Month: July 2023

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 37

Rewritten 8/9/2023

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Chapter 37

Death on Osret too. I grabbed a sheaf papers from one of the files Hoarfast had been reading, spoke Raln, and threw the papers. They cut through flesh like butter, nearly amputating Osret’s arm. The folders in his hand dropped, his arm fell limp, and it dangled from the shoulder on rope of flesh.

He screamed.

I grabbed a stapler, spoke Raln again, and prepared to spike Hoarfast’s head to the floor.

In the moment I paused, he took an opening and threw a short hook into my side, hitting the cold bane with unerring precision. That felt like explosions, freezing cold explosions, that reached up to send icicles through my eyes, chills through my brain, and frost through my veins. I crumpled, rolled over and gasped.

He tried to get up and couldn’t. He barely flailed over sideways to put his back toward me, and wiggled and squirmed the other way. His arms and legs spasmed.

I stood, fell, hit a chair, and pulled off the cushion. Priam had fully upholstered chairs, and this one had patterns of thick yarn. I could cut someone in half with something like that. Hoarfast got up again and fell sideways against a wall.

Osret grabbed him. The Celestial assassin tried to get his wits back, to clear his head enough to fight, but Osret hadn’t been rattled like he had. Osret shoved Hoarfast toward the dumbwaiter hatch.

“You do not fight crazy-guy!”

Hoarfast looked like he wanted to argue, but he wasn’t steady enough on his feet. Instead he grabbed the folders and let the Hemlin push him through the forgotten door.

I tried to get up, fell, and my legs didn’t work. That didn’t make any sense. I slapped them, grabbed Priam’s glass desk for balance, but my fingers didn’t close. I stood up, but my upper body didn’t stay over my feet. I slumped to the side, more upright than not, but leaning. When I tried to counterbalance torso and legs, I couldn’t get things going in the same direction, and my body made a wobbly S.

Osret looked back at me and dove through the dumbwaiter hatch.

I fell over.

It had only been one punch! And it wasn’t even a head shot. He’d gotten one body shot on me, and I felt like this.

The door slammed open. Someone put their shoulder behind it as they shoved, but with no one on the other side, the door banged against the doorstop.

In the doorway stood a suited man with salt-and-pepper hair and skin of cracked porcelain. He was a little taller than me, a little thinner, with a beard still black under the ears and nose but white around the chin. Long fine cracks ran over his face, hiding under his hair, and branching like the veins in marble. His hands had those same cracks, but they were pitted with tiny pieces missing. He wore a crisp gray suit with a emerald tie, and around the collar and cuffs, his suit had started cracking as well.

I grabbed the desk, heaved myself up, and stood there for a few breaths. I was going to have to fight this old guy. I could take him.

He stepped through the door and called over his shoulder, “Nevermind! It’s nothing.” He shut the door behind him.

I could still take him. I was standing up now. Admittedly, I needed a desk to do it, but I was standing up at least.

“Hroth Urmain.” Judicial Director Priam read my name tag as he moved to his chair. Keeping the desk between us, he sat down. “You do not look Tarsant.”

“I take after my father.”

“Over the summer we had a mentorship program, and I was assigned Hroth Urmain. I get about a third of the summer interns. Hroth was having problems because he didn’t show up to work on time, so I talked about motivation, discipline, and the importance of consistency for thirty minutes every other week, trying to find new and exciting ways to say, ‘Show up to work on time.’ He never did.”

“I grew a lot over the winter.”

“Let’s see. There’s blood by the door, but you’re not bleeding. Someone in here yelled Raln, so that must have been you.” He leaned sideways in his chair, looking around the desk. “I see my reading table has been destroyed, and there’s a hole in the wall. Splinters and rubble inside, but the boards are bent outward. People have gone through in both directions. There are no folders over there, but–” He looked down.

Just aside the doorway was a pile of papers, mildly blood splattered. I’d thrown them at Osret and nearly cut off his arm. Now they remained.

Priam picked them up, glanced at the title page, and looked up at me.

“So you must be Kog,” he said, and turned around the folder to show me my file.

It was the treason addendum.

Did I want to initiate on him and take the file right now?

Priam put the folder on the desk and put his hands on the arm rests of his office chair. A .43 Testament lay in his lap now, and that was a serious gun. He didn’t move toward it. He didn’t move toward the folder. He watched me.

Reading the room had been a cop thing to do. Guessing my identity had been a cop thing. Putting the file between us, showing me a gun, but sitting back and waiting was not a cop thing to do. I didn’t know what to make of this.

“I want that folder,” I said.

“I will let you have it. I’ll even give you a glass of rockblood. It soothes injuries.”

“If?” I asked.

“If you sit down and listen to me for a little bit.”

“Why would I do that?” I asked.

“Because, Mr. Kog, of the many unwise things I think you’ve done and the many poor decisions I think you make, I don’t think breeding dragons is one of them.”

I stammered. “I didn’t know breeding dragons was an option.”

“It isn’t. It’s treason.”

“I didn’t know that was a treason you could commit.”

“You are scheduled for an administrative hearing for it,” said Priam. He leaned back in the chair. The gun lay in his lap. It was a black steel thing that looked like a sledgehammer on a pistol grip. “I am scheduling the hearing. I was out trying to arrange one this morning.”

“And?”

“We didn’t have a quorum. The chairman had a dentist’s appointment.”

“So… the meeting was delayed?”

“Maybe. Next time I might have a dentist’s appointment.”

And there it was.

I hate thinking in slow motion.

I could just take the folder and run, and I’d no sooner considered it than Priam said, “No one went out this door. There’s blood on the floor, so the fight was no mere distraction. None of the windows are broken. That means whomever you fought probably escaped through that little hatch. Now you can go chasing them in the dark with your injury.” He pointed at my side. “But Mr. Kog, does that sound like a good idea to you?”

“And you’ve already read the folder anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t see what you can do for me. If you’ve read the file, other people have. There’s a whole committee that went over it. And–”

Priam interjected, “Because, Mr. Kog, they didn’t read your file. We didn’t have quorum. No one reads unnecessarily around here. And this is your file. This specific one. If you were to take this to the roof and burn it with all the other strands of destiny that never happened, it would be gone. Your main file can be sealed.”

“But who compiled the file?”

“I did. Now, Mr. Kog, why don’t you take a seat and let me pour you a drink.”

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C&C

Way back, I was on a mailing list devoted to fanfiction. On Saturdays a bunch of the writers would get together and share fics. Everyone would put in about a thousand words of whatever they’re working on, and after reading everything (took about an hour), people would discuss and provide C&C.

The C&C was often surprisingly straight forward. “Please describe this room better.” “These characters have good chemistry.” I don’t think I was ever surprised. It was nice to get a little feedback as a writer, and as a reader, it was nice to see something develop. Made you feel part of the group, and it was reassuring to see someone else fall into the same traps you fell into and would fall into again.

I want to set something like that up on Discord.

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Sigh

I got too clever and wrote myself into a corner.

It’s like putting my keys in a special place so I know I won’t forget them.

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Names

I think I’m going to change Koru’s name to Toru, just to avoid confusion with Kog.

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Robotic Arms

So I bought this arm from Hiwonder called the xArm. The arm itself is pretty good. Hardware is fine.

Robotic arms come in three general price points. The lowest is ~$40 and below, and they’re cool but garbage. Most of them have some interface and at least two joints + the gripper, but the servos are worthless and the metal is flimsy. Next up there’s a ~$100 to $200 batch of tolerable arms. The xArm is in this group; I think I paid about $200 for it. In this regime, most aspects are fine. There will generally be a few good points and a few drawbacks, but most things will be fine. Then there’s a deep trough of nothing until the $700+ arms. From there things go as expensive as you want.

The Hiwonder xArm is pretty typical for the middle group. The metal is well stamped, the pieces fit without filing or sanding, and the wires plug-in well. Some of the connectors are a little shoddy, and a few minor pieces fell apart. Still, it’s pretty good. I’m going over it with Loctite, and my machine shop made a new stand. That’s probably not something most people have access to, but this is a work piece. Physically, it’s fine or good.

The downside is the software. Everything is locked behind this odd digital mask. I can’t send PWMs to the servos or get position info out without doing this weird, proprietary dance in encoded hex. Hiwonder really wants me to use their software, but their software isn’t that good. I can’t get kHz+ position information at all, they don’t have good scripting or export tools, I can’t use other software or hardware for control, and the entire process is kludgy. They don’t have any useful tools.

If I have to use your protocol, why don’t you make an opensource translator? If you want me to use your software, why can’t I export position data as quickly as it gets written? Why are you limiting things?

One of the senior engineers keep telling me to ditch this thing, but short of jumping up to the >$700 regime, there isn’t much.

What’s weird is that the arm would be much better if it wasn’t hobbled. Hiwonder, you have a good arm. Stop making it worse.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 36

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Chapter 36

Amber Melis was the only tower with a star on top of it.

When I had worked here, the argument over moving the stars of the Mask from the mountain tops around to the spires of the seven towers had more or less ended. I remember first hearing about the issue and obviously supporting moving the stars to the towers. It seemed a brilliant idea, full of verve and light. This was before I’d spent a few months in a moldly, dark cubicle farm that smelled of feet. I then understood the issue, and the issue was that whatever Fate did, it did poorly, ineffectually, and in the dumbest possible way.

I’d none the less been drawn to the star of Amber Melis by the compulsion of a bonfire of unused destinies atop a seven-sided tower on the firmaments of the sky. It was bonkers neat. I’d spent a lot of time wandering around the maintenance corridors, back rooms, and unused stairways, and since I hadn’t gotten in anyone’s way, no one had objected. I headed there now.

The tower itself had a lovely foyer. Made of sandstone with quartz veins, the foyer had vaulted ceilings and internal windows from the atrium to second, third, and fourth floor offices. Those quartz veins ran throughout the building, carrying light from the star above to every room. The floor glittered underfoot. Speckles of sand caught in the quartz caught light from all sides, and they twinkled as one walked over.

Head down, eyes on the floor, posture slouched, I walked, glanced around, and made for the stairway. I wanted to stop and look around, but some helpful docent might try to give me directions. My badge name, Hroth Urmain, was probably the best fit of the stack, but I didn’t look like a nord. It was better than Sslass Sssa. Then someone might ask where my other arms were.

In the stairwell a couple of young women passed me doing laps for exercise, so I gave them an office smile and kept going. They looked annoyed they had to go around, and I made sure to walk extra slowly so they put some distance between us. By the time I came to the top floor, I hadn’t seen anyone in minutes and the echoes of clicky-heels had faded.

The top floor door required a hand-pass. The doorknob was true amber polished to shine, and the silhouette of a hand was carved into the stone. Someone authorized to be here was supposed to open it by holding it just right, and the spells on the knob would recognize the hand. I was no so authorized.

Up a floor a door was locked and barred with mundane bolts and locks. Someone had painted ‘Roof Access’ on the door with a stencil. I glanced around again, still saw no one, and went to work on the bolts and locks. They were doable.

The door lead to a pathway beneath an inferno.

Overhead the star burned. A mesh ceiling separated me from the flames, but fires roared. Hearing was impossible. Light-pipes for the entire building made up the floor, each one feeding a vein of quartz that would illuminate the halls. Huge rolls of fate’s threads as big as shipping hawsers stood in piles. Their upper ends fed the flames, and as the tips burned, they stretched. The coils slowly unwrapped, feeding themselves into the blaze above.

The wind was a hurricane. Channels ran through the floor, channels bigger than the Hemlin cousins’s house, that brought air from outside the tower to the roots of the fire atop it. The wind pulled my clothing and hair, made my cuffs and collar rise, and my shirt flap. I had to tuck everything in tightly to avoid inflating like a blimp. Everything up here tried to go higher, from the slithering cables that moved like snakes feeding themselves to the burning star to the rushing air. Some sparks ran in loops after being shot wide out the top, caught in the air intakes, and lifted into the blaze again.

I shut the stairway door behind me but did not lock it.

I hopped off the catwalk to the ground and climbed onto a cable pile. If I got stuck in this thing, I could get carried with it as heat pulled it into the blaze, so I was flat out paranoid. Yet for all the risk of imminent death, and the roar of starfire overhead and the beating heat reminded me that death didn’t so much lurk nearby as scream its presence, this part of the entrance excited me. I climbed through the ropes until I found a long, cast-iron pipe that lead down through the roof below. The lips of the pipe had been worn smooth by millenia of cables, and the opening was wide enough that the cable never got kinked. I climbed down like a ladder.

And then I was through, into the hidden world of Amber Melis’s secret pathways and out of the normal world of Fate’s routine operations.

A vertical shaft rose from darkness below to a number of openings above. Through each of them ran one of Fate’s cables, a thousand unmade choices and events that never happened, wrapped together into a thick cord as big around as a tree trunk. Climbing those cords gave me hints of visions, illusions of movement in the corners of my eyes, and scraps of music underneath the hum in my ears. I almost heard words never said. I almost saw things that didn’t exist. People who work in the Loom itself learn to read the threads by fingertip-pressure, but those are well constructed fates feeding Destiny. Those things happened. These threads didn’t, and I didn’t have the practice to read them anyway.

I’d always wondered what would have happened if I had. Could I figure out who wouldn’t win the Great Games next year and bet against them? I don’t think that was possible because these threads had already not happened. But could I figure out who hadn’t won their games by cheating and bet against them? I could drop an anonymous tip to the Triumph Commission. I think that would work.

But I could listen for clockwork spiders, so I did. They crawled around down here. Not often, but a few times I’d met them. The spiders weren’t that scary if they didn’t surprise you. They’re weird, mechanical beasts of gears and springs, their footsteps click, and they seem to pay no attention to up or down. Most of them are about the size of large mice. The Loom spiders are the size of houses, and they’re the ones that scare people. The ones around here aren’t that bad.

They’re not bad if you know they’re there. If I got startled by a moderately big one, maybe the size of a house cat, I’d probably just die on the spot. I’d do it deliberately, maybe via exploding, just to be sure.

But I saw none, neither big nor small. I bowed my head and said, “Pattern Spiders, I, Kog, come among the back passages of Amber Melis. Please do not startle me. I will do no harm and intend only to pass by. Thank you.”

They didn’t reply, but they didn’t pop out of hidden spaces either. They’ll generally leave you alone if you leave them alone.

I climbed off the cable onto a steel girder that ringed the shaft. It had a little door on one side that lead to a long, narrow hallway with speckled stardust in the ceiling. I tapped a few times to let anything inside know I was coming before hurrying through.

With all the unused fate moving through Amber Mellis, things had a tendency to get lost. Things like rooms and stairs and doors. No one goes through them, and the fate of a door to let someone through might get burned up in the star above. Yet the original purpose of Destiny had been to tie all things together, and Fate handled Destiny. Little fate was the stuff of Destiny. (Little destiny is the way everything in your life is going to get tied together eventually, but there’s no guarantee, assurance, or intent to make it comprehensible to you. Even if you did get an explanation, it would be written by an intern, so it would be badly mispelled, incomplete, and possibly illegible with coffee stains.) So at Fate things got lost in the way no one knew where they were, but they didn’t get lost in that they went away. They were still right there.

I moseyed down a forgotten hallway with old carpets, slightly yellowed white walls, and drop ceilings full of missing tiles where cables of unused destiny wound slowly across the floor. Piles of clutter lay here and there, eventually getting caught in the cables to be taken up to the star and incinerated. I checked old stationery and business cards. Judicial Director Priam’s office had to be around here somewhere, and eveyone loses a sheet of paper with their name on it eventually.

Priam had.

His office was on the second-highest floor in the middle of a side. He didn’t have a corner office, but he did have a great window. His forgotten door was a dumbwaiter from the often lamented before-time when Fate served drinks in-office. A weathered slip of paper that looked like a laundry tag was stuck in the dumbwaiter hatch.

I checked the door. It looked clean. I put my ear to it and heard voices.

Hoarfast was speaking softly to someone on just the other side. He said, “Just stand in the doorway and watch. If anyone comes in, just act dumb. I’m almost done.”

“But what if-” said a voice I couldn’t place.

“No what-ifs. Just wait outside with those papers like you’re ready to deliver something. Go.”

“But what if-”

“Go! Go now,” he said, quietly and authoritatively.

The other voice whispered something but retreated. Another door opened and closed.

I craned my head around the dumbwaiter hatch, looking through the little cracks.

A desk have been moved directly in front of this area, and a figure was leaned over it, reading something. The figure was a big man who cast a long shadow. He was close enough that if I reached through the doorway, I could touch him.

I did. I braced one hand on the doorframe, set my hips, and threw a huge, wide swing like I was showing off on a heavybag. My fist shattered forgotten wood, knocked papers sideways, and caught Hoarfast dead in the sternum with my whole weight in the swing.

I shattered the little door the rest of the way as I dove through, caught Hoarfast as he crumpled, and pinned his head against the floor with my left hand as I dropped overhead punches with my right. Each hit rattled his brain in his skull.

Osret of Hemlin shoved the door open, a folder in his arms, and demanded, “What are you doing–” before he and I saw each other.

Osret whispered, “Death on you.”

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Spam

Hi [OneTrueStudent]

I’m sure you’re busy and wanted to make sure this didn’t get buried.

[suspicious link]

Looking forward to connecting soon.

Thanks,

[name I’ve never heard of]
P.S. This is a real email from a real person.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Golly, that must be a real email from a real person. It says so right in the signature!

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 35

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Chapter 35

I wasn’t really upset. I was a little hungry, but after thinking about it for a bit, I was fine. I’d had two breakfasts, but yesterday had been rough and I’d skipped meals. I felt fine.

Calmly I paged through the next few parts of my file. Since Intercepting Fist’s use of Terminal Sanction had been deemed unwarranted, Fate had covered everything up. They told everyone my father killed my mother, tried to kill me, and had ultimately killed himself. Nivale had taken me in but put me up for adoption. She’d been seventeen.

I didn’t really remember her. Maybe. Kinda? When I strained, I got a few images, but those might be imagined.

Intercepting Fist’s appeal went nowhere. It didn’t get rejected; it didn’t happen. The paperwork had been put in, but no hearing occurred, no appellate court convened, no judgment was passed down. The statute of limitations had passed.

I flipped to the index. No further mention of Hyrthon or Aethionema appeared. Of course. That was fine.

Life in foster care had been utterly miserable. It had prepared me for crime. I broke into my first house at age seven, was hustling on streets before ten, and bounced in and out of homes that had no place for me. No one loved me, no one missed me, no one cared until age twelve, at which point I’d been placed with my last parents, Hau and Mariam.

They had time. They paid attention. We got into fights about things like table manners, and Hau made me help him in the garden because he liked having me around. I wished things had been different.

But they weren’t, and twelve is old to get real parents. Their home was been small, and they had other kids, fosters and biologics. A few years later I’d left to go to Northshore, but I was always welcome. Mariam was even a little annoyed I didn’t visit more. She fussed. Hau wished I did, but he understood. Not me, not foster kids, not how I felt about him, just that kids grow up, they don’t visit their parents enough, and they go see things.

Hau and Mariam were the only truly good people I’d ever known, and that thought made me tear up.

I’d always tried not to think about any of this stuff much, and I’m usually pretty good at it.

I sat in my old office that smelled of mildew and damp carpet, and stared at a wall. Nothing moved through my head. I heard old creaks in the walls. I think the building had mice. I picked up an ink-stick and twilled it in my fingers. This was a good one. It had some heft to it.

Oh right. I was here about the treason.

I went through my file again. A great deal of it covered the legal precipitate of my parents’ murder, Fate’s cover-up, and so forth. Most of the rest had been excised from about the time I met Seraphine, and that made sense.

I realized I hadn’t thought of Seraphine in quite some time, which was a bit odd considering I’d been madly in love with her. I still was.

I’d been busy, and I was good at not thinking of stuff.

How did I feel about all that?

Still fine.

Seraphine?

Fine.

I had to do something about the treason.

They did kill people over that.

Out of curiosity, I flipped to one of the addenda and skimmed through my future. I had a fate. The office would make sure I was destined for something. It should be in my file, at least a summary. I hoped I warranted a disclosure.

“Kog has not warranted specific fate within Destiny. However, he seems like an idiot, so this omission need not be corrected.”

“Really?” I yelled at my file. I flipped to the author’s notes. “Oum of Typhon, you couldn’t have written that a little more professionally? ‘Kog’s fate isn’t written by Fate because he’s a mortal’ would have been fine! You had to throw I’m an idiot in there too?” I flipped back to the narrative and started muttering about who would rue the day.

Seeking to distract myself, I went to my biographical addenda and looked myself up. Best case, how much time did I have? Realistically, probably less than a week and most of that filled with torment, but from an organ perspective, how many years did I have until….I was scheduled to die when I turned thirty six.

What?

This sheet was double-sided with ink on both sides. Some small hand had written my fate in spidery script, a mere few years left if everything went well. I was scheduled for organ failure at age thirty six. It was my kidneys. They’d go first, my blood would turn toxic, and my end would take less than a week. I’d be unconscious for most of it. A honey-dew addendum had been added and excised from my file.

Individual people don’t have a ‘thread’ in the Loom of Fate; it’s more like a cord. I’ve never seen the Loom itself, but people who work in Fate have. Stories get told. A person’s cord is a whole bunch of threads bound together, and they’re highly, perhaps, infinitely, subdividable, worked by the great Pattern Spiders. Originally made of clockwork, the Spiders have long since become something else, though no one knows quite what. These files are a first approximation of the cords.

The honey-dew addendum had been attached and removed from my internal threads, the fiber of each organ. Those fibers had burned out. Divine fibers got replaced. Mortals don’t.

I wanted to swear again, but this time the irony stopped me.

The ink-stick twirled in my hand.

Very calmly, I was very calm about everything right now, I added a zero to my life expectancy. There was a little space left. I could fit another zero in there. I did.

I initialed the modification in my finest handwriting and pressed a ‘SEALED’ sticker over it, holding the sticker firmly to the paper with my sweaty hands for several minutes. The numbers were clearly visible. The authorizing signature was not. Would it work?

Worth a shot.

Back at the File Request room, I clipped my file to the string and sent it out to be lost among the paperwork. It might get filed again. Probably by an intern. I had better than even odds on getting that document back in the system.

But nothing mattered, because the treason addendum of my file was with Judicial Director Priam. That was the interesting bit. That’s the bit I wanted. And I couldn’t go walking up there, because they had guards by the official people.

I leaned against a wall, thinking. The wall was sticky. Moisture had gotten into the paint, and it was vaguely adhesive. I leaned away from the wall, had to pull my skin free, and wiped my arm down. Little bits of gray and white paint stuck to my arm hair. This place was disgusting. No one cleaned it.

The silence got very loud, my thoughts turned slow, and I made words in my head without the casual ease of normal thought but deliberately. It felt like breathing when you’re thinking about breathing.

No one had been down here since the end of summer, when the interns left.

And not ‘no one but really the cleaning staff and security.’ No, no one had been down here since the interns left. And when we’d left, we dropped our IDs in a drop box. The drop box was down here in the basement.

I walked thirty yards, found the drop-box, and went to work on the cheap lock with ingenuity, a paperclip, and a misspent youth. It took me ten minutes to get access to two dozen IDs, more than half of which weren’t expired. Security often puts expiration dates years into the future so they don’t have to keep reissuing them. I took Hroth Urmain’s badge from the stack, clipped it to my shirt, and put the unexpired ones in a brown lunch bag I found under a desk. Judicial Director Priam worked in Amber Melis Tower.

This was actually a dumber plan than I thought it was, and I knew that while I did it.

I didn’t care. I wanted to die.

But I felt fine.

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