Quincunx

a Tzimfemme poem, roughly, that still eats at me years afterward. edited: He flails with child's gestures, half-aware he's fallen short of what he may have been; no more can he pretend to being thin, with skin gone drowning-pale from lack of air and mottled, worn itself all free of hair by slippery stink that greases skin on skin. His flab is fondled, fingers pressing in, and rearranged, he knows not why or where. I'll tell you why. You've seen my hate before-- this flawed facade, I didn't want to find! The only beauty-marks among your pores are streaks of bruises. All of these are mine. I lash out at my shame--you're so much more, you're not so bound by flesh, within my mind.

I tried to recite the poem from memory, and was unclear at a few points, where it could maybe become stronger: End of the second line, trailing off into "may" where the rest of that verse is bracketed by strong adjectives and ideas. It might be unchangeable--the rest of that verse is very strong and perfect, even the beginning of that line. The pair of questions at the end of the poem, I could not even guess as to what they were, trying to remember this--they should carry more force than that. The concept of ending and underlining the poem with questions is good. Going back over the poem and preface, the only part that doesn't come up in the poem itself is "perceptions of beauty", perhaps one question could bring that back into focus? Understand that this poem stays with me, irritates me, a rough diamond. I can see your vision, with a rare inclusive feeling, but the fuzziness of the image is driving me bananas.

(Rydia picks up boxes, looks under couches, turns on lamps, opens bags. . .) Where's the shiny? I know there's a shiny here somewhere. Here shiny shiny shiny!

"Television!" Promotional Air Time Met - Basic Channels. Please Enjoy Our Fine Programming. A transparent menu displayed on the window, backlit by real sunset, with a weather ticker predicting high light pollution and low burglary index for the next eight hours. "Television, erotic." Promotional Air Time Not Yet Met - Programming Unavailable - Please Enjoy Our Fine Products. Ludmila turned her back on the explicit ads and surveyed her apartment. She partly unfolded the loveseat, so it was less of a couch but not quite a bed, and tugged the blanket to conceal some threadbare spots. In the kitchen, the ventilation fans whined and whirred, trying to clear out the fumes of triple-strength cleaning fluid. Fresh putty--not guaranteed for acid rain, but cheap and quick-drying--covered the cracks in the walls. A card table, covered with a satin sheet and set for two to dine, took up the space where her pile of unwashed laundry usually lay. "Shouldn't scare him off," she shrugged, and went into the bathroom to do battle with her new, short crop of hair, only to race out a few seconds later when the door announced a visitor. She skidded to a halt on a patch of water and hair gel, barefoot, flipped the towel back into the bathroom, slammed that door shut, and said, "Door, open!" In the doorway was a bundle of flowers. . .no, a bushel basket of flowers. . .no, a very small man holding a bushel basket of flowers. Ludmila gawked. So did he. "Flowers are customary for the first date?" he asked. She groaned inwardly. "Yes, they are. . .Come in, come in," and stepped aside. "Put them down. . .er. . .Well, there's space in the kitchen right now." She walked backwards into the kitchen with the flowers following, and helped him lower the heavy basket onto the floor. He wasn't so short when he wasn't carrying half his body weight in flora, and he had only a few loose petals stuck on his suit jacket. Also, he was very pale, almost luminous, and without obvious body machinery--but somehow, subtly, uninviting. "So," she began, "where did you get all these flowers? And how'd they survive the trip here?" "Oh, they're a special hybrid, for low-oxygen environments," he explained. "I was going to get a regular-size bouquet, but these were ordered and not picked up, so my--" Ludmila waited, and waited, and finally suggested, "Daughter? . . .Mother? . . .Boyfriend?. . ." ". . .boyfriend. . ." Ludmila filled the new silence by thinking of how, exactly, she was going to get Michelle back for this. "So are you just dabbling, cheating on your myn, or. . ." she trailed off, ". . .Here to pass on your genes?"

First the bachelor auctions wins (yes, that's wins, as in multiple) and now this? Geez, and I thought I was demanding. . . (Tzimfemme flips her hand, grinning like a hyena to show she's not serious--but still writes down the phone number to link into one of her stories--)

I think the "buying off weenie" bit stays, though--can't have anyone becoming too complacent about not visiting for months on end. (Tzimfemme grins evilly.)

A few of the street people knew better than to spit on the laboratory floor, but not enough, as they shuffled in a line through an irradiation curtain into the operating theater. Ludmila kept the helpful smile pasted on her face, handing out the plastic-wrapped packets of surgical gown and anaesthetic drink, while assessing how much overtime it'd take to mop all of the spit stains and city filth off of the floor. Janitors' strikes had hit the college every autumn for every year anyone could remember; the political students cared passionately about this and always held fundraisers to bribe the unions into breaking the strike early, but that never worked. True students, unlike janitors and (thankfully) teachers like Ludmila, drew no overtime pay. She took her place at the podium after directing one befuddled old man to his reclining hospital bed and retracting the robotic arm that had frightened him off of it. "Take your surgical gown out of the packet and place it over your head. Wear it OVER YOUR REGULAR CLOTHES. Recline on the bed," she directed the volunteers. "Take the bottle. Pull the ring from the top of the bottle." Ludmila held up a bottle to the floating magnifier and pulled out the cork. "Yes, you may keep the ring. Drink from the bottle. . .now." She mimed drinking from her empty demonstration bottle. Slowly the room fell silent as the people drifted to sleep. When all of the volunteers were asleep, the robotic arms above each bed unfolded and descended, hovering just above the patients' faces. Ludmila stepped from behind the podium, over to a reclining operating table with a cadaver, instruments in a tray above the cadaver's head. She clipped a pair of wires to sockets embedded in her carpal bones, then spoke into a mouthpiece attached to the wires just above her wrist, "Begin Lesson. Diagnose Cornea." As she reached into the tray and selected an instrument, the robotic arms moved in unison to select the same instrument from their own trays. With her other hand, Ludmila tapped a pattern onto the table. The phone under her skin vibrated slightly as it sought a signal that would pierce the operating theater's dampening field. She clamped her jaws but that didn't dampen the vibration. It beeped to signal a connection, and Ludmila swore. "HELLO?" Ludmila flinched from pain, but the robot arms overcame the human error. "WHISPER," she muttered, steadying her hand over the cadaver's eye. A pause. "You got a subdermal, huh?" "Yeah, I did. I'm at work, 'Chelle-fen--" "I haven't been fen for months, 'Milla. Where HAVE you been?" "Neither have I." Ludmila stuck her tongue out although this phone didn't have visual, and continued to examine the eye. Another pause. "Ohhhhhh. . .'Milla, 'Milla, 'Milla. . .worst mistake you can make. Men are still pigs. I'm neuter now, loving every minute of it. You should. . . ," then Michelle's voice trailed off. Ludmila lifted the back of her wrist to her mouth. "Begin Lesson. Cornea Transplant." She changed instruments slowly, gave Michelle time to compose herself. "I'm sorry, 'Chelle. I wouldn't give everything up for a man, you know it--I just want a kid. A baby. You know?" Michelle did not know. While Ludmila and the robot arms squeezed old corneas and sutured new ones, while she ended the lessons and prompted the robots to release anti-anaesthetic, and while she paid the street people and urged them back out onto the street, Michelle told her ex-girlfriend exactly what type of idiocy she attached to that idea. After an hour and a half, Michelle started to run low on arguments and sighed into the phone, "All right. . .FINE. . .ruin your life, I don't care. You want me to introduce your anti-social ass to all the nice dependable one-night-stands, 'cause you don't want him hanging around, but you still want a good daddy. I mean good genes. Am I right? You want me to advertise a born-again fem who just wants a baby, who sounds like she's thirty-five years old and that better still be a lie, and get her a date?" Ludmila stopped mopping for a moment and checked her reflection in the window. One of her braids, loosened by the brief loss of hair optimizer, fell out as she watched and floated on the scummy surface of the mop bucket. "Well, I'll do it," Michelle stated, "just to prove that I AM the best matchmaker this filthy city's ever seen. Don't come crying to me when it doesn't work out, and I don't mean the relationship."

Next day, Ludmila stopped by a steel door nearly invisible under a shell of graffiti and pushed a credit card into a slot above the door handle. The door responded sluggishly but let her into a square hallway, facing a glassed-in cage with exchange trays and lurid red stickers: CAUTION! Inner air layer contains anthrax, Do Not Shoot The Glass. Behind the double panes perched a wrinkled-armed lady with Elvis coiffure and matching sideburns, trimming some stray hairs with a pill cutter. "Yeah?" she mumbled, before darkening the window with a complete financial and social record pulled from Ludmila's credit card. The picture on the driver's license was much paler and more gawky than the woman standing impassively in front of her life history. Ludmila plunked a few marble-sized clumps of circuitry into the tray, then pushed it through the irradiation layer, over to the concealed cashier. "Turning in pregnancy suppressant and optimized hair growth for credit. Picking up phone with a local scanner override, no biggie, just wanna chat at work. And I should have enough left over for a new tribal." "Barely," grunted the cashier, fingernails tapping on the other side of the glass. "Unless you want to get the new special, temp option renewable weekly. . ." The cashier paused, then continued with a hint of emotion, "won't need the phone for long, he'll be here and gone. Lets you keep the hair, although what you've got is gonna fall out since you took it out. You'd have to pass on the tribal anyway, we're out of everything but Ibo, Romanov, or Boston Brahmin. Real class." The shop always had to be out of something, Ludmila thought. Aloud she agreed, and touched the payment button on her side of the display. The display updated, then the tray reopened on her side, containing one clump of circuitry, a pill not much smaller printed with the ancient two-shape logo for telephone, and a filthy plastic shotglass filled to the brim. She picked up the pill and shotglass of catalyst, downed them both with a sick look, then scooped up the hair optimizer and turned her back on the booth. Just inside the door, her credit card rolled out of another slot above the handle; she retrieved it and the cashier's cage became transparent again. "You say hello to your ma for me," croaked the cashier, while Ludmila waited for the door to open, absently scratching at the new, tingling receiver that had grown under her skin, just beneath her left earlobe.

Author's note: Setting does borrow heavily from the comic series Transmetropolitan. I had re-invented the wheel to make a background world for Tzim, but this wheel was actually round. Look up the comics if you can tolerate excesses of vulgarity for the sake of an ethical political story. It was a dark and stormy night. Acid rain, lashed sideways by the wind, slipped underneath non-corrosive hoods and ate away at sprinkler heads, while the alkaline anti-rain leaked from the sprinklers onto the apartments it was meant to protect. Every so often, a neon sign would be breached and flare into a vivid lightning cloud before shorting out; otherwise light only came from unchanging graveyard-shift ad screens. Inside Ludmila's apartment, rain dripped through the crawlspace, fell through her kitchen, and continued eating its way through the floor, drip, drip, drip, sizzzzzzle. Ludmila herself sprawled on a battered overstuffed loveseat, with every lamp in the apartment shut off, staring blankly out the window until the drip, drip, sizzzzzle, drip was intolerable. "Television!" she snapped, and the window became opaque, then changed to a text display: Promotional Air Time Not Yet Met - Programming Unavailable - Please Enjoy Our Fine Products. She hung one leg over the side of the loveseat as ads flashed onto the screen, ran one hand through her lanky braids, and sighed, "I need a man. . .forget that, they keep on hanging around after you want 'em gone. . .I need a kid."

Cliches are curses on the verses-- however much you might bemoan it-- but no one will misunderstand-- --except for one--another poet.

I have a warm and general like of the poem (cannot suggest anything less than polished about it), but I was equally intrigued by the preface you included with it. The poem might have fallen short of what you expected from it, if the preface is so indivisible from the verse. Need to think a bit more on this, try to filter out what extra shade of meaning came from outside the verse.

. . .if they weren't already there to begin with. *ba-boom tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing* --Tzimfemme, the naked The loyal opposition when opposition is needed, otherwise just another pervert in the guild.

If anything, this election has convinced me to read editorials (on Yahoo News, fallen behind on The Guardian (UK) website) and absorb some fine time-pressure essays, also to realize how little writing genius is needed when shouting from a strong opinion. There is one repeating difference in the style of composition: the best conservative essays built on what has happened before, and persuade the reader by chaining the events with a conservative assumption, a defensive stance; the best liberal essays built on what could happen now, and persuade the reader by a liberal conclusion after the future vision, a less defensive stance. Boaz--your example might have been using the rule set "the judgement of woman is wisest, in building a family and caring for it"--only the best genes passed on, only the best food for it. I don't agree--my rule set is "the sanctity of life is a specious argument"--bring on the meat and the abortions, although for the love of pete not at the same table. Degenero--Us vs Them was a lot more fun until the media Them realized they were an Us of their own and actually became partial. With their audience already convinced of the media bias, what real need did they have for impartiality? No one would believe it. Articles about journalism itself? No longer in bad taste. Studies into the subtle biases of themselves and their competitors? Let the audience feel it's helping to weed out corrupted media. Loosely affiliated experts of either side brought into the studio and encouraged to debate? Let them gain the trust of the audience, give them their own voice in the media. When they prove incapable of debate and degenerate into a shouting match? High ratings as the audience shouts back at the screen! Can I get an Amen! Can I get some feedback! Can I join in on the common man, can I become involved! Yes, I can! And into this rollicking, partying, buddy-buddy atmosphere, you gotta have an opinion to get into the door to be invited! And I have an opinion, and I am the media! It's a wild party now, even Dan Rather is swinging with the tides!

We were advised not to argue people, so I'll gladly leave your comments about the wives alone--saves me having to look up anything about them. Ashcroft is in a position where he can make his morals into law, and he is doing it, and I object to his morals. I am most nervous about the slow rollback of legal abortion. On an unrelated note, it still chafes me that he failed to be elected in 2000 to a state position, and that he was appointed to a federal position. . .against the wishes of the voting population? Ever since I've been old enough to notice politics, there have been charismatic presidents. I'm curious to know what happens in the time of a bland president.

Most of my life's decisions are made against, not for (Starlight being the major counter-example). I'm not certain that my request for absentee ballot made it to the proper offices in time, but if it did--My driving concern is getting John Ashcroft out of his appointed position, and swamping all elected federal positions with Democrats is the only way I can think of to influence that. (Every local. . .um, Scandinavian, if you count also the people who asked me online, only asked me "Are you voting for Bush?. . .No? Good!") I don't remember too much political uproar when I was in high school, but I was in middle school when the '92 election and Ross Perot hit the scene, and whew, what a mindless outpouring of support. I'm surprised that we didn't go around the school chanting Three Three Three Three for sheer joy at having a third party.

Tzimfemme slid the cover sideways, exposing double-paned glass about one foot square, and peered out from her room in the Pen Keep. "Mind over matter, and heated air ventilation over the next six months," she said, before sliding the panel shut again. After a moment, it opened again. "And Rydia's insane," she added. Rydia, meanwhile, was bundling up in green down-filled coat, mystical static field socks, extra thick wool socks, waterproofed and treaded green boots, adorable green wool mittens, darling green wool scarf, matching headwrap so as not to muss the hair, and specially knitted pointed earsocks with shiny threads twisted into the wool.

*Tzimfemme, mud-caked and grim-faced, creeps out of the darkness to crouch beside Vlad with two spears in hand. Cautiously she reaches out to touch him, then thinks better of it, retreats, and pokes him in the shoulder with one spear.* YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH Cool it, Vlad, I understand, I understand. Take this. *She lays the spear down within Vlad's reach, then scoots back into the darkness so she's not within range.* Make good use of it. Me, if any dominion so much as LOOKS at me funny, don't care whose it is-- *sound of fist hitting palm, peculiar exhalation* --it's dead. Can't go with you, have to report back to the server-side boss. No stabbing me in the ass as I leave, either, or I'll stake you twice.

Minta zips around Mynx in happy gnomie circles, squeaking "sugarsugarsugarsugarsugarsugarwheeeeee!" The broken end of an extra-large adamantium child leash whips around behind her, with a bruised zombie/anchor being skipped across the carpet and leaving smears of decaying flesh. Elsewhere. . . *squeeze* "Shiny!" *squeeze* "Shiny!" *squeeze* "Shiny!" Starlight takes the new shiny laser pointer away from Rydia. Rydia refuses to let go, and a little scuffle ensues. Neither one notices the broken end of the leash, secured a safe distance away from the birthday cookies.

My newest vice is Nöt-Creme, the deceptively simple idea of making the filling one usually puts inside a fancy chocolate truffle, squeezing it into a small plastic packet, and selling it on its own. Coarse-chopped hazelnuts with a generous amount of sugar--peanut butter is the only substance which even comes close in concept, and that is far short of the mark. It's recommended to be spread on crackers or bread, but I just slurped it out of the packet pixystix-style. Every time this topic comes up, and several times in the shoutbox, I have mentioned Toffifee, the hard-caramel hemispheres with a creamy filling, a hazelnut in the cream, and a dab of chocolate over the flat part of the candy. I've developed a taste for dill-flavored chips and salt-and-vinegar pretzels, but don't like the more common forms of dill dip and salt-and-vinegar chips. If anyone has a reliable recipe for homemade soft pretzels, please forward it; for being this close to Germany, they're conspicuously absent. I loved both dark and white chocolate Kit Kats but they were damn hard to find. Mini M&Ms in white chocolate taste just fine, wonder why they tried sticking them in milk chocolate. Also, at a confectionery in Florida, they made a. . .well, bark is the closest category it approaches. . .a layer of white chocolate, then a layer of stick pretzels well coated in gooey caramel, then a layer of milk chocolate. Two kinds of chocolate, caramel, AND salt. . .heaven.

Nothing breaks an alliance faster than 12,071 telemarketers which arrive as "reinforcements" and somehow convert all your workshops, guilds, and barracks into call centers, all the while refusing offers to be outsourced to enemy kingdoms. I think the legendary three starving peasants had a greater impact in the history of Terran warfare. . . . Welcome, Wombat.

\!!"--\o_o/((-!-/ (It's going to take far more than three days to find that missing 3 1/2" disk with most of the writing exchange on it, I fear. . .)

Have you ever refused to let something drop/go/die? *whistles innocently--not convincingly*

(Minta's eyes light up at the description of a land yacht, and she scurries off to fabricate something similar. . .)

Tzimfemme walked away from the notice board, shrugging one shoulder to shake off an odd feeling in the muscles. She passed one of the large Pen wards set into the wall for protection and heating, backtracked, and leaned against the warm wall. Her back covered the ward and relaxed in the heat, but the odd feeling persisted. Suddenly she realized, jumped away from the wall, and opened a suction portal immediately behind her back to take an air and mystic elements sample. Once the portal pinched itself off, she tested the region with her own skills: no perceivable mana flow, no fingerprints, no spoken command, no phantasm spells, no sentinel spell, nothing but a tiny trace of post-party alcohol and sweat. "Well, I'm sure that eliminates. . .someone from consideration. . .I hope," she thought, and hastened upstairs to the laboratory for more extensive testing of the sample. ***** A few days later, she returned to the notice board toting a small bucket full of quivering, half-congealed mana. She set the bucket down and looked at the little rune, still clinging to the cork, and tried to pry it off with her fingers. No luck. She took a wood popsicle stick from a convenient mini-portal, scooped up a gob of mana, and applied it to the rune and surrounding area. The cork got wet. The rune remained. She tossed the stick negligently over her shoulder (the portal reopened, taking it to the trashcan in the lab) and cast her own spell of protection on the rune, then stripped it off violently, hoping to destroy both enchantments. Still the rune was stuck. Tzimfemme grumbled and fished out her flail from the portal, then used the dagger-head's edge to cut a circle of cork around the rune. Cork, rune, and corner of card all came loose from the wall. With the rune sent back to the laboratory (to be glued to the handle of the pantry), Tzimfemme took another popsicle stick and dabbed mana onto the third notice. With each dab, she recited another possible name, Pen people of power. . .and phenomenal alcohol tolerance. The sample had held both the final metabolized traces of pure alcohol and fresh untainted cocktail mixes, with plenty of other varieties of alcohol to explain the intervening hours. She was a little leery of broadcasting an invitation to six or seven people, but hadn't been able to get a more precise identification of the poking feeling.

Tzimfemme strode into the Conservatory carrying a large sheet of corkboard on her head with a small pile of other supplies helping to keep its balance. She unloaded the lot in a well-trafficed location: corkboard, kneadable tacky gunk, box of pushpins, sheets of parchment, and a once-fluffy quill which had been braided into a quill-point with a string attached. Tacky gunk soaked into the corners of the corkboard before Tzimfemme pressed it against the wall, then she pinned the quill to the board, along with several notices pre-written in tiny, even block lettering: Wanting to buy extraplanar wards for the pantry in my room. Chocolate warded against all possible forms of disappearance I can manage and yet it keeps disappearing. Leave a notice below. For Sale: Deep Freeze Unit. Room for six cadavers or hibernating human-size creatures. Remember--very few universes have laws against freezing your enemies! Contact Tzimfemme in the laboratory. Work Exchange! I need to buy the services of a traveler of time and/or parallel existences and/or accomplished naming mage. Inquire for details. Serious offers only, please. Offering in return the services of a middling-quality naming mage, non-cyberpunk technomancer, cult-maker, and chocolatier. Your method of contact will be taken as a show of suitability for the job.