Poetry-Thing Thursday: An Ocean of Time

March 1, 2018February 27, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ 1 Comment

The wolf paces in its cage,
awaiting an uncertain certainty;
an end will come.
Change has begun.
But whether his jailer,
shall be his executioner,
is a question only time may answer.

Alone in a dark and empty room,
sits a clown in full dress.
His white face is painted,
running black and red from tears.
For time has come and gone,
And still it carries on,
with it life goes,
for good or for ill.

Cuffed and shackled,
she hangs from the wall.
Dead eyes staring,
in testimony to a decayed soul.
And though she yet breathes,
her master will one day,
ensure she withers, bleeds.

Amid an ocean of time,
sails a ship of all existence.
Universes of countless beings,
multiplied by infinity.
And each one a story.
Each one a saga,
an epic.
Each one an odyssey.
And all of them
cohabit this place and time.

In the end,
an ocean of time,
is only the water,
upon which,
existence has sailed.

And we are it,
they.
However short or long,
our place on its line.
we occupy it,
together.

Short Story: Born Twice

February 27, 2018February 27, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ 1 Comment

Floodlights fell crosswise through rain, dulled to gray. The buildings and sidewalks, equally gray, formed a narrow corridor of misery. She traversed it alone, following an empty road slick with tears. Allie supposed as much, anyhow.

It was fitting, after all.

She’d hardly known her father, knew him less now death had exposed… him.

It was hard to explain why things were so dark. So cold. She knew all too well they were; the slump of disappointment, the drag-along feet of grief and wounds.

Rain soaked her raised hoodie to the bone. The only thing saving her her from ragged trembling was the overlong coat hanging open along her. Between that, her denim, and luck, the rain was held at-bay– if only outside.

Inside, Allie was a wreck.

Her father’s lovewas a cold, neglected wound festered bysilence. At that, he was mute. He’d have been as dead as stone, too,were he not begrudgingly filled with blood. He was heartless; aspetrified as an archaeologist’s first trilobyte.

That was what she’d known. Always. There was good reason for it, too.

She ambled through the gray wet, remembering her art project. Handmade. She’d waited weeks for it to return from the kiln. The whole time begging and pleading with any powers that be it hadn’t had an air bubble in it. Those time-bombs utterly destroyed every other ceramics piece she’d ever made.

This time, she’d guarded against it, meticulously kneading the clay. She repeated the process past hand-cramps. She wrung them out after one, expertly-crafted coffee mug. When it returned unharmed, and she gained access to the ceramic paints, she took greater care in coating and glazing it than anyone before her.

She sprinted home with it in both hands, bursting through the door to show her mother and father. She reached the latter first, beaming at the mug in her hands. Her father’s reply was an unceremonious grunt.

He focused back on his tablet of paper, kept writing. Not even a breath of pride or congratulations. Not a thought toward her beyond contempt for interruption,begrudging tolerance of presence. That was her father, exemplified.

She meandered between two, gray warehouses toward a lot a half-kim ahead.

It was like riding a tunnel o’ love raft alone, along drained out pool. The feeling was utter desolation; something once-sacred, now desecrated. She couldn’t help it enveloping her. Not with the the myriad of gray tainting her surroundings.

Until recently, she’d have felt her wounds entirely unfair.

In many ways, they were. Her father had never shown feelings toward her, but only by virtue of never showing any. She knew by her mother’s word he loved her, was simply atrocious at showing it. For along time, Allie hadn’t believed that. She knew it differently now, but knew she couldn’t have.

Not then.

She’d come home in tears, for one reason or another, met with the same reaction; indifference, stony silence, muteness. The memory she returned to time and again still stung with her even now, years later. Her father’s reaction, however framed differently after his death, made her utterly certain of his inability to feel.

Yet she was wrong.

This time, soaked in tears and rain as she was now in the alley. Like now, her heart broken. Justanother, crappy weekend. For all but Allie, whom had learned to emulate her father’s lack of emotion in all but the worsttimes. The epitome of human indecency, of teen angst. In essence, it was exemplary of all the worst aspects of human behavior. All in one moment of hormonal, teenage confusion.

She’d sat down to lunch with a friend. Another appeared, vid in-hand of Allie’s long time boyfriend making it with another girl. And going all the way at that. After so long, so much, it was crushing. Mostly, it was utterly humiliating.

The entire school had seen him with another girl. Before her. At least if it’d been them, she’d have been secure in the knowledge they were devoted.

Butanother girlwith less morals than a sea-slug, and a test-tube baby-face left in its first tube too long. Worse; one, lopsided breast beside another in a bra two-sizes too small and wrapped in less fashion sense thana half-decayed corpse.Even in the gray, Allie still felt the sting. How beyond-humiliatingit really was.

In retrospect, that was probably why she’d run out of school, ditching half the day.

She came bursting her front door, finding her father once more occupied. She was in shambles, emotionally, physically– she’d been soaked through from the pouring rain. She had nothing with her, not her pack, not her purse. If she hadn’t been wearing her shoes, she’d have left them too.

And all her father could say when she arrived home was, “You’re home early.”

At least, if he’d been angry, scolding, it would’ve been an emotion– something to contend with. Instead, it was the same, thoughtless lack of emotion that led to the video; to her being cast off for some pinched-face slag-sucker.

She fled for the bathroom, hiding until well after her mother returned and deduced her state.

Perhaps if she’d known then what she knew now, she might’ve handled things differently. Then again, could she have known then what she knew now, he would have. Unfortunately, her age and innocence meant she couldn’t know, wouldn’t be allowed to for years to come.

When that time finally came, he ensured she understood thoroughly.

His words rang in her head as if still being uttered. In that roundabout way sound goes on vibrating forever, she decided, they were.

Her mother had passed her a note from her father after his funeral, told her to read it alone and tell no-one of its contents or existence. She further instructed that afterward it be destroyed. She opened the letter, found a lone address with instructions including, “Go alone.”

She followed the letter’s request, if only for the sake of playing her final role as dutiful daughter. She found the warehouses, made her way into the one she’d only now left behind. Recalling her entrance as she slid into her mother’s car, the words echoed in her head with the fresh memory they were forming.

The warehouse’s door locked behind her. Innocently. The place was deceptive, looking much like any other warehouse outside but inside, clean and sterile. It was a hospital, condensed into a large, multi-room space.

There, in an office, her father spoke a final time.

He uttered a truth so radical it altered her world, her memories. One that tainted them with the hints of gray one at seeing things as they were; the loss behind the scenes; the tragedies, losses, sacrifices missed and made.

She found her way in as per instruction. There, she sat before a single computer monitor lit. Her father’s face appeared, more haggard and tired than ever. The distinct hint of pain in his eyes, something she’d never before seen but knew regardless.

“Allison,” he said with an eerily new warmth. “If you’re here, I am gone. You have to know what is at stake. The danger you’re in.”

Allie would’ve laughed, but her father’s usual frozen stone had become liquid warmth.

“You must understand why, after all of these years, it has been so important you never become attached to me. Why I have been so cold.”

He was visibly pained by thought.

“Allison, you were born much earlier than you believe. The first two years of your life caused you endless pain that only worsened over time.”

Allie could only wonder what he was on about.

“You do not remember, because we– I— removed it from your memories.” He raised a hand as if to stop her from speaking, thinking too far ahead. “What matters is your body was slowly but surely failing. Three years old, and with only weeks to live, your body was killing itself with seizures. Bouts of inexplicable pain so horrible you became catatonic for days afterward.”

Allie fought to understand, to remember, but couldn’t. Torn between her father’s words and her own supposedly lost memories, she could only watch, hope to understand.

“One particularly bad episode left you catatonic for a week. You didn’t speak, eat, or move. You couldn’t. You were withering because of it. So, we… put you on ice.”

She understood now, but didn’t entirely believe him; a creature so unlike her father, yet wearing his skin. She’d been caught off-guard by the whole thing, but even if the purposes felt clearer she had her skepticism. Her father all but erased any room for her doubt.

Simply by remaining incapable of argument.

“The pain, we later learned, was caused by a degenerative neural disease. It’s not dissimilar to Multiple Sclerosis but has the distinct difference of causing attacks of nerve degeneration. These attacks were responsible for your catatonic episodes. They were killing you.

“Unfortunately, knowing so little of the disease meant knowing of no way to fix you.”

She glanced around at the empty office, as if hearing foreign voices’ echoing their forever-resonance on eternally elderly sound-waves. They filled the gaps of credence in his story, preempting his major revelation as if to make it less impossible, more believable.

“I could not afford to lose you, Allison. I loved you– love you– even if I dare not show it.” He heaved a terrible sigh. Reality weighted his chest, expelling his air supply. “So I did the only thing a I could to ensure I would not lose you.

“Your mother will confirm this. She was there every step. Before, through every episode and treatment. After, through your rebirth. Even so, we both felt it would be best you heard this from me:

“You were not born once, but twice. First, from your mother’s womb, and second from this laboratory that now sits empty, unused.”

Allie’s eyes narrowed. Her ears sharpened.

“Your body was too damaged. Your mind was not. We took a neural map, your brain’s physical and mental schematic, and duplicated it in the gray matter of a vat-grown brain. One, with no mental imprint. It, became you. That brain, like its accompanying organs, vascular system, nerves– its body, is yours.”

“You were born twice, Allison, and both times I loved you more than I could love anyone else.”

Nonsense. Asinine. You could no more transfer a mind than raise the dead. Yet still, she believed him. She didn’t know why, but she did. Now, Her eyes were wet. It wouldn’t be the last time.

“The problem, Allie, is you’re valuable. For the last twenty years, people have sought to capture and examine you. Countless would-be assassins. Kidnappers. Molesters. All of them sent to rip you from your rightful life.

“I couldn’t let you get attached to me, because I couldn’t allow myself to be used against you. But I feared most that if you grew to love me as I loved you, my death might scar you too terribly, make you too easy a target. I couldn’t bear to live with the consequences of that.”

His face soured first with fury, then grief, before he recomposed himself.

“It is fortunate you’ve reached the age you have before my death. Now your mother may train you to protect yourself. I’m truly sorry, Allison. Forgive the love that has put endangered you so. Forgive that it made him stubborn enough to remain cold to protect you. And forgive it that its greatest gift was soured by its enemies.”

His eyes glazed over with tears, “Most of all, forgive me.”

He cleared his throat, mentioning something passing about having written every day to her. That her mother had the journals. Despite everything said, his last words affected her most; even after she found herself beside her mother in the perma-gray.

“Forgive me, Allison. And know, no matter what, I have always loved you, my daughter.”

She choked a back a breath, “I do.”

Hard Lessons: Part 6

February 23, 2018February 18, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Stake out, Take out

Crystal was surprised to find herself enjoying her time away from home. Though forced to keep lights off, Titus had managed to re-tint her optical augs using certain settings. She turned it to auto-run at certain points, most notably, in the building.

In other words, they jerry-rigged her optics into night-vision.Every time she reached the warehouse’s upper floor, the settings shifted; the contrast dialed up, the brightness and saturation shifting subtly with it.

No predator-vision, but the upper-floor of the warehouse became like a faint day-light she could tweak at will.

All told though, were it not for the generally spartan surroundings, he might’ve lived there. The few cases they’d lugged in, added to the few stashed there, said this was one of Titus’ safe-houses. For now at least.

Enough was present that no-one wanted for anything in event of catastrophe, but it was infinitely more bearable with each, minute luxury you smuggled in.

For now, that translated to wanting for nothing within reason.

Crystal knew the play then. He’d likely abandon the place, compromising it if the job went right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t need it. It was like building a temporary shelter for a project too large for a shop. He’d leavewhat he didn’t want as fuel for the next person that stumbled onto it.

That was his contribution to making the world a better place. If only a part of it. Even if making dues knocking off the rest of it, he had some honor. Every one like he and Crystal did. The game-players. Fielders, middlers, fixers; didn’t matter. They all had to observe the rules or no-one played.

Presently, Crystal was prepping cabling for cameras stationed along the floor’s long, rowed windows. Most of the DSLRs were freestanding, sitting in the open but invisible by virtue of the seeming darkness inside. They were section in the main, storage area just beside the stairs.

That section separated them from the stairs beyond their main work-space’s wall. Unlike the foreman’s office they occupied, that area didn’t require additional work now. Their space did.

Crystal carefully positioned and aligned the office cameras behind their gear. She checked their feeds, rolled Titus’ heavy, dark curtains down carefully to conceal them from both sides.

The whole set-up was linked through facial recog on the small network of laptops spread along an old, six-person fold-out table.

Crystal double-checked her work as Titus slipped into place before the laptops. He keyed one up, pushing aside clay-blocks toward her and instructing her to place them in each corner of the room.

Crystal obliged, “Overkill, don’t you think?”

“Always need an exit.”

“Uh-huh, Can’t be too careful.”

“No, but you can overbuy on C4.”

She laughed, lifted a block, “Does it come with a guarantee? Lose a limb or money back?”

He chuckled, “Nothing in life’s guaranteed, Cee. You know that.”

“I guarantee you won’t explode if you don’t play with explosives,” she retorted studiously.

“Depends how you live.”

She snorted, busying herself with a table of gadgets. He settled to rhythmically scanned the feeds. Most angles of the building ahead were straight-on, more for redundancy and catching every detail and recording it.

As Titus had explained it, he had no certainties the mark would make his rounds soon. Onlyt that he should. Something might’ve changed that he’d missed, however slim the chance. No matter how careful he’d been, someone was bound to have seen him come or go.

Whether they cared enough to make note of it, or had reason to, was the question.

It was unlikely; requiring patrols and the like, things certain to draw attention. Even the few souls occupying this place wished to forget it as soon as possible. Besides, their mark didn’t like attention. Even less, drawing it. Titus was certain of that, and Crystal through him.

He and Crystal traded places for the first leg of surveillance. She settled, less tense than she’d expected. Anxiety for a job was usual. If you weren’t a little tense, your instincts– and reflexes– were shit when it came time to use them.

Too tense though, and you were equally shit.

It was all about finding the right groove to fall into. Finding the right job to fit your skills. For the uninitiated, that was finding Fixers and Middlers that saw your value too. The game required them to help put fielders in the rightful places.

Everyone needed each other, somehow.

Mostly.

She sighed, something wasn’t sitting right in her guts. Lucas, she knew. Time was the only thing left to her, for good or ill. Arthur’s intel said he was bad news. She guessed nothing would be a stretch for him. Slime was like that, malleable, thin. It needed to be to get anywhere.

Lucas oozed his slime-ball personality the way a slug oozed trails on a sidewalk; not intentionally, as more a byproduct of his existence. It was slime all the same, made clear his movements wherever he went via the sticky trail following behind. Visibly, or in the scent of his wake, he left his mark.

They’d yet to speak of it, but Titus seemed to be intentionally avoiding the conversation; enough to relay his feelings as mutual. Near-enough.

Evidently, only Angela didn’t see the danger Lucas brought. Was it any wonder though?

Angela was his sister, his family. She was one of the few people he was most practiced at deceiving. He’d have done it since childhood, starting as a kid to divert attention to and from him. Inevitably, he’d have found the various avenues and manipulations available– the cons to get what he wanted.

All of them: the few to be used anytime. The few only for emergencies. The few that never missed, usable only sparingly.

It was obvious to anyone looking inward.

In this case, everyone was outside it save the one playing and other being played. Whether or not Crystal’s interference was warranted could only be based on examples of two, specific, trash-lumps she’d called parents.

She had no experience with familial situations otherwise. At that, she’d have been better off that way. Starting from a base-line of 0 rather than -1 was net-gain in her mind. One she wasn’t privy to.

What she needed was critical thinking. A skill she’d become adept at, especially under extreme pressure. The problem was, those situations generally involved a subject she was well-versed in or confident at working with.

This was different, emotional. She was no stranger to emotions, but certainly at handling them properly. With the least collateral damage. It was a whole other world. Only Arthur’s sentiments kept her from feeling too alone.

With Titus yet to sound off, Crystal could only tell herself what she’d done was with earnest intent. Her last conversation with Angela was merely to remind and alert; even one’s family could betray.

Crystal was a prime example of that reality. Angela knew that. Well enough to know Crystal’d been cast out. Age aside, her mother favored a display-case lifestyle over her own daughter. Crystal had wallowed in that for all of a single night on the street, was otherwise occupied with staying alive thereafter.

When Angela appear, she jumped. That’s why Angela appeared. No-one knew that or the reasons therein better than the woman herself.

Crystal hoped Angela would think on things, recognize her attempts at neutrality, and avert the otherwise inevitable catastrophes that came with people like Lucas. She could do little else, save duck once shit met fan.

Titus appeared, fiddling with a tablet before leaning to type at a prompt on a screen. Crystal watched from a corner of her eye, the rest of her attention fixed on the feeds.

She cleared her throat, “So, who is this guy? Really?”

He alternated between tablet and computer, typing as he spoke, “Akira Saito. Former contact for Hiro Nakasumo, a middler.”

“Like you.”

“Mmm.”

“You knew ‘im? I thought Nakasumo only dealt with Japanese.”

“He did,” Titus replied astutely. “Ironic the one time he didn’t, he was murdered.
“More effect than the cause, Tee,” Crystral reminded. “Nakasumo was running against another fixer. You know that’s not allowed. Everyone does.”

“True, but he didn’t know it either. Saito did. He worked with whomever he could, like the rest of us. After Saito’s death, he tried turning pro, failed. Fixers never accepted him as anything more than a two-bit middle-man. Didn’t have the instinct for it.”

Crystal eyed him, “You think he set up Nakasumo? How? Curie and the others would fry him.”

“You know how the game is, Cee; we don’t carry grudges ‘less we wanna end up dead in our sleep. We care about money. Big enough job comes around, everyone sucks it up, throws down together. Even if we hate each other.

“Nakasumo didn’t work like that. He wasn’t playing the game wrong so much as trying to play a different one entirely.”

“Could’a worked if Saito’d been the loyalist type, like youf,” Crystal said of his strict one-fixer policy.

“The Madame does right by me. I do right by her. We earn income from that. Soon as that changes, we reassess, but we all know it won’t change. That’s not Curie’s style. Mine neither.”

She shrugged, more to herself than to him. “Still doesn’t explain Angela last year.”

“It does,” he corrected with a grimace. “In its roundabout way. Even the Mafia, ‘least at large, doesn’t break the rules, Cee. That’s the difference between what Nakasumo was trying to do and what Caruso did. He was trying to adapt wrong. He measured the game wrong. Caruso went to war without sanction.”

“You mean ’cause fielders are only fair-game on jobs.”

“Yeah. And off jobs, its Johns taking heat.” He reiterated what they both already knew. “There’s exceptions, but Caruso wasn’t endorsed by anyone. The Families don’t go off on whims. They’re like a corporation, a central command structure all the way down. No-one level acts without each above-level’s permission.”

She nodded, “I know. And that’s the reason they never retaliated. Far as they’re concerned, Curie– meaning us– did them a favor taking out a rogue element.

“Still doesn’t explain why we’re here. Grudge or not, nobody rips off someone they know without reason.”

He paused, focusing solely on the tablet screen. A light buzz faded up, reached full strength, then lost itself in the humming laptops. A small drone hovered near Crystal’s head, sank to buzz its camera at her face. Titus watched the tablet, thumbing it.

He began again, still focused downward, “Akira’s not a middler anymore. He’s not in the game at all anymore. That puts him outside it. Given circumstances, he could be a John or a mark. Since he stiffed me on a job, and Curie needs to occasionally flex authority, this week he’s a mark. “

“Still a grudge,” Crystal argued.

He smiled slyly, “I like to think of it as being in collections. There.“

Crystal hesitated, brows furrowed. The drone returned to its charging pad behind her on recall protocol. Titus held the tablet out; her furrowed face stared back in a still, almost deranged with perplexity.

“Looks like someone dropped their pants to show a tattoo.”

Titus laughed, “Look good to me.”

“You need your eyes checked,” Crystal joked with the slightest hint of a smile.

Lucas and Angela sat across from one another in the main dining room of Aggiornamento, one of the more upscale casual places Angela frequented. Among other things, the food was exquisite. Given she hadn’t seen her brother in a decade, and that all they’d eaten together was left over bar-food, she couldn’t resist a nice meal.

They were perusing menus when Lucas whistled a bombshell dropping. “Pricey.”

She replied with a short, “Mm.”

He half-joked, “Guess I’ll owe you.”

She didn’t bother looking up. “S’on me.”

“Must been doing well. I mean damn, the chicken’s thirty bucks.”

Angela rolled her eyes. Lucas was famous for that. Anything that wasn’t skid-row was extravagance, never mind a half-chicken for twenty-eight creds was nearly the best bargain in all of Jackstaff. Especially at higher-end places. Hell, right time and place, a glass of water could cost that.

Lucas settled on a Filet Mignon with a bottle of beer; Angela fileted Salmon topped with crabmeat and shrimp. It went down with 10 year old Italian Pinot Noir.

For Angela, it was just another high-end meal. She partook at least once a week or so. This hardly bank-breaking. For Lucas, it was the most decadent meal of his lifetime. He settled into it finely.

Too finely.

He was clearly feeling atop the world. Angela didn’t notice. Things were too light. She was high on laughter, rosey-cheeked amusement, and expensive wine. Lucas soothed something deep within, so intimate, familiar, yet foreign. She couldn’t help finding herself giddy.

Drinks came and went.

Before long, Angela was ready to order an auto-cab. Lucas snatched her keys away then, “You wanna’ leave a ‘68 Chevelle overnight in a Jackstaff lot? Are you nuts?”

She blew a raspberry, half slurred, “Nothin’ll happen to it. I know th’owner.”

“C’mon. I’ll drive.”

“You’ve been drinking since breakfast,” she scoffed.

“I’m more practiced,” he said, headed for the car.

She hesitated, hurried after him. The ride home was much calmer and collected than she’d anticipated. Lucas took every corner expertly, foot tempering the allure of the 396 SS as it begged to roar. Instead, it carried them home at posted speed-limits, into the garage and the parking space without a hum out of place.

Angela stumbled into the apartment ahead of Lucas. She rounded, hugged him with a wet kiss on the cheek and a “goodnight,” then swaggered to her room and closed the door. He rounded for the hall to his room and straight into Arthur. The old man’s hand was flattened out expectantly, his face set like an angry father at a truant son’s homecoming.

“Keys.”

Lucas half-examined the old man. “Hmm? Oh. Here.”

Arthur slipped them into a pocket, eyes never faltering. “I know your game, kid. Seen it a million times. She’s family. I’m not. Put her in danger, I’ll put you in the ground.”

Arthur about-faced. The hall-door shut before Lucas snarled, slumped, and slime-trailed away.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Life and Death Curse

February 22, 2018February 18, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

A wormhole in your eyes.
Dimensions of space, I defy.
Tunneling through planes,
of unimaginable aims.

Creatures unknown both big and small,
gather in hubs that never fall,
from space or from orbit.
to trade in currencies of digital-bit.

Where ships of flesh,
both metal and real,
abound with things,
that sense more than feel.

And even the inane, innocuous,
invokes wonder so glorious,
and so pure,
undiscovered,
as to make one’s breaths encumbered.

So saddle up. Take the ride,
I promise not to chide,
but to show the universe,
as more than a life-and-death curse.