Then... free therapy I guess? Learning to face and overcome your fears, and all that? At least until the orcas show up.
Some people pay $400/hr to sit on a couch and chat with a stuffy old guy. Some people are thrown bodily towards their natural predators. I don't judge.
Broken, flaming, falling faster A challenge that we could not master These new worlds spell our disaster And there's no Happy Ever After
Do something practical like SNOW DANCE so I have off work from both jobs tomorrow and can come out and play on EMC for a damn change!
It was difficult to tell which was the more unpleasant - the reeking garbage strewn across the sidewalk, or the look on Simon's face as he observed the mess. This was the third week in a row he'd come home to find rancid refuse in front of his apartment, the bags ripped open and plundered by paws unseen. It had to be an animal, he was certain, but he had yet to catch the villain in the act. That, he decided, was going to change... ----- "Get back here you mangy trash-rat!" Sneakers slapping the pavement, Simon raced after the fleeing opossum. Though his eyes were red and bleary from lack of sleep, he was determined to teach the little garbage-thief a lesson. Just as he closed within an arm's length of the thing, it swerved left into his neighbor's flower garden. Simon's foot came down in the soft soil, slipped, sent him tumbling into the peonies. But his fist had closed on something firmer, furry and wriggling madly to get away. Naked clawed feet scratched at his forearm and the sudden pain of it reminded Simon he was dealing with a wild animal. One that had teeth. And possibly diseases. Certainly those, from the way it'd been rummaging in his refuse these last few weeks. Luckily, he had it by the scruff of the neck, and despite the opossum's twisting and thrashing, it could not bring said teeth to bear on his bare arm. However, he was rapidly losing his grip on the little beast and had no desire to be near it when it got loose. To his angry, sleep-deprived mind, there was only one rational course of action. He hoisted the opossum up and hurled it with all his might. ----- Years later, Simon considered, he'd probably find this an incredibly funny story to tell at parties. At present however, from his position in the holding cell of the local precinct, he found it distinctly less amusing. Firstly, because he was in jail, but secondly and perhaps more importantly, he felt genuinely bad for Mr. Goldstein across the road, who'd lost his front window and gained a dazed, injured, and very unhappy marsupial in his living room - one that stank like the county landfill in miniature. He felt less guilty about the patrol car it had bounced off of to get there, but that had more to do with being shoved face-first into the garden soil and handcuffed than any overt dislike of law enforcement. In retrospect, throwing an angry opossum at a police vehicle while screaming obscenities was an obvious way to get on their bad side. Come to that, throwing anything at the cops was a generally bad idea, but live animals carried that extra "animal cruelty" baggage. Double-whammy, there. A man in uniform walked up to his cell, tapped the bars lightly. "Alright Mr. Wending, Captain Martinez wants a word with you. On your feet son." Dutifully, Simon rose from the bench, wondering what sort of sentence "assault with a stanky trash-rat" carried...
Responsibility... Blame... Regret... Murderer! The words chased each other through Ronald's mind, howling and storming through his psyche in an emotional maelstrom as he stood with ichor dripping from his fingers. It fell sizzling onto the hot metal before him, an accusing bubbling hiss that spat out, "Thisssss issss your fault!" He stared numbly at the gruesome aftermath, paralyzed by horror. He never wanted this. To do such a thing to another living creature... it was appalling. Unthinkable. He was a monster. His hand strayed towards the knives, moving of its own accord as he weighed the depth of his crime. His reverie was shattered by his roommate, Don, who stumbled bleary-eyed into the kitchen and began loading the coffee maker. There was an awkward moment of silence as he observed Ronald, staring at the stove with an expression of shock on his face and egg yolk on his hands. "Um, dude. You alright?" Don tapped his friend's shoulder lightly. "You're burning your omlette."
August 6th, 2167 Today the lights came on. That sounds like such a small thing, but it's been nearly fifty years since humanity saw an electric light shine. Five decades since an electric motor purred to life, a computer screen turned on, a calculator calculated, or a watch beeped. Fifty years since They took our power and siphoned it off to Their home on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. They did it to teach us a lesson, or so the history books claim. They wanted to keep us bound to the Earth, primitive and weak, until we'd outgrown our "savage" ways. As if tearing the roots of modern civilization out from under us was going to make us more civil. That was the world I was born to, a world still recovering from the chaos. They took our electricity - we haven't even seen a thunderstorm since that day - but combustion still worked. Bullets still worked. My parents used to tell me stories of how ugly it got. It's a miracle they survived. It's a miracle any of us survived. But that's the thing They didn't understand, I guess. Humans, we're a stubborn bunch. We'll survive anywhere we can, any way we can. We make our homes in places halfway to boiling and way below freezing. We're problem-solvers. We figure things out. We figured Them out, too. I'm not a scientist, myself. I don't know how the energy transfer works. I just know that for the first time in my life, I looked outside and saw street lights lighting. I bet They probably aren't going to be happy about that, if They find out. When They find out. The last time They were here, they could've destroyed all life on the planet, or so my parents said. Could've destroyed the planet itself. Instead, They turned the lights off. I wonder what they'll do this time. ________ August 7th, 2167 Saturn is about eighty light-minutes from Earth, give or take. That means about an hour and a half after Earth got its power back, They knew about it. A few hours after that, They were back. Hopefully, for the last time. Here's another funny thing about Humans: we like weapons. We master fire, and we use it to burn our enemies. Black powder? Guns and bullets. Grenades. Rockets. Nuclear power? Atomic bombs. And let's not forget chemical and biological weapons. Computers? Great, now our rockets and war machines are more accurate, precise, dangerous. When we learn something new, one of our first questions is "How can we make it kill?" From that perspective, it's really no surprise They wanted us stuck on Earth, restricted to beating each other with clubs. But to do that, They showed us something new. And we figured out how to make it kill. It was just before dawn when Their fleet entered Earth orbit. I was up early this morning and saw them arrive, over a hundred it seemed. Silver stars flashing to life high overhead. Then the lights went out again. It was terrifying, thinking They had done something else, maybe more permanent this time, but it wasn't Them - it was us. All the accumulated energy of Earth was very suddenly redirected, straight into those ships. As quickly as They flashed into being over our planet, they flashed back out again. It was over in less than five minutes, and if They had anything to say, I don't think anyone was listening. It took another hour for the power to come back on. Eighty minutes later, I understood why. A new 'star' appeared on the horizon, brighter than any I'd ever seen. Enceladus, going out with a bang. Whatever Earth's new 'energy weapon' had done to Their fleet, it had done to Their home as well. I feel a little sick in my stomach, thinking about it - that light in the sky was the death of an entire species, one more intelligent than mine. But then I remember the stories my parents told me, what They did to us, to Humanity. Makes it hard to feel sorry for Them. If you want peace, don't start war.
It stems from a book I finished recently, "Starbound" by Joe Haldeman (I don't recommend it). Essentially, Humanity comes up against a near-godlike alien race dubbed 'the Others,' tries to make peace, and is spanked like a naughty child and sent to bed. They don't destroy Earth, but it was essentially a different version of The Day the Earth Stood Still. ...Apparently it was part of a trilogy (Marsbound, Starbound, Earthbound), and from the reviews and spoilers I read, the final book is a catalogue of how our civilization collapses in a world without power. Frankly, while I don't have much love for the human race as a whole, I thoroughly detest the idea of getting our teeth kicked in by stern extraterrestrial parents and being unable to do anything about it. Hence the above story.
The gun trembled in my hands, ice-cold fire flooding my veins as I forced myself to concentrate. To focus. My life, the lives of my squad, my planet, depended on it. "Invaders from space," I muttered, forcing a thin laugh I didn't feel. It was too ridiculous to be real. Reality was dead, shot through with high-calibre munitions and left to rot on the battlefield. We all lived a waking nightmare, our books and films brought to horrifying life. And the Invaders were certainly horrifying enough. Oh, they walked on two legs like us, had two arms and a head with sensory organs. But there the similarities ended, for they towered like giants over us, weapons so powerful by virtue of their size alone that a single shot could blast an entire squad to bloody nothingness. Their hides, so much tougher than ours, resisted our weapons and healed rapidly from what wounds we could inflict - on the rare occasions we could even breach them. When the war began, I had hoped some hero scientist would come forward with a solution and save us all from certain destruction. But when a single Invader can wipe out an entire city, it's hard to keep hold of something as frail as 'hope.' Hopeless as it felt, I still had my duty. This was our world, and I wasn't about to give it up without a fight. Somehow, we'd find a way to stop these Invaders, these "Humans." Somehow, we'll find a way to win.
A coiled spring, wound tight; it strains against the lever, and breaks. The jagged edge whips through carefully ordered thoughts, throwing them asunder and leaving chaos in its wake. All the carefully managed stress, finding no outlet, has created its own instead, and like a house of cards my sanity collapses - I fling my arms in the air and run screaming from the room. Down the hall, a modern civilized man reduced to a howling barbarian, frothing at the mouth as guttural cries draw shocked expressions from my coworkers. A wild jubilance thrums in my blood, for the release feels good. Onlookers think I've gone crazy, but the truth is exactly the opposite - I have gone sane, and it is the rest of the world that remains mad...
I haven't rambled in a while. Figured I should fix that. -===- "No sir, no sign of the fugitive so far... Affirmative, we'll keep you posted. Alpha Six, out." The guard frowned, tucking his radio back into position on his belt, and hoisted the heavy assault rifle resting against his hip. Ferro-ceramic body armor scraped and rustled as Six shifted position, staring into the darkness beyond the clearing - a flat no-man's land whitewashed by glaring fluorescent floodlights. Behind him, a cardboard box crept two silent inches to the left. Concealed under a strange geometric arrangement of wood pulp and cellulose, three faceted eyes observed the Hou'Min as it lifted its primitive ballistic device and resumed sentry watch. Somehow, these barely-sapient bipeds had managed to become the dominant species on their tiny waterlogged rock, but those days were numbered. Just as soon as Fl'eff-Ba'al could report back, the rest of the Fleet would move in, and these gangly Hou'Mins would be little more than slaves and chattel to serve the needs of his kind. If he could just make it past this one... Another two-inch shuffle proved an inch too far into Alpha Six's peripheral vision. The second his eye caught the motion, he brought his rifle around, its underslung flashlight glaring bright at the conspicuous box of "Florida Oranges" that had somehow crept fifty yards from the kitchen supply to the perimeter fence. His other hand deftly seized the radio again, but before he could raise the alert the box flew upwards, exposing its otherworldly occupant. Roughly a foot long, it resembled a wingless three-eyed grasshopper, if grasshoppers had the shaggy fur coat of an English sheepdog. Three tiny faceted black eyes scowled at him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a sudden shriek of brass and strings. Six sighed heavily and lowered his gun. "Commander, I found your 'fugitive.' West gate, box of oranges this time." He reached out, grabbing the escapee by the thick scruff of fur on its thorax. "Alright Fluff-Ball, back to the Embassy now. Your Queen's gonna be pissed if she finds out you tried this again." Fl'eff-Ba'al, dangling from the sentry's grip, merely glared in silence as he was carried back inside.
As long as you're entertained, that's all that matters. Yeah, writing inspiration has come very hard the last few months.
I was more referring to you stopping by to say hello than the writing, which I do always enjoy. Maybe the inspiration will return along with the nice warm sunshine. =] Good to see ya about tiger.
