DRAMATIS PERSONAE WHOA

HOLY CROW, a day and some change until November First! Hmm, and I haven't updated since my last update about how I haven't updated. Well, uh...

...

...BAM HERE'S A ROUGH SKETCH OF THE CAST OF MY NANOWRIMO BOOK

Hopefully this whets your appetite, eh? If it doesn't you have no soul and you are possibly an inhuman monster who drinks my tears

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Benjamin Ames
The hero of our story. Originally an independent data/tech scavenger, Ben is among the first paranormal containment officers contracted by Weitz-Hirojima Utilities, due to his accidental involvement in the first highly-publicized "anomaly" in the Core, the decadent center of Mars' only city. Ben suffers from Shima Syndrome, a mental disorder common among the lower rungs of Martian society, sparked by a life-saving operation during adolescence that resulted in the loss of his arm. Shima Syndrome is defined by an irrational desire for full cyborg conversion, despite lacking the financial or legal backing needed for the operation, and the subsequent reliance on black market technology and back-alley surgery to achieve it. Sufferers are derogatorily nicknamed "tech vultures" for the compulsive practice of swapping out body parts and implants even if the replacement isn't necessary. The only remaining organic parts of Ben's body are his brain and a collection of nerve clusters.

When we join Ben, he's only working for Weitz-Hirojima in hopes of earning legal status as a corporate agent, thus escaping a crippling series of fines for illegal personal modification. Unfortunately, he's not terribly good at his job.

Rachel
"Rachel" is a composite AI derived from a synapse-scan of the dying brain tissue of Ben's first girlfriend and a personality module constructed from Ben's uploaded memories, recently installed in a customized Goldburg Industries bipedal construction robot in order to better assist with paranormal containment. She's Ben's partner and companion, and seems to genuinely care for him despite the initial existential horror she felt upon activation; she's also the only one who can accept that the "real" Rachel is long dead, and that Ben's fixation on her is severely unhealthy. She has been seeking a way to detach herself from him in secret, prior to the opening chapters of our story. She's very close with Jeremy, sharing his love for pop culture, and goes out of her way to bring him back scavenged junk.

Jeremy the Octopus
Discovered by Ben in an abandoned lab in the Outer Arms, the corrupted logfile for Jeremy's project lists him as Phase Eight of Thirteen. No other information seems to have survived what appears to be a corporate-backed "flash mob" raid. Jeremy is curious, eternally optimistic, and obsessed with pop culture from all points of human history, as well as the urban legends Mars' ghosts seem to produce with ever-increasing frequency. He's arranged a "garden" of junk in his tank and loves anything that can provide him with new tactile sensations. On top of his advanced intelligence and increased lifespan, Jeremy's creators modified his eyes (following the genetic template of a mantis shrimp) to allow him to see several wavelengths above and below the narrow spectrum available to human eyes, and it's implied his perceptions of time and space are slightly different and might even be precognitive to some degree.

Calvin Weitz-Hirojima
The embodiment of Weitz-Hirojima Utilities, in whom all of the corporation's legal and civil rights are personified and represented. As the face of the corporation, Calvin is ultimately responsible for all of the company's external dealings and it is he who handles Ben's contract. Calvin is also the star of the Daily News, where he interacts with other corporate embodiments in a glorified sitcom produced for the masses. The Daily News features a popular segment where said personalities are submitted to graphic corporal punishment on behalf of the companies they represent in order to pay for infractions such as toxic dumping and unsafe working conditions; it's a well-known "secret" that corporate embodiments are actually AI.

So...that's that. STAY TUNED

NaNoWriMo 2011 WHAAAAAT

Sooooo I haven't signed into this account for two years, pretty much. Because I couldn't remember which e-mail I was using, which password I was using, how to speak English, how to chew & digest food, etc. Basically I'm an idiot.

BUT HOLY SHIT 2011, WHAT A RIDE

I've signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, BAM THERE I IS, with the ultimate goal of actually writing something and then...self-publishing on Amazon?! MADNESS

I will use this blog as originally intended and post excerpts from the novel, based on that snippet of cyberpunk rubbish I made in 2008. Two thousand and eight. Three goddamn years ago. Whoa.

STAY TUNED

Stuttering to a halt

All along my multiverse string is an event I like to call the Stutter.
It's impossible but it's there.
Imagine a troop of unicyclists.
A breed of individualists, you'd think-- not one is the same as the other.
Like herding cats, you'd suppose; every cyclist lurching around at different angles, left or right or straight or back as their balancing acts spun out in perfect disharmony, an orchestra's chaotic tuning rumble before the show that goes on until the end.
Yet inconceivably, down the line, at every possible moment, my unicyclists jerk to a halt.

(It's chilling, like stepping into a room full of babies. All their wobbly little heads turn to stare at you. Babies are predators.)

I glance down the string of me, across a row of my perplexed face. Even Mustache Nathaniel, the most invincible of all Nathaniels, can go no further. We're at the wall.

Some of me scritch uneasily at the air, other me pace. I'm a me for random pointless adventure; it passes the time and hides my unease.
I think Mustache Nathaniel's gone to the bottle.
We can't congregate and work this out, the me.
We're on the string, and the string is not a single place.
It's something of a surprise I can see me at all.
Yet the string is there in the corner of my eye, a hazy flashbulb growing sick and weak.

There's an answer. The answer's always been there, after a fashion, but it's one I've never liked.
It seems too easy and too quick, and it would solve all the problems I love having.
Cut the string.
You can make it quick and painless.
Pop, a bundle of balloons imploding in the cold of space. And then nothing but rubber scraps.

I grimace. The far end of the string frays as a few of me eagerly embrace that option. The assholes. They wouldn't have made it anyway. I give that tattered end the finger as they put those me in the earth.
Mustache Nathaniel's bought a motorcycle. Damn. Wish I'd thought of that.

I lean back and contemplate the wall, and let the string fade out of sight for now.
But no matter how long I stare, the answers aren't coming.

When people ask me what I want to do with my life, I tell them I want to live on a spaceship.

A cargo freighter, hurtling through the "empty" space between star systems, alone for years at a time while the galaxy grows stranger all around me. I'd grow out my beard and spend my days walking upside-down through empty maintenance tunnels, boxing shadows and singing at the top of my lungs.

I'd invent meaningless rules that I'd eventually take with deadly seriousness-- "Today is blue day. Do not operate buttons with your tongue." There'd be thousands I'd write and re-write them on a giant pane of glass, with a bar of soap. When not in use, I'd let it drift free through the cargo hold. It could shatter at any moment. This would mean absolutely nothing if it happened, and yet for some reason it would be extremely heartbreaking.

Without a sun or moon of my own I'd decide which hours to sleep, or maybe I'd alternate between states of consciousness until I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

I'd have a room full of plants with automated watering routines because I'm horrible with green things but I love them nonetheless. I'd sleep in here sometimes, or maybe all the time. Maybe I'd only ever be truly awake in there.

I'd have a dog, nothing too small or too big, maybe a Labrador, maybe a robot. Maybe a cyborg, so that it could talk but I wouldn't have to worry about it ever murdering me and taking command of the ship as long as I kept up a constant supply of doggie treats and occasionally threw a rubber ball around.

It'd be cool enough to wear a light jacket but never cold.

I'd set up an old projector and watch eighties movies every day.

It would be perfect.

It's a cover for having no idea what I'm actually doing. And it quiets the tiny voice in the back of my mind that suggests I'm not going to survive the next decade, let alone long enough to see a spaceship.

escape

About a year old, but I don't want to lose it so I'm throwing it up here. One of my few attempts at stream-of-consciousness that I actually kind of like. Brinley was "my" solemn-eyed pit bull, and Keara and ShayLee my lovely roommates at the time.

_______________________________________________


I am struck with a consuming need to understand that which is what I call myself.
What am "i"? What am "I"? What am I?
I grasp my neck and feel my pulse, sweaty fingers clutching at my face as I try to feel everything at once, process every sensation in one expanding moment. It's almost there for a second, as I crawl across my skull. It's a golden ripple of understanding, a wave of nirvana as I interpret what screams under my skin when I slap my jaw. But it passes over me like the edge of a blade. Any lower and it would probably sever the head from my shoulders.
I'm gripped with desperation as I recall these feelings. The wake is fading and the waters are settling. I'm afraid that the moment of clarity will never return. Every second that passes I settle more into the questionless concept of Me, the fright of suddenly not knowing who calls itself I is being paved over.
I close my eyes and try to recreate it but the realization is instant: "I am simply pinching myself."
The knowledge is there again. And the emptiness at the core of that. For a moment I thought I could recreate that shell, for five seconds I was outside the sculpture that is my body and I was afraid and excited.
I wonder if that was what being crazy is like.



I turn to Brinley and say, "I almost had it, Brinley."
And then I realize that there is no Brinley. Brinley is the face I put on the striped dog at my feet. Brinley is a bundle of emotions and unspoken concepts. It isn't the animal there, sleeping on the tile. There it is again, laughing at me-- that thing I almost understood.
Is Brinley me? Is part of what I call myself Brinley?
That thing in my head called "Brinley" isn't the same floating jumble as the one in Keara's head, or ShayLee's (whoever they are). We force ourselves to share pieces of them, maybe so we don't kill each other. But they're not the same.

The same concept applies to people. What is the other? Who are "you"? You're certainly not me (right?). But in a way, you are. You're not all that I make you. And yet, so much of you is, just like you make me.

This is degrading into something. I'm moving away from the simpleness of the thought. Or maybe I'm moving towards it and I can't process it without making it more complex.


That's scary.

dream

I dreamt that we were together in an old house filled with windows. The storm clouds outside pattered the glass with rain, and an undulating field of grass stretched into the horizon.

We sat on a musty old bed and you painted a heart consumed with fire on the canvas in front of you. When your brush left them, the flames suddenly twitched and curled and gave off heat, and we were bathed in red-orange light.

I pressed my lips to where your shoulders met your neck and took a deep breath, trying to take in your scent.

And then I woke up.

Fuck.

eggs

I've spun an eggshell around me
made of time and alienation
And curled in its heart
I watch people slide down the curve
like rainwater off glass.

My fingertips bend as I
press from inwards out and
satisfied with the fortifications
I retreat.

The yolk is
written words and voices
relayed over wire and
as the years skitter by it's
proving thin subsistence.

I'd break out but I
doubt
the quality of my
egg tooth.