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Me, Myself, and Only I

Nov30

The headline reads 100,000th “Multiple” Power registered. ​

I hadn’t realized I’d let myself get so big.  I might have to pull things in a bit.

***

I always wanted to be a shape-changer. I guess, in a way, I have, even if all I can change into was myself.

It was the Golden Age of Superheros, back then, when the comet hit and many of us turned into something a bit different.

Me? I turned into several of me.  Four, at first.  There’s still a few stories of that first me around, The Quartet.

We sang four-part harmony pretty well.

But then I figured out how to replicate – or not – changes done to my body when I multiplied.  And I figured out how to choose where the damage went.

The Quartet died.  They died kind of old, and rather heroic.

I lived.  Dyed hair and a change of costume.  People don’t look too deeply.

There was Multiple Man – that one was a trick.  Then there was Quantum Lass.

I can get old.  But aging is damage, and there are ten of me in a nursing home, cheerfully playing cribbage with each other.

I wonder who was number 100,000.  What was her name?  Her schtick?

I’ve lost track, you see.  I don’t even think I’m the original anymore.

And if I called them all back into me, I don’t even know what would happen.

But that’s all right.  Because three of me are billionaires, and I can live in comfortable semi-retirement as Plurality, playing chess with myself and

never

ever

alone.

 

Written to WritingPrompts’s prompt:

In a universe of superheroes and sidekicks, Multiples are one of the most common powers, with roughly 100,000 individuals in possession. But the truth is, there has only ever been one Multiple. You.

The Testing

Nov29

Part two of The Testers.

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The testing seemed to go on forever.

Kelly didn’t remember it being that long when she was 15, or before that when she was ten, but this one was supposed to be the biggest, the most important, so maybe that meant it was the longest, too.

She answered questions on things she couldn’t remember ever learning.  She performed first-aid on a very creepy dummy that seemed to breathe and sweat and bleed.  She sewed together two pieces of fabric.

The screen continued to ask her questions through all of it.  Some were personal: when was the first time you had sex?  Do you sleep with your partner-parent?  Where do your children sleep? Continue reading →

Ba(n)kers

Nov27

This story brought to you by the fact that I kept misreading Lilfluff’s prompt “a baker” as “a banker.”

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The old bank smelled delicious.

Of the village that had stood here before everything had collapsed, seven buildings remained and seven new ones had been constructed from the wreckage of the old.

In the center of everything, the bank was an anchor, not a window broken, not a tile out of place.  It had withstood storms before.  It would withstand more than that in the future.

And in the middle of the bank, Geraldine Atwater and Clementine Smith had built their ovens.

They kneaded bread on the old marble counter-tops and stacked it for display on the check-signing stations.  They took deposits of money or trade goods or ingredients and gave receipts in bread and rolls and pastries, anything they could figure out how to make with what they had.

They’d gone back to the old traditions: The brewery hadn’t stood, but they’d rebuilt it, and they used the yeast from the brewery for their bread.  The area was littered with millstones and old museum replicas of mills.  They’d used them as a blueprint for a new mill, right next to the bank-cum-bakery.

The area had never stopped farming.  They had to borrow from the Amish and the Mennonites to get things back to an old-school way, but they traded with everyone they could still reach, and in the end, Gerry and Clem had enough for their bakery, and the town had enough to eat.

Today was a special day, and today they were baking up a storm.  The ovens had been fired since three hours before dawn and now, the bread for the village and the rolls for their sandwiches baked, they were twisting up the braids and the swirls of a grand confection.

Today marked three years since their first loaf had been baked in their new oven.  And it marked three and a half years since the day they’d all stepped out of the Great Storm.

The bread sculpture wouldn’t show the storm, though.  Four feet tall and seven feet long, the sculpture would show hands.  All of their hands, the whole village, the Amish, the Mennonites, the crazy hermits up the hill.  Hands, and a mill wheel, and the framework of a building being pushed into shape.

“Should we call it Thanksgiving, do you think?”  Gerry twisted the gnarled knuckles of Eli Schneiderman’s old hands into the dough in front of her.

“Nah, that already means something.  Call it…. Call it Friendship.  No.  Community Day.”  Clem added a line of cinnamon to the millwheel.  “The sweetness of a true community.”

The Testers

Nov26

Written in part to prompts from Wyste and Lilfluff, clearly not finished.

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“And when you turn twenty,” Thomas whispered, “the Testers come and they take you away.  And if you’re very very lucky, they take you to a good place, and if you’re not, they take you to a bad place.”

The younger children shivered.  Kelly was supposed to be watching them tonight, but she was letting Thomas tell his stories, even if they weren’t at all helpful.

She’d be twenty tomorrow.  She remembered when they’d taken Aaron.  And before Aaron, Jennifer, and before Jennifer, Keisha and Min and Lad and Petyr Continue reading →

Married?

Nov21

This story was spurred on by the 2/3-Nano semi-burnout and by buying a 2-month-old, 20-meter long dragon as the mate for a 2-day-old, 2-meter-long hatchling. 

Despite that, I tried very hard to avoid anything remotely squicky.  Also, this is not about dragons. Continue reading →

A Good Life

Oct31

To Anke’s Prompt.  I found I didn’t want to make it dark this time. 

🎃

The field had been warm, sun-kissed and sheltered from the wind. The soil was rich and the rain was lovely.

Now the air was cold and the Vines were drying up. The pumpkin, and all its siblings and cousins, were full-grown, ready. In two more weeks, maybe four, they would start going back to the soil.

The pumpkin saw its family being taken away, moved on wagons and carts. The ground was cold. The sunlight was thinning and the pumpkin could not reach the nutrients in the earth any more.

“This one! It’s gorgeous, look at it!”

Hands lifted the pumpkin and carried it, brought it into bright light and turned it around and around.

The knife shaped and altered the pumpkin while the voices cooed over it. “Beautiful! Awesome!”

The candle flickered inside the pumpkin and the moonlight shone down on it. Visitors stopped and praised it.

The pumpkin would go back to the earth soon. For now, it was pleased.

A New World: The Letter

Oct25

First: A New World
Previous: Myths

⚗️

The potion was sweeter than she remembered it, and for a moment, Kael worried that she’d made a mistake with an ingredient. Impossible.  It might have been a thousand years, but to her mind, it had been barely more than a nap.  She could no more have forgotten the ingredients than she could have forgotten her own name.

Her eyes cleared and she went for the note, glad she’d thought to put it away before the tourists showed up.

The letters shimmered and twisted until they were legible and understandable.

Lady Kaelingrade,

I do not know what potion you wrought, but you wrought it well indeed.  The entire tower slept for quite some time.

Under the words, she seemed to read: I wish you’d warned us.  There were people I would have liked to say goodbye to.

This note can only be read by you, but as a precaution, I wrote it in the script I first found a hundred-plus years ago, when I returned.  You’ve shown signs of stirring, lately, and I think it might finally be time for you to awaken.

Finally.  You were closer to the smoke, of course.  That’s why you slept so much longer.  But I could have used you, so many times, since we came to this strange place you delivered us unto.

I have set things up to give you a place to learn about the world before you decide what you must do.  Do not mistake me: I and the others are still loyal to you.  But a man can not stay in one place, these days, and pretend to be his own uncle, or simply never age and claim to be one of the Great Ones.  Belief is too thin and people are too willing to mob someone, looking for secrets that are not mine to share.

I am still loyal.  I am still loyal.  I am still loyal.

I will return.  I hope, if you have awakened and gone out into the world by then, that you leave me sign in the same method, or another similar method. Until then, beware others you meet who seem like you.

You’re not going to be strong enough, not yet.  You need me.  You’ve always needed me.

Kael blinked.  She was reading – was reading three lines into each line: the letters, which she could not read herself, the meaning of the words, and the meaning behind the words. What had Joaon – no.  Something in the potion had been a little bit off.

She was going to have to find a way to grow and collect her own ingredients again.  She was going to have to find staff again.  And Joaon, who had always been more than staff.

He’d been back a hundred years.  Some part of her bristled.  He could have woken her!  He could have – he’d lived for 100 years?  Without her?

Well, he’d always been more than staff, more than an apprentice. The potion for long life was not all that difficult a one, if you knew where to get the ingredients.

How did you take an apprentice, these days?

No, the matter at hand.   She looked back down to the letter.

The set-up I’ve created for you will restrict you a bit, I’m afraid, but it provides you with cover while you get used to the world.  These people are foreigners, or we would have called them that in our time.  

You have no idea how hard it was for me to adjust, without that, how hard it was for all of us, and I hope you never do know.  It is our job to make your life easier, after all.  It has always been our job..

She blinked twice, and realized she was blinking away tears.  “Joaon… oh, Joaon.”  

I assume you understand how it is that I am still alive, a hundred years after coming to this place.  I have always been very attentive.  And you had already kept me alive long past my allotted time.

This is more than that.  I had grandchildren, once.  Now I may, somewhere, have descendants.  Do I dare to try the potion that would tell me?  And if my line has died out…

Do be careful: there are ingredients today with similar names to the reagents of our day that do something completely different. I have attempted to stock the stores with only those things that you will recognize, but sometimes those I put “in charge” of the tower have their own wishes.

How they can manage not to believe in proper potion work, while standing in your Tower, I will never know.

I hope I see you again soon.

I hope I see you again.

Your loyal servant,

I am still loyal.  I am still loyal.  I am still loyal.

Joaon of the Red Rushes

 

A New World: Myths

Oct17

First: A New World
Previous: Carrenonna

⚗️

“That is… a very good question.  But I suppose the answer lies in the fact that Kaelingrade is said to have disappeared, isn’t she?  Whereas Carrenonna-”  She trailed off, hoping someone knew.

“Kaelingrade vanished without a trace, tower and all, in a cold spring one day during the Aterpian Wars,” read the father. “What are – oh, those were some of the wars before we landed, weren’t they?  Skirmishes?”

Kael raised her eyebrows at the man. “Skirmishes?  You are talking about battles when thousands on thousands of people died.”

“But they didn’t have real technology here, did they?  Before we, I mean, before colonists came.  That was a long time ago, but I know there wasn’t anything like modern warfare.”

“Oh, come on, Dad.”  The older daughter rolled her eyes.  “Just because we can drop bombs and blow up entire cities now doesn’t mean that we’re superior or something.  And besides, they had magic back then, real magic, didn’t they?”

“Aria, what did we say about-” Continue reading →

Bring Down the Walls – a bonus story for Patreon

Oct9

I mentioned a story about renovations…

🔨

The renovations started in June.

They closed on the house in October — Judy had a feeling about the place; Steve thought it had good bones — and lived with the ugly panelling, the wonky ceilings, the strange toilet all winter long.

As soon as the weather was consistently warm, down came the hideous panelling.

And behind the panelling, they found a note, written in sharpie across the drywall.

September 20, 1970:  I hung this panelling with my own two hands. -K. Thomas Continue reading →