On and Off

"Have you tried turning it off and then on agai.. . ." Meghan began her monotonous greeting.

"Yes!" A panicked voice interrupted her, "That's when all of this started!"

"Can you explain the problem that your computer is having?" Meghan asked politely, only half listening for a response.

"It's trying to eat my dog!" There was a loud banging and the squeals of an upset canine blared through Meghan's headset.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, can you repeat that." Meghan asked, but she heard only cursing and the sound of commotion in the background. "Hello? Hello Ma'am, are you still there?"

Panting, the woman picked up her phone, "Yes, I'm still here. What do I do about this thing?! I've locked it in the cupboard!"

Meghan was unconvinced that this wasn’t a prank call, “Can you tell me the brand and model of your computer?”

“It’s not an Apple, that’s all I know.” the woman’s voice sounded distant.

“Can you describe the logo on the case?” Meghan began to ask.

“You know I wouldn’t put it past those apple people to do something like this.” The woman was rambling, “but I couldn’t afford one of those, maybe I should have. . .”

Suddenly, there was a crashing sound and a weak scream escaped the woman’s lips as the line went dead.

Meghan stared at her phone. Then she hung up, shook her head, and looked up the customer's phone number, sending a memo to her supervisor.

Clouds

Cloud harvesting was illegal.

But the conditions tonight were unbeatable, and Tamra had an anxious buyer with a bonsai terrarium that was going dry.

The combination of a moonless night with pre storm laiden clouds was as ideal as any harvester was going to find. Tamra was one of the best, she knew the air currents, the police patrol patterns and more importantly, she knew the clouds.

Cloud harvesting was the perfect game of double dutch. You needed to be in the right place, at the right time. Tamra had only been caught once. If she had been an adult she would have been executed, but since she was only 11 she had been grounded and made to live like a Terraist for five years.

Hanging underneath the police landing platform, Tamra made minute adjustments to her glider. Tonight the winds would be fun, unpredictable, but most definitely fun.

The sound of heavy boots came from above her, a change of shifts. Tamra heard the soft landings of the men coming in and watched the dark, almost black silhouettes of men taking off into the night sky.

She waited for fifteen minutes, and then four steady breaths before she prepared to take to the skies. Like a swimmer beginning a race, Tamra coiled her legs and core then simultaneously released the catch to her glider and pushed off into open space.

In an instant the clouds and darkness enfolded her.

Oasis

Persephone had never been so ungrateful in her entire life. She knew she should have been, she had been wandering in the desert for most of a week. She had finally been saved, but maybe not for the best.

She had been slowly staggering towards what she knew intellectually was a mirage of an oasis, it wasn’t the first time, when she stumbled into a helipad. It was a rich, custom helipad exquisitely manicured and decorated.

Persephone remembered finding what she supposed would be a safe haven, and she remembered collapsing in the cool grass, but she didn’t remember anyone coming to take her captive.

Now she found herself in a small room, It was probably a broom closet that was hastily converted into a cell, cool and away from the baking sun. But she was still dying of dehydration and starvation.

Upon waking she had crawled to the door, determined to start pounding and yelling for help, but she was so weak that she could only scratch quietly and croak out moans hoping that someone would hear and help.

Hours passed, or maybe it was days. Persephone had long since given up on time. She knew she should be grateful, someone knew where she was and had “rescued” her, but as time slipped by she grew more panicked.

The door suddenly swung open and Persephone was greeted by the unblinking eyes of a lizard the size of a horse.

Prayer

She was bone weary exhausted. The victory feast had been a welcome distraction, but as the clan leaders droned on she felt the weariness seep into every muscle and every fiber of her body. It was time for a much deserved rest.

As she opened the door to her home her eyes filled with tears of gratitude. One of her slaves must have run on ahead and lit the hearth.

With the door firmly closed behind her, Agatha let the mask slip, she nearly stumbled as she knelt before the warmth emanating from the hearth.

“Thank you,” she murmured, “thank you for the brave who took up arms against us. Please guide their souls to a well deserved rest.”

“Thank you for blessing us with courageous men and women. Guild their souls to great glory and prepare them to fight for the end.”

“Bless the families of those who have lost, who are without husband, brother and son. Help them to feel glory at the sacrifice that was paid for them. Bring peace to their sorrows.”

“May we always strive to fight for your honor, and to bring pride to our clan and people. For thee and we.”

A Agatha paused for a brief moment to cement her prayer in her heart. She made her way to her bed and buried herself in furs. As she drifted off to sleep, she promised herself that she could sleep for a week.

Fight or Flight

Anikevna was falling, in the ocean, in a glass box, naked.

She must have been drugged, she was waking up because the temperature was dropping. Her first instinct was to break the glass and swim for the surface, but it was getting dark.

Twenty feet away she noticed movement, a man in a box similar to hers. She raised her hand, but he kicked out and broke the glass. It imploded around him, shards of glass rending his body. He wasn’t moving.

Anikevna wanted to throw up, to scream or run away, but where? She fell silently deeper into the cold waters.

Not much later Anikevna was startled by the base of her box magnetizing to a conveyer belt, with dozens of other boxes, or parts of boxes. It slowly drew everything into a dome.

The inside of the dome opened up to display thousands of boxes, being stacked up the walls. Anikevna blinked. There was air, maybe she could escape. There was a woman ahead of her who thought the same, she broke her box and tried to run.

Two robots rushed forward, the first caught the woman by the head and crushed it, the second gathered up the body by crushing the bones and pulling the mass inside before moving to a new task.

Anikevna’s box was stacked and locked into place. It wasn’t long before she felt air circulating, and even less time before she was asleep.

Arm

Melena walked briskly into the Mike’s Tattoo Parlor. She cringed as the chime above the door rang, and brushed her platinum grey suit in an action that suggested she was brushing the feel of the place off her shoulders.

Melena stopped in front of the tattoo artist, a professional looking man much to her surprise, and the figure of her best friend.“Kassidy! What are you doing?!” she nearly shrieked.

“Calm down Melena, honestly you’d think you had just walked in on me skinning a baby goat alive.” Kassidy nonchalantly replied as she turned her right arm slightly to the left to provide the artist better access. He was finishing an intricate design that stretched from her lower neck and disappeared below her pant line.

Melena just stared, unable to comprehend. “Kass, I’ve known you for nearly 20 years and you have been vehemently against tattoos. You wouldn’t talk to my sister when she got one after her baby died” she paused, “I just spoke to you last Thursday, you never mentioned anything about this.”

“When was the last time you saw me?” Kassidy asked quietly, her eyes not focusing.

“Um, about 4 months ago, at Chantell’s Birthday celebration, right?”

“Well, things have changed a bit.” Kassidy murmured. She gripped her arm, just below the shoulder joint, and with a small click she detached the entire arm and handed it to Melena. “I needed something to cover up the scars.”

Wrong Time

“I was born in the wrong time,” Nico sighed, not for the hundredth time.

It was 2164, and it was too bright, too loud, and too much. She should have been born before technology had its big take over, when she could learn to hunt with a spear or to fight with a sword, not when she had to dive through layers of code to make any difference.

She went around her small apartment turning off monitors. She had two major rigs with three screens, a personal laptop, a work issued one, several pads and a couple cellphones. Plus or minus burners.

When it had all been turned off, it was eerily quiet, not very dark because of the thousands of adverts outside and the glow from her neighbor's windows. Nico rolled her eyes and turned on her laptop and faced it towards the window, if she didn't someone might call the cops for “suspicious activity”.

She sat on her couch and closed her eyes, and jacked in. Suddenly the world around her disappeared and she was surrounded by brilliant color. With a few motions, she organized everything into organic shapes and colors, her virtual self stood tall and ready for arcane battle. She drew her broad sword and started cutting through code, searching for a weak link.

“I really should have been born in a different time”, she muttered as she dove further into Cover ID's of the corrupt.

Wonderer

The figure materialized from the murky night not more than 50 yards from the city gate.

“Hey! Who goes there!” cried the shaky voice of the youngest member of the night watch. Weapons were gripped harder and shifted into an offensive stance.

The woman slipped forward with the silence and grace of a lion-fish. She cocked her head to the side for a moment, then replied in a stilted accent, “You can call me Wonderer.” Thinking the matter finished she moved forward to enter the city.

“Woah! Are you really expecting us to just let you, a stranger in with no identity?” The older pair of the guard said, holding out his hand to keep the woman away.

She paused for another minute, thinking, or maybe translating. The men were able to get a better look at her now. She was clothed in what looked like seal furs, decorated with sharp stones and shells. Her arms were bare save for a single strand of exotic looking kelp. “Ask travelers from Elyzil, I was there, before I was in Kabalia, and before that in Rielind, your city is the next in my concatenate.”

“Your what?”

Another silent moment, “in my. . .series. I have word and warning to bring to the people.” With an air of urgency she push between the two guards. The flick of her black scaled tail propelled her forward and the water currents stirred her midnight hair.

Sacrifice

She stood at the precipice read to jump and yet, she hesitated.

The view up there was stunning. She took a breath of icy wind, tinged with eternal green and mystic blue. As a final look at life she couldn’t asked for anything more. She pulled her fur wrap closer around her shoulders as she dug her bare feet into the stone and peered down the thousand foot drop.

Her clan was suffering. Gefjun seemed to have abandoned them. For the past 5 seasons their crops had failed, their flocks had been killed by roaming dogs, and their cattle had mostly starved to death. Something had to be done.

So she did something about it. She volunteered to sacrifice herself to Gefjun.

After the initial shock, her clan had many suggestions on the best way to go about it. One of her uncles suggested being tied to a plough horse and being drug through the fields. Her favorite aunt suggested a traditional blood sacrifice. She had another idea.

She decided to climb to the highest place she could find. She wanted to be close to all of the elements: earth, wind, fire and water, by climbing up high she could be sure that the solitude would bring her close to all of them.

It took a heartbeat of time to turn her cloak into tinder and to light it with her flint. Her toes curled on the edge.

Then she jumped.

Battlefield

They always wore white into battle.

Kafira’s spear lashed out and exploded through the man’s neck, dropping him like a sack of meat. Dancing to the side she dodged the swing of a man twice her size, she spun and drove her spear deep into his chest. Planting the butt of the spear into the ground she let the man’s weight drive the spear haft through his body, with a small grunt she pulled the spear free and charged into the next cluster of men.

Kafira could only see glimpses of Anci, flashes of white and silver between the bodies of men separating them. As Kafira tried to determine the best path to reach her, a massive club came screaming towards her face. She ducked but the club grazed her head, sending a stream of blood down her face and her to the ground.

Immediately she rolled away from her assailant, into the legs of another man who toppled backwards onto Her. The spear was trapped and her knife hand was pinned under the struggling form on top of her. The man with the club stepped up to finish the job when a war axe blossomed from his chest. A blur of white ripped the man’s throat out and he fell, crushing the man atop Kafira.

A petite figure dressed in white and dripping with blood looked down at Kafira and grinned.

“Stop laying around, we have work to do.”

Moon

Olivia was painfully scrawny. It was to the point that her friends winced whenever they saw her. Usually she would add layers of clothing to hide her figure (or lack thereof) but it was August, in the middle of a deadly heatwave. There was no avoiding her knobby knees as they stuck out from her shorts, or how her skin clung to her bones. It was embarrassing.

“Try to eat something” Clarissa coaxed, concern written across her features.

“I have!” Olivia almost yelled. “Have you seen how much I’ve eaten today?” She started to list while ticking off her fingers, “Two doughnuts for breakfast plus an extra large jamba juice, a whole grapefruit, most of a medium sized watermelon, two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, an energy drink and a large salad! That’s not to mention the gallon of water I have already had today. I can’t eat anymore!”

Clarissa shook her head, “this yo-yo dieting isn’t good for you”

“It isn’t a diet” Olivia muttered under her breath, out loud she said, “I know, I just need to find a good balance.” Which technically wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t a truth about this particular situation.

“Well, at least make sure you eat something healthy for dinner and keep hydrated!” Clarissa mentioned as she broke away from Olivia to unlock her car.

“Yes mom,” Olivia called sarcastically.

“I’m not your mother! And if I was I wouldn't let you get into this state” Clarissa growled.

“I live on my own, my mother has nothing to do with my diet,” Olivia called back as she reached her navy colored Mercedes. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Olivia slid into her front seat and immediately regretted it. The heat hit her like a wall of over cooked mackerel, unpleasant in every way. She quickly turned on the car to get the fan going and just sat there, letting gravity act more heavily than normal on her. She hated this time of year, or to be more accurate, this time of the month.

Last night was the New moon. A boon for social workers and medical professionals everywhere but it was a blight for Olivia. For her, gravity was heavier, pushing all of the water from her cells, massively dehydrating her and reducing her body to mere skin and bones. This happened every time the moon waned.

Luckily things were looking up for Olivia, the moon was beginning is waxing face and she would have water pulled back into her body. By the time the moon was full again Olivia would be severely curvations, it could also be a rough time but it was usually much more fun.

Olivia never found out why her body was so attuned with the moon. Neither her mother nor her sisters ever complained of the same problem. They had “Normal” female problems something that Olivia was delighted to not share with them. Olivia had seen specialists, and non specialists to see if there was something wrong with her, but all anyone could summize was that nothing was wrong.

She signed as the air around her began to chill. She couldn’t wait for fall to come, but today she couldn’t dwell on that. Today she had work to do.

Sometimes it was annoying having two jobs, the stress of coordinating schedules and requesting time of was more than a little annoying. But having a consistent alibi and identity cover more than outweighed the inconvenience.

Because of Olivia’s special relationship with the moon, she was able to cultivate and hone her skills as a master thief. That’s quite a silly name for what she was. She didn’t take wallets or steal credit cards, that is what a thief did, there was no art to it, to majesty. Just cold actions, for petty reasons for petty rewards. Olivia had higher ambitions in mind.

It was one thing to steal something, but it was quite another to be so gracefully and unobtrusive that the mark never knew that they had been stolen from. This is what Olivia strived for. With her frequent body transformations, Olivia could pursue many different types of jobs, that demanded a wide set of skills.

Tonight, what she needed most was to be as small as possible. The mark had beautiful sprawling grounds with cultivated gardens and manicured lawns. Olivia had to locate the exterior Keep (yes, an actual keep with turrets and everything) slip inside, hack into the private server and recover the client’s requested information.

Any other time of the month and Olivia wouldn’t be able to slip in and out unnoticed, but tonight she was a wafe, hardly more than a shadow.

Olivia parked her car most of a mile away from the house. Luckily the estate was protected on three sides by a cultivated forest, a nightmare for security but it made for a stunning backdrop for elaborate get togethers.

Tonight’s party was Asianic themed, paper lanterns dotted the acres of land. Down by the main pond there was a crew of men setting up for the pyrotechnics show to be had later in the evening. Olivia slipped from the edge of the woods into the crowd of people talking and laughing near the house.

Olivia had changed from her work clothes into a white buttoned dress shirt, with black slacks and a scarlet cumberbund, the same  as all of the other waiters and waitresses working the event. She wound her way through the tables of fine silk tablecloths and elaborately decorated china, until she reached the kitchens, there she picked up a tray horderves, and wound her way through the grounds, finding pockets of party goers and offering them refreshments. After her fourth trip to the kitchen Olivia meandered down the north end of the property towards the keep.

The place looked as bright and festive as the rest of the grounds, the lights in the windows were on and paper lanterns garnished the wrought iron gate and lower branches of a nearby tree. It was beautiful and looked alive, but Olivia knew better. There was no one inside, it was a server room, sealed to protect from the elements, not meant for hosting any number of people.

Olivia circled the building once, making sure that no one had her in their line of sight and efficiently shutting down all of the security cameras. (This part of the job seems relatively easy but, in fact it had taken weeks of planning, hacking into the security system, planting files, erasing other files, making a back trail and covered up the back trail with useless but seemingly working code.) Olivia took off her waiters costume revealing a black, tight leotard. She slipped through the bars of the gate (a mere 6 inches wide) and stood at the entrance of the server room.

Here she had to carefully open an access panel to the left of the door. Inside was a set of three fuses, the first would trip the power to the servers, the second would trip the power to the security cameras, and the third was trip the silent alarms. Olivia shook her head, and mumbled while she used a micro screwdriver to lift the nearly invisible panel above the fuses to reveal another set of fuses, the second to the left was the one she needed. With barely a whisper of cloth, she had the fuse pulled, the panel replaced and the doors of the server room standing slightly ajar.

She allowed herself half a smile. She silently counted the servicer banks until she came to the 17th, there she opened it’s case and plugged in her hardware. Olivia took a few deep breaths to steady herself, then jacked in.

Jacking in during her depleted cycle was not only very painful but also extremely dangerous. With so little water in her body, she struggled to keep a large enough electrical current flowing from her nervous system to the plug in order to transfer data and really delve deep into the server's information. It couldn’t be helped. Any other time she would have been to big to squeeze through the gate, there might have been other methods she could use, but none would have been as elegant.

Olivia worked quickly, lifting the files she was getting paid for. She also grabbed a few random files to keep for herself, a sort of blackmail. Then she picked more random files to add to her download. Will any luck they would be thrown off by the random assortment of files taken, that is if they ever noticed they were gone in the first place.

After the download was complete Olivia started on her cover code. She had spent more than a few hours studying the code used by this security company, and practicing mimicking it. As she began her withdraw from the system, Olivia painted a artwork of code to cover her retreat, with in it she build a little surprise for anyone who wanted to unravel what she wrote. With any luck someone would pull those strings.

She regained full consciousness as she pulled out the jack. She would need water, lots and lots of water after this but that would have to wait. Olivia quickly unplugged her hardware and wiped down the server and its frame. With quick steps she left the server room, resealed it and slipped back into the night air.

She paused outside the door, there was a thick tension in the air, something that Olivia didn’t feel comfortable with. She hurriedly put on her serving outfit and made her way back to the main building. She was intending to head back to the kitchen for a few more rounds but she was suddenly stopped when a large hand gripped her arm.

Steam Pots

It was time to discover what was under the steam pots.

For thousands of years they were a source of curiosity. Geologists and volcanologists had extensively studied the steam pots and had determined that a thinning of the crust had caused heat to mould the surface.

Katherine was not convinced. She lived around the steam pots all her life and she knew there was something else going on. Today Katherine was going to find out where they really came from.

Katherine had “acquired” a police riot shield and set it up close to the most secluded steam pots. Her friend Carl was helping her, mostly because he owned a sod cutter. They had to cut through layers of decaying plant matter and clay to get underneath.

They cut a corner of the ground close to one of the smaller Steam Pots.

“Okay, Carl. All I need you to do is prop up the corner of ground so I can see what’s underneath.” Katherine instructed. “And don’t divagate! Or we could be in trouble.”

“Sure, not a problem.” Carl said as he pop his gum. He used the sod cutter to lift up the corner of the ground.

Katherine eagerly peered around the shield. As soon as the ground was exposed to the air there was a gout of flame that shot out.

As the flame dispersed Katherine saw a glimpse of of what created the Steam pots.

A fire salamander!

Escape

Alice was curled tight in a ball underneath an enormous bioluminescent mushroom. She rocked ever so slightly, she dared not open her eyes, praying that nothing would attack her in the dark.  

She was lost, confused, scared and very angry. Stupid incorporeal cat! Even with her eyes closed she could still see the disembodied eyes and leering smile. She wished she had thrown something at it.

Alice had to choose a path, left or right, the cat says “it doesn’t matter” but it did to her, she didn’t want to end up dead!

Suddenly she froze, something changed. She could see the inside of her eyelids, almost as if. . .  She slipped open her eyes and for a moment thought she had gone insane. She was surrounded by an evergreen forest, there was nothing fantastical! She jerked her head back in surprise and the nightmare returned.

She furrowed her brow, then inched ever so slightly forward, keeping her eyes wide so she didn’t miss anything. It was not quite a parallax, more of a dimensional shift. There it was! Her surroundings changed back into the normal forest, her heart leaped with hope.

She moved her hands forward, until she could see them, then she gripped the low vegetation of the forest and pulled herself forward. It worked! Alice immediately jumped up and ran right into something huge, soft and invisible.

The barely visible nine foot cat was not grinning. Alice screamed.

Research

Research was not fun.

There were days, when Cassie found interesting passages, or when she found an entire website dedicated to the histories of skaldic passages. Mostly, research was dull and long. All she wanted was to be outside, climbing the walls of the fjords and jumping into the chilly waters below.

Unfortunately she was getting paid to research. Maybe paid was too strong of a word, she had room and board and a promise to not be sold into slavery if she completed her tasks. At first she thought it was a hyperbolic statement but then Meredith disappeared, not quietly, there had been screams and the sound of a struggle. Cassie had rushed to her friends aid but by the time she got there Meredith was already gone.

They had been tasked to find the ‘forgotten verses’. A seemingly impossible task considering the foreboding title. And yet, the more Cassie delved into the research, the more surprising results she found. There were thousands of verses that were never compiled into epics, and hundreds of text containing fragments. It could be a dizzying collection of exciting finds that needed to be pieced together.

Today though, was neither exciting nor fulfilling. It had been weeks since Cassie had found anything. They brought in a new girl yesterday, Persephone. She has to find a way to ameliorate her position.

There was a shuffling of feet at the door.

Cassie drew her dirk.

Island

Going into prison, they don’t tell you that you need a weapon. You assume the state is there to protect you from the other inmates. This is a lie.

I was caught smuggling FDA blacklisted data chips from the Netherlands. I should have been sent upstate for 2 years max. But here I am 10 months later, on a high security island prison, there are no guards, just the inmates, the facility and an AI security reef to keep us in.

I never needed a weapon before, when I was a cyber smuggler. All I needed was the code. I could write shelter, defense and attacks. Physical violence was anathema to me. That changed in the first ten minutes.

There were two of us arriving that day. I was in a state of shock from my sentencing. That, plus the noise of the helicopter left me in a bubble of isolation. I should have been paying more attention.

We were instantly accosted by large, heavily muscled men. They took everything we had of value, which wasn’t much considering, but I lost my shoes. Better than the man who arrived with me.

He didn’t want to give them anything. There was a flash of obsidian and he was dead.

The first thing I did was get a blade. It’s the key to survival.. I take better care of it than I ever did my rig before, better even than myself.

Ring

25 steps to the target.

In another life, they should have been sisters, if not best friends.

This was not that life.

20 steps.

Kafira was her name. Her hair was as white as a snow leopard’s coat, it turned when she was 24 after the accident.

When she became a weapon.

15 steps.

The target was Madame Clarissa McGilligan. She was hosting this charity gala. Usually she was surrounded by interns, journalists and body guards. Tonight there were dozens of hanger ons, fluttering around Clarissa as if she was a venial drug that they were attracted too.

10 steps.

This is where it turned into an intricate dance. Kafira needed to get close, but she could not interact with the target or even touch the target. That is why she came dressed for this mission. She wore a midnight blue dress that was embedded with gold beads.

5 steps.

All of her jewelry was ancient. Her necklace was from the 15th century, a piece that was passed down in her family. The earrings were “borrowed” from a museum. Her prize was a gold ring studded with diamonds. It was from the Chinese female pirate Ching Shih.

Half a step to the right and three steps forward.

By rubbing her pinky against the intricate ring she opened a tiny latch. With the flick of her wrist she dropped the poison into the champagne flute.  

With a smile she walked away.

Stars

Sophia was in a hurry. She’d just finished working 16 hours in the lab and she was feeling fried. She spent the 5 minute walk from her station to her her car catching up on all of her social media apps. She despised notifications.

Just outside the front doors Sophia bumped into Tiffany, who was gazing up at the night sky.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t…” Sophia began, “what are you doing?” she finished quizzically.

“Trying to be a bit more human,” Tiffany replied in a sibyllic tone.

“You are trying. . .“

“To be more human,” Tiffany finished, “I’m looking at the stars.”

Sophia glanced up, “There aren’t really any stars out, the light pollution is too bright.”

“You can see Orion’s Belt, Ursa Major, and Minor, oh and that is Venus.” Tiffany pointed out.

Sophia looked at Tiffany as if she had swallowed a goldfish before her eyes. Sophia shook her head and walked to her car thinking.

Instead of driving home Sophia drove out of the city to find the stars.

Sophia drove to the smallest town she knew, only 55,000 people, they had to have stars there. Not enough.

Four hours and 320 miles later Sophia drove up a back road into the sagebrush.

She looked up to find the sky bursting with stars, and it took her breath away.

Somehow, seeing all that vastness she found a greater purpose, she knew what it meant to be human.