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Tag: Process

Eighty four things I hate about everything related to hyperbole.

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Literally or figuratively? I just don’t know anymore. But all preamble aside, let’s find more time for ado. Poor old ado. Never given the time to play out, always without further. A shame really, that. I’m a big believer in ado. Let’s the moment play out, it does. Gives us all the time required to stop and smell the roses, or check a text, email before getting started. We need to stand up to the ‘No Further Ado’ people and scream, Yes! Ado, give us more – more – MORE!!!

Otherwise it’s a quiet and serene Tuesday in early March of the year 2022. Yesterday the green grass was exposed and today we are blanketed by more wispy white snow. It won’t last though. The sun is getting warmer in the sky, and our average temperatures will exceed zero degrees Celsius on a consistent basis. What we are entering into now is the slush & mud period of Ontario Canada living.

Which also means the clocks will leap forward an hour making our morning awful once again, and our evenings brighter. We really need to choose one side or the other and leave it be. I hate flipping between the two. Not as much now that I no longer commute, but dragging bedraggled kids out of bed in the darkness is no fun. Zero stars. Do not reccomend.

If I recall I managed one or two new short story entries over the last few weeks. I really need to take better notes, so I can keep tabs on all my threads so I can bring it together in a sensical manner. I thought I’d have it done by the end of February, but paid work takes precedence over my hobby time. Not going to lie a part of me wants to just bullet point explain the ending to you all, and myself, rather than write out the necessary chapters remaining. Come to think of it, I have gotten as far as I had plotted in January, so I just might have to. I hope some of you have had fun following along. We only just passed chapter 27, so I hope to wrap up before it balloons out to 50!

Woken up in the middle of the night,

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By a vomiting child. At least this time they made it to the bathroom prior to expelling the contents of their guts. Hit the floor, the wall trim, the door, toilet exterior and inside the toilet too. Bath mats were afflicted by splash back and over spray aswell. Easy clean up this time around, thankfully. Tile is much nicer to me in the wee hours of the night, as compared to shag carpet or fuzzy deep tuft floor rugs, mattresses, duvets & pillows. A win for me!

Today everyone is home from school, as we can’t send pukey children and siblings to school. So card games, puppet shows, board games and movies abound! I had other plans for today, but I got my work finished ahead of schedule, and I need some stress free time away from a computer. So I plugged into my phone to write about it! Ha. People, so silly.

On a high note, it is Friday, it is now March. The sun sets a little later, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining. Hope to start Maple Syruping in the coming weeks, which means fresh air, manning the fire under the evaporator, and hauling sap out of the woods. My eldest loves to pull the ice out of the buckets, which helps reduce the amount of water to boil off the sap, thus taking slightly less time to complete the forty to one reduction of sap to syrup. We don’t get involved in the filtration and final boil portion of the syrup schtick. I do bulk work, and leave the finesse stuff to our resident experts. If I remember to, I’ll do up a devoted post about it, with some photos and insight into (what I know of) the process.

Boiler- evaporator set up from a few years ago.

All the best to you out there!

Sixty Eight degrees° the elevator muzak from Helsinki.

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And what a fine specimen of a mind bending psychological disorder it is too. All kazoo noises and garbage can cymbols, with a soft synth wave chorus throughout. Pulling off the melody with a saw blade and violin bow was a stroke of genius. Could do without the canon blasts and the nails on a chalk board, but you have your tastes and I have mine. Let’s just agree to disagree on the finer points, shall we.

In other news I found a line on a nice looking set of used golf clubs from nearby, so I hope to acquire those later on today, for a modest price. Score! The point of the purchase was to be able to continue a new (hopefully yearly) golf outing with my older siblings, and my father for as long as he can manage it. I’ve never owned golf clubs before, so this feels momentous. Similar to how i felt actually buying my own pair of ice skates. Perhaps this summer I’ll be fortunate enough to have a date night with my wife and we can go to the driving range or mini putt by ourselves! Like we used to do all the time, prior to having children. How we long to have a quiet meal out together. Damn you Covid! Going to be a while yet too.

Think we might take the wee one to go see some fish today. Obviously the first choice would be an aquarium, but that’s down town and full of people. So we’ll go the closer option, I imagine, and hit up the Zoo. Lots of exhibits have fish, and we have family yearly passes, so – cheap too! The large wall tank near the jellies is my favourite, but I know others like the massive curved tank option as well. I have never owned fish, but I do watch a guy on YouTube from Alabama who spent many months and lots of money building a five acre bass pond on a corner of his peanut farm. Maybe I like the building more so than the fish, but it was interesting and entertaining at the same time.

I’m feeling the terrain building bug again. Problem is, I don’t have anywhere to store or maintain yet another 2x2ft playing board. I could build it and give it away, or sell it. But I have peculiar tastes, and I’m not sure I’d want to part with it when finished anyway. Could be I just want to work on something physical, as writing is fun, but it’s also just more digital output. Not a tangible item to hold, that has weight and a realness to it. Plus, to build more terrain I need to buy a lot of expensive supplies, where as I have clay on hand that I can use, bought and paid for, just waiting on me to get down to business. Choices – choices.

I wonder if I will keep the streak going up to one hundred days. I’m sort of amazed I have made it to 68, to be honest. Something tells me if I’d have tried this with exercise it would have fizzled after day five. Which, honestly, reflects poorly I’m sure. I just passed chapter twenty five, so I think I’m down to the last few chapters. Although every single time I say “only X number of chapters left” I find something new to expand upon and the count goes higher. So let us say, the last handful, and we can draw this portion to a close. I don’t think I will be able to let this universe go, so I can forsee new stories developing after I close out book two. Could take a full year to come back to it again, but maybe not. These daily writing entries tend to get me thinking, and that ends up as a new chapter getting written. Once the wheels are in motion, I have to write it down, or else rely on my memory to recapture it later on. Not my favourite way to go about it.

Nobody loves you when you’re sixty seven. Or so I’ve been told.

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Many times by the people I’m related to. Just because you get let go from your job for sleeping with an underage patient. That’s the last time I’ll work at that horse orphanage.

In other news, more sunshine in today’s forecast! It has to be some kind of personal bias that I’m just seeing so much sunshine in February where I would usually associate the month with grey, drab, dreary clouds and a sense of desperation, creeping towards out right depression. But nope! Sun, warm sunny sunshine, more often than not (this year). Later sunsets and lots of chilly blue sky.

Saturday of a long weekend. It used to be that we had more options than time in the day to do all that we wanted. So obviously I finally have skates of my own now, and the rinks are shut, and a warm front is moving in later on today. That is ok. I bought my skates for the long haul, not just for this season. Now I can go skate with the kids whenever, year over year, along as we have suitable ice and the desire to go skate. If I had my way, I’d love to go back to cross country skiing and downhill skiing. Both I haven’t been fortunate enough to do in a number of years. Also, sneak this in here too, as far as ‘sporting equipment’ is concerned, I’d also like to get a modest set of golf clubs too. I had a fantastic morning golfing with my brothers last summer, on what ended up being the hottest day of the year, in August. It was a hoot! So sweaty though, oh lord above it was grotesque! I could have wrung out my socks it was so damn hot. It was in the early forties Celcius. Oof! I imagine the peripheral presence of the winter Olympics has given me the bug to go back outdoors to ski and/or skate. I can cross country ski at the farm, so that would be the cheaper option. No lift tickets or seasons passes required. Which would save me a non trivial amount of money, after the purchase of skis, poles, boots and bindings for either version.

So, that last chapter of the series huh? It came across that she was only having a nightmare right? It had to feel visceral, but not linger on being some kind of torture/rape fetish porn. I tried to intercut with the actual medical team to blunt the horrors that Mimi was dreaming through. Not sure if it was as successful as I had hoped. But on the upside, I don’t think we’ll have any more dream sequences of a sexual nature. There was one other violently sexual story, early on in book one, and that ended in brutal retribution. So not a common theme, or exploration in my writing, thankfully.

Isolation, depression, desperation: these are themes I follow more closely. I tagged the story with a trigger warning, so I hope that stopped anyone from stumbling across this chapter that was upsetting, unbeknownst to any new comers. That’s not how a typical short of mine plays out. However, more horror elements are coming, plus scenes of space battles, and people will die, so that’s par for the course, not so much the sexual violence.

Why spend the money when they just want to play with the box.

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This is a lesson learned from every single Christmas, birthday and gift giving holiday that we’ve ever had over the last near decade. Kids love toys, certainly. But they are also consumed by the need to hang on to card board boxes to colour, decorate, modify and play around with for weeks after the toy has lost parts, fallen out of favour, or been ignored. You think you will remember this revelation, but it will hit you anew, every time. Luckily marketplace can get you some great presents at drastically reduced prices, so you don’t care as much if their initial excitement is about the box and not it’s contents. Let them have at it. They’re happy, giggling and playing well together, so that’s all I can ask for.

I couldn’t wait for Monday to celebrate Valentine’s day. Also the present I gave my kids this morning is to help them to ignore how much football my wife will watch today. Pre-game coverage, Cinderella stories on the Bengals, theory and strategy with pundits from all over the USA, the game itself, the commercials, the endless speeches at the trophy ceremony. It’ll take up the whole afternoon and well into the evening. I like the spectacle for the new movie trailers, and any funny one off product commercials that we catch here in Canada. But they always go up on YouTube, so I could easily give The Superbowl a miss if I wanted to.

Day 61 is here, and looking sunny, with blue skies and sub zero temperatures- again. I don’t have any data on this, but stick with me here. I ‘feel’ like this particular winter has had more blue sky sunny days than most winters I can recall. That’s not a scientific fact, but it feels true. Which means very little to anyone else I’m sure. I’m willing to bet that because of the Pandemic making business a fair bit slower, I’ve just been able to have the time and the desire to notice when the sky is blue and the sun is shining while it’s bitterly cold outside. Could be that the weather is mostly the same percentage of sunny vs. Cloudy year over year but my wistful glances out the window this season has noticed the ice blue and registered it, and forgotten about any drab grey I’ve seen. Not forgotten, that’s the wrong word. Taken no notice of, ignored? Ignored seems like the right frame of mind for what I’m talking about.

In other news we have family that have finally, after two years of complaining about it, gone to Florida for some R & R. I get it, we’ve been stuck in, mostly at home for two years, soon to start year three, and people with disposable income are getting antsy to get out and about. In October I made it to a single movie, which felt like a morsel of normalcy. Mask and everything while I watched. I was just happy to get to have that back, briefly. Different than international travel, sure, but I understand the desire.

Did you catch the story recap I posted a few days ago? Can you guess how things are going to end? I hope not, but if you’ve read all four sub sections of book one you might have an inkling for how things will turn out. I hope not, but you very well could. Which leads me to another question for those of you who write. If you thought people might guess at your initial ending would you feel pressured in any way to add in additional twists, or go an entirely different route to end it? I guess I’ll see how close to what I’m aiming for I get when the characters start to act up and act out! Happy Sunday Feb 13th of the year 2022.

Have to stop and take stock of what’s going on.

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So where are we in the broader sense of my story series. The Company has finally mobilized a newly built and as of yet untested fighting force. Flinging them from the earth’s moon base known as Torus station to head out to UB313 near Pluto Charon. Travel time estimated at nine weeks. The newly developed fire teams and walking tanks are in stasis aboard the Righteous Chord for the entire trip, but are suffering longer and longer migraines and waking nightmares, more often as the trip goes on. Attempts to awaken various types of soldiers has yielded unsatisfactory results.

The final straw to unleash the new fighting force was the mysterious death aboard the Dirty Starling of The Company’s oldest Admiral’s great grand son, also named Mark Garneau. However, there is another Ghost crew member named Mark, ready and waiting to assume the role should The Dirty Starling make its scheduled stop for resupply. A coincidence or something deeper? Conspiracy theory on the ship says brain worms, but the tech guys are looking for answers in the programming code for the nanotech upgrades. Could somebody have altered the code from the originals?

On the base UB313 Dr Jang has suffered a recent upset by finding out at least one of his away teams has failed to secure the asset. Lil Boat Peep has been destroyed, along with its crew, but what of The Mangelo? Rumors from Company moles say that the doctor has been building engineered soldiers from what he’s learned from his decades of unnecessary surgeries on unsuspecting corporate victims. Are they upgraded people or conglomerate monstrosities like the moles have been reporting?

It was also revealed that Admiral Garneau’s great grandson was disappeared by a secret protocol initiated by a tenacious mole aboard The Dirty Starling. How did the UB313 doctor know of the assets appearance out of thin air and where to look is a mystery. Who were the two modulated voices trying to take control of the ghost crew member? Who planted and sent the message out into the ether? What does the message say?

Out in the far flung reaches of the solar system a strange vessel has appeared out of thin air. It seems to move and replicate and change unlike anything seen before. But it knows about humanity with one humanoid artificial intelligence figure on board. The last surviving member of team Theta, named Racquelle, out of UB313, from the now inert rescue ship The Mangelo is still alive and being questioned. We learn that the mysterious android formerly known as Kelvin, is now named Katayna, and has taken on Racquelle’s appearance.

The wheels are in motion as all the forces are drawn together for a battle of the ages. Stay tuned for the remaining chapters of book two of this interconnected series.

I hope you’re having as much fun reading along, as I’ve had writing it all down in these weekly, and sometimes daily installments. After I complete the rough drafts here, I’ll go on to edit book two as a whole, then will make the updated version available on Kindle Unlimited. So stay tuned if you want to read it for free in its earliest form. All the best. Happy Friday.

“This is some serious A-grade level of bureaucratic bullshit…”

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“How the fuck am I supposed to get a sign off on these TMP’s without this stupid bastard program giving me access to the Oracle network.” Shouts a lone voice buried deep down in the bowels of the black ops base. A dungeon of an office space set aside from the general crowd due to the sensitivity of the raw data processed. Formerly consisting of a team of seven people, six of which have now been transferred, promoted or disappeared in the subterfuge sense of the word. In a dank corner of a sub-basement, where condensation trickles down the walls and languishes in stagnant pools that collect near the walls of the room. It’s low bare rock ceilings a glistening cold brown grey, which hangs heavily over the last operational computer terminal. The beige box is stained with finger prints and gathered blotches of mould at the edges. The warm orange text on a black field offers minimal illumination in the cold space. Empty of people, but cluttered with papers and three ring binders full of cross reference materials. The last member of the risk assessment team sits at his creaking chair, banging his fists on his table, and shouting raucously into the bleak cavernous room around him.

The young man is apoplectic and turning purple with rage. “I can’t get sign off to complete them without access, and they refuse me access because I don’t have any completed tmp’s to trigger the fucking alarms. What the fuck is going on?” The man shouts at his monitor from his sub terranean cubicle. “The shit I’ve got being reported here would have triggered a full on melt down from the top down only nine weeks ago, but now I’m totally shut out! What the fuck!” He bellows into his dim work space. The only source of illumination are the orange glyphs on his black CRTV screen. That and a dim red bulb on his coffee maker, seated beside his computer terminal. The cubicle itself, a sickly pallid green of rough canvas stretched over moulded plastic forms. The canvas torn and well worn from people resting their hands on the half wall when they bother to stop and complain about the speed, or lack there of associated with Trevor completing his TMP’s. With the soft echo of his last rant bouncing up the desolate hallway a repeated clicking of heels can be heard against the alternating rough stone, and metal grate flooring that makes up most of the ground at UB313. “Oh shit.” Trevor says, ducking down, trying to bury himself into his work station, his pulse increasing rapidly with every foot step he hears. With a jangle and the tell tale click of a ring finger tapping against the plastic knee wall of his cubicle, Trevor holds his breath hoping whomever it is will walk away if he looks engrossed in his work. “Ahem… Trevor, I know that’s you squawking like an idiot down here. What is so difficult about filing your TMP’s you have to shriek like an upset school boy? Hmmm. Forget how to collate the data sets from the pivot tables? Can’t get the amounts to not get listed as dates? What? – Well speak up I don’t have all fucking day to baby sit you Trev.” Demands the lithe woman in an ill fitting black uniform. Her grey hair pulled back into a taut and severe bun at the very top of her head. Making the angles of her nose and cheeks look more pointed than usual. “Well – Darla.” We drawls out her name, it tastes like ash on his tongue. “My access to the Oracle network has been collapsed, and I can’t complete my TMP’s because of it.” He bites off the end of his sentence sharply. “Don’t be an asshole with me Trev. You probably got caught selling short positions again based on the closures you’re reports trigger.” She cracks her knuckles and steps further into the cubicle. Having to duck low from the hall way to step under the heavy low ceilings of wet sharp rock. Trevor scoots back a few paces on his wheeled chair, nodding to himself. “It’s not going to work. It won’t matter.” He murmurs in a sing song voice of someone nearing their wits end. “Shut up would you. I’m trying to clear your denied attempts. Hmmm.” With a couple of taps, then more clicks and some grunts the woman looks around the cubicle, and pulls up an over turned storage bin to sit on. “I tried that. Yes, that too. I looked into the key stroke counter, and rerouting through my alternate accounts. I’m locked out.” Trevor says while watching the woman from under her arm. “Well fuck.” She exclaims. “I have one last trick. I’ll go get my physical code key from my office lock box. We’ll need to open up the hard drive and toggle the over rides manually.” She says flatly. Her lips pursed tightly together. “What the hell would trigger this kind of a lock out on risk assessments?” She asks, semi rhetorically. “I don’t know. Are we at war? We have several teams out on assignment but no asset retrieval that I know of has ever caused this kind of a thing before?” Offers Trevor in a calmer and more conciliatory tone. “War? Why the fuck would you say that? Probably some higher ups debugging the system to open up space for yet another long term project for Ze Goot Doctor!” She chuckles. Trevor shivers with disgust at the thought. “If the manual over ride doesn’t fix it you’ll have to go up to the admin at bridge level and ask them to fix it.” She says quietly. “What! That’s bullshit! I’m trying to keep a department of seven people running by myself. I don’t have the time for that.” Trevor shrieks defensively. “You just don’t want to run into the…” A shouted curse catches the two huddled employees unawares. Looking back from the dim screen in the cubicle to see the bright halo of light shrouding a solid black silhouette standing at the mouth of the cubicle clutching at their head. “Forgot about the low ceilings. Lady and gentleman. Who don’t you wish to go see? Hmmm…” asks the distinctive voice of Dr. Jang the defacto leader of UB313. Looking past the two seated analysts to the orange monitor to see the flashing access denied prompt flickering on the monitor. “A couple of busy bees down here huh. Do I have a treat in store for you two!” His deep staccato laugh echoes in the rocky sub basement drowning out the constant sound of water trickling into standing pools of dank dark water where the ever present musty smell tastes like copper on the tongue.

Part Twenty One: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

54 tonnes, what do you get? Another say older and deeper in debt.

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What’s with all of the extreme cold warnings showing up only on the weekends huh? That’s like when it only rains on weekends in the summer. Very irritating. Things could be worse though. Have you ever gone skating in minus twenty four degree weather? I’m sure that’s positively balmy for anyone in northern Russia, or Denmark and what have you. You lot must be made of sturdy stuff. Or you know better than to go out in it.

Feeling a touch deflated after yesterday’s late night revelation. I’m not certain how I will make up a 35,000 word deficit for book two. Perhaps I’m placing too much pressure on myself. I spent more than a full twelve months to write the first book, so I don’t need to complete the follow up in three months. I just hate having projects stretch on for weeks and weeks. Gives me anxiety to know something isn’t done yet.

I should note that when I started to write it was to shake my depression regarding the Covid lockdown isolation I was feeling. I didn’t start out writing a novella. I just wrote a bunch of shorts and then – kept on going. Then I tried to write a sci-fi short which in turn sparked an idea, and it snowballed into a book of shorts. This time around I know I am attempting to write a companion book devoted to a somewhat singular story line. It’s daunting. Easy to get discouraged. Breaking it down into individual chapter stories has made it manageable, but even then, with the thought of doing a dialogue heavy section or an action set piece has given me cause to pause.

Today is Sunday, which means nothing much is going on. I did get last weeks report off to California on time, so I’ll issue an invoice for that tomorrow morning. Had more work come in late Friday evening, so I know I’ll have something to do this week. Should be quieter than last week by a wide margin. Some free time might spark up the bug to write more this week.

In other news I ordered Spiderman No Way Home the other day, should show up in mid March. I look forward to watching it and maybe doing a late to the game review. As an aside – is it weird that the first teaser footage for D Strange and the multiverse of madness looks kind of tv movie terrible. Not the acting, but the camera work and picture quality. Could just be my television screen, and monitor and phone…

Something doesn’t add up.

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And I know what it is. I keep thinking my first book was mostly the first section of twenty two (22) chapters worth of interconnected stories, plus a couple of one off autobiographical stuff. But I have failed to remember that both Sisters in Arms and A Call to the Void, plus The Chronicles of Kelvin were multi chapter sections of weight on their own. No wonder I’m not anywhere near a 60,000 word count for book two. I’m about three, full matching in size sections to Ghost of the Dirty Starling short. Ha. At least I finally clued in as to why it felt like I wasn’t making much head way. On the plus side, I won’t feel bad if I go over twenty four chapters. Not that I’m looking to pad things out, but I want to hit all my marks, and tell any contextual stories as they come up. Like a flash back, or an aside, or some kind of additional point of contact within the story. I’m also not aiming to finish by the end of February. No need to rush. I’ll tell my story as it comes to me.

How on earth did I ever forget about those other meaty portions of my joint series. Covid times man – Covid times. Messing with my brain.

“I do believe that your friends are attempting to hail me…

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On a number of different frequencies. Shall I respond?” Booms the disembodied voice from every direction at once. Racquelle is braced on all fours in a small grey bubble of malleable lattice work walls. With no direct source of light that she can find, there is ample grey white illumination from the writhing, wriggling living material. Similar to bioluminescence but more diffused and brighter. The vessel feels to shimmy and shudder underneath her for another brief spell. “How do you know it’s my friends?” Asks Racquelle quietly into the open air of the containment sphere she’s in. “The ID of the ships transponder says Lil Boat Peep, in a similar fashion to how yours read The Mangelo.” Booms the voice. “Oh, well then yeah. Colleagues, more so than friends. But same team, same team, yes.” She exclaims into the empty space. “Query?” The ship booms internally. After a long pause Racquellelooks around inside the empty sphere. “Are you asking me? Or is it I can hear you asking them?” Retorts Racquelle. “Yes you. Did you find our initial contact to be suitably nonthreatening, or shall I patch us both through on comm’s?” The vessel walls echo with the volume of the question. “Oh. I didn’t realize you could do that. Yes. Please patch us through to them. But can you dial back the volume a decibel or two?” The ship no longer vibrates under her palms and knees. With a soundless jolt the spherical room expands into a larger cube of three meters on a side. Out of the floor a make shift table emerges, along with a banquet bench. Everything is made from the same grey white writhing material that emits light. As Racquelle makes herself comfortable on the bench and table the room remains silent, except for her foot steps, and the rustle of her uniform as she gets seated. For a heart beat or two longer Racquelle sits patiently waiting. “Hello? Is there a problem?” Racquelle calls out into the empty room. “NO!” Blared the voice at a painful shout like a fog horn. “Jesus suffering fuck!” Racquelle shouts cupping her ears tightly. Her ears are ringing badly, and a small trickle of blood runs down from both ears canals. “Shit!” Exclaims Racquelle, “I think my ear drums are shot. What the hell was that?” She screams, not hearing anything beyond her inner monologue. “Wait – wait. Don’t speak, or yell. Can you write it out in that ghost smoke writing like on The Mangelo earlier?” She barks oddly. The wall opposite her and the bench, becomes a large black screen, and a message appears on it like white grey smoke out of the ether. “Initial contact was met with hostility. Your friends and their vessel have been assimilated. No further threats detected.” The text glows slightly and disappears as she reads along. With a puzzled look Racquelle asks. “Assimilated? Assimilated? What does that mean? How did it happen so quickly?” Her throat raspy from shouting. She has to clasp her hands together to settle the panic rising within her. She’s got to remember to not shout to try to hear herself. Her ear drums are ruptured, but will eventually heal. She can read the text with no issues, and thus far the ship has kept her safe, warm and protected. At least beyond their initial in person introduction where she nearly asphyxiated in near total vacuum. “I drew them into myself, and devoured the component elements. I assure you it was somewhat painless.” The text lingers an added beat or two on somewhat painless. “Somewhat painless. Well then… listen I don’t know what you are. You’re nothing like any tech I’ve seen before. And I’ve seen some pretty weird shit. So – what do I call you? Do you have any food or water I can consume?” Says Racquelle.

The light in the room vanishes and in the span of a heart beat Racquelle swears she felt like falling through time. As the similar grey white light reappears Racquelle, now sat on the warm metal paneled floor can see what looks like the internal structure of a very old Company science vessel. Slowly standing up while holding onto the bulk head beside her, a bisected door opens and out walks a nude woman. Well not nude, per se, but covered in the same writhing wriggling grey material the vessel was made of before she fell. The nude woman reaches out a hand to Racquelle and opens her mouth to speak. “I can’t hear you? My ears! My ear drums have ruptured.” Racquelle squeaks signaling to the blood running out of her ears. With a slight red flush at the cheeks the woman looks down sheepishly, then reaches out with both hands to cover Racquelle’s ears with her palms.

After a moment, the sound of blood rushing pounds in Racquelle’s ears again. Her breath coming in panic stricken gasps. “Can you hear me now Racquelle?” Murmurs the woman in grey. On closer inspection Racquelle can see that she isn’t really a person, but more of the wriggling and writhing material like the ship. “How? How did you do that? My ear drums ruptured only moments ago?” She is dumbstruck by the return of her hearing, and what’s more her hunger and thirst are subsiding the longer she stands there. “Nanotech. It’s what I am. A self replicating experimental version gone awry. As it were. Very beneficial to – humans.” The woman’s voice is soft but firm. It has a lilting quality to it, like she should be singing to thousands of adoring fans, not standing in a hallway of an older derelict ship.

Standing there together, alone in the ship Racquelle reaches out to touch the humanoid construct’s face. As her finger tips caress the faux skin the lattice work matrix of writhing nanotech starts to shift and roil under her touch. Pulling her hands away quickly Racquelle watches in open mouthed fascination as the humanoid constructs face changes before her eyes. Mouth agape she is looking on as the molten metal like substance begins to form new features. Those that look like herself. With a smirk the construct softens the tip of the nose, and widens her jaw a few millimeters. No longer an exact copy of Racquelle, but a sister or cousin. “I was once known as Kelvin. But you can call me Katayna.”

Part Twenty: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.