Monday, May 31, 2021

Stuff I've Been Enjoying As The Pace Of Life Ebbs and Flows

Stuff I've Been Enjoying As The Pace Of Life Ebbs and Flows

One thing that e-book libraries make apparent, aside from that my To-Be-Read pile is ever expanding, is that I also have a Did-Read pile. I find it a little joyful to scroll back through the list and think, "Oh, wow, that's right" when I see a title that brought me to a fun place for a while. Here are a few of those books and series (I've been in a loop where I'll go weeks at a time without reading much fiction, and then dive in full depth when I do find something that captures me) that you may find worth tracking down.

The Between and My Soul To Keep, both by Tananarive Due. I came to these probably out of a sense of "Huh, I thought I had read more of Tananarive's books than that", so let's track down a couple more and see what I missed. I think I first picked up The Good House when it came out? Hard to remember, that's also the stretch of my personal timeline where my fiction reading had dried up to almost nil, due the demands of grad school. Any rate, coming to The Between and My Soul To Keep was like spending time with a lifelong friend I haven't talked to in a bit; Due's voice just wraps me in like that, like we're sitting in a good little restaurant and she's catching me up on all the wonderful weird things she's been up to since last we met. These are... these are books somewhere in the lands Anne Rice and Toni Morrison explored, that wonderful strange very near to home horror of secretive family stories confirmed by the stranger on your doorstep. I think whether you sip or gulp of Tananarive's books will depend a lot on moods; but when the mood does grab, there's a great deal to love here.

A Thousand Li, A Xianxia Cultivation Series by Tao Wong. This one came to me purely as a "You might enjoy this" at the end of another book. I took a flyer and came out after 4 books wondering where the time went. Let's see, how would I recommend this (to anyone other than my 12 year old self)... whether you spent hours wondering over the Shaolin monks, or simply enjoyed Naruto on occasion, these may be worth your while. Tao Wong also has a few other books out, after I caught up to A Thousand Li I read the first couple books of Wong's The System Apocalypse series, which is a whole n'other vibe. Either way, you don't have to know what martial arts madness might be to enjoy these books; Tao Wong will be happy to teach you!

Second Hand Curses, and the Spells, Swords, Stealth series by Drew Hayes. And in the one good turn deserves another sweeps, Drew Hayes' books came up in my recommended list after reading a few of Tao Wong's books. I dove into the NPC's world (Spells Swords Stealth) wholeheartedly, and then picked up Second Hand Curses when I ran through the NPC's world. Hmm, let's see. Mostly, as with the other wonderful authors I'm singing of, Drew Hayes is my kind of crazy. Here, we're talking of the kind of crazy that hoped, just maybe, you'd pack up your D&D books from the after school game at the rec center, get ready to head home, and accidentally stumble through a portal to your game world before you got there. If that makes sense, the NPC's series will be your kind of crazy too.

Which brings me to the Wandering Inn by PirateAba. I am not up to date, I think I've read through the first 3? books/chapters of The Wandering Inn so far. PirateAba has been working these as a daily story for at their website for quite some time now; think of it as a daily webcomic, only as a serial story for RPG geeks, and you're in the right neighborhood. I've only visited here, not yet taken up residence, simply because I did come to the Inn after reading Tao Wong's and Drew Hayes' series first and my own personal exhaustion threshold set in; still, I'll return to the Inn, or maybe it'll return to find me again when I'm ready...

Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire. Here's a novella series that takes Peter Straub and Clive Barker, among others, as a jumping off point. Fun fun fun, especially if you've ever driven past an old boarding school in New England, one of those granite mysteries hiding behind changing leaves and a broken down iron gate. Fair warning, for me, the Wayward Children grabbed me in the first book and didn't let go until the last one. I'd finish one, buy the next one thinking "Oh, I'll read something else in between and come back to these later" and the very next night I'm an hour past bedtime, finishing up the book and going through the same exercise all over again.

The Clocktaur War, A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking, Nine Goblins, and The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon. There's a lot of different here, a lot of delightfully mad, interesting and twisty lanes through the multiverse. My favorite part is that, looking at the list, it means the next time I wander into Kingfisher/Vernon's bibliography, odds are damned good I'll find something fun to grab no matter where my head is, which always a nice thing to know about a writer.

Thursday, May 27, 2021

A Day's Wait, Por Que?

This story is for those who've ever had to spend a few more hours in a place than they really counted on. Maybe because the flight got bumped, or the weather moved in. Ever spent too many hours in a crew boat in the middle of an unexpected tropical storm? Slept in the office because the ice and snow came in while you went for that last meeting of the day?

Javier makes the corn run often enough. Run up to Brownsville and unload the corn, then haul empty over to Harlingen to get a trailer full of grain for the run back to Monterrey. An easy day's work, it keeps the miles paid. Sure, every now and then you're pulled over for a few hours in the sleeper. But that's just the trucker's life, ain't it?

In this week's story, dear reader, we, and Javier, discover the difference between "Oh well" and those times when you really do end up having to sweat out...

A Day's Wait, Por Que? by M. K. Dreysen

Javier scuffed through the dust, the old steel toes dragging in the caliche, as much from the weight of the heat as that of the bad news.

A summer day in Harlingen. Damn. He climbed into the cab and picked up the phone. "Rita, yes... no. Yes... hey mama, listen. I'm stuck here for another day... maybe tonight... if they get a train in tonight... yes... no... maybe, mama listen. It depends on whether they load me out first or not."

He looked at the other trucks, their drivers making similar phone calls. Some of them, the ones who'd gotten there later, had already fired up and started the big turns for the highway. "Yes... looks like Pete and Sonnier and them... no. Mama listen... ok yes. I love you too. Bye."

Javier thumbed the phone's connection shut and threw it on the dash. Then he parked the old steel toes up next to the phone, picked up a book, some weird western by a one-eyed poker player from Las Vegas, and started on the next chapter. There was time yet, and daylight, and hours that didn't go in the log.

A horn jarred Javier out of the book. He jerked, then rolled down the window. "Yeah?"

Marcus Jones had pulled up; he'd been the only truck in front of Javier. Marcus had pulled his rig loose of the trailer, bobtailed now and probably headed into town. "Get you anything?" Marcus asked, peering past the yellow lab that had been his constant road companion for a few years now.

Javier thought about it. "Where you thinking of going, my friend?" Marcus was good people, always a happy sight where their runs that overlapped. He'd be headed for Corpus whenever he got the trailer loaded.

"What do you think? I'm thinking of a sitdown, you wanna come along?"

The rigs would be good here, the folks who ran the grain silos kept a clean yard. And it was daylight. Javier thumbed the book.

A few more chapters, finish whatever Marcus brought back, climb in the back and sleep until they had enough grain to fill the trailer... it sounded more immediate than climbing into Marcus's cab. "No, but thank you. Whatever looks good, Marcus, maybe a good salad with chicken if they have it?"

"Caesar?"

"Yep."

"Got it, see you." Marcus pulled away. When Javier checked his mirrors, he saw another bobtail rig pull out behind Marcus.

Almost twenty rigs had been in the yard when they'd gotten the message. Now, they were down to... eleven, about half of them trailers only now. Javier nodded and turned back to the book. No sense climbing into the back now, he told himself, not and have to climb back out again. Too easy to fall into deep sleep that way, and let the coming lunch get nasty in the heat.

Half the trucks would have gone to find another load, he mused between paragraphs. Gravel if they had to. Javier snorted; he had a trailer for that, instead of this one for grains and other food-grade loads.

But his gravel trailer was parked in Laredo. No sense hauling the hours up the road for that nonsense. The silos would start filling as soon as he got over the horizon, the way Javier's luck ran.

Javier started running out of patience with his book just a few minutes before Marcus showed back up with lunch. "Thanks man, I appreciate it."

"No problem. Anything happen?"

"I'd have called." And Javier would have. He didn't recognize everyone who'd parked to wait, but those he did know he would have called. You didn't want to be the asshole, not when there'd be a time and place where the positions were reversed.

Besides, the jerks... well they all too often ended up on the side of the road, cussing the maintenance they'd let slide and the other drivers who'd warned them about it. Some roads Javier didn't want to steer down, not even a little.

Rita called when he'd put fork to his second bite. "Yes mama... a salad, Marcus picked it up for me... no it's not as good as... of course. Yes. Yes. I love you too, I'll call you... yes I'll keep it next to me."

He thumbed back into the book; maybe he'd just been frustrated and bored, the pace picked back up again as his stomach started happily into its work on the salad.

When he'd finished and relieved himself, Javier climbed into the sleeper and allowed the summer sun to go about bleaching everything to that blended gray tone without his supervision.

He slept through Rita's calls. Both of them, and the beeps from the annoyed voicemails she left. The knockout curtain blocked the long change from daylight to yard lights.

Something scratched at the door of the cab. Javier would have had to have the curtain pulled, and he'd have had to sit up in the bunk to see the mirrors. Instead, he slept through the inquisitive testing.

Marcus's horn did wake him. Just a bit before midnight. Javier splashed a little bottled water on his face, used the chemical toilet again, then climbed down out of the cab.

The yard had lost three more rigs, just him and Marcus and another half dozen now.

But the train had come in. The engine's light, and now a horn, greeted Javier as his feet found the caliche dust. "Good," he muttered before walking up to join Marcus. "You get any sleep?"

"Yeah. Benny woke me up to take a walk about half an hour ago, otherwise we'd both still be out."

Javier let the grinning lab sniff and lick his hand. "Yep, you're on the job, right Ben?"

The dog shook his collar, then bounded up and into Marcus's rig. "He knows the drill better than we do."

Marcus nodded, then they went in to get their tickets punched.

****

The yard was rigged up for loading a couple trucks at a time. They only needed two of the rail cars to fill up the trucks who'd stayed. Marcus got the first scale, Javier pulled into the second, and they started the wait for the next stage.

Technically, they were back on the clock as soon as they geared up. The electronic logs didn't let anyone get away with anything. Yeah, even though they weren't moving. Javier called Rita while the yard got the railcars going. "Getting loaded soon, mama, I'm on the scales now... yes... no... Marcus too... no. Mama listen, I might have to pull over at Reynosa... it's my hours, love."

He held the phone away; the logs didn't care about the couple hours, going and coming, that the border crossing added to his time. All the computer knew was that he'd put in six hours on the road here, through Brownsville and the load of corn he'd dropped there, up to Harlingen and the wait. And he'd gotten some sleep, but it didn't count to ten hours off the road on the computer.

Javier was the only one Rita could yell at about the idiot computer. "Mama, don't worry, I'll be home tomorrow." Well, once he dropped the load off at the mill in Monterrey. But he wasn't going to bring that up.

"Can I talk to the kids? Oh." They were asleep, and Rita didn't want to wake them. "Listen mama, I love you."

She grudgingly accepted that, and returned his love. "Now go to sleep, ok?"

The grain started its count on the scale just as Javier cut the connection.

The scale had been re-calibrated just a couple weeks back. The Harlingen silos kept them in good repair; their drivers needed, more than most, to know that the scales didn't lie. Not when they had to deal with border patrol any way they went.

Point was, the scales were capable of measuring the weight difference between Javier and his truck.

And Javier and his truck, and the shadowy passenger they'd added, the one that had slid its way into the trailer's undercarriage. Only, because the shadow had already made its way into a safe spot in the belly dump mechanisms, the scale didn't see anything but trailer and driver plus one.

So Javier and the silo crew went about their business, unaware. And when Javier did pull out into the yard, where he stopped to rig up his covers, check tires and axles and brake lines and the belly dump's locks, he didn't notice the shadow either.

The yard lights couldn't quite penetrate that far, and the shadowy form, the one that had scratched at Javier's door to check whether the driver was truly asleep or not, knew well enough how to hide from Javier's inspection in those favorable conditions.

****

It built itself from bad ideas and trouble. It fed from the forklift driver's "Eh, I'll chance it," and the scaffold builder's urge to "Just get it done with."

When the silos had gone up, even before that when the grade crew had shown up with a backhoe and a bulldozer to level the ground, it had coalesced from the survey team's last day on the site. The last run, the one where the surveyor had taken his last sight, scratched out his numbers on the pad and transcribed a three for a two.

Shrugged and gotten on with his life. Somehow, it worked out. Maybe because the dark little collection of "Ah, it'll be alright" had phased into existence, and absorbed the little mistakes and easy decisions before they could get far enough to hurt anyone. Dirt work. Tracks laid down. Scaffolding and steel. Then the hundreds of hours while the folks who worked the yard learned how the place had been put together, and what they had to do to make it all work.

The beast had fed well, grown strong within a constant inflow of all those little things.

Only now, the yard crews had their practice. The owners had burnt through their stock of "Hey, maybe you can" and "Can't you do just a little more" and "Wouldn't you be able to, if you tried" suggestions. Even the truckers and the train crews had ground down to the steady and the patient. Mostly.

There were always a few other bad ideas around. They waft in, don't they, from just about everywhere?

Not enough though to keep one living on the diet to which one had become accustomed. The beast hungered for the old days. For something more than the thin gruel of an occasional "I'm good, I can drive" blowing in off the highway. Even Jose Stone the maintenance hand had cleaned up, quit keeping a six pack in the ice chest in his truck for quitting time.

"You know, I should have done this a long time ago, I can't tell you how much better I feel" tasted like lye soap instead of ice cream and cake. Or like it was time to hit the road and find new pastures, the beast had finally decided.

It didn't know for sure what lay over the horizon. All the shadowy thing knew, really, was that the trucks went somewhere. That the yellow dog in the first truck meant trouble.

And that there were no animal companions keeping rig number two occupied while the driver slept. And so it climbed aboard, hid itself as well as it always had, and set itself to watching, and waiting, for the opportunity it needed to climb down and feast anew.

****

They met in a truck stop in Reynoso.

Javier had driven as far north as Fairbanks, as far south as San Salvador. The truck stops didn't change much, except for the menu. Especially early in the morning, you just pulled through an almost settled dust haze lit by the neon of the gas pump lights and rumbling from the engines.

His passenger hadn't been anywhere but a grain yard. But that had the same look, it thought. When the trucks pulled in to wait for their loads, the pre-dawn light had a look to it that the creature recognized.

But here was that same quiet professionalism; here, the drivers got down to check tire pressures, miles and oil and hydraulic fluids. Whether the load had shifted. Sure, the creature tasted remnants of that which it sought.

But only remnants. Echoes of a different hour and a different time for misbehaving. This hour tasted of drivers who only wanted to get down the road, or sleep off the last few hours of the last one.

The creature watched, listened. Javier pulled in, got down to use the shower and someone else's pisser, and the passenger stayed.

It was unsure.

Javier came back to the trailer and did a walkaround. Nothing too much, not here in the dark, he'd walk it again with a bump stick and a pressure gauge and a more critical eye, but he liked to at least make sure the belly locks held. That the grain wasn't leaking out onto the parking lot. That he still had all the tires and the tractor and the trailer where they should have been.

He didn't feel his passenger's impatience. Its mounting frustration. Hunger, packed into a seam where light and humble driver's vision couldn't reach. When Javier nodded his agreement with himself that the rig would do for another few hours, then left the trailer to walk around and climb into the cab and its waiting sleeper...

the passenger slid down to the parking lot. It didn't stand there and wait, it didn't pause.

It flowed beneath the trailer and around to meet Javier at the bottom step of his cab.

Javier felt it come on as a rush of bad feeling.

As a lack of surety.

As though he had picked up his trust in his rig, examined it, checked it out. Put it down for a bit.

And turned back to discover that the trust had never been there at all. Weight rushed onto his back, pushing, demanding that he realize he wasn't going anywhere, and if he did make the decision to get on the road he'd be traveling with the damned and the dead instead of getting back home to Rita this night.

The claws the creature sank into him bled Javier of the little moments, the simple accomplishments. The passenger wanted to drive now, and it needed doubt and uncertainty to take the wheel. It needed fuel.

Javier climbed into his cab. He reached for the grab bar, kicked his toes against the steel tank step. Fumbled the door closed, banged his knees on the seat and came this close to kicking the shifter loose of the floor.

He made it to the bed and tried not to think about the thirst that flooded his mouth. For what, he didn't know.

And even that strange thirst, hunger, desire, drained away until the only thing left was the doubt. The "What am I going to do?"

Then focus narrowed down to the roof overhead, closed down to just a little bit of light from the parking lot, and a whole lot of darkness from the passenger that now rode Javier's mind.

****

The computer recorded ten hours of rest in Javier's logs that night.

Looking back, even a month later, Javier couldn't quite remember which trip it had been.

Which haul and overnight in Reynosa turned into ten hours of sweats. Three hours before the sun tried to fight its way into the cab and drag him out, but seven hours yet more of Javier staring at the back of the sleeper bunk wall. He fought it.

For every lost shred of confidence, Javier remembered a moment when somehow the truck stayed on the road. Or the brakes caught just in time, even with the squeal of tires on the pavement.

He fought it. He pushed the doubts into a bundle, one mistrust at a time. Then, when the gorge of the passenger couldn't be contained any more, Javier stumbled and fell to the parking lot and vomitted the creature up.

It lay there in a pool of attempted poison and summer sun and evaporated.

But even in dying the creature left a residue there, a little bit of memory that occasionally caused one of the Reynosa truckers to misjudge their timing, or to ignore the pressure on that one tire in the back.

Javier avoided that little patch of bad attitude, as much by luck as intention. Just like he would forever after wake, most nights, for a minute or two of wondering whether he'd checked everything but no...

From then on, when he pulled into that Reynosa truck stop, once he'd filled up and pulled back around, instead of turning left and getting lined up halfway between the easy out and the quick walk to the dinner counter, Javier just pulled straight out of the pumps and took the first available. Or turned right and shrugged at the walk and the additional trouble he'd have getting out.

And tried, between bites of egg and potato and the green salsa please, or the moments of sleep, or the walkaround to make sure he and his rig were all in good sync, not to remember why the lefthand, the eastern side of the parking lot just didn't feel like the best place to park his rig anymore.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

It's Not Just You

It's not just you...

No, really, you're not the only one who's confused by Nick Rowe's metaphor here, that Rowe labels as Friedman's Thermostat.

It is the case that, for very a particular technical definition of correlation, the setting of your thermostat is not directly correlated with the amount of power used to maintain that set point.

However, it is also the case that, if you set your thermostat to 74 degrees Fahrenheit, you will save approximately 6 percent power (in summer, in winter reverse the two for the same effect) than if you had set your thermostat to 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, how can both of these statements be true at the same time? It has to do with a very particular definition of correlation, and a technical result from so defining the object in question.

To see what's going on, look at Temperature (T) in your house as a function of time (t), T(t) over some period, we'll use a 24 hour time for convenience. Now, let be the average temperature over that 24 hour period. It is the case then that we have an additional function T(t)-<T>, call it dT(t) for delta orchange or fluctuation.

What's interesting about dT(t), when you measure it, is that, if your a/c system is all in good shape, then dT(t) oscillates regularly around zero; alternatively, T(t) osciallates around the average value of <T>.

Put another way, your house spends as much time slightly above <T> as it does slightly below <T>. Thus, your a/c turns on, the temperature drops, the a/c cuts off, the temperature rises. Rinse and repeat.

So what's this mean? Well, if you then integrate over dT(t) over your 24 hour period, you just get zero. Or, if you integrate T(t), you get <T>, the average. The first measures the fluctuations, the second the average. If your system is in good repair, there should be no bias in the fluctuations, and thus you get zero.

So how then a zero correlation? Well, in one of its technical definitions, a correlation function can be referring strictly to the integral over dT(t), in which case multiplying by a constant (power use while the a/c is running) doesn't change the integral. You just get zero again.

Or, if you instead use a slightly different definition for correlation, the one that refers to the integral over T(t), you get a correlation of 1. Which doesn't tell you anything either, since you get 1 for 74 degrees on the thermostat, and 1 for 72 degrees on the thermostat as well.

How then do you tell the difference?

There are at least three ways. One of them is something that I've hidden: the normalization. Correlations are often defined similarly to probabilities, and so restricted between a range of -1 to 1 inclusive.

However, for thermostats and temperature, this normalization condition is inverted by multiplying by <T> and <P>, the average temperature and power, respectively. In which case, the product <T><P> will be slightly different for 72 degrees versus 74 degrees. And that's how your power company knows that you used more electricity cooling your house at 72 degrees than you would have cooling it at 74 degrees.

No really, that's pretty much exactly what you kilowatt-hours charge on your electric bill is. You could divide by various things and turn the total kilowatt-hours used per month into a correlation, but your total bill won't change. You still used a given number of kilowatt-hours total for that month, and you would have used less or more if you'd used a slightly different thermostat setting.

That's one way to measure a non-trivial correlation, what's another?

Use the absolute value for T(t)-<T>, rather than the scalar value. In which case, abs(dT(t)) is positive definite, which in turn sums to a non-zero number over any 24 hour period, and you then in turn get a real, and useful measure. If you've ever stumbled over the difference between velocity (a vector) and speed (a positive definite scalar), it's precisely the same thing.

The third method is just a variation of these two, and in fact counts the same thing (to within a scalar conversion factor if your system is in good shape): measure the number of times your system turns on in a given period. In summer, the system will come on more often at 72 than at 74, and you will again have a useful correlation measure between power usage and temperature setting.

Caveats? Well, for a physical system, one thing that's lurking here is that you can re-run the experiment. You can go in and set your thermostat at 72, count the number of cycles, and then go in tomorrow and redo the experiment at 74. If today and tomorrow have essentially the same weather, you can readily measure the difference.

In macroeconomics and history, to pick two examples, you don't often get the chance to re-run an experiment. The best you can hope for, to this outsider, is to find moments in time where today looks enough like yesterday that comparing the two gives you something close to a controlled comparison.

Note also that this gives you one way to tell, assuming the differences don't wash out in the variations due to the weather, that your system is in good running condition. This is one of the ways, in fact, that smart thermostat systems can help. Over time, your data set will be robust enough so that "assuming your system is in good shape" notes above will then give your system a potential means of self-diagnosing when something is going wrong.

Meaning: this summer went ok, next summer goes ok, third summer and all of a sudden your thermostat notices that it can no longer count on the relations it's been measuring. Call a repair team out before something goes really wrong.

I could go into measurement theory; indeed, this is why quantum mechanics (the folks) scratch their head when they hear about quantum mechanics (the popular speculative topic) from others. What's a measurement, indeed?

I won't. Because really what we're talking about is the difference between training and practice or craft. When I teach a class on something, I'll of necessity need to give you the highlights. These are what I hope you'll retain, and I'll hope as well that if you stick with the subject, in using it you'll learn the finer points.

Which is fine for those who go on to practice and learn the craft. It's when you get popular speculation based on the highlights only that you run into these mass confusion things. Terminology that everyday practitioners use verus how that terminology is understood by observers often turns into the most difficult hurdle.

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Just Another Day In The Clouds

Shura spends his days working the bench. Monitoring the results, collecting data. Research.

Research that the company that employs him no longer deems necessary. Too much payout with too little to show for it. Only, this company doesn't do layoffs. Not when there's another way to cash in.

This week's story is...

Just Another Day In The Clouds by M. K. Dreysen

"Did you hear him scream, Sasha?"

I'm not Sasha, that's my grandfather. I know the asshole had heard the others call me Shura.

The nametag, I guess. Alexander right there on my coveralls and the familiarity just took over.

"I know you did, didn't you?" the man I knew as Aleksei continued. "It's not like you could avoid it, now could you?" He walked around my little lab bench, one hand out for the edge, the other wiggling the barrel of the gun.

The one he'd used on Yevgeni. Yeah, I'd heard. "I'll push this into your ass, fire it. And then I'll use the knife to make another hole and do it again."

He'd made his way up from there. One hole at a time, until the inevitable shot through the back of poor Yev's mouth had, I hoped, put him out of this world's misery.

And now Asshole Aleksei had backed me into a corner of my own lab. "Nowhere to run now, Sasha."

Nowhere to run.

****

There's no room for it. We floated there, kilometers above Venera's surface, drifting along wherever the winds took us. And did they take us? I'd spent my first few months writing a log, one of my own rather than the constant stream of data the computers minded.

I'd stopped, but the numbers, hundreds of kilometers per hour... but I couldn't feel it. Our platform sat in one of the great streams, almost as far above the storms as they are above the surface. We rode that great river around Venera. The greatest carnival ride in the solar system.

Yevgeni, me, Viktor, the permanent crew. I minded the spectrometers and the other indirect measures. Yev and Vik worked with the drones, a constant stream of remotes back and forth between here and forever. Rocks, metals, gas samples falling and rising.

And we all wrangled the data, comparing and mining and formatting it so that all those following along back home could get their own updates in a timely manner.

"I'm going to put you on TV someday, Shura."

"Fuck off, Viktor. Cameras are for pretty professors defending their funding."

"You don't think this shit costs money?"

I know it costs money.

We'd just finished our turnaround. Every eighteen months or so, a crew flies out from Earth, parks a warehouse full of exotic metal at the orbital station, and then descends to replace all of the pipes and other bits that have corroded in Venera's atmosphere since the last time they came.

Which used to be every six months. When Yev first started. But he'd slowly replaced all the cheaper, milder steels they'd used at startup. "Cheap bastards," he muttered every time he found a piece of carbon steel.

"They never expected the place to still be running, Yev."

"Dumb fuckers," he would further retort.

This was my third turnaround. I'd started the first one by asking one of the welders why she did it. "Pay's good."

"And?"

She shrugged over her evening vodka, the one or two shots we allow ourselves during weeknights. "Gravity helps."

Which I could see. I could also see, once I'd spent a few minutes with others who made the trip regularly, that sending money home and not having to put up with the other nonsense made up a big part of the rest of the reason, for almost all of them. Lada, Karine, Oleg and Pasha, them I came to know as they cycled through every year and a half.

Aleksei, and another asshole named Karl, they didn't fit. Not even with the other one-timers they'd appeared with this last turnaround. They didn't play chess with anyone other than each other. They laughed and sang on Saturday nights, when everyone who wanted a half-liter instead of just a shot or two got one.

We all sang. But the two assholes sang and laughed and clapped hands on backs and shoulders and asked "Why don't you lift your knees and dance?" without starting the dancing.

Usually, when they finished the main work, then Yev and Vik and I would fan out over the platform, testing and looking and watching.

I can't really listen. Yev can, could, he'd rest his helmet on a pipe and ear on the inside of his helmet and listen for rushing air or steam. That kills my neck for nothing, I can't tell the difference between a leak and the sound of my own breath inside the helmet.

Still, the crews got a couple days break, trashing our little cafeteria while we hunted down the little jobs that they didn't quite finish. The four regulars, they're good, but the one-timers, you never know.

"Why don't you just send them back to the station and fix it yourself?" I asked Lada.

"We're dragging their worthless hides to Luna and Mars next, Shura. Maybe they learn something this way."

Oleg, Lada's fitter and second in command of the little crew, just shook his head at that one. "She knows better. But she always hopes."

"It worked on you," she pointed out.

He grinned through the gap in his teeth. "Yeah, I was dumb enough to stick around though! These fuckers are smart enough to step off at Zemlya orbit and never come back!"

The orbit shuttle fits only a handful at a time, with gear. So Aleksei and Karl decided to stay behind and wait for the second trip, once Viktor had signed off on the work.

I didn't hear. Viktor, I mean. Which probably means Karl did for him on his way to the shuttle. Viktor had gone out for a check on his drones, back to business as soon as the visitors left.

Aleksei started with Yevgeni. In the control room. I'd come to the lab. Because I couldn't think. And now here I was, staring at the barrel of the gun. "He fucked you, didn't he?"

That's what jumped into my mind. Where'd Karl go? And it answered itself.

I saw it in Aleksei's eyes. He turned as soon as the realization that maybe I was right kicked in. The asshole ran to my window, where you could see the shuttle. "How do I... oh," and he punched up the button that opened the connection with the shuttle.

"You're part of it now, Aleksei," Karl said, before Aleksei had a chance. "The company's needs, right?"

Aleksei cursed, then headed for the only option he had. The airlock and the suits that hung there.

I lay there on the floor, too stunned to move. Until the klaxon over the lock bleeped, telling me it had opened to the outer world. I scrambled for the control room, stumbling over Yevgeni's body on my way to the computer. "Orbit, Orbit, mayday mayday."

"Hello, Shura."

Lada answered my call. It should have been one of the Americans, Rosette Leland. "What did you do to them?"

"Relax, they're safe. 'Life-support system malfunction'. They'll recover as soon as we're safely away from here."

"You sound awfully calm that I'm still alive, Lada. Why?"

"Those two fuckups?" She laughed. "You can't communicate with anyone besides me. And your platform won't last long. We've had weeks to insure that everything goes the way it should."

"Why, though?"

Lada shrugged. "Money. Yevgeni and Viktor, and now you, have been here eighteen years without a return. The company could no longer sustain the investment." Lada shrugged. "But the insurance company doesn't need to know that part of it."

The platform shuddered as the shuttle fired away.

I glanced at it through the window. And grinned. Aleksei clung to the outside of the capsule. He'd managed to attach himself with a grapple. The suit would probably protect him on lift. "Looks like you get to figure out how to deal with your two circus freaks now."

"They won't make it. Oleg had a chance to work with the shuttle as well."

I watched the track until it disappeared just over a minute later. "And me?"

"I've been practicing for the cameras, Shura." And then Lada closed the connection.

The computer showed nothing but a "Connecting..." icon after that. Once I'd absorbed that, I made my way to the airlock and my own suit. At least I'd been too short and skinny for the asshole to take that.

I didn't have time to sit and wait. Whatever Lada and Oleg and the others had done, I couldn't trust the platform, home that it had been. Somewhere, time was ticking.

Yevgeni would no more have allowed them to work on the escape craft than he'd have allowed them to wash his socks. "Some things you don't leave to outsiders, Shura," he'd told me after I'd checked out on the little rocket. "We order parts as we need. In batches of three. And we do the work."

Circuits. Fuels, those we cycled on a weekly basis. Metals thickness, signs of corrosion. All three of us, together and separately. The escape craft, three little rockets, I knew them as well as, maybe better than I knew my lab.

****

The capsule has its own connection with the planetary communications network.

I waited until they'd cleared orbit. Each minute a little more terror. I rationalized it, told myself that I'd know if they'd planted explosives. Enough to bring down the platform all at once, anyway. They would only have been able to use small doses, little pieces here and there and let gravity and the winds do the rest.

So I waited until they were gone. I ran back inside only to get a little more food, freeze dried nasty but I'd live. My chess board, my tablet.

Then back into the rocket.

In theory, the escape craft had been meant just to get us to orbit. But eighteen years under Yevgeni's care, along with a few improvements he'd snuck into requisitions, meant I had a few more options than that.

Really, only one.

I drift at L1, waiting. There's regular traffic here every few weeks. I only have to make it one week before the next scheduled maintenance and observation trip. An Australian crew.

Anonymous. Unconnected to the company in any way that I know of. I don't know what I'll ask them to write in their logs. Or where I'll run to. They've already proven how far they'll reach. All I can do is hope that keeping my mouth shut and head down will give me space to live.

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Fair Warning (Reprise because of Blogger's formatting)

Normally, I have about as much patience with content labels as did Frank Zappa. That said, I find I need to make an exception here.

In the story immediately below, Saying Prayers, I tell a tale based, in part, on those who work the sex trade. Parts of their stories deal in turn, as best my poor skills can handle, with the interpersonal violence that is so unfortunately common in that world.

First, know this: if you need to, skip it.

Second, if you're struggling, there's someone out there who can help. I know trust is hard to come by, but when you're ready, look in odd places and you'll find someone there waiting.

Finally, for all of my dear readers: I'm always trying to get better as a writer. Some days I'm ok, some days I don't know what I did other than peck away at the keys. I can't, won't, ever promise anything but that I've done my best with the story of the moment. I wish only that you find something to take with you, from this story and those that follow. mkd

Saying Prayers

Life is supposed by certain philosophers to be a collection of moments. Little bubbles of time, interconnected mostly by our selves.

In times of distance, rich in the luxury of abstraction, this description sounds like something you might hold in your hand and gaze into. Bubbles, each of them holding your days and the deeds you did there. The emotions you felt. The ideas you dreamt of, the hopes you longed for.

But in the moment, when the days don't flow so much as they stumble together, and you can only hang on by white knuckle and torn fingernail? I suspect that no matter how high we fly, no matter where our futures take us we will still very much be human.

We'll always have days, dear reader, like the one Rhonda O'Neil has in this week's story. This is a story of a day where Rhonda moves from bubble to bubble, moment to moment, tying knots in her rope so that she might hang on just a little longer and then...

Saying Prayers by M. K. Dreysen

Ilya Young walked through the Tiger like he owned the place. Chest out, smile big, son you're doing good and feel like it act.

And all things flow to those who act and feel it, right? And so they did for Ilya. When he stalked the Tiger he ruled a domain that he didn't own.

Everyone who had any sense knew it. Rhonda O'Neil knew it. Or at least acknowledged facts she couldn't change.

"Wait, why's your nose bleeding?" Bella Tan asked.

Rhonda just looked at the youngster. And let the blood drops linger where they threatened to fall.

Bella turned back to the show. Ilya had followed Rhonda down from the upstairs room, slow and proud and strutting. His strides and rhythm had carried him over to a table in the back corner.

Empty, or at least it emptied for Ilya. Others would join him, Rhonda knew. Hell, Bella would be running for that corner soon enough.

"Hey Missy."

"Hey yourself. Need something?"

"Scotch, a double, water on the side."

Missy turned, frowned. "That bad?"

Rhonda shrugged, then licked at the corner of her mouth. Winced, from the split and the blood there. "Not as bad as it could have been."

"I think I'll go on over there and let him buy me a drink," Bella finally said.

Rhonda wiped the blood on the back of her hand. She didn't look at Bella's hesitant imitation of Ilya's self-conscious stroll to the back corner.

****

Higher up on Station, someone else for whom Ilya Young held certain... meaning... wanted to crawl under her own version of a rock. "Gwen, how'd you let it get this bad?"

Gwen Charle stood and faced the music. She'd known it was coming. Well, that there would be a moment of reckoning, one way or another.

She'd rather hoped that the Mars Colony, the one the Station sponsors had backed, would have been farther along. That had been her plan.

Ok, not a plan, so much as a dream. When the accountants showed up with their questions, before they called in the bigger guns... that's what Gwen had pictured in her mind.

Accountants, exit south for dirt. Gwen Charle, exit north for red dirt. Eventually. Only, the Mars Colonists hadn't quite held up their end of the bargain.

Not enough for a lady who'd become dreadfully accustomed to comfort, you see. And the little extras, like Ilya's cash flow. The good wines, the fine art, the little tastes of quality drugs when Gwen felt the urge.

The girls Ilya sent to deliver these things, and...

Gwen put the dream and the memories of the good times aside. Now was not good times, now was not a red dirt golf course and some little beer wench in a high high skirt to make dirty comments to on the back nine.

Now was Phil Ord and a dressing down.

If Gwen was lucky. "I of course take full responsibility."

Phil smirked. "Well isn't that nice of you. You lose our employers how many billions of dollars over the past three years, and you're all ready set go to take 'full' 'responsibility' for it." Phil shook his head. "Like it's business school or something."

Gwen interrupted before her boss could get too far down that road. "I know how stupid it sounds. This ain't white shoes business, Phil, I know that. But what else am I gonna do?"

Other than maybe have booked some tickets for anywhere else but here? Too late, Gwen, too late.

Phil stopped, then unwound the cap from his bottle of water, sipped, put it back. Gwen made sure the bottled water followed Phil whenever he came up for a visit, she knew how the air on Station played hell with his sinuses.

"Trying to survive, Gwen? Only way that works is if you've got an idea for where to make the money before I get back to 9.8. And they'll be keeping an eye on you forever after. Bad place to be."

"Better than where I sit now."

"Granted." He turned, in Gwen's own chair, and watched the blue marble rotate. "Think you can work a little magic in the interest of keeping alive and looking, Gwen?"

I'd damned well better, she thought. "Yeah, I'll come up with something," Gwen Charle said.

****

Missy knocked at the door.

Softly. They'd been in there too long, but Ilya... didn't react well to folks checking on him. Even when they worked for him. Or maybe that was especially.

Nobody said anything. Missy closed her eyes briefly, then leaned her head against the door and knuckled it again.

Nothing more, so it was time for the big sigh and the casual push with her foot.

And then the "Oh, Christ, Bella what..." when she saw the blood.

And Ilya Young's arms dangling over the end of the bed.

****

Rhonda volunteered for the weekly run upstairs. Supposedly it was Bella's turn, but she was otherwise indisposed.

Rhonda waited to smile until she'd cleared the Tiger and the deck it sat on. Ilya wasn't coming back, but the cameras never stopped and one of his friends stood to inherit. But when Rhonda did feel confident enough to smile, she did so fully and completely.

Hands in the air, laugh to the skies, yell and scream and not give a goddamn what anybody thought of it smile.

And then she put it away. Well, except for a little hint that followed her all the way to Gwen Charle's office. "Hey, Miss..."

No blood, and Rhonda's mind might have preferred blood to what she saw on Gwen Charle's computer screens.

"You know what the real tragedy of the Titanic was, don't you?" Gwen Charle said.

"No life boats," Rhonda replied.

"Not enough, anyway. They fixed that, after. From then on, any damned soul on ship had a seat on a lifeboat."

Gwen didn't turn, not even when Rhonda stepped up to her with the bottle, and a couple of other things.

She focused on the trajectory mapped out on the screen. "Nobody can clear a few billion in days. Well, nobody I know. Only way to clear the books is put her in the drink."

Rhonda wanted to snort. Like the Station's sponsors were the neat sort, the kind who kept up to date with their insurance payments. Or even had insurance. The real kind, rather than the storefront in Queens that made them look good on paper.

Rhonda waited until she knew Gwen wasn't violent to hit the button on her cell phone. The one she almost never used; it summoned the cops.

And recorded the conversation.

****

Rhonda sat at the Tiger's bar and watched false dawn rise on the screens. The little special effect that helped clear the place once a day.

She rolled a glass with a last sip of very old Laphroaig between her hands. "Long day?" she asked Missy.

The bartender finished wiping the bar, then eyed the chairs, stacked, and the floor, clean. "We've had worse."

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Fair Warning

Normally, I have about as much patience with content labels as did Frank Zappa. That said, I find I need to make an exception here.

In tomorrow's story, I tell a tale based, in part, on those who work the sex trade. Parts of their stories deal in turn, as best my poor skills can handle, with the interpersonal violence that is so unfortunately common in that world.

First, know this: if you need to, skip it.

Second, if you're struggling, there's someone out there who can help. I know trust is hard to come by, but when you're ready, look in odd places and you'll find someone there waiting.

Finally, for all of my dear readers: I'm always trying to get better as a writer. Some days I'm ok, some days I don't know what I did other than peck away at the keys. I can't, won't, ever promise anything but that I've done my best with the story of the moment. I wish only that you find something to take with you, from this story and those that follow. mkd

Friday, May 7, 2021

*cough*

ahem. (fully) vaccinated, and it feels so good... (with apologies to all and sundry) (I regret nothing...)

Thursday, May 6, 2021

Contemptible Enemies - A Story of Pikka The Immaterial

Some time back, dear reader, I pointed out that hereabouts, we do happily host friends, family, and honorable enemies.

That said, we do have some experience of the less than honorable kind. Of enemy, I mean.

And, more to the point, so does Pikka the Immaterial. If you have followed Pikka's adventures, then you might recall the sorcerer named Yetimina Eb Zhedrin. And, remembering, you may well have wondered at her fate.

Like you, dear reader, I too have been curious over Yetimina's path through the world. In this week's story, I find that I may show you that Yetimina has become one example of those whom Pikka discovers to be...

Contemptible Enemies - A Story of Pikka the Immaterial by M. K. Dreysen

Pikka dangled between stones and a pit. Almost every drop of blood had been drawn from her body, through tiny incisions, to form the thorny fetters which bound her there.

She felt them, the bindings. They burned with the energies flowing from the pit. The wizard had been turned into a conduit.

The sorcerer who had bound her thus paced the stone circumference of the pit. "Yes," Yetimina Eb Zhedrin said to herself. And to her her prisoner. "Of course."

Pikka felt the energies; she heard nothing. She maintained her self within a void. And within that bleak opening into her mind, Pikka whispered a question. 'Pride?'

But no.

"This is much more satisfactory," Yetimina said. "Much more controlled."

And perhaps more entertaining. But Yetimina didn't go so far as to say that. She simply enjoyed the slow burning flow, and left the joys of lording her creation over her once-peers for later.

When the pit was safely closed. And the bridge she had formed to the netherworld burned to cinders.

'Accomplishment?'

"She is stronger than I would have dared hope," Yetimina said. "But then, perhaps one must be to make up for such poor beginnings."

'Wealth?' Pikka almost chuckled at that one. But she had room in her voidspace for only the questions. Humor must needs wait its turn.

Above, the barbed wires disappeared into the stones, to then appear within a small room above, where they continued upwards to the next level. And the next after, room, stone, room, stone, until at last the wires of blood found the roof. Here, they wound themselves into a rusted lightning rod.

In this moment, the lightning rod served as transmitter, rather than receiver. Lightning blasted from its tip into the dawn sky.

Blood-tinged. Fragrant of ozone and burning flesh. The forces called thus stroked across the dawn with the minimal subtlety of the search for power.

Below... below lay only darkness. Whatever the blood-drawn connected to left traces only in the lightning above.

And the terrible slow tearing of Pikka's flesh.

'Mastery?'

Pikka felt her questions fading. Did this mean that the time for questions had gone? Or that her strength to ask them had failed at last?

'Knowledge?'

Satisfied that her creation worked, and that the heart of it remained firmly bound, Yetimina hurried to the roof and the lightning rod. "Here, here," she muttered.

Here rose the purpose of her creation. All below was merely function. "Ah my dream."

She stood just within the door, unwilling to offer herself as a target and trusting in her wards. The forces she'd channeled and released ignored her.

Yetimina's purpose required exquisite timing, and luck. Luck for Pikka to survive long enough for the summoned forces to exhaust themselves.

For when they were exhausted, when, as Yetimina observed with some glee, they had poured themselves into the sky and found no connection only discharge... when they had allowed the idea of freedom to drain all that the eons of separation and frustration had generated... the scarlet lightning bolts shrank in length and breadth.

Until only a handful, a mad bouquet just about small enough to form a centerpiece at her table coalesced above the lightning rod's tip. Observing this with a smile that crept out of her iron control, Yetimina took a single step forward.

And then another.

'...'

Below, one more question rose unvoiced within Pikka's mind. Lifted itself.

And was answered. Not verbally, perhaps, not even as a feeling, other than maybe a combination of a last wavefront of energy from below, the last gash of the thorns tearing themselves free of her flesh.

And an opening. From the empty space where her mind had gone, to the last atom of her blood, the last molecule of iron within it.

And a blossom of energy.

Yetimina strode now across the rooftop, confidence lending her pace and distance. The bouquet, her target for this whole endeavor, had shrunk now to the size of her doubled fists.

Just a little larger than the quartz bottle she now brought from within her robes. "Ah, beauty, yes," Yetimina purred. "Just a..."

Just a breath, a moment. Long enough for Yetimina to tip the quartz lip into the flow of energy, for that flow to fill the bottle.

And, in the space below, for the husk of what had once been a human body to burst into a glitter of fragmented memories.

****

The quartz bottle, tinted pink and purple with what it contained, went onto a shelf in Yetimina's study. Between the journal of the last sorcerer-king of a forgotten kingdom and the notes of her first and only apprentice. There, for some weeks, Yetimina admired the beauty of her creation.

That's how long it took for Yetimina to realize that something was disturbing her sleep. Before, she had routinely slept through, accompanied or not.

After the quartz dream found its way to her shelf, though, Yetimina found that she rarely made it more than a couple of hours in deep sleep, before waking to stare at the ceiling.

After a few more weeks of troubled mornings and sniping at the servants, Yetimina found a... a whisper disturbing her rest.

She set aside any thought that the lack of sleep had unhinged her, and tracked down the whisper.

To the bottle on her shelf.

Yetimina passed a few days with this new knowledge before proceeding with the matter. She listened to the faint sibilance for those hours; it followed her at the faintest of levels wherever she went.

Only growing stronger when Yetimina actually sat, still, directly in front of the quartz.

For a few days. Days, then hours. Listening. Until Yetimina at last distinguished words. 'Pride. Knowledge. Accomplishment. ...'

And, where a sorcerer had settled herself to sit and listen to the quartz bottle that whispered and disturbed, and then closed her eyes to hear what that bottle had to say...

a wizard opened her eyes. Shuddered in release, and from the built up tension of a single word.

Slowly, her features and body shaped themselves to their new owner.

****

Some many months later, Pikka walked the rail of an ocean-going vessel beneath a blood red moon. Satisfied with the moment, or perhaps just that this moment was the first one she'd found where the decks were truly empty, Pikka the wizard cast a quartz bottle onto the placid ocean depths.

The ship continued, the sails giving it just enough velocity to pull ahead of the bottle and the current.

Some few hours after the vessel disappeared over the horizon, the bottle, dense with whatever it carried, sank beneath the waves.