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Full-size photos at my Flickr stream

It had been a long day, a day in a string of days filled with lots of nothing. Business lately was flatter than a Martian flat cat; and brother, that’s flat. Even the weather was depressed; it had been spitting rain all day, the kind of rain that ate holes in ceramacrete here on Chania 3, nice and acid.  Anyway, I was sitting in my office, fighting the latest battle in the age-old war between income and expenses. As usual, the expenses were winning; I hadn’t seen a clipped credit in weeks.  I was already a month behind on the rent; the landlord was beginning to give me the fish eye and tap on the commlink on his belt every time he saw me, which was turning into every morning as I walked in the lobby.  I knew what that meant; he kept the name of his favorite bouncer on speed dial there, some critter big and blue and with six arms.  When that guy bounced you, you stayed bounced.

I was getting ready to give it up for the day, when there was a knock on the door.  A knock on the door meant one of two things:  the landlord’s bouncer, or a paying client.  Right at the moment, I couldn’t be fussy.  If it was the bouncer, he’d just rip the door off if I didn’t open it, and the landlord was in the right, anyway.  If it was a client, I might just make enough out of this to stave off Blue Boy’s advent.  I keyed the door….

…and knew that this case was probably gonna be worth big credits, and that I was in a whole lot of trouble from the get-go.

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This is Part II of the story which was begun yesterday.  In Part I, Ellen entered into a slightly shady “gene-jig” clinic to prepare for a “job,” the details of which we don’t know of yet.

But we shall shortly….

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One month later —

The evening sparkled, as it always did at the Hotel Capulus, in the Resort Districts of Metroplex 84. No matter the actual weather conditions, the night sky twinkled with stars and a bright full moon, and the sun was always warm in the daytime, thanks to the hotel’s climate-controlled dome. The guests glittered as well — only the elite’s elite (there were always super- and substrata in any social class, even if the levels were as shallow and artificial as wealth and social or political standing) could get a reservation here. Daytime or nighttime, men and women came to the Capulus to relax, to meet, to transact business or attend events, and always to dance and preen in the time-honored game of “king of the social hill.”

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The following is a shortened and altered form of what is becoming one of my pieces of short fiction.  The below is Part I; a link to Part II is at the end.

Note: one or two photos in Part I may qualify as minimally NSFW.

“Can a person steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick?” — Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

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2236 C. E. (201 A. M. – Anno Metroplex)

The door to the orbital station’s “medical bay” slid open, and Ellen Kuan stepped through, confident enough from the technical side that she had made the right choice in gene-jiggers. Messing around with the genetic makeup of your own body was never a recommended thing — one reason why gene techs were so closely regulated. This house was as regulated as any other — but they were also discreet; and discretion was something Ellen needed lots of discretion in her own peculiar profession. She much preferred not tinkering around with what nature had provided (and it had provided well in her case). The payoff for this job, however, was too big to resist — a slice of better than 50 million credits — and so she had come to this clinic, knowing from three previous times that she would get both things she needed: a professional, quality job, and silence. Unless she blabbed herself, in which case it was well understood that the clinic’s owners would sing like an Antarean bluebird in mating season.

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“If they ever do my life story, whoever plays me needs lots of hair color and high heels.”

— Charlize Theron

The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The memory of all that —
No, no! They can’t take that away from me!

— Ira Gershwin (lyricist), “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”

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Warning:  The photos (and, to a degree, the story) should be considered NSFW.  You accept the consequences if you continue on; you have been warned….

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It was well past midnight of the station night, but Seong wasn’t feeling tired at all — rather, she tingled with anticipation. However, to fulfill that anticipation, she needed to get to her destination.

Fortunately for her, “night” on Tulla ‘niFalon Anthropology Starbase, orbiting the planet Elenia, meant exactly that. To give the impression of a diurnal rhythm, the station cycled its lights to correspond with the time of day in the city over which the base held its geosynchronous position. There was just enough light to see for normal humans, especially in the dark-purple colored halls of the Residential Section. Seong padded along, her movements quieted by the crepe soles of her boots. And what boots they are! she thought with a grin.  Not to mention the top!!  We won’t mention anything else, of course, because there’s nothing else to mention….

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Publisher’s note:  As you may know, I originally published this poem, written by me, in September 2011.  Recently, though, I’ve wanted to polish it up a little and take new, less muddy photos to compliment it.  This is my new effort, and I offer it to you, along with a brand-new framing story, for your consideration.  More speech on the details and other aspects afterward….

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The young cabin boy’s day was over, his captain to bed; and he knew that he, too, should be rolled up in his own hammock with the powder monkeys below.  But the men were yarning tonight to pass the time, and many of them had a soft spot for the young lad.  They would tell him tales of the sea, taking pleasure both in their skill at spinning tales, and at his interest in their words.  The boy hung rapt now as a scarred old veteran sailor drew on his pipe and let out a cloud of smoke to be blown away on the wind coming through the gunports, then spat out out the nearest one, and launch into a fresh story.

“There are those who claim that the world is round,” said the fellow; “that the Sea bends back upon itself without end and goes about the earth in a circle that never stops; that you can sail from one point to any other point on any other seacoast without flying away into the heavens. And they would be right…except when they are wrong. For there are those who know the spells which, for a time briefer than can be measured, yet longer than the world is old, can unbend the Sea and open the door to the skies, and a ship may sail away to a world beyond the world…the world of the Sea Queen’s folk.”

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“Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

INSILICO Central, the core of the space-platform habitat built by that massive trans-stellar cartel, was a place that hummed with business any time of the station day. And that was the way Laurel America Auttenberg liked it. After all, what was the use of spending several trillion credits in building a tin can like this out in the middle of the big black — but strategically at the contact point between five of the strongest stellar economies in the sector — unless you were going to be doing a lot of business.

And making sure all of that business got done, with as few hiccups governmental or otherwise as possible, had become her personal job some eleven years ago.

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Dreams, by Pho Vinternatt, is not an easy art exhibit to face in some ways.  It’s nothing extreme physically — a set of fifteen avatar photos, along with interview transcripts.  But it’s the content of the interviews that can rock your secure world, when you stop to think about them.  Pho’s notecard explains it best:

When I started this project I had no idea that peoples dreams and wishes would be so much scarier, personal and moving than their fears.

I hadn’t realized how little we speak of our dreams, big or small ones, realistic or not, and how seldom we tell them to others.

Our dreams expose us, and opens our wounds and vulnerabilities. We choose our words very carefully when we do speak of them, because they’re frail and precious to us.

All dreams deserve to be spoken of, and they all deserve respect for making us who we are.

In this exhibition you will meet 15 people with very different dreams. Let them share them with you.

Be prepared to start considering your own dreams and ambitions here.  But also prepare on other, more psychic levels.  You, too, might find these words uplifting — or something that will scare the whey out of you.

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Lynxa, by Styles by Danielle, is the gown for Miss Benin in the EOE 2012 competition. When I got the group notice about it, I had to get this and model it. Appropriately for my story, Benin is in the West Africa region which was home to Tarzan as he grew to manhood.

The woman stood on the mansion’s wooden balcony and looked out upon the dawning day. The sky to the east burned with orange light, which would soon lighten to yellow as the Sun rose over the horizon to welcome the spinning planet Earth to another twenty-four hours of time.

Lynxa, daughter of La, heir to the title of High Priestess of Opar, smiled slightly in satisfaction as she reflected again on what she had just called the bright golden disk in the sky: “the Sun.” No longer the Flaming God of her mother’s people, the men and women of the lost Atlantean city of Opar. She had abandoned that faith twelve years previously, when she had turned 21 and was faced with the choices of men she would be required to select from for a husband. None there could match, or even approach, the tales of the man whom La had always called Lynxa’s father, the man she always referred to as Tarzan of the Apes.