A bit of fiction
Just a little something I wrote about sand.
You should read it. It will do you good, or, at least, it will do you no harm from which you cannot quickly recover.
now with LJ-cuts! Whee!
This is a story about dead artists.
In the year 2180, Flashback technology was perfected. Through a combination of cloning, mindscans, and almost-but-not-quite breaking the universal laws constraining time travel it became possible to essentially reach into the past and recreate any individual you could positively identify a precise location for, healthy and whole. It was a phenomenal breakthrough and, for the most part, a crashing failure. Most people just didn't survive the transition fully sane. Massive future shock, combined with a body that wasn't quite right, the utter annihilation of their old lives, and people who had long since outstripped their abilities in every field, conspired over time to warp them all crazy. It was a real problem, too, because many of the people who were drawn from the past were intelligent and driven, with strange knowledge in their heads, obsolete but effective, and fallen into obscurity. After the first crude atom bomb took out a small chunk of New Bronx City, a moratorium was called on scientists and engineers. The Glorious Revolution of Castrograd, once it was put down, spelled the end of time-ported great leaders as well.
Some of those snatched up from the past stayed relatively normal, however, and most of those were artists. They were long accustomed to penury and woe, often far more popular in death than they ever had been in life*, and they were still able to ply their art, of seeing what was, and showing it to those who were willing to see as well. Also, many were at least somewhat insane to begin with, and that seemed to help.
*Tupac, in particular, snatched from the moment of death itself, saw his death, rebirth, and lasting cult status as a sign, and took up twin mantles of artist and spiritual leader. To this day his gospel is known for the leavening of wisdom and blessed serenity that its teachings have brought to so many of those who need it most.
but this is not really a story about dead artists.
This is a story about a desert, and a man, and another man.
Only a small part of the sand-blasted world of Haroth was inhabitable. Only a small part of that was inhabited. Only a few of those people were anything but crushingly poor. Those few, however, were astonishingly rich, made so by their absolute control of the one safe starport on the surface, and the one spaceport above, and the small fleet of specially designed cargo vessels that could survive the trip between.
It was the sand, you see. The sands of Haroth were legendary. They sparkled and shone and rippled and clustered and behaved like a living colony of crystallized fire and glowed in the dark and drew away stress just by existing.
Even the poor people on Haroth were happy, in a way.
The effective ruler of Haroth was a man named Tavish, who wore robes and called himself a Shan and pretended to Burmese ancestry in spite of his bright red hair and bright green eyes and freckles. What with the number of heavily armed private guards in his employ, though, everyone else called him a Shan as well. The Shan heard of flashback technology, and thought it would be a glorious thing to have his court graced by one of the ancient greats.
He picked Monet. We don't know why.
Monet, then, being Monet, and being dropped in a place where there wasn't much other than hypertech and sand, decided to focus on the sand. He went down among the sand-collectors and the sand-sifters and the deep-bore sand-miners, and he learned about the sands of Hathor in a way that few of its wealthiest beneficiaries had, and from time to time he came back and made art with it. He learned about the varying kinds of sand, of the orwak sand and the sgun sand and the rolv sand and their textures and feels and how they would dance and he made art with them and he made art about them, and it was beautiful. His most valued piece was the sgun piece - the only one made purely of sgun sand, for sgun sand was rare indeed, even on Haroth, and the shimmering greens and blues that sang with the moods of whoever was closest were a sight to behold when placed and shaped and crafted by such a master.
But this is not really a story about a desert, or either of those two men.
This is a story about an expensive professional
It only took once. Professor Law was a visiting professor of philosophy and psychology, one of the many human baubles tempted to swing by this backwater by the Shan's money. He had intended to pass through for a week, perhaps a month. He would hand out pocket packets of Jung and Diderot, Seneca and Byersly. He would entice beautiful, fragile, shallow, naive women to his study, to his couch, and, perhaps, to his bed. He would leave healed minds with slightly-broken hearts in his wake and he would leave with money in his pockets. It was a good plan. Then he met the Shan. Then he saw the Monet. The artist was gone, but the shining suspense of sgun sand still stood proudly in the hall.
It only took once. and that one shining image burned itself into his mind. The Shan was irritating, pompous, and rejected his own heritage, and Prof Law had been about to regret his plans, but all that fell away into pools of copperflame blue and thrusting shards of shattered ocean. The image burned with inner light. It burned for him, and he for it. The rest of the evening was a daze, spent looking at it as much as he could bear, while those around him laughed at him. When the night was completed, as he was ushered out the door, the Shan commented that if he would only perform a small errand or two, he might be given the opportunity to see that beauty again. By the time he came to know himself once more, he had already agreed, and signed a contract for three years.
When he realized what had happened, he was horrified. He tried to fight the addiction, tried to control himself, but to no avail. Every moment that he was permitted, he basked in its presence, and when he was given a task, he worked with a junkie's desperation to earn another moment more. In the meantime, he burned the midnight lightbulb seeking to understand the power that held him in thrall. He went down among the sand-collectors and the sand-sifters and the deep-bore sand-miners, and he learned about the sands of Hathor in a way that none of its wealthiest beneficiaries ever had, of the draw of the sands and the warping of the spirit, of how it drove some men mad and others sane, and of the fits that would come over certain people when they had taken in too much, or the wrong kinds. He slowly grew to understand his plight, and how it was caused, and what it did, and in understanding, finally mastered it. He worked off the remainder of his time without visiting the Monet at all, though it was always an ache within his heart, and he worked on artwork of his own, of a different sort. The Shan used him, and he made his art, and he burned with desire for what he would not let himself have. Finally, over time, the need faded to a dull ache, exorcised by will and artwork, and he left the Shan's court for the outlying areas, still focused on his creation. Six months later, he was done. He sent the Shan a small package, hand-delivered by a courier service, and sat down to wait.
but this is not really a story about that expensive professional, or any other.
This is a story about a desert princess, and her bodyguard
She was beautiful and strange and alone, and she danced out of the desert in flowing rags that seemed to be woven from the sands themselves, and the dockhands and construction workers fell silent in awe as she passed them. She whirled and blew across the cobbles like a sylph, like a spirit of the air, as if her body was an afterthought provided so that others could watch her passing and marvel at it. A rough man called Ibram caught sight of her from the corner of his eye, and could not look away, though he did not know why. He stood from his table and he left his winnings and he followed her up the hill to the manor, where the most powerful man in all the world was. She touched down on the second landing, on the tiling of the marble rose, and dropped in supplication. He nodded in sad acceptance, and proceeded the rest of the way up the hundred steps to place his hand upon the reader and request an audience. A guard came out to see the desert beauty, and when he had seen her, that guard made crude remarks, and showed ill intent. Ibram broke him, and stripped him of his weapons, and sent his weeping, bleeding body back to ask for a more appropriate escourt. A squad of five of the Shan's High Guard formed up at the door and charged him, and with staff and stunner Ibram disabled them. Twenty formed up to meet him, but at this the Shan became aware, and stepped outside as well. The princess looked up from where she had been prostrate, and smiled, and then she was past and through the double-line of troops as if they were not even there, and she reached out and touched the Shan's face and she kissed him.
The Shan invited her in, and Ibram followed.
Three months later, the Shan asked of the desert princess that she marry him, and she agreed. By that time, reality had settled in to her. She was more human and less strange. She had taken to speech and custom, and though there was still some of the other in her, there was not nearly so much. If Ibram was made sad by this, he never admitted it in words. For a wedding gift, the Shan gave to her the sgun-sand masterpiece that had been crafted by Monet - the last of the pieces that the artist had completed before his release and departure. He said that she embodied it far more than he ever would, and that she ought to have it, and she smiled and kissed him. She had taken to speech, but not always. For her gift, she went with him into the desert one day, alone, without Ibram or the Shan's guards to watch over them. When they returned, neither would speak of it, but the Shan pronounced himself satisfied. It was clear to all that watched that the Shan loved the desert princess, and the princess loved the Shan, and surprisingly many of the blessings and well-wishes that were ritually pronounced over the couple were sincere. They were wed within thirty days, and among their many gifts was a package from the man known as Law.
The first day after the wedding, they did not stir from the bedroom, and food was left discreetly by the door. The second day, they did not stray from the suite, and food was served on the balcony by servants. The third day they actually took their dinner in the informal dining room, and dressed appropriately, and on the fourth day they turned to other affairs and began to work their way through the great pile of things that they had been presented with.
It was the sixth day when the Shan reached and opened the gift from Law, and he knew in an instant that it would be among his favorite possessions. It drew him in and captivated him. Alerted by his sudden silence, his new wife slipped over on feet that were no longer entirely silent and placed her hands upon his shoulders and nibbled his ear and drew him away for a time, but after they were done, he felt drawn to it again, and glanced at it once or twice before returning to his task, and once or twice during as well.
Over the weeks that followed, he became worse. A few glances transformed into a few long looks, until the Shan was gazing at his new most precious thing at every moment that did not see him drawn away by something else. He gazed at it like he had gazed at her, and finally he stated that he would not be separated from his sandswept beauty at all. She would not have minded so much, had he been speaking of her at the time. Finally, in desperation, she turned to Ibram, and begged him to find what was wrong with the Shan, and how she might fix it. Ibram did not much like the Shan, but he loved the princess with all his heart and all his soul and all his spirit, and so at her bidding he searched.
He searched, both paper and data, and as he searched, he found that the topic had been well-researched before him. There were little scraps of dissertation, journal articles and scholarly papers, all written by twice-Doctor Law during his time with the Shan, all focused on the deep psychological effects of the Sand. He read about the obsession, and the addiction, and finally the fits and seizures that, untreated, might lead to death. He read about how an artist who was good enough could unintentionally craft make pieces of great beauty that might trap the unwary, and how an artist who understood enough of the effects of the sand could craft a piece that would target an individual. He read an in-depth psychological analysis of an unnamed individual who sounded an awful lot like the Shan, used as an example of how to craft such a malevolent bit of beauty. At the bottom there was a link, and at the far end of that link, simple words.
*You know what I want. Give it to me, and I'll fix what I've broken.*
That was all. He reported to her his findings, and continued the search, knowing that he had found his answer, but hoping somehow to find another. He encountered more articles, here and there, but nothing that he could use to make his lady's lord better, until finally, having passed through all the prior stages, the Shan collapsed, spasming in the lesser ballroom. Ibram gave up the search, then, and went to meet his lady, head hung low.
but this is not really a story about the desert princess or the bodyguard.
This is a much simpler story than all that.
This is really just a story about what he said to her, when all that took place had taken place.
"Send Law your sgun-sand Monet. The fit has hit the Shan."
This is a story about a joke.
This is a story about a very bad joke.
There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?
I'd love to get feedback in any form. Compliments are good. Constructive criticism is good. Death threats are good. It's all good.
You should read it. It will do you good, or, at least, it will do you no harm from which you cannot quickly recover.
now with LJ-cuts! Whee!
This is a story about dead artists.
In the year 2180, Flashback technology was perfected. Through a combination of cloning, mindscans, and almost-but-not-quite breaking the universal laws constraining time travel it became possible to essentially reach into the past and recreate any individual you could positively identify a precise location for, healthy and whole. It was a phenomenal breakthrough and, for the most part, a crashing failure. Most people just didn't survive the transition fully sane. Massive future shock, combined with a body that wasn't quite right, the utter annihilation of their old lives, and people who had long since outstripped their abilities in every field, conspired over time to warp them all crazy. It was a real problem, too, because many of the people who were drawn from the past were intelligent and driven, with strange knowledge in their heads, obsolete but effective, and fallen into obscurity. After the first crude atom bomb took out a small chunk of New Bronx City, a moratorium was called on scientists and engineers. The Glorious Revolution of Castrograd, once it was put down, spelled the end of time-ported great leaders as well.
Some of those snatched up from the past stayed relatively normal, however, and most of those were artists. They were long accustomed to penury and woe, often far more popular in death than they ever had been in life*, and they were still able to ply their art, of seeing what was, and showing it to those who were willing to see as well. Also, many were at least somewhat insane to begin with, and that seemed to help.
*Tupac, in particular, snatched from the moment of death itself, saw his death, rebirth, and lasting cult status as a sign, and took up twin mantles of artist and spiritual leader. To this day his gospel is known for the leavening of wisdom and blessed serenity that its teachings have brought to so many of those who need it most.
but this is not really a story about dead artists.
This is a story about a desert, and a man, and another man.
Only a small part of the sand-blasted world of Haroth was inhabitable. Only a small part of that was inhabited. Only a few of those people were anything but crushingly poor. Those few, however, were astonishingly rich, made so by their absolute control of the one safe starport on the surface, and the one spaceport above, and the small fleet of specially designed cargo vessels that could survive the trip between.
It was the sand, you see. The sands of Haroth were legendary. They sparkled and shone and rippled and clustered and behaved like a living colony of crystallized fire and glowed in the dark and drew away stress just by existing.
Even the poor people on Haroth were happy, in a way.
The effective ruler of Haroth was a man named Tavish, who wore robes and called himself a Shan and pretended to Burmese ancestry in spite of his bright red hair and bright green eyes and freckles. What with the number of heavily armed private guards in his employ, though, everyone else called him a Shan as well. The Shan heard of flashback technology, and thought it would be a glorious thing to have his court graced by one of the ancient greats.
He picked Monet. We don't know why.
Monet, then, being Monet, and being dropped in a place where there wasn't much other than hypertech and sand, decided to focus on the sand. He went down among the sand-collectors and the sand-sifters and the deep-bore sand-miners, and he learned about the sands of Hathor in a way that few of its wealthiest beneficiaries had, and from time to time he came back and made art with it. He learned about the varying kinds of sand, of the orwak sand and the sgun sand and the rolv sand and their textures and feels and how they would dance and he made art with them and he made art about them, and it was beautiful. His most valued piece was the sgun piece - the only one made purely of sgun sand, for sgun sand was rare indeed, even on Haroth, and the shimmering greens and blues that sang with the moods of whoever was closest were a sight to behold when placed and shaped and crafted by such a master.
But this is not really a story about a desert, or either of those two men.
This is a story about an expensive professional
It only took once. Professor Law was a visiting professor of philosophy and psychology, one of the many human baubles tempted to swing by this backwater by the Shan's money. He had intended to pass through for a week, perhaps a month. He would hand out pocket packets of Jung and Diderot, Seneca and Byersly. He would entice beautiful, fragile, shallow, naive women to his study, to his couch, and, perhaps, to his bed. He would leave healed minds with slightly-broken hearts in his wake and he would leave with money in his pockets. It was a good plan. Then he met the Shan. Then he saw the Monet. The artist was gone, but the shining suspense of sgun sand still stood proudly in the hall.
It only took once. and that one shining image burned itself into his mind. The Shan was irritating, pompous, and rejected his own heritage, and Prof Law had been about to regret his plans, but all that fell away into pools of copperflame blue and thrusting shards of shattered ocean. The image burned with inner light. It burned for him, and he for it. The rest of the evening was a daze, spent looking at it as much as he could bear, while those around him laughed at him. When the night was completed, as he was ushered out the door, the Shan commented that if he would only perform a small errand or two, he might be given the opportunity to see that beauty again. By the time he came to know himself once more, he had already agreed, and signed a contract for three years.
When he realized what had happened, he was horrified. He tried to fight the addiction, tried to control himself, but to no avail. Every moment that he was permitted, he basked in its presence, and when he was given a task, he worked with a junkie's desperation to earn another moment more. In the meantime, he burned the midnight lightbulb seeking to understand the power that held him in thrall. He went down among the sand-collectors and the sand-sifters and the deep-bore sand-miners, and he learned about the sands of Hathor in a way that none of its wealthiest beneficiaries ever had, of the draw of the sands and the warping of the spirit, of how it drove some men mad and others sane, and of the fits that would come over certain people when they had taken in too much, or the wrong kinds. He slowly grew to understand his plight, and how it was caused, and what it did, and in understanding, finally mastered it. He worked off the remainder of his time without visiting the Monet at all, though it was always an ache within his heart, and he worked on artwork of his own, of a different sort. The Shan used him, and he made his art, and he burned with desire for what he would not let himself have. Finally, over time, the need faded to a dull ache, exorcised by will and artwork, and he left the Shan's court for the outlying areas, still focused on his creation. Six months later, he was done. He sent the Shan a small package, hand-delivered by a courier service, and sat down to wait.
but this is not really a story about that expensive professional, or any other.
This is a story about a desert princess, and her bodyguard
She was beautiful and strange and alone, and she danced out of the desert in flowing rags that seemed to be woven from the sands themselves, and the dockhands and construction workers fell silent in awe as she passed them. She whirled and blew across the cobbles like a sylph, like a spirit of the air, as if her body was an afterthought provided so that others could watch her passing and marvel at it. A rough man called Ibram caught sight of her from the corner of his eye, and could not look away, though he did not know why. He stood from his table and he left his winnings and he followed her up the hill to the manor, where the most powerful man in all the world was. She touched down on the second landing, on the tiling of the marble rose, and dropped in supplication. He nodded in sad acceptance, and proceeded the rest of the way up the hundred steps to place his hand upon the reader and request an audience. A guard came out to see the desert beauty, and when he had seen her, that guard made crude remarks, and showed ill intent. Ibram broke him, and stripped him of his weapons, and sent his weeping, bleeding body back to ask for a more appropriate escourt. A squad of five of the Shan's High Guard formed up at the door and charged him, and with staff and stunner Ibram disabled them. Twenty formed up to meet him, but at this the Shan became aware, and stepped outside as well. The princess looked up from where she had been prostrate, and smiled, and then she was past and through the double-line of troops as if they were not even there, and she reached out and touched the Shan's face and she kissed him.
The Shan invited her in, and Ibram followed.
Three months later, the Shan asked of the desert princess that she marry him, and she agreed. By that time, reality had settled in to her. She was more human and less strange. She had taken to speech and custom, and though there was still some of the other in her, there was not nearly so much. If Ibram was made sad by this, he never admitted it in words. For a wedding gift, the Shan gave to her the sgun-sand masterpiece that had been crafted by Monet - the last of the pieces that the artist had completed before his release and departure. He said that she embodied it far more than he ever would, and that she ought to have it, and she smiled and kissed him. She had taken to speech, but not always. For her gift, she went with him into the desert one day, alone, without Ibram or the Shan's guards to watch over them. When they returned, neither would speak of it, but the Shan pronounced himself satisfied. It was clear to all that watched that the Shan loved the desert princess, and the princess loved the Shan, and surprisingly many of the blessings and well-wishes that were ritually pronounced over the couple were sincere. They were wed within thirty days, and among their many gifts was a package from the man known as Law.
The first day after the wedding, they did not stir from the bedroom, and food was left discreetly by the door. The second day, they did not stray from the suite, and food was served on the balcony by servants. The third day they actually took their dinner in the informal dining room, and dressed appropriately, and on the fourth day they turned to other affairs and began to work their way through the great pile of things that they had been presented with.
It was the sixth day when the Shan reached and opened the gift from Law, and he knew in an instant that it would be among his favorite possessions. It drew him in and captivated him. Alerted by his sudden silence, his new wife slipped over on feet that were no longer entirely silent and placed her hands upon his shoulders and nibbled his ear and drew him away for a time, but after they were done, he felt drawn to it again, and glanced at it once or twice before returning to his task, and once or twice during as well.
Over the weeks that followed, he became worse. A few glances transformed into a few long looks, until the Shan was gazing at his new most precious thing at every moment that did not see him drawn away by something else. He gazed at it like he had gazed at her, and finally he stated that he would not be separated from his sandswept beauty at all. She would not have minded so much, had he been speaking of her at the time. Finally, in desperation, she turned to Ibram, and begged him to find what was wrong with the Shan, and how she might fix it. Ibram did not much like the Shan, but he loved the princess with all his heart and all his soul and all his spirit, and so at her bidding he searched.
He searched, both paper and data, and as he searched, he found that the topic had been well-researched before him. There were little scraps of dissertation, journal articles and scholarly papers, all written by twice-Doctor Law during his time with the Shan, all focused on the deep psychological effects of the Sand. He read about the obsession, and the addiction, and finally the fits and seizures that, untreated, might lead to death. He read about how an artist who was good enough could unintentionally craft make pieces of great beauty that might trap the unwary, and how an artist who understood enough of the effects of the sand could craft a piece that would target an individual. He read an in-depth psychological analysis of an unnamed individual who sounded an awful lot like the Shan, used as an example of how to craft such a malevolent bit of beauty. At the bottom there was a link, and at the far end of that link, simple words.
*You know what I want. Give it to me, and I'll fix what I've broken.*
That was all. He reported to her his findings, and continued the search, knowing that he had found his answer, but hoping somehow to find another. He encountered more articles, here and there, but nothing that he could use to make his lady's lord better, until finally, having passed through all the prior stages, the Shan collapsed, spasming in the lesser ballroom. Ibram gave up the search, then, and went to meet his lady, head hung low.
but this is not really a story about the desert princess or the bodyguard.
This is a much simpler story than all that.
This is really just a story about what he said to her, when all that took place had taken place.
"Send Law your sgun-sand Monet. The fit has hit the Shan."
This is a story about a joke.
This is a story about a very bad joke.
There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?
I'd love to get feedback in any form. Compliments are good. Constructive criticism is good. Death threats are good. It's all good.