Simon stared at the answering machine on his study desk, the small red triangle beating like an electronic heart. He pressed the button. “You have one new message,” said the mechanical female voice. There was a pause and a click, then:
“Goodbye.”
He drifted out of Redemption Hall into the sublime sunshine and took a long last look at the heavy double doors closing behind him. He felt like a new man, and, thanks to the divine guidance of the Holy Father’s 1,012-step plan, he was as new as a rosebud about to bloom on a spring day. New as the first tinkling laugh of an infant. New as the glossy coat on a freshly painted ’65 Mustang. New as . . . well, you get the general idea.
Yesterday’s Jesse was gone, cleansed of his rancor, his negativity, his derision. No more would he ride the storm of discontent. He couldn’t wait to embrace the world–the warmth of its breezes, the music of its soul, the puppy-dog playfulness of its children. He was also very hungry.
From the one hundred kilometre altitude viewing platform of the Quito Space Elevator, Natalya Serov counted the hundreds of corporate logos spread like quilts across the Andes and the Amazon rainforest. Brands included MaxiCola, Conical Energy, MarsPlus, Jovian-Briggs, Europa Water, 8Quantum, LaPlasta Limited, France Inc. and many more of the Solar System’s wealthiest corporations. She was reminded of a sponsorship notice for a trade show convention, but one that used an entire country as its billboard.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
It was a few weeks before Christmas, and despite the Queensland heat, people were rushing to and fro with bulging shopping bags. Everyone was busy with buying, buying, buying. The shops on Cobble St were close together and their weathered look suggested that they had been there forever. They were traditional shops, too: the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. It was the type of street, with its suggestion of antiquity, in which a young man could wander and his mind could turn to fantasy.
It had been known since the early 1950s that high levels of radiation could induce gigantism in certain species. But since most of the early cases had involved arthropods and poisonous lizards of, it has to be said, a rather aggressive disposition, the commercial implications of this line of research were not as obvious as they might otherwise have been.
“Nuclear Physics for Market Gardeners,” p. 126, by Hank Bremsstrahlung
The Prosperity Act needed good people. Not everyone could handle the work. Not everyone could kill children.
* * *
(more…)
Hell to a violinist is the ticking of a metronome, the robotic, relentless and remorseless tick, beating out the time, beating the soul out of the music. And in every tick of the metronome, you can hear The Devil. Practising.
1
A child’s foot stepped hesitantly onto the quicksand, and began to sink, ever-so-slowly.
“Howie… you’re sinkin’,” a small voice piped up.
The foot spread its small toes as wide as it could, and moved just a little bit sideways, and the sinking slowed. It didn’t completely stop, but it was unhurried now, as imperceptible as one of those slow bubbles that form on the surface, taking hours to pop in a sloppy belch.
Briony chose the room. There were three similar upstairs, but this was the smallest and did not even come with a decent view. Her mother had intended it for storage. The room was slightly longer than it was wide, with wooden floorboards, pale yellow walls, one small square window and a cupboard built in to one wall.
“Briony,” her mother said, “You’ll never fit anything in that tiny cupboard. It doesn’t even have shelves.”
“[Zdrastvuitye]! Salām and hello! And welcome everyone aboard our Scorpion Tour Bus! My name is Zenka and I will be your guide on today’s tour of New Alamut or, as it is more colourfully known, the City of Assassins.
