Heading Out

The Hydra had gone from two heads to four-hundred and thirty-six in under ten minutes. That’s what you get for being in the front lines of an army filled with skeletons. It was widely known that the necromancer had an unbeatable army, because the soldiers never died, but no one took into consideration why exactly the other side lost. It wasn’t because the skeletons couldn’t die, it was because the other side got sick of fighting. Face it, necromancer dude, bones don’t have muscle. A tap from a stick could send a skeleton tumbling to the ground, and it took a minute or two to reorient itself. During that time creatures like the Hydra took the force of the oppression.
Head number twenty-two stifled a yawn, dodging lazily around the club of a bumbling ogre. She’d been in the back ever since heads sixty through eighty grew in front of her, and with the elder expert members in the back she wasn’t worried about getting scratched. A moment after it swung the ogre was torn apart in six directions, along with twenty more of its kind. How the other army got ogres on its side was no wonder to head twenty-two. If she had any say in the matter she’d take the whole family away from this mass of broken bones. She’d seen so many brothers and sisters cut off, seen many more born, and in the end nothing was gained. At the end of the last battle, with more than a thousand heads, the alchemist had produced more than a thousand vials of a solution that put the heads back in the body of the Hydra so they could be born again with another head. Each time a head drank the vial their shell shriveled and fell from the main body, until it was reduced to a manageable size. It wasn’t death in the sense of ceasing to be in the absolute, but it sure felt like hell. Head TT had been in storage more than two-hundred times, making her one of the middle-junior members of the Hydra. Originally when it was recruited by the necromancer the Hydra had only three members, the parents of all those who fought for him now. One of these parents had died in the last battle, which was why all the heads fought so ferociously this time. The memories of any head could be shared among the other heads, so the loss of an elder member was like partial amnesia. Titi had never been very interested in what the elder members had to remember, as it didn’t seem to matter anyway. All they ever did was fight these battles, accidentally trampling on skeletons in the process, to a point where Titi could predict with surprising accuracy where each member of both sides of the battle would go at any given time.
The ‘lephanti is heading over here, she remembered to the other members, including an image of the great wrinkled beast for the benefit of the newer children. The heads looked to the elders for a decision. Coordinating what was now almost five-hundred heads to move the Hydra might be more work than taking down the ‘lephanti, which was almost the same size as the whole snaked contraption. The ‘lephanti had speed, bulk, and armored skin on its side, but not a lot of brain or willpower. Left to themselves the ‘lephanti tended to be a mild grazing creature that would rather stand like a statue than do anything, they were harnessed mostly against their will and had no stakes in who won the war. The elders made a decision to get rid of the ‘lephanti, which made Titi worry a little. Fighting that great beast would take out hundreds of her siblings, compromise her own life, and weaken them for the next wave that would follow the ‘lephanti. Titi could see the leaders of the other army giving orders, and she was sure they would use the chaos of the ‘lephanti’s charge to send in their best warriors. The necromancer always won, but the other side always tried to take as many with them as they could. Why, though? They all only come back, it’s not like these strong attacks would weaken the necromancer’s army or conviction. He was going to take over the world, and when all he had to do to decimate armies and send warrior kings fleeing was to reach his hand out of his hole and animate a few bones, Titi had no doubt he would succeed. She wasn’t likely to see that day, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because once the world was owned by those who could never die she didn’t think anyone would be able to figure out how to keep on living. Once he had the world, what would the necromancer do with it? Titi seemed to be the only one concerned with such a question, but in light of her inevitable demise, it didn’t seem prudent to bring it up.
As the ‘lephanti came closer, Titi caught a memory from one of the elders, of a dank, stinky area with bubbling waters and dreary trees. The water soothed the Hydra’s skin, the trees bore fruit that popped sweet flavors under the tongue, and the stink kept those who would bother the Hydra away. Titi met the elder’s eye, and understood she wasn’t alone in her feelings, the difference was that she had never known anything besides the drone of battle, where the elder knew the crisp satisfaction of happiness. Titi suddenly realized there were more options than being killed or fighting for eternity, and one of those options sounded pretty good to her as she realized how large this particular ‘lephanti was. The ‘lephanti get bigger as they get older, and this one must be close to two-hundred years old. When its great armored skin wasn’t covered in the soot of army fire it would be home to types of lichen and beetles until it resembled a mountainous boulder. The ‘lephanti, Titi thought, would appreciate this move as well. Instead of standing there and waiting to be bowled over, Titi mustered control of the Hydra and started to move. As the heads realized where she wanted to go their combined strength and head swimming let them gather speed until they were galloping through the sea of skeletons faster than the ‘lephanti, straight to the caverns of the necromancer. Take down the master, and the servants all fall. Take down the master, and the slaves are free. Titi smiled, showing her jagged teeth, and her family smiled with her. The Hydra would rule the swamps once more.

Dead Duck

It was the type of blazing August evening where you walk on the dead grass so your sneakers don’t melt on the asphalt when I took control of a duck. Where the duck’s mind went I’ll never know for sure, but I suspect it came to rest with Sir James Mire from down the street. From then on the cat would switch from day to day eating cat food and bread crumbs. I looked out from large, feather-portrait duck eyes, past the end of the beak, to my body crumpled on the grass, and noticed for the first time I have a large birthmark in the small of my back. That’s knowledge I could have gone without. The duck’s body was no more thrilled with the weather than I’d been, and I looked around hoping its instincts would lead me to a body of water where I could splash droplets on my feathers and watch them slide off, but the instincts went with the mind and the body was clueless. While working out how to waddle, feeling like a squatting turtle, I wondered why I’d taken control of a duck. The answer came to me when I figured out how to fly and found myself settled cozily in Maria Reneb’s backyard.
Since before I can remember I’d adored Maria, the feeling developing into a recognizable crush as soon as we entered middle school. Around that time we’d sort of realized we were supposed to hang with our own kind, me around the water fountains and soccer field, Maria around gaggles of girls and the lockers of school idols. By the time the second year of middle school started I was insanely in love with Maria. It didn’t matter we hadn’t spoken in months, or that a bunch of other boys liked her, or that she, like most of the girls, declared she hated boys, it just made it more the sweeter. Impossible romances have triumphed in their own times, in their own ways, some of them in better ways than others.
Floating on the pool cover, I kept an eye on the windows until I saw movement. There, over the bushes, was Maria in her bedroom. Being a duck, not only my heart fluttered, but I could feel every feather bouncing in excitement. Surely this was my purpose in life, to behold the goddess where she dwelt. Tearing myself from the cool water I gangly flew to her window to get a better view.
Oh, the beauty! Hair glistening and dripping from the shower, face alive with laughter, delicate feet walking around the pattern of the rug on her floor. She was on the phone with a friend, chatting away, in the throes of enjoyment. Maria, Maria! I squawked loudly, and she looked up as I waddled again past her window. Her face melted into a peculiar expression as she watched me strut back and forth. I had the urge to show off, so I took flight again and went way up into the sky, looking down at her family’s woodland estate. It was serene, beautiful and quiet. Very quiet. I flew closer to the ground, wondering where all the other birds were. I had only a brief glimpse of my fate through a back window, ornaments above the fireplace, before the shot rang out. A searing pain tore through my side, and I was burning hot then suddenly cold. Too cold to fly. I plummeted down to earth, my feathered eyes watching Maria lower her gun and hoist it back on the gun rack.
“Maria...” I cried, betrayed, and hit the ground. I’m just glad I didn’t have to feel that, being back in my own body, a little dizzy from the fall but unharmed. No one was around. My sneaker, fallen on the sidewalk, was getting soft. I pulled myself together and got to my feet, limping for a bit until my circulation resumed, and then I went home. Life had been interesting as a duck, but now that it was over, I needed a bath.
I saw Maria the next day at school, talking with the same animated face to one of the guys from the baseball team, and I got from the squealing her friends made they were going out. I passed the guy later in the hall and wished him good luck, he just stared at me. A few other people stared at me. Finally, around lunch, because I’d forgotten food anyway, I went into the bathroom to figure it out.
“No way!” I exclaimed, examining my face in the mirror. Little freckles had erupted all over my face like dark feathers defining a duck’s face. It made me look kind of cool. I hitched my backpack over my shoulder with a grin and sauntered away to find Maria.
“Hey Maria,” I said, putting my face good and close to hers.
“Uh... hi Mark,” she said, imitating my sing-song tone. Her friends giggled.
“I just gotta tell you, you’re freaky weird, but someday I’m gonna prove I’m better than he is.”
You can imagine I didn’t rehearse that at all, but I thought I sounded pretty cool. I was up. I was the man. As I walked away from her, keeping my head turned slightly, I saw the look she gave me when she realized why I looked so weird; it was the same look she wore before she shot the duck parading across her geraniums, and I had no doubt someday Maria was going to shoot me down. I’d be ready for her, though, starting with my dad’s B-B gun in the shed he thought he’d lost and the soda cans my little sister went through. Get ready, Maria, for the greatest shootout in the history of— wiggle! Crumb! I mean, in— quack! No, I swear the duck is with Sir James Mire, I— fish quack!
Shoot.

Greek Tragedy (poem)

I wrote this the other day. It was just fun.

:::::

I have a face like a Fury
hair like Medusa
I’m shaped like a manticore
with feet like Atlas

I know I’m no Aphrodite
I’m no Athena
I beg no golden apples

I will not stand before you
it would be like
trembling before the might of Zeus
or a woman before Hera

if I could but hide like Daphne
or escape beneath Poseidon’s waves

Heracles has come and slain me
I will go to join Cerberus
Waiting by the river
Hello Hermes give me news
of what goes on above

I’m not like Persephone
no one will create winter if I’m gone
Not like the heroes
rescued from Hades

I am not like the Hydra
if you cut of a head
I have no life left in me
I am fallen like Helle

I will stay here like Tantalus
always watching what I can not have
waiting for what I can not have

I lie on the bed and find I’m too tall
cut off my feet so I will be small
bind me to a tree-top and let it sway
I’ll fly to the Argo and sail away

I will stay in Hades and be like Tantalus
always watching what I can not have
waiting for what I can not have
reaching for what will never be

The King Who Hated Seals (2008)

Once upon a time there was a king who hated seals. You can’t get more straightforward than that.
All others, including the queen, the prince, and the two baby princesses, thought seals were cute, fuzzy, and beautiful, and couldn’t wait for the time when seals flocked to the beaches in great numbers. The people of Teigiet had always been like that. In fact, this love for all things cute intensified so rapidly that finally a long-ago king passed a law forbidding the killing of any animal deemed by the people to be cute. This came to include horses, chickens, cows, dogs, cats, and sheep, until the list included every living creature besides rats and fish. The result of this policy was that, since then, the people of Teigiet lived on berries, corn, bread, pollen, honey, potatoes, lettuce, and everything else but meat. Livestock was reduced to wool, milk, and egg producing animals, pigs all but died out, and Teigiet flourished in the arts. People came from kingdoms far and wide to see the great architecture, paintings, sculptures, and jewelry that had become the pride and joy of Teigiet, but they never stayed long because nobody had yet figured out a satisfying way to cook a rat. You might have thought the people would turn to fishing, but there was a major complication to this strategy: The seals got wind of the new law of Teigiet and spread the word until seals all over the world wanted to go to Teigiet beaches. It got so bad that the Seal Elders had to drive seals away so there would be enough food for the seals of Teigiet. These seals loved fish more than anything else, and ate a lot of it. They ate so much fish until there were no more fish in these oceans for the people of Teigiet.
The king had been elected to his position because the voters were kingdom elders of the highest regard and could not resist his luminous, teary-blue eyes and shy smile. The king had grown up as the son of a tree-groomer. It was assumed his father was the head of the castle tapestry weavers, but with Valissa as his mother, and considering he took after her in appearance, no one could really tell. He had five older brothers and one older sister when he was born, and Valissa was still having children; he’d lost count of how many half-siblings he had. However many children there were when he was growing up, it was crowded in their average-sized stone house. Valissa, who was very small and believed in nourishment from the sun, didn’t bother to bring home enough food, or divide it properly. Tommie had always gone hungry. Now he was king, and was called ‘Your Majesty’ by everyone, except his children called him ‘Daddy-seal’ and his queen didn’t call him anything at all.
When Tommie married Venil he thought she loved him. He wasn’t wrong, but Venil never loved anything for long unless it was tall, slender, black-haired, and named Venil. Tommie could see that now she didn’t love him, but he still felt guilty when he looked at the head cook.
Varuk was young for a head cook, at 25 she was a year older than the king, and she had ruffled blonde hair, ruffled blue eyes, a ruffled round face, and a perfect, undisturbed nose. The king sighed when he thought of her, he sighed when he saw the seals, he sighed when he saw his wife, and he sighed especially long when he saw his dinner. If only dinner had some substance to it. It didn’t matter that as king he could eat as much food as he wanted, he always ended hungry. He’d heard tales that involved rabbits turning on a spit, and slices of veal hung up to dry. He even dreamt of fish with lemon sauce, a sprig of parsley on top.... And that is why the king hated seals.

Varuk, head cook, hated seals.
She often dreamt of the beautiful meals she could prepare if she had fish to work with. The window in her room overlooked the beach, and she spent a lot of time glaring at the seals. One season wasn’t enough, oh no. Seals changed their migrating patterns just so they could come to the Teigiet beaches. There were seals all year long. She thought there should be fish during the slow seasons, but it was a feeble, unfounded hope. Even if there were, Teigietans had forgotten how to fish. What could be harder than sticking a bug on the end of a string and pulling out a fish when it bit? She wondered, but there was no reason to dwell on it. She had tried and tried to cook with rats, but not only did nothing work, all her assistant cooks were easily terrified. Even rats, the vile creatures, weren’t common. Cats had been allowed to run free for the last few generations after all, it was a rare day any Teigietan didn’t step out of the way of a furry fluff. Varuk had heard rumors of a successful merchant in the East who sold fur coats, and Toon-of-no-job went to the East every spring with a wagon.... Varuk shook her head and looked wistfully at the pot. She looked wistfully at the carrots, she looked wistfully at the spit above the fire that was used to cook potatoes, she looked wistfully at the sharp knives used to de-head cabbages, and she looked wistfully at the seals. She wished people didn’t think seals were cute. She wished they would be allowed to import meat. She wished the king wasn’t married, she wished she didn’t love his children so much. She wished she could have leather shoes. And she wished, more than anything else in the world, that she wasn’t a cook. Varuk loved to cook when she was little, but by the time she was fifteen she had made every dish known to modern Teigietans, including oysters, which were extremely difficult to work with and gave everyone food-poisoning. Now she wanted to travel the world, to see places other than the west coast of the Continent. She wanted to go to Sherry, and Raint, and Tiffle, and Rona, and Saskka. She wanted to go beyond the continent too, to the islands of Sona, and Tol, and Sonsaso, and Bri. More than anywhere she wanted to go to Bri. Bri was said to be a place apart from all others, a place of difference, individuality, change, excitement... in short, everything Teigiet wasn’t. She wished their king would participate in an annual mud-racing contest. She wished Teigiet had an annual mud-racing contest. She wished Teigiet had any contests. “Bother,” she sighed as the metal spoon scraped the metal bowl and caused a shrieking sound. She looked around. No one was watching. She took the metal spoon out, licked it, put it in the sink, and stirred the pudding with her finger. Wooden tools would be much more useful, but tree-groomers were so loved by the people — cough cough the previous king loved Valissa cough cough — that the previous king passed a law against the harming of trees. Teigiet had wept many tears as the people traded away their precious art for metal tools, and had only just recovered from the loss. Now carpenters all over were being replaced by stone masons, and more people left small Teigiet to live in neighboring Rona. Varuk finished stirring the pudding, and sucked her finger as she looked out the window overlooking the beach. Seals. Who liked seals anymore? More than should be possible after all the damage the seals had caused. On the bright side, cute animals were becoming less cute. Varuk had liked seals too when she was little, and cats and birds and horses and little lambs. When seals capsized the Tension and her brothers drowned, she realized cute did not equal sweet and gentle. Varuk had loved her brothers very much. Without them to protect her, her father beat her black and blue every day. And that was why Varuk, head cook, hated seals.

Dido GreekChild (2008)

Prologue:
In the beginning, God created the world: heaven and earth, light and dark, water and land. This was good.
Then God created plants and animals. They were good too (even the mosquitoes). [But] Then God created Man. He messed up.
Man destroyed all of the above, usurped God’s throne, and took God’s name for his own. This was bad.
God saw what he had done and attempted to remedy his mistakes, but Man/New Gods discovered his plans and confined him to an earthly form. This was also bad.
God/No More God watched from his new position as Man/the New Gods spread across the galaxy, finding new and fertile planets and infesting them like ants of Latter-Day-Gaia. He watched them create the new technology allowing them to live safely on these new planets, even on other planets not so perfect for human support. He watched as Man/the New Gods settled into their role over the [other] humans and other creatures, naming themselves the Olympians and keeping amazing powers to themselves so they could continue absolute control. God/No More God saw that this power was part advanced technology, part something else, something acquired from the new planets, something like the ‘magic’ of stories from Latter-Day-Gaia. God/No More God saw all of this and saw that it was bad. Then God/No More God became aware of the immensity of their power and the lack of his own, and God/No More God realized no one remembered him anymore. So he called himself Promethius, like the Titan who gave fire to man in Greek legend, and slunk away to face his punishment in the shadows.

Part 1: Dido
That was 204 years ago. Now it is the year 800 A.G. (after Gaia), 800th anniversary of the Olympians’ rise to power, 100th anniversary of the Chip, 50th anniversary of the teleportation pin, 10th anniversary of the AgePack, and 1st anniversary of my half-sister’s birth. Ever since the AgePack came out, nobody ever sees old people... or not that they can tell. AgePacks allow you to look as young as you want. It’s not reversible, so you have to be careful how young you go, and it doesn’t make you any younger, but everybody loves it. Especially my dad. That’s why he got married to a real 20-year-old four years ago, even though he’s at least 50. She doesn’t know that, though. All she knows is that his oldest kid’s 12, and even that’s a life because I’m actually 16. I didn’t want to use an AgePack, but my dad bought one for me and wanted me to use it. “Of course, dear father,” I responded according to my programming, but inside I was fuming. I hadn’t been thrilled at the idea, but I was finally ready to kiss my first boy. Now I positively could not. Not just because I looked four years too young, but dad also changed the data on my card to say I am 12. Normally your card shows all your information correctly, not matter how many AgePacks you’ve used, but dad works at an Industry and knows how they’re made. Robots and computers do a lot of the physical work in these ages, but the Olympians don’t allow them to do anything that makes them think. That’s ‘cause they’re afraid of anything being smarter than them. Ha. Normal people would get zapped just thinking about that stuff, but I’m not normal. After Dad got married to Medea I learned how to remove my chip. When a baby’s born, it is immediately injected with a liquid that settles together right next to your brain, forming a hard chip, a computer chip. They keep everyone in control, keep them just like they’re supposed to be. Parents can program their kids to the personality they’ve chosen. And if you do, say, and maybe even think something wrong, GCP sends an electric wave to shock you. The more offensive the crime, the bigger the shock. A real big one kills a person; that’s why there are no prisons anymore. Since the chip is right next to your brain, the only way to remove it would be skull operation. But how could you, when anything you did would activate it against you? Simple. I didn’t. Not to the Chip’s level, anyhow. It takes a strong emotion, a strong brain wave, to alert the Chip. I made my plans deep inside my consciousness, until the time was right. Then I acted quicker than it: I plunged the Creeper right into my skull, screamed bloody Hades, and yanked it back out. The Creeper is a surgical device that I found handy since my step-mom is a Doctor. It’s purported purpose is for moving stuff around inside without having to cut open the skin, but it has an ulterior purpose: the Olympians created it to detect Chips. Y’see, they aren’t the only ones stickin’ pieces of metal into people. The Aesir, the rebellion, put chips in their members’ bodies to detect them, contact them, and kill them in case of torture. Yeah, the Aesir and the Olympians don’t ‘xactly get along. The Creeper has a special command that seeks out chips and grabs them. It only works in a small range, of course, or it would just alert anyone it entered. The Olympians fear the Aesir deeply, going to extreme measures to capture members of the rebellion. They never expected anyone to be crazy enough to stick the damn thing into their own head. Any why would anybody want to? The Chips keep us peaceful, safe, tranquil, at one with the Self.... Now there’s something that’s a no-no. Religious tolerance isn’t a big thing here. The Olympians want people to worship them, and them alone. It doesn’t matter they were once human, they’re gods now. But I don’t worship them. I don’t like them. I almost killed myself removing that chip, but I’m glad I did, I never realized how caged I was with it. Now? I can do, say, think whatever I want. As long as I have my card, the Olympians will never know, never bother to check if I have my chip. The Chip, by the way, I conveniently dropped in the way of something very heavy. It blew something up when it choked, but it’s gone now. I wish I could’ve saved my two half-brothers, but I couldn’t risk their fuzzy heads. My other step-brother and -sister are goody-goody students who could turn me in at the slightest scent, like my step-mom and Dad would. Well, maybe not Dad, he’s never followed the rules, but he’d never endanger himself if he didn’t have to. My step-sister, though, she I saved. I’m still mentally trapped in the boundary of our ‘tranquil’ society; what would it be like to grow up entirely free with thought? I stopped the needle entering her head when she left he womb. It was scary, the whole thing: convincing the right people to let me be present during the birth, re-programming the lights to flicker at the right moment, putting the doll in the way of the needle, poking a plain needle into her head to create a prick, all without being caught, all without hurting Célé. But I did it. My step-mom programmed her to be a quiet, sweet, coo-coo baby. She is, but it’s of her own violation. I take care of her most of the time, so I’m the only one who hears her scream. I treasure every one of those ear-piercing trills, because it means she’s free. My siblings and half-sibs were all programmed not to have tantrums, not to scream, not to object, not to think a thought of their own. I wasn’t. Mom programmed me to be rebellious. She didn’t tell Dad, and he made me obedient. Obedient stuck in the programming and is what’s said on my Card, but the layer covered up was the rebellious one. I wondered why Mom programmed me to be that way, and I found out when she was killed in a riot. She had been an Aesir, unknown to my father, and wanted me to be the same. Thanks, Mom, but you’d have been more help if you’d been a bit more rebellious yourself. It doesn’t seem the Aesir have found out about the Creeper yet, or how to use it to their advantage. Well, that’s not surprising. They aren’t very bright. Then again... no one is supposed to be. The Olympians want stupid subjects to rule over, subjects that won’t give them trouble. But it’s too late. There’ve been problems lately with the Chip. Lots of problems. That’s led me to believe there’ve been problems all along concealed by the Olympians that they can’t conceal now. The Chip was invented 100 years ago, and has been injected into every new-born baby’s head since. It can only work on new-borns, on anyone else it causes brain damage, so during the first decades not many people had it. Now 75% of people do. Humans typically live up to 120 years, and there are a few 200 years old now, which means there are people who don’t have chips, who never had to go through that. But they are vastly outnumbered by those with chips. I don’t just mean the 650,000 of us in this city, I mean everyone in this world and hundreds of others. Because of the problems popping up with the Chip, people are getting a little unhappy... and people aren’t unhappy in this age, it’s just not done. Neither is anger, exasperation, despair, annoyance — or, consequently, excitement, interest, concern, happiness, or love.
My name is Dido GreekChild NV2447 — I hate the Olympians, despair of the Aesir, am enthralled by computers, and I love my baby sister Célé. That’s why I’m going to become the greatest hacker known to mankind to get her back.

They take babies sometimes. No one knows why. They don’t leave Changelings like the Fair Folk of old. They never return the child. The parents never worry and often don’t care. Why do the all-powerful Olympians take the babies? Is it to show their power, to show they control our lives? Or do they need the children? For new colonies? For experiments? For themselves? No one knows but the Olympians themselves. For that reason I must find the Olympians, and I will. Wherever the Olympians are, I will find them. Computers are everywhere.