“You tiny bastard,” she began, and not, it must be pointed out, in the careful whisper Overpastry surely hoped for.

“You tiny, tiny bastard, how dare you – with your mono-mind and pathetic inability to accurately recollect the events of a single day let alone years’ worth of living – how dare you talk to me like a child at a summertime birthday party reaching for one burger too many against its concerned parents’ wishes!”

In spite of their fear (for the bear still menaced nearby, the barrel of his anti-proton gun crackling like a thunderstorm in a bottle) people leaned forward to hear more of Tri-Thought’s unrelenting beratings. What did she mean, they all wondered, by “tiny bastard”? Was she referring to his cock, or perhaps his bank account. The source of their wonder was Overpastry’s quite obvious height advantage over the enraged woman: he towered at least a 0.4 meters above her – and a bit more when she wasn’t wearing her mood enhancing platform shoes.

This difference created a disconnect between the specific form of her insult and the visually available facts.

What no one except a trained and alert cognitive augmentation specialist (or alternatively, someone who, momentarily forgetting the weapon held by an angry, genetically enhanced bear pointed in his or her general direction, carefully listened to what the woman said and put two and two together) could not have known was the fact that what was “tiny” about Overpastry – at least from Tri-Thought’s point of view, wasn’t his penis or his net worth or his life experience or his collection of Kombucha themed love stories (such as the beloved “De-toxed and In Love”) but his aggregate thought capability relative to that of the retired exotic performer.

Tri-Thought, during her years as a wildly sought after dancer – had made a tidy sum of money much of which she devoted to cognitive augmentation surgery. In short, she had three brains: the quite fine one she was born with, and two from South Korean elecronics giant LG; part of their “Indestructable You” coopertative, implantable processor series.

She remembered everything…perfectly. Every event, every feeling was stored, indexed, catalogued and completely accessible in 3 dimensional color images, displayed in the mind’s eye of the implantee.

Needless to say, this made Tri-Thought a formidable opponent in any argument (and most any situation).

She pointed a finger, with its perfect nail, painted a flawless mauve, at Overpastry’s chest and started in again.

“I will handle this situation you weeping, soiled pants half wit! No freakish, escaped mercenary bear – no doubt a Blackwater gene puppet who recently shook free of the juice – is going to ruin my morning ritual of refreshing citrus fruit, oat muffin and heart rate lowering tea!”

No one was more surprised than Mr. Abernathy Overpastry of 1370 Composite Street, Cleveland, Ohio, when an immense Brown bear – outfitted with a brightly colored safety vest and armed with an old timey ray gun (the sort of first gen anti proton device your grandfather might have used to hunt skull faced dogs and those annoying, robotized Norwegian rats that host late night talk shows) – rudely made its way into the Starbucks near his posh office, demanding, in a deep, bear voice, to be served “only the hottest of coffees, kissed by the sweetest of sugars and served in the most expensive of coffee mugs or protons will be loosed from their atomic prisons and howling, your howling, will ensue!”

Mr. Overpastry turned to his companion, a former stripper, once quite famous, whose performance name was Ubiquitous Glitter but who now, instead of returning to the name bestowed upon her by her parents – Denial Highchair – insisted upon being called Tri-Thought, and whispered: “you have a tendency – a weakness, I would call it – to say the wrong thing at the wrong time which, in a delicate situation such as this, will almost surely mean our swift, subatomic doom.   How I would miss your smile, your cruel jokes, your long legs, your perfume brewed from the husks of collapsed stars. I could not replace you so I ask that you stay as silent as the grave lest you disappear in a burst of anti smoke. This bear means business, as is the way of his people.”

Tri-Thought, insulted by this little speech, ground the high heel of her libido enhancement shoes into Overpastry’s right foot. A violent gesture which had the curious effect, owing to the shoe’s unique properties, of arousing him even as he cringed quietly in stabby pain.

“You tiny bastard,” she began…

Jehovah.

Don’t talk to me about Jehovah.

Before that pan dimensional piker appeared on the scene, stealing my worshipers, claiming my territory, I lived an exceptionally beautiful life; really, I can’t begin to describe, not in this clumsy mortal language, the eye searingly radiant splendidness of the life which was – gone now because of that monotheistically obsessed bastard.

Mind you, I brought it on myself. “Zeus, why don’t you leave off the shape shifting and raping for a bit?” Hera nagged. But when you’re a god, you do as you please, yes? Listen, don’t try to bullshit me, you would’ve done the same you self-righteous jackass. In days gone by, I might have assumed the form of a kangaroo and buggered your mom, or yawned and lovingly inserted a lightning bolt at light speed up your left nostril, just because it was a lazy Sunday and left nostrils temporarily annoyed me.

That’s just how it was.

Well of course, Yahweh, Jehovah, whateva comes along – with the help of his masochist of a son (and what the hell was that little show? Executed on a cross by the graceless Roman Empire? You know what Herakles would’ve done if they’d tried to shove him up on one of those things? Try to picture hearts and entrails and severed heads…everywhere…bloody well right) – anyway, Mr. “I Love You” comes along and says, “come unto me, all who are weary and burdened and I shall give you rest.”

Of course the monkeys soaked it up, ran to their little meetings and huddled together for warmth. And really, who could blame them? After a long stretch of my bullshit (and you can’t be fooled about yourself: I admit it, I was a shit head much of the time what with the trans-species sexcapades, the cosmic chess games with mortals as pawns, hurling lightning up asses, killing Cronus and Rhea to pump up the Olympians…and so much more – long rap sheet children), they were done, over and out with the old ways.

And the thing is, for the longest time Yahweh was right up there with the rest of us – thundering from the sky, sending heralds to mete out punishment, making bizarrely arbitrary decisions just because. He was a small time war and harvest god for a minor tribe of goatherds who smelled so bad the fucking goats couldn’t take it; we all knew him of course, he’d show up to meetings, drink ambrosia and get fucked up like the rest of us. But he had plans. Hera and Aphrodite saw it, Athena and Ares too. “Watch that one”, they said. Even Shiva, who scared the shit out of everyone (and let me tell you, he’s a true bad ass, you don’t play with Shiva..total nutter) whispered, in that rough way of his, about “keeping an eye out.”

But none of us saw his master stroke, the move that slid in under the god-radar: the slimy operator sent his son to become one of them, to eat and sleep with them, even die right in front of them, at their grubby hands (and it was a messy death too, not quietly in bed surrounded by grandchildren and a weeping widow). Not only that, but he sold the whole thing, which really was a carnival side show for immortals, as a sacrifice for mortal benefit. Brilliant. Not one of the old gods could match that move’s deftness. One of the greatest marketing maneuvers ever. But there was more: not only was it a sacrifice but a sacrifice to restore a lost harmony between humanity and Yahweh!

A lost order that had no room for the rest of us.

Oh, it took a few centuries but soon enough we were pushed to the margins like a bunch of punks. Look out everybody, the new kid’s in charge! Only he wasn’t all that new and it was all a slick act.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the fucker gloats, holds his perceptual conquest of practically one half of the world over our heads (still doesn’t mess with Shiva though…he’s not crazy and the Indian team possesses some serious worshiper mojo even today).

But all that’s going to change…and soon.

MEMO

TO: The Atlas Family

FROM: Tom Atlas, your adventurous and beloved CEO

Subject: My God, it’s full of stars!

Earlier this morning, I asked my assistant to bring me a hard copy of an elaborate spreadsheet, detailing profit projections for 2007.

Instead, for some inexplicable reason, she brought me a copy of a print-out detailing the known characteristics of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1 or TMA-1 for short.

I’ve tried to stop staring at it, but its mystery pulls me in, like matter towards a singularity.

My assistant, the mysterious Miss Q, has tried to remove the paper from my hand, insisting it was all a joke and that the image is a mock up from a decades old science fiction film.

I cannot believe it. I will not believe it.

You will yield your secrets to me, TMA-1.

Yes.

Tom

MEMO

TO: The Atlas Family

FROM: Tom Atlas, your adventurous and beloved CEO

Subject: 2007, Your CEO looks boldly ahead into tomorrow, today!

While the rest of the world burns, we here at the Atlas Corp family will move from strength to strength, attaining unprecedented heights of productivity, profitability and other words ending in …tivity and ability.

I know you’re all eager to get the new year started but before we plunge in, I wanted to share some exciting predictions with you, predictions that came to me in the night after drinking several bottles of rum while a Deepak Chopra DVD softly played somewhere off in the distance.

Prediction One.

In a fit of rage, I’ll decide to abandon humanity once and for all and become a man of metal…not a robot mind you, since I’ll retain my free will but I will be robot-ish (or robot-esque) in appearance.

Prediction Two.

My Kung Fu skills will become unstoppable. Despite this, people will still fuck with me…at their peril!

Prediction Three.

My cousin will make progress towards his goal of resurrecting the Roman Empire.

Prediction Four.

Polar bears, driven to desperation by global warming, will begin plotting a planet-scale coup to topple human government everywhere.

With these things to look forward to, let’s get to work making ‘07 an even more intriguing year than ‘06!

Yours metallically (soon),

Tom

Dear Scooter:

There’s a building outside my hotel room window, kitted out with neon accents like a gigantic piece of 1980s kitsch. Maybe it’s the LG building, I don’t know for sure and I’m too lazy – or distracted – to ask someone. So the building’s owner will remain a solvable mystery that will go unsolved.

Of course, I’m not writing about the building but to explain myself, to explain why I haven’t been as productive as you would’ve liked – as productive as you need me to be.

I could blame it on the many times I jerk off during the day – too many really, but the images are there, online, providing a sort of relentless, low-level stimulant that breaks the bounds of true need – but that would be a weak excuse.

And you’re not the sort of guy who listens to excuses with a kind ear – explanations, always but excuses, never. So, I’m not going to offer you any excuses.

Instead of going through a long, drawn out explanation I’ll describe a situation to you – a typical situation that saps my will to be productive, makes me wander down odd streets and stare at empty mall parking lots in the dead of night waiting for something extraordinary.

Here’s how it happens.

I’m sitting in a meeting – it could be any meeting really, they all pretty much look and sound and smell the same. Someone’s talking, maybe it’s me, it doesn’t matter. And while they’re talking I’m thinking about that moment in Hammett’s Maltese Falcon when Sam Spade, growing very suspicious (more so than normal) of Brigid’s motives tells her a little parable about a man named Flitcraft who, Spade says, disappeared one day, “gone, like a fist, when you open your hand”:

“Here’s what happened to him. Going to lunch he passed an office-building that was being put up – just the skeleton. A beam or something fell eight or ten stories down and smacked the sidewalk alongside him. It brushed pretty close to him, but didn’t touch him, though a piece of the sidewalk was chipped off and flew up and hit his cheek. It only took a piece of skin off, but he still had the scar when I saw him. He rubbed it with his finger – well, affectionately – when he told me about it. He was scared stiff of course, he said, but he was more shocked than really frightened. He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.”

Flitcraft had been a good citizen and a good husband and father, not by any outer compulsion, but simply because he was a man most comfortable in step with his surroundings. He had been raised that way. The people he knew were like that. The life he knew was a clean orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things. He, the good citizen-husband-father, could be wiped out between office and restaurant by the accident of a falling beam. He knew then that men died at haphazard like that, and lived only while blind chance spared them.

[...]

And so I’m thinking about what you might call the ‘Flitcraft scenario’ (to elevate it a bit) and my mind starts to wander; I’m thinking more of what Hammett wrote than the meeting with its back and forth and small percentage of usefulness and large percentage of empty yammering.

I’m thinking, during that meeting – any meeting – about a Flitcraft, perhaps in Baghdad, who goes out to get something mundane and winds up sliced in pieces by a bit of uranium tipped metal or a round from an AK or a cluster or thermobaric or God only knows what. The randomness of it begins to dismantle something in my mind, something very carefully constructed leaving a bit of a mess in its wake.

I suppose this is a sort of weakness really; after all, others go on with the business of selling their homes or arguing about what to watch on television or…

Farewell My Strawberries

Mrs. Wigginfield Smythe, or, as the society page called her, The Widow W.S., was the kind of wealthy old woman who’d always been rich but never young.

She sat in an immense leather chair, stern and unforgiving, staring at me from behind a cup of tea . I knew when I was being sized up for weaknesses – this was one of those times.

She wasn’t happy and no doubt there was a good reason for it. Then again, even if there wasn’t I had the feeling she was just the right woman to find one.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Forge” she began, precisely, not a breath wasted “you’re wondering why I summoned you here.”

“Well, I’m a detective so I figured you needed someone – or something – found.”

“Quite. Your sterling reputation fashioned within my mind an image of the sort of man you’d be which is why I had my assistant phone you. I must say however that after being in your presence, I can see my preconceptions were somewhat wide of the mark.”

Nice.  The Widow wanted me to know that while I might be a clever monkey, I was still just a tool – a means to an end, no better than the pool boy or the guy who changes the light bulbs every so often. Best to keep the rabble in line.  Insults – especially of the genteel variety – make me impatient. I was ready for her to get to the point.

“Sure, sure, I get that a lot. And listen, since you haven’t told me anything I can just pick up my toys and go play elsewhere.”

“How droll you are” she said.

“No, there’s no need for you to go. I’m certain you’re the man for the job. And so, let’s get down to it, shall we?”

“Mr. Forge, years ago, my father, Abercrombie Wigginfield, made an astounding discovery while on safari in Africa: a diamond mine that contained an extraordinary type of the precious stone. When held up to light, these diamonds, or strawberries as they’re known, sparkle with a hint of the deepest red. Because my family has held exclusive rights to the only mine in the world producing these jewels and also, because we’ve maintained the strictest controls over distribution, we’ve always had, at our fingertips, a record of the location of each strawberry in circulation around the globe.”

“Impressive.  I’m guessing one of these rocks has gone missing then?”

“Yes.  But not just any ‘rock‘ as you so commonly put it but one of my own – a ring crafted for me on the direction of my late husband and presented as a gift only a few days prior to his unfortunate motor car accident.  It’s priceless Mr. Forge.  I cannot adequately express to you my eagerness to see it safely returned.”

“Have you looked everywhere?”

“What an absurd question!  Of course I’ve looked everywhere as have my most trusted servants.”

“Have you looked under your chair?”

“What the devil are you…”

“The chair you’re sitting in now…there’s a diamond ring big as the LA Times building right behind your left foot.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. That’ll be a thousand dollars.”

The End

Dear Buttons:

It’s true, I’ve been writing – or, I should say, trying to write – an SF story for at least the past 15 years. Maybe 20. The details are imprecise.

I’ll admit this is a long gestation period for something that isn’t City of God but the story has “grown in the telling” (to quote Tolkien, who wrote this somewhere…I’m reasonably certain).

In the beginning, it was an homage to the pre-atomic age, only vaguely science and technology inspired tales of the Buck Rodgers/Flash Gordon film serial era. Lots of square jawed heroes blasting tentacled monsters with ray guns (how do they work? Why bother asking) and easily frightened heroines wearing mini skirts and ‘dance of the seven veils’ sex-o-matic coutre.

Tomorrow’s Rocketeers was the working title because everyone traveled in gleaming rockets and lived in yesterday’s idea of tomorrow. And it was cooking for a while but lost steam when I reached this moment:

Captain Steel reached for his electro rifle; the beast, it’s 15 mouths shaped into some sinister and hideous imitation of the human smile, slithered across the floor towards Susan. She screamed and fainted. There was no time to waste. Steadying himself, Steel aimed and pulled the trigger. A blue flash of pure electrical power arced through the air and danced on the beast’s sickeningly green form. It let out an unearthly cry of anguish and burst into purple flame. As it melted into the ship’s bulkhead, it hissed a final warning: “ussselesss…your heroic actions are useless human. We are beyond your reach…one dies, others absorb his thoughts and knowledge to continue the battle…a battle which you have already losssst.” Steel narrowed his eyes and fired again. There was one final howl of pain and then, the beast was gone. “The others?” Steel whispered to himself as he set the rifle on recharge.

Will Captain Steel uncover the terrible secret of the alien’s deadliest weapon – the omni-mind? Well, maybe, but by the time the omni-mind concept entered the tale I’d lost interest so the answer must remain uncertain. Tomorrow’s Rocketeers died a quiet death on board Space Fleet Patrol Rocket Prometheus, somewhere far beyond Neptune’s cold orbit.

If the early-mid 20th century theme wasn’t working, perhaps the early Cold War period – with its flying saucers, radiation scarred mutants and occasional invasions from the Red Planet would be a more successful source.

Tomorrow’s Rocketeers was unceremoniously trashed; the new novel was named The Lonely Earth.

The Lonely Earth is the story of time traveling mutants who journeyed – “journeyed” being a suitably romantic word for temporal travels – to the past (the 1950’s) from the terrifying, post atomic war year of 2012. Their misshapen mission: to convince foolish humanity to abandon atomic weapons forever. Armed with the strange and horrifying tools of their dreadful time (such as the Plutonium Gun – it can melt through six feet of solid steel!) they’re determined to change the past to give hope to the future:

Dr. Thompson (physicist attached to the Pentagon): But surely you realize Qazarian, that in spite of the risk, we must retain and build our atomic arsenal to defend ourselves and all the freedom loving peoples of the world against communist tyranny. Furthermore, the march of knowledge cannot be stopped – we must uncover all the atom’s secrets!

Qazarian (holding the Plutonium Gun, aimed at Dr. Thompson): You scientists! Always talking about progress but never willing to own up to the costs. Well let me show you the cost Doctor, let me show you! [removes handsome guy mask to reveal the severely disfigured face of a mutant] Do you see the price the future will pay for your work Doctor? Do you see?

Thompson cringes in horror.

[...]

That was fun but once again, I grew tired of working with past notions of futuristic concerns (although the nuclear issue is very far from settled – these days we tend to associate the threat as coming more from suitcases and al Qaeda than ICBMs .

Clearly the past was good for brief visits but quickly lost its charms the longer I lingered.

No, the 1930’s 40’s and 50’s were best left alone.

It was time to move forward to the noir inspired themes of 1980s cyberpunk .

The book assumed its last avatar: Troubled Dreams of the Electromagnetic Spectrum:

She was running down an alleyway. It was long and full of human and animal filth. Rats, castoffs and other things – not quite identifiable – used this narrow stretch of secluded cityscape as their home. A castoff looked up at her from his dura-plast home. He was about to say something but noticed the neuronic whip clenched tightly in her hand and reconsidered. It was better to leave people who knew their way around a neuro-disrupter alone.

She was running because the dogs were after her. Not the spliced hug-pets out of Quangdong, re-engineered to sport black, manga sized eyes and sweetness unto death personalities…no, these were crash hounds. Crash hounds had only one purpose: find the target, get really close and detonate the mini-thermobaric modules nano-worked into their skeletal structure.

As dogs go, they were pretty low on the sweetness scale.

The alleyway led to a maze of alleys. She hoped to lose the dogs or, if she got really lucky, run into someone, or something, so bad ass it detained the dogs, forcing them to fireball.

This wasn’t the best plan – hell, it wasn’t even remotely good but she was out of options and rapidly running out of time.

[...]

But even this, once you remove the ‘five minutes from today’ trappings, is actually a borrowing from the past. Couldn’t Raymond Chandler, had he been born at the right time and been so inclined written a tighter passage?

The answer’s yes.

The entire project is in jeopardy Buttons. I’m experiencing a crisis of confidence, of relevancy, of meaning.

What spirit of the age can I use to animate my efforts?