Writing from 07-11-2008
I wrote this back in 2008 as part of a failed attempt to write every day for a month. I made it 4 days. I plan to post all 4 for posterity's sake.
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Max part one
Max held his arm above his eyes, trying his best to block out the harsh afternoon sun. His oversized t-shirt blew wildly around him in a fit of muddy brown while his jeans trailed too long over his shoes, ending in rutty tatters. Long hair splayed itself behind him and exposed a silver collar around his neck as the wind did its best to set him off balance. Had he not been stationed within the basin digging trenches for the past three months he would have been lying in one right now. Unfortunately some of the new transfers had yet acclimate to the weather. Several convicts, not prepared for the wind, were knocked askew and tumbled into the holes they had been digging for the last several hours. Max ignored their cries as he peered out over the farmland. Without the use of magic it was nearly impossible to take anything in high detail with the sun facing him. The signal he was meant to receive from the guild would be one unnoticeable to anyone not looking for it. Without knowing what it was beforehand did nothing but lead to the constant over analyzing of anything and everything. He would be sure to sober up properly before the next mission briefing, or at the very least have someone take notes.
A giant of a man stepped out from one of several tents set off twenty yards from the work site. In what seemed to take far fewer steps than Max would have thought, he crossed the distance between them and placed a large hand on Max's shoulder. Dominic Antigan towered a full head over Max. His naked scalp glistened in the summer heat while sweat streaked over his brown, cracked skin. Pink scar tissue covered most of his arms and across one permanently sealed eye. His simple tunic and pants billowed in the wind. Dominic was a consultant for the Eastern Trade Consortium, the organization solely responsible for eighty percent of slave trade in North America. The ETC payed him a great amount to do absolutely nothing on the record. No one wanted to have slave trade in the books if they could avoid it. He earned a small fortune capturing, training and “employing” people to meet whatever ends the client might wish. Manual labor, harems, cannon fodder, for the right price, anything that needed doing could be done.
“Mister Rivius.” Dominic's voice bellowed. His grip tightening on Max's shoulder. “Did I say your fellow field-hands could rest?” Max calmed himself. The ring around his throat worked against him twofold. On one hand it prevented him from channeling anything flashy, specifically disallowing anything other than magic that would increase the workers endurance. Without the collar, Max would've normally been able to simply grab Dominic's arm above the wrist and tightened his grip, the magic enhancing his strength a hundred fold and grinding bones to dust. With it on he could run for hours on end, endurance giving out only as his body fell apart. The ring unfortunately prevented this by acting also as a shock collar. Dominic had but to think a relatively pointed thought and all that would exist for Max was pain.
This was all foreplay and Max knew it. Unfortunately his slaver had a penchant to be dramatic. He'd let the crows eat him before playing Dominic's game. Max wrestled his shoulder free and stood quietly anticipating the shock.
Writing from 07-06-2008
I wrote this back in 2008 as part of a failed attempt to write every day for a month. I made it 4 days. I plan to post all 4 for posterity's sake.
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Burn the Witch
The corpse lay curled in upon itself in the middle of the floor. One arm holding its stomach while the other grasped out towards the doorway. Behind bulging lifeless eyes, wet blood trickled from the ears. Its twisted features left little doubt on whether the death had been a peaceful one. Elana had once heard that you couldn't truly kill a cynic. She filled such challenges in the back of her head for later review. This was definitely a case of 'myth busted.'
The hotel room was fairly stereotypical. Two beds, a cable TV, nightstand with wiretapped bible, closet and bathroom with a single serving of everything. The two large windows let in enough light to trick you into believing you weren't sleeping in a cesspool. That's why so many hits take place in shabby hotels. No self respecting crime scene investigator would search for DNA here. The hidden stains were a glimpse of history. A veritable cornucopia of cheap sex, murder and morning after ammonia baths left by the hired help.
She stepped over the husk and walked into the bathroom. The sink turned on of its own volition while she applied toothpaste to a blue toothbrush she found in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. Elana brushed her teeth with one hand while she teased her hair with the other. After a few moments, she rinsed out her mouth and returned to the corpse. It still stared towards the entryway with the same agonized grimace. She knelt down onto her knees in front of it and twisted her head at an awkward angle until she looked it face to face. She studied its features for only a few seconds before she closed her eyes and kissed it.
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His body relaxed. The pain left his face and his body went limp. Elana broke from the kiss and stood up. She kicked him twice, unlocked the door and left the room. The police would find him two hours later after a disillusioned maid dialed 911 before changing the sheets. His death would probably rack up to heart failure or an air embolism. The spell always worked in its own peculiar way. Once the medical examiner accounted a death to a Viagra overdose. You never know what a guy is packing nowadays. One of these days her date won't laugh at her chosen occupation. Her word would be all the burden of proof required. No one questions doctors, why should a witch be treated any differently. She hoped that soon she'd find her anything and everything. Until then she would pass the time clearing out the genepool.
Writing from 07-05-2008
I wrote this back in 2008 as part of a failed attempt to write every day for a month. I made it 4 days. I plan to post all 4 for posterity's sake.
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My life sucked in the way C-SPAN sucked. Something was always on but never anything worth watching. The semester ended a month ago and anyone worth hanging out with had an apartment near campus. It was cheaper that way, but why pay for an apartment now when I could roll a dorm into my student loan. Nothing screams patriotism in America like good old fashion debt.
I had landed a job for the summer selling overpriced teflon to old ladies from a kiosk in the mall. It paid more than minimum wage and sat me across the way from the local bookstore, which were the only two facts that mattered. Most of my days were spent sitting at home delving through the collected works of types like Neil Gaiman and Jim butcher, on the rare occasion delving through some Lovecraft to keep my literature-cool in check.
The fifth day of storm had found me relaxing inside on the couch, choking down 'Dreamquest of Unknown Kadesh' (I'm so cool) while sipping down some generi-cola. It hadn't rained a drop for months and now a monsoon. At least global warming had my back while I was walking around campus. A single lamp that stood at the end of the couch lit the room half-heartedly. A bookcase lined one wall and found itself piled high in what might have once accumulated to a small grove of trees. The wall opposite to it stood the front door surrounded by a collection of old family photos. Me in fifteen different flavors of stubborn. I didn't take to photos, they tried not to take to me. We had an understanding.
The wall left of the front door (your other left) had an electric fireplace no one bothered using anymore. For some reason my family thought that replacing all the fun of making a fire and the smells that accompanied that with faulty wiring was a good idea. They neglected to realize that a fireplace is more about the character of it than the view itself. Plus, my mother would never let me burn army men in the expensive glorified toaster.
Lightning flashed.
The fourth wall had a door. A heavy metal thing set in a wrought iron frame. The design on the front was Celtic, knots abounding. The handle was set a couple inches into the door itself so you would have to wrap your hands around it like a pole and twist to open. It looked as if it had been there for a hundred years, little rust stains seeping into the drywall around it.
My book dropped.
Writing from 07-04-08
I wrote this back in 2008 as part of a failed attempt to write every day for a month. I made it 4 days. I plan to post all 4 for posterity's sake.
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07-04-08
I hate responsibility. I could take her, she was offering herself to me. All I'd have to do is let it happen. It'd been awhile since I had anything resembling meaningful release anyway. With work the way it went, I was surprised I had time to sleep, much less copulate.
She saddled me, supporting her top half as she lay on me nuzzling my neck. Her lips felt electric. Each one burning away at my hesitation, drawing me in closer to the inevitable. Her tongue caught me off guard and a small noise escaped me. She pulled herself up vertically on her knees. She was already naked from the waist up and her skirt left nothing to the imagination. Laura had a body Rembrandt would feel crass attempting to put to canvas. I felt like a fly in a spider's web. Her grin did nothing to lesson the sensation.
She lingered there, allowing me to bask in her beauty for what could have been years, then slid her hands to my belt and started to pull it off. The button on my jeans offered no resistance. As she started to unzip me my hands shot out of their own accord and stopped her. A few seconds later what was left of my inhibition caught up with them.
“Put your clothes back on.”
I imagine less willpower was used to raise Lazarus from the dead than I had to put into those five words.
Her hands stopped, but her grin never left her face. It only lasted a moment before her hands sank from my belt with with the least of good intentions.
She applied pressure, and only the pleasure of it existed until the stroke ended. My body called to me, screamed at me to let go.
Fuck it, I needed this.
My hands loosened on her wrists and she repeated the stroke. She tossed her head back and laughed. I closed my eyes. I didn't care anymore, I only wanted release. She recovered from the laugh and brought her lips down to me. She kissed me once, tightened her grip, and then everything stopped. There was a great vacancy. Where a the warmth of her had been moments before, now there was only cold.
I opened my eyes and found her pulling her top on. By the time I had the sense to put myself away she was pulling on her second shoe. I started to stand but hadn't regained enough motor function to be quick enough. She threw her purse over her shoulder, dropped something on my desk and walked out. After taking a cold shower and grabbing a sandwich, I examined my present.
It was a playing card. More precisely, the queen of hearts. Little cracks had been scratched into the pips and two words above her highness's head mocked me in black ink.
“I win.”
Thoughts on Noprivacyville
I caught an article by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) outlining a thought experiment based on a city with no privacy anywhere except for the bedroom and bathroom. The city tracks you via GPS and also tracks everything you do via smart devices and one hell of a network. All this data is aggregated and made public for everyone and about everyone, no exceptions.
Theoretically I could pull up the mayors data and see that he's at home watching episode 13 of family guy. Smart sensors in his chair would tell me that his heart rate is nominal, blood pressure is within tolerance and that he's weighing in at a respectable 237 pounds. I remember seeing the mayor last fall and thinking he was a bit plumper than 237 so I look into his weight and see a nice graph charting out the 32 pounds he's lost since last October. Way to go mayor. Curious about his weight loss, I probe deeper. I compare his caloric intake to his caloric output and see 2200 coming in and 2600 going out daily. He's obviously working out. I'm curious about what he's eating so I dig into his diet. He just ate dinner; Chicken, broccoli and lowfat cheese. Lots of protein, little fat. I see that the type of cheese he uses contains 14g fat. That's funny because the company I work for sells cheese with 10g of fat for the same price. An advertisement pops up on his TV moments later telling John. A. Smith that he's looking great, but he could tighten up that diet a bit with WONDER-CHEESE® sold at his local convenience store.
Now, with a city with a population of 100000, who in their right mind would track people individually? You'd have to invest way more manpower than would be worth it for that kind of targeted advertising. Apply a few software engineers to the problem and you've got a system utilizing adaptive algorithms to look for certain combinations of traits to target potential clients. You could just target anyone who's eaten cheese recently, or has had a meal that would have done well with some cheese, but that's a lot of money to be spending on people who might want to buy your product. Ideally you want to spend money only on the people who will spend money on you. Every customer who sees your add and doesn't buy the product or spread the word, is wasted money. This model applies to per person targeted advertising, nothing like billboards or the like. What you want your algorithm to do is to find people who's lifestyle is improved by your product. Companies will target advertisements based on two vectors, quality and price. It's too costly to employ software to spend your money for you on a customer to customer basis if your product can't corner one or both of those items. Without the upper hand, it's more cost effective to hit as many customers at once for the lowest cost with general advertising on TV, radio and billboards. With targeted advertising, the best bang for the buck wins.
If you read through the comments in the article, it's plain to see a vast majority of people lean away from the extremes of Noprivacyville. Everyone wants to be more or less anonymous in their daily comings and goings. I personally would be one of the first to volunteer for the project. There is nothing I love more than the concept of personal data aggregation. My only issue with this is people sneaking in unchipped and committing robberies. If an outsider could get access to the cities database, they'd instantly know everyone's personal habits. When they'd be home, if they kept their doors locked, how to best steal from stores. All the info would be there for the devious. This might be offset with a combination of smart devices and camera's. That chair the mayor sat on in my earlier example would still record data if an unchipped person sat in it. They'd leave behind a trail of data. Include into the occasion camera's everywhere and that might help a bit more. Maybe the officers would have a program set up where an algorithm tracked the unchipped through the cameras and the clues they leave behind else wise.
There are more thoughts to be explored, such as the affect on crime in general, corruption in politics and police brutality in a city where everything is tracked on record, but I've got finagling lessons to attend to.