NEW SITE

I'm posting new fiction at Codex Studio, although Hectowords will remain as an archive.

Succession

You didn't think of the dead as you approached it. You didn't think of the cost. The throne waiting for you, built a thousand years before by the Mad Emperor, seat of the Empire for a thousand thousand years to come, was prize enough for any cost.

You sat on the throne deaf to the cheers of your soldiers, the moaning of the dying, everything but the roar in your chest. The throne's whisper was startling in its clarity.

"I rule," you said, as the Emperor before you had, and the one before him, and the dozens before. They weren't your words, and you knew that if you could only rise from the throne, you might remember what you had intended your words to be.

The throne smiled with your face.

.finis.

Four of Swords

I've killed thousands of grandfathers in thousands of pasts.

It's easier to erase yourself when you know your parents' real names.

.non finis.

Pro forma

First you shed the bad futures in haste and fear. Then you traded the best, the unlikely ones, for a stronger likelihood of a tolerable fate. You were very thorough.

Now your future is clear and one, a succession of many scripted years, and you'd scream through all of them if you hadn't given that choice away.

.finis.

Fugue from lost time

I turned off my perfect memory. No longer would it trawl, prompted by our every word and deed, through everything we did and said as far as the world's memory goes. I was happy with you, and with the idea of you, and I didn't want us to be ended by the past.

I slept blissfully that night, dreaming without memories, until my phone woke me up in the middle of the night with the unbidden recall of how many times I had attempted this — and you — before.

I had forgotten it was programmed to do that.

.finis.

The Long War

My death marks our victory. He's long dead, killed in battle, as a conqueror, on our soil, but after his death we had all the time in the world. We chased history into shame, and shame into secrets, and choked the secrets down. We went to the ends of the Earth to kill the grandchildren of veterans and raise their orphans as our own. We conquered countries to erase a single word.

I'm the last person who knows who died undefeated where now stands a tribute to heroic, failed Nelson, and tonight I'm dying without having told a soul.

We won.

Justice

There can be no afterlife without God. But there still had to exist some sort of retribution. Some balance, even after He left.

I see you don't understand; that's natural. You still haven't done most of the things your nightmares are punishment for.

.finis.

Ascent

They believed the sky and the world were a symbol of each other, so they greeted us as god-scouts when our ships first landed on their planet. We took advantage, of course, of their short-lived awe, and when it died with their cities, we found a thousand years of technological development enough of an edge against their revenge. Ten light-years of emptiness hadn't stopped us, and that was all they had.

Now and then they kidnapped a garrison guard, for our warnings against their brothels were as good as advertisement to soldiers' ears. We shrugged the losses off, used the missing to impress the present, and contented ourselves with hundred-to-one retaliatory strikes. We thought we had won.

They were waiting for the right moment, for the right star to slide behind the right moon. They sacrificed their prisoners that night, and then did nothing more to resist us. We thought, alright, now we have won.

Ten years later the star we called Home blinked out.

.finis.

The Gun

"Your four ideas are really beautiful," said the attorney to the inventor. "You should protect them." The attorney then put something on the table. It didn't look like a gun, but like the idea of a gun.

"What's that?" asked the inventor.

The attorney picked the thing and fired it at the inventor. The inventor blinked once, twice, feeling suddenly that he had lost something, but unable to grasp what.

"You have three beautiful ideas," said the attorney. "You really should think about protecting them."

.finis.

February 8th, if you let it be

Has the new year lost its luster? Do you already miss the excitement of those first days, the feeling of boundless potential?

It doesn't need to be like that.

By $14.99 a month, you can switch to one of our Private Calendar services — and the year can begin anew tonight! (and because all of our months have 30 days, the price is even lower than you think).

.finis.

You and Other Expenses

I hope you can hear me, that you're here still. Perhaps I'm imagining the little inconsistencies in what I see and remember that I hold to as proof of you. But I need to believe it's not so.

If you are here, if you stayed home and still can afford the perceptual tax for me, please believe that I'm sorry. I'm sorry I could no longer pay enough to keep you in my awareness. I'm sorry that I messed up so bad. And I'm sorry about what I'm going to do.

I remember telling you that I loved you, even if I don't remember your face. It was true, and it still is. But I haven't been able to make any new payments, and this morning they took away the sky. I know it's beautiful, and not always gray. I know there were things on it called Moon, Sun, stars. That much I remember. But not how they looked.

I'm sorry, my love. It's too much. I'm going to the memory pawnshop now, to trade the memory of you for the sky. Or maybe the memory of both for a bit of cash.

I can't tell if you are drying my tears or they are just dropping off my skin.

.finis.

Hell Week

Train like you fight, says the Army. I thought I understood what that meant, right until the Sargent blew my brains out.

I know I'll get back — my unit is the best, and the gates of Hell aren't far — but to what body? And in what war?

I don't know. But I trust the Sarge.

.finis.

Love beyond death

He haunts me from the other side of death. His otherworldly obsession pays no heed to the sacred barrier between the dead and the alive, between the beating heart and the restless soul. I can feel his need for me every night as his eyes seek me through the shadows, desperately loathing and desperately attracted to the idea of bringing me to his side.

And might God forgive me, every time he holds a seance and tries to will me back to the living I fall a little more in love with him.

.finis.

Just another final battle

Time collapsed, and Excalibur fell from my suddenly old hands. The field was covered with the dying cries of unborn soldiers, as huge monsters teared apart my knights.

Dinosaurs, I recalled from Merlin's seemingly unending lessons. They had been extinct for eons, and hadn't been discovered yet, but Le Fey's spell, the ultimate weapon she had been so reluctant to use, had made that distinction irrelevant.

Le Fey's laughter rose over the carnage. "I win, Arthur! I win!"

I could hear under her voice an approaching rumble, and I smiled, still kneeling on the ground. I had been a good knight and bad husband, but excellent bait. I wondered what history would tell about me, if they would remember this at all.

Up in the sky, I could see now the Enola Gay.

.finis.

Private Thoughts

JBS was a very discrete data courier. It was difficult to be one in a world of remote ultra-precise fMRI, but he had learned to do public key crypto on his head. The math had been challenging to learn, but the most difficult thing was getting used to not knowing what he was thinking about.

.finis.

Steampunk Revolution

They laughed when we built the steam-powered computers, the pneumatic battlesuits, and the servomechanic blimps. They thought it was just another weird internet fad.

They didn't laugh after the EMPs shut everything else off.

.finis.

The Tree of Lives

Some other yous made different choices. Some of them better. Some of them much worse. They think about you every pain-filled second, they imagine you with hungry, resentful eyes, they claw with thin bloody fingers at the prison walls of "should have." Do you feel safe from the absoluteness of their will? Don't you hear their hate at night?

.finis.

Moon Landing

1962: Informed about the likelihood of the Moon undergoing a sudden quantum wave collapse and disappearing -like Atlantis and Lemuria before- President Kennedy launches a crash program to put people on the Moon with hundreds of millions of people watching.

.finis.

Memo to Writers

Call it Post Recovery Aggressivity Disorder. The word 'zombie' makes Alcor's lawyers draw blood.

.finis.

Three of Four Moments

First, you realize that there won't be enough time in your life to do what you want.

Second, you understand that this has been, and will be, true all your life.

Third, and most unexpectedly, you realize that in fact you don't quite know what it is that you would want to do with the time you have left.

The fourth of your last four breaths slips away while you idly search for some way to pass away the time.

.finis.