm
There might be spying
It might be a Tech-no-logical device perhaps
Faceless things standing around on shear ice concrete slab
Black outfits all alone
Vision
Visionary
Ice reflects past and future
Overture
Fog shroud
Funeral silence
Rolling in off the Northern Atlantic seaboard
Granite Etched stone monoliths tortured spirits moan, betraying their fate on the unforgiving deep
The trees are all dead, covered with ice and cracked limbs wishing spring would come and the hope for life once more. Unless Old Man Winter wins out this time and then nothing changes. An Ice Age come in a hurry at his behest.
Fog, towers lurking in the distance glittering in the light, secrets, flesh and skins personas and the end of relationships
This is the land the three have come to visit once more, down from their home of unforgiving nature.
This is winter, it is just past the Winter Solstice and their power is at the peak. Soon, within days, it could come to fruition. Patience rewarded finally.
All the while the winds come down from out of the Noreast.
It is a blizzard of salt water and hypothermic winds racing along.
This is the heart of winter when spirits and aliens walk the land in search of what it is they think they want.
Spring
There is a Modern Home sitting alone.
The house sits there along the walkway covered with ice from the drizzle and snow of the night before.
Rotunda-like house, encircling a dead garden of plants
Filled with wrap around windows
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22228
Suze & the house locked away all alone on the promontory
She is a recluse, an artiste, painter sometimes sculptor and performer.
A Mime, a clown, ala Cirque du Soleil performance artist
Red in China Wealth, Prosperity, Feng Shui, facial decorations making a
Triangle, Triad, 3 of a kind, the first stable geometric figure
The first third of the New Year devoted to her kindness bringing forth life and love to the new growth.
It symbolizes the 3 Shadowy figures lost in time and ice. They are alone as she is, even with each other they are alone while the winds whip away their thoughts leaving only the empty garments that they are.
She is unaware of this all. Still for her, all alone, in the 3 by 3 space allowed in her mind, she moves in fluid grace
Sculpted brows over smiling eyes and lips parted ever so little while she dances to the howling winds outside waiting for spring to arrive.
There is a rose of crystal water hanging start in the air suspended by the weight of devotion. It spins crazy in the twisting dervishes of convection and tree altered courses. The woods are comforted with the sounds it makes and the expectations is ensues with.
Far away the city lies to the other direction, up towards Providence way, not that close to Portsmouth, the three Ps so to speak. There is Periphery. Sitting all alone in the dark.
“Old Baso knows the way there, but ain’t going this time about no sir, no sir.”
His thick local drawl, coming out past rotted gums and gold tooth stark exposed when he speaks. The throat of his thick with mucus made severe from chronic bronchitis and a nervous twitch to the eyes. Ash gray face from parching wind wrapped up in thick scarves all around, trousers damp on the ankles from wading through foot some deep snow. Old Baso knows the ways around the lonely places, but no one seems to hear him speak.
Peripheral, being or having or part of, constituting the periphery, out of the way and on the fringes.
Summer
Crazy ballistic dance of life
Echoes off the ceiling, sensory bound
Overload of lights and kinesthetic ballet
Toe to toe, fingertip to fingertip, dance the life away,
Old Baso in the background of memory pasted on the mind’s eye, a cornucopia of disjointed digits.
Fingers spayed out in supplication to eroding fate
The three are not kind, kindred to their home a fourth of the time extant on the earth
Spirits of the laments of eternal white and frost bit. Not allowed here now with the sun high in the sky and temperatures well above the freezing mark. No they are only allowed down here when the cold wraps the land in a cocoon of deadly cold.
The radio is playing now,
The words epic in relation
The children stop playing in the street and begin to cry
Only knowing something bad has happened.
“no bangs, no yells, merely the sea
is Mr. Freeze inside of me
no bangs, no yells, merely the sea
is Mr. Freeze inside of me”
Sitting there on the radio in the background of the house music from somewhere
Shipwrecks in the Arctic Circle leading to death. Drowning after slipping under the ice. A
Grip of Glacier, they are coming home again
The Daughter of Spring was ambushed and with her discarded vitality, the three there, only two seasons, six some months or less, remaining till triumph is possible. The ones in black that live in white using the weak to bring it around again. The plans continue to enfold.
A cold stone seat in the heat of summer, holding onto the promise of winter and her aching grip on the joints. It is a promise to the powers of white lying in wait.
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22229
Fall
No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes
Rolling Stones Paint it Black
All alone
Lost in the park waiting till the snow comes again to keep it company
Worried over
Old
Aged
Pocked and torn town
In summers lament
http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=22230
The photo place far down the street is lit from the street lamps that are left of the nightlife.
Winos sitting along side the alleys, marking the hours till morning comes and the agony of life with the drink starts all over again.
There was Old Baso squatting outside, marking time till the shortest day comes back around again, leading towards the longest day not so long past.
His thick local drawl, coming out past rotted gums and gold tooth stark exposed when he speaks. The throat of his thick with mucus made severe from chronic bronchitis and a nervous twitch to the eyes. Blacked skin made darker than usual in the wake of the summer months. Now that the season has turned, and the way lies open to things to return to the world once more, his step is slower and measured.
Black and White folding into the night
Walking all alone, down the deserted side walk
A circle of life, darkest winter till spring summer falling
Into night strident pastiche of Kaleidoscope
SteelDraco
First Post
A Day's Work
by D Brooks, aka SteelDraco
For Round 2, Fall 2005 Ceramic DM
To most, it would have just been another office building, tan sandstone and darkened glass concealing all manner of boring paperwork. The manicured lawn and scattered pieces of modern sculpture only added to the mundane appearance of the place. Of course, I knew that there were cameras watching my every move, and wouldn’t be surprised to learn there were gun turrets in a few of those sculptures. It’s what I would have done. Working for the Hoffman Institute can have that effect on a man.
I nodded to the man at the desk inside, and flashed him my Institute identification. He let me pass without comment, and I made my way to the side of the large entryway, where another glass door led deeper into the building. I scanned my card and entered a passcode, and the door hissed open. Couldn’t be too careful, with some of the things stored in here. Fumimaro’s office was just down the hall, past the Xenotech R&D department.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Bertoulli.” That was Marta, Fumimaro’s assistant. She smiled up at me from her desk, looking a bit too much like Rosalyn for me to ever really feel comfortable around her, with long blonde hair and green eyes. Even had the same smile, damn it. “He’s expecting you. Ms. Lyons has already arrived.”
“Thanks.” I walked past her desk, and into Fumimaro’s office. It was one of the few places in the Institute where I really felt comfortable, since it actually felt like someone spent time there. Pictures on the walls, a clutter of paper on most of the flat surfaces. It felt… real.
There were already two people in the room when I entered. Seated behind the desk was Ichen Fumimaro. He was a Japanese man, most of a head shorter than me, and probably sixty pounds lighter. I’d guessed before that he was in his late thirties, but despite going to several birthday celebrations with him, I still didn’t know exactly how old he was. He smiled at me as I entered. “Ah, Michael. Good to see you.”
The woman across the desk from him stood up as I entered, and moved to hug me. “Michael! It’s been too long!” She had to stand on her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek, and I smiled at her warmth. No matter what she saw, you couldn’t get Samantha down. I looked down into her wide face, all friendliness and dimples, and laughed. Her brown hair went most of the way down her back, and she flipped it around as she sat down again.
“You got rid of the glasses,” I said. “Contacts?”
She made a face, almost pouty. “Laser surgery. I was tired of the librarian look.”
I snorted at that. Samantha was the head librarian of the Wolcroft Collection, one of New York’s most prestigious private libraries. Not everybody has heard of it, of course. You have to have some connections among the mystic circles to get an invitation, but there’s probably not a better source of occult lore on the east coast.
I sat down next to her, and looked at Fumimaro. “Well? What’s the catastrophe?”
He looked at me for a second before chuckling, and hitting a few buttons on his computer. “This, actually.” A monitor on the wall flickered to life, showing an image of what appeared to be a grassy field with a sizable pit in the center of the photo. The grass around the edge of the pit was greyed, as though covered with ash. “What you’re looking at is the area above the Baston Particle Collider, yesterday morning. Quite a few of the recent breakthroughs in particle physics have been done here; it’s one of the most extensive supercolliders ever built. Unfortunately, it seems like they were a little too successful at breaking down matter. They seemed to have created a temporary dimensional rift, allowing something from another reality access to our own.”
I leaned forward at that. “Another Chernobyl? I’ve heard stories, from the members of the Order of St. Gregory. If demons are coming through –“
“No, no, nothing to that extent. The rift was small enough that it sealed almost immediately, and the entity that came through hasn’t been nearly as destructive as the creatures that manifested around the Chernobyl reactor. Just… odd.” He hit a few more buttons on his computer, and the screen changed. The view was closer to the damaged area, and there was a scattering of rocks and other debris apparently hanging in the air, over the pit.
“When our technicians went in to examine the area, they discovered something startling. What we initially took to be a breach in the side of the collider actually, well, wasn’t. Everything that was there, still remains. They discovered that the terrain was rendered transparent. The area near the transparent terrain was drained of color, reduced to black and white. Obviously it’s some manner of supernatural effect, since black and white doesn’t make any sense for how color is transferred. It is still not certain exactly what’s going on – samples were sent over to Xenotech R&D Central today, to see if they could make anything of it. We have not yet received word back from them. I don’t expect to for a few days – they needed to run some complex tests to figure out what is going on, as I understand. As of right now, we know this entity’s touch drains color completely, and its proximity causes colors to fade. We have no information on how long this condition lasts, so I’d suggest you avoid getting close. Samantha, you’ll be issued a dimensional containment unit, for when you manage to find the entity.”
That seemed like a problem to me. “How, exactly, are we supposed to do that? Has the thing been spotted? Do we even know what we’re looking for here?”
Fumimaro passed us a photograph from inside his desk. It was a trim young Asian woman with short hair, dressed in drab black clothes. She was standing in an art gallery, looking rather proud.
Samantha . “Suzette Noriko? How is she involved in this?” I stared at her blankly, then at Fumimaro. She laughed. “Boston art scene. Famous painter. Don’t you ever go out?”
“Not there, no.” I turned back to Fumimaro. “How is she involved?”
He hit another button, and the monitor showed a house – decently sized, with trees to screen it from neighbors. And a sizable hole in the side of the wall. “This apparently happened just this afternoon. This is from the police report, and they forwarded it immediately to us. Her cleaning service found the place like this. You should start here. She was supposed to be home, but hasn’t been accounted for. The entity may have kidnapped her.” Fumimaro stood, and bowed to both of us. “Your equipment is prepared for you. Good luck.”
Samantha pulled the company sedan past a couple of uniformed cops. I showed them my ID when one of them flagged us down to explain that the house was under quarantine, and they let us on by. The gravel crunched under the tires as we pulled up to the artist’s house, which looked even more alien in person. There were two sizable holes in the exterior – one on the second floor, near the rear of the property. The other was near the front door, as though the thing had gone all the way through the house. You could see portions of the floor, here and there. It looked like one of those cutaway diagrams you see in books, explaining how things were built. Most of the color seemed to have been leeched from the place, with only a few patches of real color noticeable. It looked like the place might have been bright yellow, at one point.
I stepped onto the porch, and put my hand against the transparent wall. It was perfectly solid, and felt the same as the rest of the wall as I ran my hand along it. The edges seemed ragged, as though the thing that had caused this was irregularly shaped. Something to remember. Samantha had pulled out of some her tools – what looked like a Geiger counter, as well as an amulet hanging from a chain, which she was swinging loosely. She was searching for whatever had been here, or whatever residue it might have left behind.
I went in first, my hand resting on my service pistol. Couldn’t be too careful, after all. Though from the look of things, I might just end up with transparent bullets. The inside of the house was leeched of color, too. I noticed a few picture frames, and that made me stop. There didn’t seem to be a canvas inside any of the frames – just a greyed-out frame, and then the interior of the wall. The thing had brushed up against each painting, rendering it transparent.
“Sam, look at that.” I gestured, and she seemed to ponder for a moment.
“Colors. She’s known for her use of color, with many conflicting and clashing colors in the same piece. It’s eating the colors.” She ran her hand over one of the frames, and nodded. “The canvas is still there. It… it ate the painting.”
I supposed that made sense, in a strange, alien sort of way. “Probably why it came here. If that’s what it eats. But… if it eats colors, where’s the artist?”
Samantha nodded. “Good question. Let me go find out.” She headed upstairs, and I looked around some more. I found a room where it looked like there had been a struggle of some kind. The room was obviously for showing off paintings, with a few little tables and walls covered with frames. One of them was on the floor, obviously pulled down and flung or carried across the room. A few of the little tables were fallen and scattered. Several places in the room had been made transparent, including a sizable patch of floor. I felt around, but didn’t notice anything.
I heard Sam looking for me, and called out for her. She was holding what seemed to be a hairbrush, and the dangling amulet seemed to be pulling toward the back of the house. Probably using magic to find the artist. “She close,” I asked. Sam nodded, concentrating. I followed her, out through the spacious kitchen and into a small garden area.
There were shrubs and flower bushes here and there, and what looked like a small hedge maze near the back. A few stone benches and an easel were nearer the house, obviously where she sat and did some of her painting. Sam led me toward one of the stone benches. ((PICTURE 3)) It wasn’t out of the ordinary – just faded grey stone, weathered with age and the elements. And yet, Sam’s amulet was barely swinging at all now – it was pulled directly toward the bench, a though by a powerful magnet. She nodded toward it, and I reached out to see what was there.
My hands brushed clothes, just above the bench. I felt around, and it was clearly a person – Suzette Noriko, I presumed. She started to stir, slowly. She seemed to be injured, or at least not moving well.
Errr. “Miss? Suzette Noriko?” She made a noise, a sort of groan.
“Y… yes. I’m Suzette Noriko.”
“Are you all ri – are you injured?” I supposed it was obvious she wasn’t ‘all right’.
“Hit… my head. I tried to talk to one of the police, when he came. I scared him. He tried to run, and I grabbed him. He hit me. Sort of… went blank. Hoped it would be over when I woke up. Bad dream. Not… not dream…” She trailed off again, and I let Samantha try and tend to her. She had more medical training than I did – mine was mostly just making sure cops and Knights in the field didn’t bleed to death. This was more of a mental shock. Being turned transparent would probably have that effect.
It was a few minutes before Sam got Suzette coherent enough to give us the full story. She had been working on a new display in her private gallery, when a cloud of tiny motes of light had come through her wall and started leeching the color from her paintings. It hadn’t responded when she’d yelled at it, or when she’d started throwing things. It was only when she entered the cloud – to pull a favorite painting away from it – that the entity had reacted. She said she felt something touch her mind, screaming in agony. It hungered, needed the colors to stay alive. It pulled at her, trying to find where more colors could be found, where she got them. Then she’d passed out, only to wake up when the police arrived later that day.
“Did you get the sense that it was going somewhere?”
“Y-yes. It wanted to know where I got the colors. It left right after that.”
Purposeful little thing, I had to give it that. “Where?”
“A shop. Not too far.” She sniffed. “It’s an art supply place, in Cambridge.”
I looked at Sam. “It doesn’t seem to move too fast. We’ll be able to beat it to Cambridge from here.” I turned to where Suzette was (probably) sitting. “Wait here. We’ll come back when we have the thing captured.”
“No! I – I need to be there. What if it goes away and I never get better? It thinks, maybe I can get it to give me my color back. Or I’ll be a freak forever.” I looked at Sam, but she seemed sympathetic to the woman’s problem.
“All right. Fine. You can come with us.”
Sam stood up, pulling Suzette along with her. “I have an idea,” she said. That didn’t sound good.
I waited for them for probably ten minutes. I heard water running upstairs, and then what sounded like a hair dryer. And all the while, the creature was getting farther away, probably eating color all along the way. I found a few things in a coat closet that might prove useful later, and put them in the trunk of the car, next to the dimensional containment unit from Xenotech R&D.
((PICTURE 2)) They came back down, and I was surprised that I could see Suzette. She was wearing a green-and-black turtleneck, black slacks, white gloves, and high boots, that covered up almost all her skin. What wasn’t covered had been painted with thick make-up, done to look like a mime. Her hair was visible, too – still a little damp, probably freshly dyed. She looked quite fetching, really.
“Huh. Good thinking, Sam. She’s visible again. But why?”
“Directive 7b, Michael. Don’t scare the mundanes. We couldn’t have an invisible girl running around town, talking to us. She’s going to be with us, she needs to be disguised.”
“Decent point.” After everyone was in the car, I sped toward Cambridge, following Suzette’s direction. On the way, Samantha called ahead to the local police, and had the area around the store cleared, so we wouldn’t have to deal with many witnesses. Better safe than sorry. We made it there in good time, and I didn’t notice any greyed-out terrain as we went. Maybe we had actually gotten lucky.
We arrived at the shop near nightfall. It was hard to miss the place, really. It had a garish sign that read COLOR, with at least fifteen different, painfully clashing hues. The interior was just as bad, even in the relative darkness after close. Certainly a creature that fed on color couldn’t stay away from here long.
Sam got into the trunk, and started pulling out the containment unit. I passed each of the girls my little protective item – a long, black coat, taken from Suzette’s coat closet. “Maybe if you’re dressed like this, the thing won’t be interested in your colors, and leave you alone. Worth a shot, at least.” I pulled mine on, as well – apparently Suzette had had male guests who had left their coats behind at some point. Lucky for me.
While Sam set up the containment unit across the street, Suzette and I went into the shop to bait the trap. Apparently she was a part-owner or something, since she had keys. Inside, everything seemed normal. It was an upscale art supply place, with all kinds of paints, brushes, canvases, tools, and such. Each of us grabbed a few buckets of paint, and started a swathe of color to the small bit of grass where Sam was setting up the containment unit.
((PICTURE 1)) The air was thick with fog already, and the containment unit was frozen over. Some side effect of the way the thing worked meant that it was always bloody cold nearby. Sam had explained it to me at one point, but I got as far as “molecular oscillation” and “induced superconductivity” and “Einstein-Rosenberg bridge” before my head got all fuzzy and I had to sit down. I’m just a cop who ran into some bad stuff, after all. She’s the genius. I was just glad I had stolen such a big coat.
We had gone back and forth several times, creating a wide line of color between the shop and Sam. After about twenty minutes, Sam radioed us, while we were inside looking for cheap paint to use. “It’s here. Hurry.”
We ran across the street, watching the sky above us. Sure enough, there was what looked like a thick swarm of tiny, silver fireflies moving toward the shop. It wasn’t terribly fast, but it was probably a good six feet across, pulsing slowly. We moved behind Sam and the containment unit, and she closed the protective circles around us with a few words. I knew they were designed to funnel the creature toward the containment unit – I’d seem them work before on much more dangerous things.
The cloud hovered for a few moments in front of the store, and I could see the colors on the sign flowing into it. The silvery light of the cloud flickered as it absorbed colors, and different hues flowed across it in shifting patterns. The front of the store faded slowly to grey. ((PICTURE 4))
The thing moved slowly downward, as if sniffing at our scattered paint. Slowly, it settled over it, and began to move toward us. It inched toward us, quivering and coiling as though suspicious. Past the first circle… just a little more… there!
Sam triggered the containment unit, and it began to hiss loudly, like a teakettle on full boil. The entity surged and roiled, but was unable to move away from her, thanks to the containment circle she had created. Slowly, agonizingly, it was sucked into the nova-bright opening at the tip of the containment unit, until every last silver sparkle was gone. Only after that, and a few breaths more, did Sam seal the containment unit. It was over.
It was a few months before I heard how everything turned out. Suzette never got better, but she was recruited by the Institute – it’s amazing how useful an invisible operative can be. In the art world, she became known for wearing mime makeup all the time, but then, they’re sort of expected to be eccentric. Her home had to be bulldozed, and the invisible pieces carried away to safe places. The supercollider was modified with the same protective wards the Knights of the Order of Saint Gregory put around nuclear reactors, to prevent extradimensional breaches. Last I heard, they’re working on a way to selectively release the entity, to make transparent materials. Apparently transparent steel goes for a price you wouldn’t believe. Really, all just another day in the Hoffman Institute.
by D Brooks, aka SteelDraco
For Round 2, Fall 2005 Ceramic DM
To most, it would have just been another office building, tan sandstone and darkened glass concealing all manner of boring paperwork. The manicured lawn and scattered pieces of modern sculpture only added to the mundane appearance of the place. Of course, I knew that there were cameras watching my every move, and wouldn’t be surprised to learn there were gun turrets in a few of those sculptures. It’s what I would have done. Working for the Hoffman Institute can have that effect on a man.
I nodded to the man at the desk inside, and flashed him my Institute identification. He let me pass without comment, and I made my way to the side of the large entryway, where another glass door led deeper into the building. I scanned my card and entered a passcode, and the door hissed open. Couldn’t be too careful, with some of the things stored in here. Fumimaro’s office was just down the hall, past the Xenotech R&D department.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Bertoulli.” That was Marta, Fumimaro’s assistant. She smiled up at me from her desk, looking a bit too much like Rosalyn for me to ever really feel comfortable around her, with long blonde hair and green eyes. Even had the same smile, damn it. “He’s expecting you. Ms. Lyons has already arrived.”
“Thanks.” I walked past her desk, and into Fumimaro’s office. It was one of the few places in the Institute where I really felt comfortable, since it actually felt like someone spent time there. Pictures on the walls, a clutter of paper on most of the flat surfaces. It felt… real.
There were already two people in the room when I entered. Seated behind the desk was Ichen Fumimaro. He was a Japanese man, most of a head shorter than me, and probably sixty pounds lighter. I’d guessed before that he was in his late thirties, but despite going to several birthday celebrations with him, I still didn’t know exactly how old he was. He smiled at me as I entered. “Ah, Michael. Good to see you.”
The woman across the desk from him stood up as I entered, and moved to hug me. “Michael! It’s been too long!” She had to stand on her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek, and I smiled at her warmth. No matter what she saw, you couldn’t get Samantha down. I looked down into her wide face, all friendliness and dimples, and laughed. Her brown hair went most of the way down her back, and she flipped it around as she sat down again.
“You got rid of the glasses,” I said. “Contacts?”
She made a face, almost pouty. “Laser surgery. I was tired of the librarian look.”
I snorted at that. Samantha was the head librarian of the Wolcroft Collection, one of New York’s most prestigious private libraries. Not everybody has heard of it, of course. You have to have some connections among the mystic circles to get an invitation, but there’s probably not a better source of occult lore on the east coast.
I sat down next to her, and looked at Fumimaro. “Well? What’s the catastrophe?”
He looked at me for a second before chuckling, and hitting a few buttons on his computer. “This, actually.” A monitor on the wall flickered to life, showing an image of what appeared to be a grassy field with a sizable pit in the center of the photo. The grass around the edge of the pit was greyed, as though covered with ash. “What you’re looking at is the area above the Baston Particle Collider, yesterday morning. Quite a few of the recent breakthroughs in particle physics have been done here; it’s one of the most extensive supercolliders ever built. Unfortunately, it seems like they were a little too successful at breaking down matter. They seemed to have created a temporary dimensional rift, allowing something from another reality access to our own.”
I leaned forward at that. “Another Chernobyl? I’ve heard stories, from the members of the Order of St. Gregory. If demons are coming through –“
“No, no, nothing to that extent. The rift was small enough that it sealed almost immediately, and the entity that came through hasn’t been nearly as destructive as the creatures that manifested around the Chernobyl reactor. Just… odd.” He hit a few more buttons on his computer, and the screen changed. The view was closer to the damaged area, and there was a scattering of rocks and other debris apparently hanging in the air, over the pit.
“When our technicians went in to examine the area, they discovered something startling. What we initially took to be a breach in the side of the collider actually, well, wasn’t. Everything that was there, still remains. They discovered that the terrain was rendered transparent. The area near the transparent terrain was drained of color, reduced to black and white. Obviously it’s some manner of supernatural effect, since black and white doesn’t make any sense for how color is transferred. It is still not certain exactly what’s going on – samples were sent over to Xenotech R&D Central today, to see if they could make anything of it. We have not yet received word back from them. I don’t expect to for a few days – they needed to run some complex tests to figure out what is going on, as I understand. As of right now, we know this entity’s touch drains color completely, and its proximity causes colors to fade. We have no information on how long this condition lasts, so I’d suggest you avoid getting close. Samantha, you’ll be issued a dimensional containment unit, for when you manage to find the entity.”
That seemed like a problem to me. “How, exactly, are we supposed to do that? Has the thing been spotted? Do we even know what we’re looking for here?”
Fumimaro passed us a photograph from inside his desk. It was a trim young Asian woman with short hair, dressed in drab black clothes. She was standing in an art gallery, looking rather proud.
Samantha . “Suzette Noriko? How is she involved in this?” I stared at her blankly, then at Fumimaro. She laughed. “Boston art scene. Famous painter. Don’t you ever go out?”
“Not there, no.” I turned back to Fumimaro. “How is she involved?”
He hit another button, and the monitor showed a house – decently sized, with trees to screen it from neighbors. And a sizable hole in the side of the wall. “This apparently happened just this afternoon. This is from the police report, and they forwarded it immediately to us. Her cleaning service found the place like this. You should start here. She was supposed to be home, but hasn’t been accounted for. The entity may have kidnapped her.” Fumimaro stood, and bowed to both of us. “Your equipment is prepared for you. Good luck.”
Samantha pulled the company sedan past a couple of uniformed cops. I showed them my ID when one of them flagged us down to explain that the house was under quarantine, and they let us on by. The gravel crunched under the tires as we pulled up to the artist’s house, which looked even more alien in person. There were two sizable holes in the exterior – one on the second floor, near the rear of the property. The other was near the front door, as though the thing had gone all the way through the house. You could see portions of the floor, here and there. It looked like one of those cutaway diagrams you see in books, explaining how things were built. Most of the color seemed to have been leeched from the place, with only a few patches of real color noticeable. It looked like the place might have been bright yellow, at one point.
I stepped onto the porch, and put my hand against the transparent wall. It was perfectly solid, and felt the same as the rest of the wall as I ran my hand along it. The edges seemed ragged, as though the thing that had caused this was irregularly shaped. Something to remember. Samantha had pulled out of some her tools – what looked like a Geiger counter, as well as an amulet hanging from a chain, which she was swinging loosely. She was searching for whatever had been here, or whatever residue it might have left behind.
I went in first, my hand resting on my service pistol. Couldn’t be too careful, after all. Though from the look of things, I might just end up with transparent bullets. The inside of the house was leeched of color, too. I noticed a few picture frames, and that made me stop. There didn’t seem to be a canvas inside any of the frames – just a greyed-out frame, and then the interior of the wall. The thing had brushed up against each painting, rendering it transparent.
“Sam, look at that.” I gestured, and she seemed to ponder for a moment.
“Colors. She’s known for her use of color, with many conflicting and clashing colors in the same piece. It’s eating the colors.” She ran her hand over one of the frames, and nodded. “The canvas is still there. It… it ate the painting.”
I supposed that made sense, in a strange, alien sort of way. “Probably why it came here. If that’s what it eats. But… if it eats colors, where’s the artist?”
Samantha nodded. “Good question. Let me go find out.” She headed upstairs, and I looked around some more. I found a room where it looked like there had been a struggle of some kind. The room was obviously for showing off paintings, with a few little tables and walls covered with frames. One of them was on the floor, obviously pulled down and flung or carried across the room. A few of the little tables were fallen and scattered. Several places in the room had been made transparent, including a sizable patch of floor. I felt around, but didn’t notice anything.
I heard Sam looking for me, and called out for her. She was holding what seemed to be a hairbrush, and the dangling amulet seemed to be pulling toward the back of the house. Probably using magic to find the artist. “She close,” I asked. Sam nodded, concentrating. I followed her, out through the spacious kitchen and into a small garden area.
There were shrubs and flower bushes here and there, and what looked like a small hedge maze near the back. A few stone benches and an easel were nearer the house, obviously where she sat and did some of her painting. Sam led me toward one of the stone benches. ((PICTURE 3)) It wasn’t out of the ordinary – just faded grey stone, weathered with age and the elements. And yet, Sam’s amulet was barely swinging at all now – it was pulled directly toward the bench, a though by a powerful magnet. She nodded toward it, and I reached out to see what was there.
My hands brushed clothes, just above the bench. I felt around, and it was clearly a person – Suzette Noriko, I presumed. She started to stir, slowly. She seemed to be injured, or at least not moving well.
Errr. “Miss? Suzette Noriko?” She made a noise, a sort of groan.
“Y… yes. I’m Suzette Noriko.”
“Are you all ri – are you injured?” I supposed it was obvious she wasn’t ‘all right’.
“Hit… my head. I tried to talk to one of the police, when he came. I scared him. He tried to run, and I grabbed him. He hit me. Sort of… went blank. Hoped it would be over when I woke up. Bad dream. Not… not dream…” She trailed off again, and I let Samantha try and tend to her. She had more medical training than I did – mine was mostly just making sure cops and Knights in the field didn’t bleed to death. This was more of a mental shock. Being turned transparent would probably have that effect.
It was a few minutes before Sam got Suzette coherent enough to give us the full story. She had been working on a new display in her private gallery, when a cloud of tiny motes of light had come through her wall and started leeching the color from her paintings. It hadn’t responded when she’d yelled at it, or when she’d started throwing things. It was only when she entered the cloud – to pull a favorite painting away from it – that the entity had reacted. She said she felt something touch her mind, screaming in agony. It hungered, needed the colors to stay alive. It pulled at her, trying to find where more colors could be found, where she got them. Then she’d passed out, only to wake up when the police arrived later that day.
“Did you get the sense that it was going somewhere?”
“Y-yes. It wanted to know where I got the colors. It left right after that.”
Purposeful little thing, I had to give it that. “Where?”
“A shop. Not too far.” She sniffed. “It’s an art supply place, in Cambridge.”
I looked at Sam. “It doesn’t seem to move too fast. We’ll be able to beat it to Cambridge from here.” I turned to where Suzette was (probably) sitting. “Wait here. We’ll come back when we have the thing captured.”
“No! I – I need to be there. What if it goes away and I never get better? It thinks, maybe I can get it to give me my color back. Or I’ll be a freak forever.” I looked at Sam, but she seemed sympathetic to the woman’s problem.
“All right. Fine. You can come with us.”
Sam stood up, pulling Suzette along with her. “I have an idea,” she said. That didn’t sound good.
I waited for them for probably ten minutes. I heard water running upstairs, and then what sounded like a hair dryer. And all the while, the creature was getting farther away, probably eating color all along the way. I found a few things in a coat closet that might prove useful later, and put them in the trunk of the car, next to the dimensional containment unit from Xenotech R&D.
((PICTURE 2)) They came back down, and I was surprised that I could see Suzette. She was wearing a green-and-black turtleneck, black slacks, white gloves, and high boots, that covered up almost all her skin. What wasn’t covered had been painted with thick make-up, done to look like a mime. Her hair was visible, too – still a little damp, probably freshly dyed. She looked quite fetching, really.
“Huh. Good thinking, Sam. She’s visible again. But why?”
“Directive 7b, Michael. Don’t scare the mundanes. We couldn’t have an invisible girl running around town, talking to us. She’s going to be with us, she needs to be disguised.”
“Decent point.” After everyone was in the car, I sped toward Cambridge, following Suzette’s direction. On the way, Samantha called ahead to the local police, and had the area around the store cleared, so we wouldn’t have to deal with many witnesses. Better safe than sorry. We made it there in good time, and I didn’t notice any greyed-out terrain as we went. Maybe we had actually gotten lucky.
We arrived at the shop near nightfall. It was hard to miss the place, really. It had a garish sign that read COLOR, with at least fifteen different, painfully clashing hues. The interior was just as bad, even in the relative darkness after close. Certainly a creature that fed on color couldn’t stay away from here long.
Sam got into the trunk, and started pulling out the containment unit. I passed each of the girls my little protective item – a long, black coat, taken from Suzette’s coat closet. “Maybe if you’re dressed like this, the thing won’t be interested in your colors, and leave you alone. Worth a shot, at least.” I pulled mine on, as well – apparently Suzette had had male guests who had left their coats behind at some point. Lucky for me.
While Sam set up the containment unit across the street, Suzette and I went into the shop to bait the trap. Apparently she was a part-owner or something, since she had keys. Inside, everything seemed normal. It was an upscale art supply place, with all kinds of paints, brushes, canvases, tools, and such. Each of us grabbed a few buckets of paint, and started a swathe of color to the small bit of grass where Sam was setting up the containment unit.
((PICTURE 1)) The air was thick with fog already, and the containment unit was frozen over. Some side effect of the way the thing worked meant that it was always bloody cold nearby. Sam had explained it to me at one point, but I got as far as “molecular oscillation” and “induced superconductivity” and “Einstein-Rosenberg bridge” before my head got all fuzzy and I had to sit down. I’m just a cop who ran into some bad stuff, after all. She’s the genius. I was just glad I had stolen such a big coat.
We had gone back and forth several times, creating a wide line of color between the shop and Sam. After about twenty minutes, Sam radioed us, while we were inside looking for cheap paint to use. “It’s here. Hurry.”
We ran across the street, watching the sky above us. Sure enough, there was what looked like a thick swarm of tiny, silver fireflies moving toward the shop. It wasn’t terribly fast, but it was probably a good six feet across, pulsing slowly. We moved behind Sam and the containment unit, and she closed the protective circles around us with a few words. I knew they were designed to funnel the creature toward the containment unit – I’d seem them work before on much more dangerous things.
The cloud hovered for a few moments in front of the store, and I could see the colors on the sign flowing into it. The silvery light of the cloud flickered as it absorbed colors, and different hues flowed across it in shifting patterns. The front of the store faded slowly to grey. ((PICTURE 4))
The thing moved slowly downward, as if sniffing at our scattered paint. Slowly, it settled over it, and began to move toward us. It inched toward us, quivering and coiling as though suspicious. Past the first circle… just a little more… there!
Sam triggered the containment unit, and it began to hiss loudly, like a teakettle on full boil. The entity surged and roiled, but was unable to move away from her, thanks to the containment circle she had created. Slowly, agonizingly, it was sucked into the nova-bright opening at the tip of the containment unit, until every last silver sparkle was gone. Only after that, and a few breaths more, did Sam seal the containment unit. It was over.
It was a few months before I heard how everything turned out. Suzette never got better, but she was recruited by the Institute – it’s amazing how useful an invisible operative can be. In the art world, she became known for wearing mime makeup all the time, but then, they’re sort of expected to be eccentric. Her home had to be bulldozed, and the invisible pieces carried away to safe places. The supercollider was modified with the same protective wards the Knights of the Order of Saint Gregory put around nuclear reactors, to prevent extradimensional breaches. Last I heard, they’re working on a way to selectively release the entity, to make transparent materials. Apparently transparent steel goes for a price you wouldn’t believe. Really, all just another day in the Hoffman Institute.
Macbeth
First Post
Election
by Sage, a.k.a. MacBeth, for Round one, Match one
Jamis watched the audition for the next President of the United States of America from the front row of an abandoned theatre. A bloated homeless woman, probably carrying a menagerie of diseases, stretched in front of the Powers That Be, the people that she was auditioning for. The Powers sat behind her, as they always did, watching not the candidate, but the reaction the crowd gave the candidate.
Jamis thought this woman was one of the worst he had seen yet. Even with the reworking, the coat of polish, that the Powers gave the winner, it seemed unlikely that she could be anything but a Cabinet member.
Half of the people auditioning were crazy. Jamis probably was too, the only difference was he knew he was crazy. The others were still in denial. Jamis always thought of his insanity like an addiction: the first step is admitting you have a problem. Jamis had never heard the second step.
The audition happened every four years: word went around the street people, the beggars, the crazies, that some people would be auditioning for a new President of the United States. Nobody sane, or at least half sane, would come. But the street people would come, try to be presidential, then spend the next four years swearing that they knew the President before he was famous. That the most powerful man in the free world, the King of the democracy, they would claim that he hadn't actually gone to Yale or that he hadn't been a governor. The governor had been another man, the records were all false. The man in the oval office, they would say, had picked cans out of the 7-11 dumpster with them.
These homeless people, they would claim they had stepped in the president's vomit that one night he had tried to drink mouthwash.
Jamis just sat there. He hadn't auditioned yet, so he watched as the Powers sat silently, occasionally laughing at some of the worse auditions. Behind them a small golden cone poured smoke onto the stage.
The rumors among the shifting crowd that had formed to try out for the role of the most powerful man in the free world said that the gold cone was how the winner was chose. Not by a popular vote, not by a vote of the Powers, not by the edict of one ruler, but by the shapes the smoke made as it poured out of the cone.
This, Jamis decided, was Democracy at it's best: the popular opinion of the people, judged by an elite few, and then disregarded by some unknown mechanism that poured smoke into a deserted theatre.
********************
Most of the people, the homeless, the future Presidents of the United States, they were there because they were crazy. Jamis was there because he was part of the MUMU, which was a lot like being crazy.
The MUMU was the Mankind Unity Multinational Union. They were the greatest political scientists to ever eat leftovers out of a Denny’s dumpster, and they were hoping that their man, Jamis, would be the next President.
The name for the group had been the subject of much debate. Kevin had suggested something that involved the word League, while Henry wanted to work Revolutionary into the name. David would work with any words, as long as they had alliteration. Jules wanted to include the word Club.
Needless to say, Club is not a serious enough word for an organization like MUMU, so Jules was shot for insubordination, then declared a martyr for the cause of the MUMU.
*********************
The auditions had been going for hours now, and it was Jamis’ turn.
“Next we’ll have… Jamis Stevens” came the voice from one of the Powers That Be.
Jamis stepped up onto the stage, watching for the water damaged corner that had almost killed another potential President. Taking a seat at center stage, with the powers behind him, he began his speech. The MUMU had been working on it non-stop for weeks, and now all the back-alley schemes would pay off, if Jamis could appear sane (or insane) enough to be the next President.
“My fellow homeless people:” Jamis began, in his most presidential voice. “We are gathered here today for free shelter, for a chance to be the biggest pain in the rear in the world, and to live up to the American Dream. What is the American Dream, you ask?” Nobody had asked. “The American Dream, my friends, is to live in a way that is showy, annoying, and impersonal as possible. We want to live places that look like they’ve never
been lived in. We want food untouched by human hands. And this, my fellow hobos, is what I intend to give you: the American Dream.”
For a few moments the crowd was silent, until suddenly cheers of joy broke out from the back of the theatre, and spread forward. Jamis thought his speech had gone over well, the crowd though they had found a full bottle of vodka beneath some seats.
Regardless of the reason for the crowd’s reaction, Jamis heard a voice from over his shoulder. “Good job. Come back tomorrow.”
*******************
Jamis left the theatre and walked to the nearest bus stop, caught a ride as far is he could go, and then kept walking, pass the center of town, past the suburbs, until, somewhere in the middle of the morning, he reached the headquarters of MUMU.
Walking down the sides of the pit that held the (literally) underground headquarters of MUMU, Jamis pondered the events of the day, and planned for the next day. He had seen a number of other possible Presidents called back for the next day, and he wondered what they would be put through. His mind wandered as he trudged through the collapsing walls of the old quarry, down to the headquarters of MUMU.
Jamis was very happy with the headquarters of MUMU. He had always been disappointed that there wasn’t actually a tunnel with trains in it bringing slaves out of the South, or a cave with French resistance fighters in it. In his opinion, if you were going to be an underground organization, you might as well be really underground.
Hoping into the hole beneath the digging machine that still languished in the quarry like a forgotten corpse, Jamis squeezed himself through the hole that lead into the grand gallery of the MUMU.
The grand gallery was about 10 feet on a side. So it goes. Really grand rooms are hard to get underneath a quarry.
The mascot of the MUMU sat in the center of the room. The MUMU equivalent of the proud Donkey of the Democrats or the bold Elephant of the republicans was a lazy white crocodile. He stood for everything that MUMU stood for: sitting around all day, being lazy, being cold blooded, and pretending to be a log to catch food.
Jamis patted the croc on the head. “Good job watching the door, Snaps.” The croc made a half-hearted attempt to eat Jamis’ hand, but it had long ago grown tired of the stagnant taste of homeless people.
“Anybody else home?” Jamis called, his voice echoing around the small chambers of the underground base.
After a few minutes with no answer, Jamis decided to lie down and sleep in the grand hall, next to Snaps. After having lived homeless, he had never been comfortable sleeping in a bed, or in his own room, again.
*************
The next day, back at the theatre, Jamis sat down in the front row. The theatre was maybe a quarter as full as it had been the last day, with only the grubbiest, the most insane, the most charismatic of the hobos left. From the looks of it, many of the applicants had slept on the grime-encrusted floor of the theatre over night.
The gold cone was still smoking at center stage. Jamis thought that, just maybe, he could make out the shape of words in the smoke. Seeing things that most likely weren’t there made Jamis feel comfortably insane.
After a few minutes of talk among the congregation of the homeless that sat around the theatre, the Powers That Be stepped back on stage. They stood there, eyed the crowd, and then one of them turned to the gold cone. Another one of the powers spoke:
“This, my dear citizens, is how we will decide. When I finish speaking, my friend will drop a small ball into that cone. After that, the smoke will tell us it’s recommendation for the Next President of the United Sates of America.”
As soon as the last words had left his mouth, the other Power dropped the ball in, and the cone began to smoke more heavily. Jamis was sure he could see words in the clouds now, but nothing he could actually read. The smoke swirled for a minute, as if mulling over it’s choice, and then a word appeared: “Jamis.”
The Powers That Be immediately left the stage, grabbed Jamis, and walked away. The rest of the crowd followed, hoping that they might get another chance, or maybe a shot at Vice President, or at least an Intern position.
As the theatre emptied, nobody noticed the next word to form in the smoke still pouring from the censer: “is.”
And, a few seconds later, another word “not.”
Then “fit.”
And “to.”
Followed by “be.”
Then “President.”
“of”
“the”
“United”
“Sates”
Then a few minute’s pause.
Then:
“Seriously,”
“this”
“is”
“a”
“really”
“bad”
“decision.”
Then a another pause, and, perhaps, some comprehension in the swirling smoke.
“Damnit”
“They”
“Never”
“Listen”
Then, nothing, for another four years.
by Sage, a.k.a. MacBeth, for Round one, Match one
Jamis watched the audition for the next President of the United States of America from the front row of an abandoned theatre. A bloated homeless woman, probably carrying a menagerie of diseases, stretched in front of the Powers That Be, the people that she was auditioning for. The Powers sat behind her, as they always did, watching not the candidate, but the reaction the crowd gave the candidate.
Jamis thought this woman was one of the worst he had seen yet. Even with the reworking, the coat of polish, that the Powers gave the winner, it seemed unlikely that she could be anything but a Cabinet member.
Half of the people auditioning were crazy. Jamis probably was too, the only difference was he knew he was crazy. The others were still in denial. Jamis always thought of his insanity like an addiction: the first step is admitting you have a problem. Jamis had never heard the second step.
The audition happened every four years: word went around the street people, the beggars, the crazies, that some people would be auditioning for a new President of the United States. Nobody sane, or at least half sane, would come. But the street people would come, try to be presidential, then spend the next four years swearing that they knew the President before he was famous. That the most powerful man in the free world, the King of the democracy, they would claim that he hadn't actually gone to Yale or that he hadn't been a governor. The governor had been another man, the records were all false. The man in the oval office, they would say, had picked cans out of the 7-11 dumpster with them.
These homeless people, they would claim they had stepped in the president's vomit that one night he had tried to drink mouthwash.
Jamis just sat there. He hadn't auditioned yet, so he watched as the Powers sat silently, occasionally laughing at some of the worse auditions. Behind them a small golden cone poured smoke onto the stage.
The rumors among the shifting crowd that had formed to try out for the role of the most powerful man in the free world said that the gold cone was how the winner was chose. Not by a popular vote, not by a vote of the Powers, not by the edict of one ruler, but by the shapes the smoke made as it poured out of the cone.
This, Jamis decided, was Democracy at it's best: the popular opinion of the people, judged by an elite few, and then disregarded by some unknown mechanism that poured smoke into a deserted theatre.
********************
Most of the people, the homeless, the future Presidents of the United States, they were there because they were crazy. Jamis was there because he was part of the MUMU, which was a lot like being crazy.
The MUMU was the Mankind Unity Multinational Union. They were the greatest political scientists to ever eat leftovers out of a Denny’s dumpster, and they were hoping that their man, Jamis, would be the next President.
The name for the group had been the subject of much debate. Kevin had suggested something that involved the word League, while Henry wanted to work Revolutionary into the name. David would work with any words, as long as they had alliteration. Jules wanted to include the word Club.
Needless to say, Club is not a serious enough word for an organization like MUMU, so Jules was shot for insubordination, then declared a martyr for the cause of the MUMU.
*********************
The auditions had been going for hours now, and it was Jamis’ turn.
“Next we’ll have… Jamis Stevens” came the voice from one of the Powers That Be.
Jamis stepped up onto the stage, watching for the water damaged corner that had almost killed another potential President. Taking a seat at center stage, with the powers behind him, he began his speech. The MUMU had been working on it non-stop for weeks, and now all the back-alley schemes would pay off, if Jamis could appear sane (or insane) enough to be the next President.
“My fellow homeless people:” Jamis began, in his most presidential voice. “We are gathered here today for free shelter, for a chance to be the biggest pain in the rear in the world, and to live up to the American Dream. What is the American Dream, you ask?” Nobody had asked. “The American Dream, my friends, is to live in a way that is showy, annoying, and impersonal as possible. We want to live places that look like they’ve never
been lived in. We want food untouched by human hands. And this, my fellow hobos, is what I intend to give you: the American Dream.”
For a few moments the crowd was silent, until suddenly cheers of joy broke out from the back of the theatre, and spread forward. Jamis thought his speech had gone over well, the crowd though they had found a full bottle of vodka beneath some seats.
Regardless of the reason for the crowd’s reaction, Jamis heard a voice from over his shoulder. “Good job. Come back tomorrow.”
*******************
Jamis left the theatre and walked to the nearest bus stop, caught a ride as far is he could go, and then kept walking, pass the center of town, past the suburbs, until, somewhere in the middle of the morning, he reached the headquarters of MUMU.
Walking down the sides of the pit that held the (literally) underground headquarters of MUMU, Jamis pondered the events of the day, and planned for the next day. He had seen a number of other possible Presidents called back for the next day, and he wondered what they would be put through. His mind wandered as he trudged through the collapsing walls of the old quarry, down to the headquarters of MUMU.
Jamis was very happy with the headquarters of MUMU. He had always been disappointed that there wasn’t actually a tunnel with trains in it bringing slaves out of the South, or a cave with French resistance fighters in it. In his opinion, if you were going to be an underground organization, you might as well be really underground.
Hoping into the hole beneath the digging machine that still languished in the quarry like a forgotten corpse, Jamis squeezed himself through the hole that lead into the grand gallery of the MUMU.
The grand gallery was about 10 feet on a side. So it goes. Really grand rooms are hard to get underneath a quarry.
The mascot of the MUMU sat in the center of the room. The MUMU equivalent of the proud Donkey of the Democrats or the bold Elephant of the republicans was a lazy white crocodile. He stood for everything that MUMU stood for: sitting around all day, being lazy, being cold blooded, and pretending to be a log to catch food.
Jamis patted the croc on the head. “Good job watching the door, Snaps.” The croc made a half-hearted attempt to eat Jamis’ hand, but it had long ago grown tired of the stagnant taste of homeless people.
“Anybody else home?” Jamis called, his voice echoing around the small chambers of the underground base.
After a few minutes with no answer, Jamis decided to lie down and sleep in the grand hall, next to Snaps. After having lived homeless, he had never been comfortable sleeping in a bed, or in his own room, again.
*************
The next day, back at the theatre, Jamis sat down in the front row. The theatre was maybe a quarter as full as it had been the last day, with only the grubbiest, the most insane, the most charismatic of the hobos left. From the looks of it, many of the applicants had slept on the grime-encrusted floor of the theatre over night.
The gold cone was still smoking at center stage. Jamis thought that, just maybe, he could make out the shape of words in the smoke. Seeing things that most likely weren’t there made Jamis feel comfortably insane.
After a few minutes of talk among the congregation of the homeless that sat around the theatre, the Powers That Be stepped back on stage. They stood there, eyed the crowd, and then one of them turned to the gold cone. Another one of the powers spoke:
“This, my dear citizens, is how we will decide. When I finish speaking, my friend will drop a small ball into that cone. After that, the smoke will tell us it’s recommendation for the Next President of the United Sates of America.”
As soon as the last words had left his mouth, the other Power dropped the ball in, and the cone began to smoke more heavily. Jamis was sure he could see words in the clouds now, but nothing he could actually read. The smoke swirled for a minute, as if mulling over it’s choice, and then a word appeared: “Jamis.”
The Powers That Be immediately left the stage, grabbed Jamis, and walked away. The rest of the crowd followed, hoping that they might get another chance, or maybe a shot at Vice President, or at least an Intern position.
As the theatre emptied, nobody noticed the next word to form in the smoke still pouring from the censer: “is.”
And, a few seconds later, another word “not.”
Then “fit.”
And “to.”
Followed by “be.”
Then “President.”
“of”
“the”
“United”
“Sates”
Then a few minute’s pause.
Then:
“Seriously,”
“this”
“is”
“a”
“really”
“bad”
“decision.”
Then a another pause, and, perhaps, some comprehension in the swirling smoke.
“Damnit”
“They”
“Never”
“Listen”
Then, nothing, for another four years.
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