scuppernong - 5

25 November 2410 16:52 GMT, Stockholm at Earth

I went to see Nils Bortsikt, a sarge vigilant who worked civil enforcement around the college. I knew him from a blackmail job I'd figured out for the Globalist Party.

When I got to his nook he wasn't alone. Two other humen sat with him around a battered stainless steel table. They were eating herring and boiled potatoes with dill and drinking brannvin.

"Hey Nils," I said. "I'm integrating the book theft at the university for Karl Slott."

"Sit down, Go, have a drink, that's Karl Kretiensson and Kurt Quant."
They stared at me blearily. I knew them to nod at.

"Leet Larsson says you're interested in those libers at the school," said Bortsikt. Soujourn," he shouted, "Bring us another bottle! The lazy boon's probably asleep by the stove."

Nils Bortsikt carried a burner, a Husqvarn Paroxys. Husqvarn made fine weapons. A Paroxys could carbonize a steak on the moon. Kretiensson and Quant were in uniform.

A naked chimpanzee came in with another glass and a full flask of clear, pungent liquor. Nils poured all around.

"Hold it chigger, you forgot the last one," he yelled.

He tilted back the first bottle and guzzled it empty before tossing it in the direction of the chimp. It made a graceful left-handed catch and scuttled for the kitchen.

"The monks get dumber every day," Nils Bortsikt said, shaking his head.

"Nice rump though," said Karl. Or maybe Kurt. "Damn right," said the other one.

I tasted the brannvin. It was like drinking herbed gasoline.

"About Chimera Libra," I said. "My case load tells me the local leader is named Noir, Rio Noir. You know about that?"

"Sure I do," Nils said. "Noir's a damned nuisance, an agitator, vandalizes marketing, remixes courseware, everything in between. The university doesn't like that shit, and neither do I. Where do those planet farmers get the gall, coming back to the Civilized World and preaching freedom for the chigras? They can't survive free - hell, they're only animals. You ever see how the free ones live at New Berkeley?"

"So Noir is a trouble-maker. Has Chimera Libra ever engaged in violence for their cause?"

"Nah, nothing serious, we don't allow that, do we boys?" Nils winked at his other guests, who chuckled appreciatively. "A roasted limb or two lets the steam right out of 'em. There've been a few scuffles between the libers and the townies, but just knives and clubs, everybody as good as new a few weeks later."

"You think Noir took the book?"

"Crazy enough for it, I'd say. They just don't have property morals on the wild worlds. No sense of ownership, none at all. You ever seen a boon with property? It's what happens when you set the chiggers loose, degrades society." The sidekicks nodded solemnly.

"Know an address for Noir?"

"Better - I got a fold from last week, a place near Sture Plan, Noir was hauling firewood," said Nils. He opened it and pointed out the building. "It's some kind of speesh commune. I'd guess Noir nooks there."

scuppernong - 4

The Backburn Era
by Verandra Doeuvre

Chapter 1: Queasy Beginnings (excerpt)
The Helsinki Chimera Relocation Act

@Kulan Belastningar AB
07 February 2410, Stockholm at Earth

Against the Chimera who now possess that fair city [Helsinki], what complaint have we to make? In what degree are their knives and clubs to be compared with our own great instrument of death, that which left Helsinki to them and not to the race of men? How little did they expect, ten years ago, that human beings would return from beyond the Baltic Sea to complete the great and horrible dispossession of the Blow?

-- Congressor Kale Mansard Dodge,
closing remarks in opposition to
the Helsinki Chimera Relocation Act,
11 September 2377
Stockholm at Earth

Despite intense pressure from Backburn, seventeen Backburners in the Middle Seats - some angry at their leader over impending Top Seat matters, others sensitive to the moral outrage of their constituents - voted "nay" to the act, while six more made themselves absent. Only the last-minute capitulation of the Mansard Dodge faction allowed the bill to pass.

Nothing can exculpate Deicer Backburn and his pro-removal supporters from the basic truths of the antirelocation arguments. Backburn's paternalism was predicated on his assumption, still widely but not universally prevalent among humen of the time, that all Chimera - although Backburn called them his "cousins", he also called himself their "Great Uncle" - were "feral in their habits" and inherently inferior to humen. His promises about voluntary and compensated relocation, and his assertion that Chimera who wished to remain in Helsinki would be allowed to do so, were constantly undermined by delays and sharp dealings - actions which Backburn condoned...

The politics of Chimera removal also reinforced those elements within the Backburn Ascendancy that presumed the supremacy of humen over non-men, and interpreted any challenge to that supremacy as counterfeit philosimianism disguising a partisan agenda. True, Backburn's opponents, notably Ludd Heft, seized on the issue and aided the antiremoval petition effort, whatever their earlier views on the matter. But to reduce all of the critics, as many of Backburn's supporters did, to "fractious" politicians who were out to hurt the administration was to confuse the opportunists with sincere hominitarians like Nazard and Tierce, while making support for removal a matter of strict party orthodoxy. Recast in the political heat of the 2390s and after, this turn of mind would complicate and compromise the Backburnian variant of political democracy by rendering all kinds of benevolent reform as crypto-egalitarian efforts to elevate Chimera at the expense of ordinary humen...

scuppernong - 3

25 November 2410 15:22 GMT, Stockholm at Earth

Aubrey Owsley, my systweak, had her nook across the square from the university. She worked from the first floor of a three-story brick building. Her immediate neighbors were a pamper-flesh called Svetti's and a preschool called The Ghost. There were three pizza shops and four coffee shops in the block. I pinged her.

"Heysan, Django, it's a long time since," she shouted when I opened the door. "Come on in."

"Hey, Ouch, nice paws," I said. She'd grown foot fingers.

"Yeah, now I can do four things at once."

Owsley half-lay on an ancient tobacco-brown cracked leather sofa, with her new heels resting on an Empire ottoman. She wore a black watchman's cap, a long, faded, brown corduroy skirt over yellowed once-white wool longjohns, and rough wool footgloves. She had a leather belt with a turquoise buckle. She had on a brown and cream Norwegian wool seaman's sweater which rode above her waist, revealing an unbuttoned longjohn hole. Let me take you a button-hole lower, I thought. All twenty fingers twitched randomly and Oswley's half-closed eyes shifted independently of one another as she worked. She drooled just a bit.

Owsley was a very busy, very wealthy, very good sysman. I'd met her when some sork kidnapped her twin long-haired Dachshunds, Myrtle and Methyl. I got them back unharmed, and the ransom too. Owsley still felt grateful.

"Ouch," I said, "I need some face. I'm going dustup on New Berkeley and I want your check-out. And I'm still having that problem with ping recall."

Owsley sat up slowly, focused, and wiped her mouth. "Glad to help, Go. Tell me about it."

"You remember how I feel I have ping, but when I recall it, nothing's there, no source, no subject, no nothing?" Owsley nodded.

"That's slowly getting worse. And I have kind of a general fuzziness, nothing specific, just kind of a lost feeling I guess, and - well, it's embarrassing, Ouch. I, uh, I guess I dropped a fold on my foot."

"You dropped a pseudo-object on your foot?"

Good old Ouch. I can always count on her for sympathy. She slapped both hands over her mouth, squinched up her eyes, and slowly slid off the couch to lie on the floor, trying to stifle her laughter. Tears ran on her face before the mirth eased up a little.

"Go," she said, gasping, "did you - did you - hurt yourself?" She gulped, and chortled.

With what dignity I could muster, I said "Yes, Ouch, I hurt my big toe."

That set her off again.

"Go, let me take look around in there," Owsley said finally, wiping her eyes and getting up. "I'll see what I can do. I'm sure I can" - snort! - "fix the toe."

I unlocked my sys and watched Ouch work. It was all Geek to me. I saw flashing graphs and snaky interlocking balls of neon strings and incomprehensible fractal displays
and other artifacts of Ouch's trade come and go in our shared visual field.
Test patterns ran shapes repeatedly through my eyes - star, cube, pyramid, sphere, mobius, torus, saddle - or sounded chords to my ears, or tingled my fingers painfully at each tip in rapid succession, or made goosebumps rise in waves running down my arms. Each one a pattern, diagnostic and prognostic. Seventeen interminable minutes later, Owsley spoke.

"First, the ping problem. You understand that once it's in your extended memory, incoming information makes itself known to you via attention attraction focii?"

I nodded, trying to look as if I knew that. Well, I did know it, sort of.

"OK, in your case, the focus for ping got linked to your habitual learning system. I
bet you poll it pretty frequently, right? You know you don't have to do that? It will announce itself? That's what it's for?"

Ouch tends to preach. "Yeah, OK, so I used to check it from time to time. So?"

"Well, the repeated active attention you gave to it when it hadn't changed state made your sys think you wanted that to happen automatically - habitually, if you will. So now the focus tries to get your attention even when no ping has arrived. There's two ways to fix that, the slow way and the fast way.

"The slow way is to ignore it. Just check for ping now and then, not too often, to see if you actually do have any. After a few days, your system will naturally dissolve the habitual binding to the focus, and the problem will reverse itself.

"The fast way, I reach in and break the habit from outside. What'll it be?"

If I had to fight, I didn't want distraction. And I didn't have time to waste looking to see if I had ping or not. I had a business to run. "Fast."

Owsley grinned. Suddenly, simultaneously, I felt a painfully intense taste of cilantro, a piercing light behind my right eye, and a drastic phantom limb manicure. I said "Ouch!"

"You called? OK, habit's broken. As for the fuzziness, that could be several things. I adjusted your sonic quantifier - that's the organoid that puts hard numbers to your sound data, like when you want to know exactly what frequency a sound is, you know? - it was a little non-logarithmic, and I bumped your subitizer back up to 10. There's still that damned tendency down to the natural level - how could they function back then when they couldn't grok more than four things at a time?"

"Speaking of the past, did you notice my latest antique?" Her hand fingers pointed to her left.

Owsley collected and restored ancient electro-mechanical devices. Her new project was a group of large ugly black plastic boxes connected by stiff colored tubes or cables. There was an array of worn buttons, with letters still visible on most of them. There was a square-bottomed glass bottle lying on its side, with glowing colored figures and a moving cartoon dog on the bottom surface. The whole contraption squealed like a mutant mosquito and reeked of ozone.

"Is that a television? Or a typewriter?" Ouch had me puzzled, and she liked that.

"No, Django, that clumsy contraption was called a "personal computer". It's a distant ancestor of your own sys, and big sys too. Do you know that there was no direct connection between that thing and the cognitive perceptions of its operator?"

"But how the hell did they work it? Knobs and levers?"

"Very close to right. Almost the only input came from pushing on those lettered buttons with your fingers - that was still called type-writing. The operator had to see output in letters on the bottom of that bottle, and then read it back to himself!"

"But how did it ping? How could it load or show folds?"

"This device is more than four hundred years old, Go. It couldn't show folds because back then they couldn't share perceptual spaces. There wasn't any ping, just telephone and electrified mail. They couldn't load because they could only use one or two of the old senses for access to electrical memory. All right, now watch this."

Owsley reached out her left foot fore-finger and carefully pressed a button on the array of lettered keys. The images on the bottle's surface disappeared, replaced by an even glowing blue.

Owsley frowned. "It keeps doing that," she said. "I don't think it's supposed to."

"Anyway, Django, let's get back to you. One reason you feel lost is that they're chasing a dead cat in the quantcomps up on Orwell, so the big sys satpix updates are intermittent. Just ignore it until they get that fixed. There're no isats around New Berkeley so you'll have to work from static images there, but at least you won't notice any geographic agnosia.

"I corrected some other minor problems - I tuned your ultraviolet spectrum equalizer, I got rid of some hum in those hot Japanese transponders you wear, I reversed a tendency to Spoonerism in your French-English translator -"

"Berci meaucoup," I interrupted.

Owsley looked at me sharply and chuckled. "Can't tweak a tweaker, Go."

"I also found the problem with your hold on that fold. There was some unscheduled cell necrosis in your left haptic-tactile organoid. It made your in virtu touch experience tend toward the slippery. I fixed that, so you should be able to feel shared pseudo-objects just fine from now on. In short, you're in top combat form."

Owsley looked at me expectantly. She knew I had to ask. I tried to fight it. I clenched my jaw. I gritted my teeth.

I said, "What about my big toe?"

"Well, Go," Owsley said, already giggling again, "not to worry, that pain in your toe is all in your head. Now go break a leg at New Berkeley."

scuppernong - 2

25 November 2410 15:17 GMT, Stockholm at Earth

Before I left the college, I hunted up the campus combat gym. The slave quarters were behind it. There was a single-roomed hut not far from the outhouse, its frame built of fir logs peeled and shaped with an adze. It had a sod roof. The walls were over-lapping vertical wooden slats, painted brown once long ago. The door was open. There was a glass-paned window at the rear.

Inside was a stack of firewood and a cold stove, a cold kettle, and an immense tin bathtub. The place smelled like woodsmoke and garlic. The floor was hard-packed dirt.

There was a swing hanging by fibrous rope from tremendous ringbolts in one ceiling beam. The knots in the rope looked industrial. On the swing was an orangutan.

The tang sat quietly with its legs crossed at the ankles and its long arms hanging beside them. It must have weighed 90 kgs. I thought it was x.

Its copper-colored body hair was long and silky and covered it completely, except where its muzzle and high forehead showed bare and bright blue-black. I caught a flash of black nipple.

It wore only a loincloth and old Birkenstock sandals. Two 45-centimeter blades hung in black nylon scabbards strapped just below its knees. I guessed about a kg apiece. Its hand fingers touched the hilts. Its full brown eyes watched me impassively.

Now I could smell it. It was definitely x.

"I'm Django Boldt," I said.

"Sasgatch," it replied, in Tanglish.

I heard "Min da hetta Saesquac." I got "I'm Sasgatch." We had a lingua franca. At least that ice was broken.

"You have any idea why you're on this job?" I asked.

It shook its long head, slowly.

"Ever been to New Berkeley?"

It grinned, exposing ominous yellow fangs. "Born there," it said.

How in hell did you wind up at Earth, I wondered, but it probably wasn't the most diplomatic question.

"You got load from Slott?"

"Yuh," it said. Loquacious.

"You know you'll have to slave to me, even at New Berkeley?"

It made no reply. Its eyes didn't shift. Its whiskers didn't twitch. Not a silky hair moved.

"OK, then you know I have to do this," I said. I mastered it.

"But I'll deactivate that while we're at New Berkeley. They don't like slavery, and neither do I."

Sasgatch sat motionless.

"I'll jump on the day after tomorrow and meet you there," I said. "We should talk before that."

Sasgatch, poker-faced, said "Yuh".

"Want to eat at my place <see caseload> tomorrow night at 18?"

It nodded. It looked aside and made a grimacing smile toward the ceiling, over its right shoulder, drawing its upper lip back over its teeth and rolling its eyes. Not as direct as the grin, but still showing plenty of tooth.

"Ping when you get there. And bring the knives."

It showed the smile grimace again.

"Orayt vi gong tal bak," it said.

"OK, we'll talk later," it meant.

The Aspect War - Prologue & Chapter 1

Prologue - Slumber

She slept.

If you can call this thing of nightmare a her; dragon scales rippled with a watery sheen and the ever-so slight rise and fall of her breath. Each scale shone as if it were comprise both of darkness and the tiniest slivers of light. It was once said that, to stare at them was to be lost in their shimmer, and for a moment witness destruction spanning thousands of years in a single second. Seeing her was to court madness.

She dreamed. She once roamed the Earth, free and the world trembled. She inspired legends of terrible djinni, fiends from worlds beyond, all were tales of her or her many, many children. She incited madness, lust for power, and ultimately the destruction of all she and her children touched. Sodom and Gomorrah were both victims of her wrath. Mad prophets would later claim it was some other god. Soon after, she consumed said prophets; mangy, stringy things, which stuck in her teeth and gave her a bout of indigestion, but could never find all of the books that took the credit away from her and were later published.

Thinking of those mad prophets made her think of dusty Babylon. Brilliant Babylon knew how to treat a being of her stature, they worshiped her, revered her and gave her the proper homage until they too betrayed her. Cast her into darkness, silenced her destruction. As a parting gift she destroyed their Hanging Gardens and left a seed that would ensure their ultimate destruction.

They could not kill her, she was a god. But they could imprison her and cast her into a darkness that lasted for millennia. A cooling soothing darkness, one which softened her rage, quieted her powers and hid her from the view of man. The darkness was connected to the Void and the Void was everywhere and nowhere. And for a time, she was forgotten. Many of her children were destroyed by heroes of various ages, eventually forced into hiding or exile, lest they too be destroyed. And they too were forgotten.

The darkness hid her terrible bulk, shuttered away beyond the light from the early morning. The green canopy overhead blocked all but the most determined of misty light and kept much of her from view. The monolithic temple hid the rest of her. She was not a thing most humans would want to see. In fact, no human had seen her this way for over a thousand years. Those that had, inspired new religions, talk of serpent gods and the destruction of the world.

She slept easily during those times. They made sacrifice to her and she grew strong again. But she could not attract attention. So during the night, one night a thousand years ago, she drew her new people to her into the Void and they waited, serving her, making new things, and waiting. No human had seen her since. And she preferred to keep it that way, until the prophecy spoken of two thousand years ago came to pass.

This dragon, this monstrosity of scales, this frightening creature of myth and legend, this mother of monsters, eater of men, ravager of worlds, slept deeply and dreamed of mad prophets who said she would return to the world. She had a special penchant for those mad prophets, who even today, preached the revelation of her return, free from constraint, free from morality, free to sow and reap humans like the wheat of dusty Babylon. Such dreams gave this living monstrosity a fearsome shudder and the humans nearby for a thousand miles, in every direction experienced an earthquake.

These quakes were becoming more common for them, more powerful, some causing nightmares. Dreams of more terrible quakes to come, some that spoke of a time, where monsters would rise up and slay men and bathe in their blood. No one ever spoke of such nightmares. Even to acknowledge them seem to drive men to madness. So most kept doing what they always did, living lives of quiet desperation.

Even in her sleep, their fear and terror fed her, pleased her, and for a moment excited her. Then she returned to sleep, a deeper sleep, and in that sleep, she dreamed again. And often those dreams were the stuff of human nightmare, capsizing ships, destroying buildings, releasing volcanoes. Today she dreamed a dream of modern life, putting on a business suit, dark blue, carrying a slim and stylish briefcase and going to work; an insurance firm in New York City, specializing in insuring the rare, the expensive and things so valuable they were irreplaceable. She would not work there very long. Just long enough to ensure that some of those things would cease to exist, through unfortunate accidents, hostile takeovers, theft, extortion or murder; a woman simply has to have hobbies between attempts to destroy the world.

#

Chapter 1

He woke.

The first thing he noticed was the chill. It was a pervasive thing, it felt as if it froze the very marrow of his bones. Not normally affected by weather, he found the sensation unpleasant, but not unbearable. Standing up, he began to take in his surroundings. There was no light -- no that is not right, there was no normal source of light. No lantern, no torch, no lamp, no light bulb; yet the room gave off a subtle luminescence, centered on where he sat. Driving his vision further past the illumination, he noticed that there was a radius to the field of unlight and the area he was sitting in was larger than he was able to initially perceive.

"Curious." The sound of his voice, flew free. Encoded with his desire, it fled into the darkness and did not return. The very nature of its failure told him everything he needed to know. This subtle use of his power told him he was not in the world as he knew it. He realized he must be in a nearby Shard or worse, lost in the Void. As he considered this, his apprehension began to take shape.

Almost casually, he inspected himself and found everything seemed to be normal. He was still wearing the grey and black suit and vest common to his attire and the last thing he remembered wearing to work. His shirt was still the silken, Italian blouse he favored for formal meetings. He was wearing his favorite leather shoes, with an added non-slip surface beneath them. Not that he ever feared slipping, but it was a habit from a bygone era when one's footing might cost one's life. And until now, He had been very careful.

He looked down at his hands. They were still the strong hands of a Roman soldier, a bit more weathered, a bit less callused, but still capable of relieving a man of his life with a variety of tools. But the thing he was looking for was gone. His ring was missing. The sigil of his power was missing. This did not mean he was powerless, it meant that for his duty to continue, the ring moved to his successor. That meant he could not leave this prison. And that his power was in the hand of a mortal, for the first time in two millennia. A mortal He truly loved but had poorly prepared for this day.

He could only hope that his impressions all those decades ago were right.

#

The Director tried to wake from a dream that seemed overwhelming real and quite visceral. It was not his normal condition to dream, having not done so for many years since coming to work at Death, Incorporated. Having not dreamed in decades, left him open to the strange, surreal nature of this dream. He was standing in the middle of a field surrounded by monstrous creatures of all shapes and sizes, wielding a sword of ice and shield comprised of a field of force laying waste to everything around him.

In the distance, he could see demons and angels flashing swords of flame and lightning, illuminating the battlefield. This seemed to last days and nights and then with a final flash of lighting, the battle ended. He was the only thing standing unscathed on the field. Taking in the horrible vista, he wept, openly.

Time passed.

Sensing moving in the corner of his eye, he turned and dropped his terrible, ice-sword, which froze the very air near it and the blade shattered as it struck the ground. It was an Angel still moving slowly, feebly trying to remove the corpse of some horror draped across it. The Director found himself striding toward the Angel with a strange ambivalence in his core. Grabbing the nearest limb of the giant white gorilla, he flung it from the Angel, who sat up.

"Did we win?" the Angel croaked, his voice dry and likely burned from angrily flung cocoastrum during the battle. "I can't see you, please come closer."

"No, I do not think your side won," the Director intoned gravely, "we are the last things alive here, so I can safely assume, my side did not win either. Do you have a name?"

"I was once called Malik, the Guardian, and I guarded the doors to Hell," the Angel glowed visibly upon the recitation of his former station and for a moment seemed more majestic than his current condition, covered in the blood and offal of other creatures would allow.

"You may call me, Aurelius," the Director said. "I think I was once the general of this army but now I am not so sure."

"Well met, former general of a once mighty army. You must have been formidable to have defeated this mighty Host..." Malik began. "I cannot remember why we were fighting, though General. Do you have any memory of the conflict?" The Director seemed surprised by the Angel's confession and had to think deeply himself.

"To be honest, I have no memory of why or how this battle took place. I am willing to forswear any further conflict if you are Malik, of the Angelic Host," the Director's feeling in this regard seemed sincere, even as this very real dream transpired.

"General Aurelius, as much as I appreciate you taking the time to free me from confinement, I am not able to forswear violence toward your person. There is still the matter of the Heavenly Host who even now, tell me to rend thee, limb from limb," Malik seemed pained to admit this and sat back on his haunches and spread his wings. While he was sitting, he appeared to slowly get cleaner and his injuries began to shimmer and heal themselves. "Perhaps we could simply sit a bit longer and see if we can untangle this since there is no one here but you and I. Perhaps we can come to an agreement."

General Aurelius - the Director took in the scene and for a moment was surprised by the carnage - there seemed to be a variety of warriors from a variety of ages, lost in time and space, vast incredible armies with amazing technologies all lay about the battlefield. The General's senses transcended the five and with his extended awareness could see ripples in time and space where these armies were snatched and conscripted. He could also sense the ruptures that the enemy used to reach this battlefield between Time and Space. Until he used those senses, his awareness was limited to this place, this space, this time, suddenly he was aware of a thousand times, a thousand places, where He reigned and suddenly realized where and who He was.

"Malik, Angel of the Host, I declare this conflict completed. And as an act of Mercy, I shall allow you, the final survivor, to return to your Host. Remind them, this is our final conflict. The next time we meet, I shall destroy you and your utterly. Know this and never return," the pronouncement was clearly delivered and chilled the very air around the both of them. There was a weaving of force, of malice, of murderous intent in those words. The General was sure his words were relayed to the Host, even as he said them.

Malik, clearly shaken by the tone, and the message, stood and suddenly his twelve foot stature, seemed to overshadow the tiny General before him. "General, looking around the battlefield, it is clear that you and I are at the locus of something terrible, but I do not believe that you are in any position to make demands, or to cast threats. From where I stand, it is you, who should be looking at surrender. I am Malik, the Guardian, the warder to Hell, the hand of God and Sealer of Doors. You are in no position to make demands." Malik suddenly burst into white flames and a blue flaming sword appeared in each of his hands.

The General looked at the Angel and was momentarily in awe. "Beautiful." With a momentary pause, he whispered, "I'm sorry." The General raised his hand and suddenly the Angel appeared to be in a fearful wind, his flames flickered and were blown backward, wisps blasted back as the wind increased. Malik roared and leapt forward, blades flashing forward, blue fire glowing like the sun. The General Aurelius, the Director, watched in horror as his outstretched fist clenched and some unknown force exploded forward and simply erased the Angel Malik, Guardian and Warder to Hell, Hand of God and Sealer of Doors, from existence.

The Director screamed, a long wail that caused fear in all who heard it, and then he woke, his right hand burning. On his hand was the ring from his dream, bearing the Aspect Skull of Death backed with a nuclear plume, the symbol of the destroyer of Worlds.

Scuppernong: Glossary

baboon, n.  A kind of chimera.  In appearance, a baboon resembles the Olive baboon of equatorial Africa. See Wikipedia, whence:

"The Olive Baboon is named for its coat, which, at a distance, is a shade of green-grey. (Its alternate name comes from the Egyptian god Anubis, who was often represented by a dog head resembling the dog-like muzzle of the baboon.) At closer range, its coat is multi-colored, due to rings of yellow-brown and black on the hairs. The hair on the baboon's face, however, is finer and ranges from dark grey to black.  This coloration is shared by both sexes, although males have a mane of longer hair that tapers down to ordinary length along the back.  Besides the mane, the male Olive Baboon differs from the female in terms of size and weight: males are, on average, 70 cm tall and weigh 24 kg; females measure 60 cm and 14.7 kg.

Like other baboons, the Olive Baboon has a long, pointed, dog-like muzzle.  In fact, along with the muzzle, the animal's tail (38-58 cm) and four-legged gait can make baboons seem very canine.  The tail almost looks as if it is broken, as it is held upright over the rump for the first quarter, after which it drops sharply.  The bare patch of a baboon's rump, famously seen in cartoons and movies, is a good deal smaller in the Olive Baboon."


bellfold, n.  A fold which functions as a doorbell.


big sys, n.  The modern web.  It does a lot of stuff like implementing pings, running money, etc.  But its power is strangely hobbled, because it can't (or won't) answer a lot of questions.  For example, big sys will not usually tell you the current whereabouts of a person or chim.  It is this fuzzy limit on the omniscience of big sys which makes the job of an integrator necessary.

bloig, n.  Tabloid blog.

Blow, The, p.n.  The effect of the Monsanto Fuckup.  This event, the accidental release of a biological weapon, killed 96.4% of human beings, on all worlds, 2365 9 May (sondag) - 15 May.

boon, n. Baboon.

burner, n.  A weapon whose effect is achieved by disrupting the strong nuclear force in its target field, causing an unstable thermally destructive chain reaction in affected matter.

chigger, n. (strongly pejorative) Chimera.

chimera, n. An intellectually enhanced non-human hominid: a chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, baboon, or macaque.  "Chimera" is pronounced in the Swedish fashion, with a soft initial ch sound, as in "chimpanzee."

chim, n. Chimera.

chimpanzee, n.  A kind of chimera.  In appearance, a chimpanzee resembles the common chimpanzee or the bonobo.

Congo, g.n.  The second New World.  Congo was discovered by Hawking bridging in 2250.

cosmet, n.  A suite of superficial genetic modifications resulting in changes in the appearance  of an individual.  A cosmet is a fashion.

critter, n. (pejorative)  Chimera.

dead cat, n.  A bug in a quantum computer.  After Shroedinger.

enforcer, n.  A person licensed by a state to perform violence on its behalf.

extended sensorium, n.  A collective term for the cognitive and somatic enhancements common to modern human beings.  These include the ability to see in the infrared and ultraviolet, enhanced sense of smell, taste, hearing, proprioception, etc.

Fautueil, g.n.  The third New World.  Fautueil was discovered by Hawking bridging in 2250.

fold, n. A pseudo-object, occupying a perceptual space shared among individuals, and used to facilitate communication, usually of visual data.

goil, n. Gorilla.

goo, v.t. To search big sys for information.

gorilla, n.  A kind of chimera.  In appearance, a gorilla resembles the Mountain gorilla.

grounge, n., adj. A color in infrared light.

Hawking bridge, n.  The macroscopic quantum effect which sometimes opens a way to a New World.  Voodoo physics.

het, n, adj.  is originally from "heterosexual" (probably influenced by English "hot").  Genetically augmented senses mean that mutual "love at first sight" is highly compelling and inescapably self-evident.  To be het for one another is to be in mutual sexual love.  "Het" also refers in a larger sense to sexual orientation and attraction, but has lost any oppositional meaning to "homosexual."

homb, n.  Cultured human flesh.

integrator, n. ("integ").  An investigator.  A detective.

irlight, n. Infrared light, made perceptible by the extended sensorium.

iyears, n. Visible big sys antennae.

liber, n.  One who advocates an immediate and unconditional end to chimera slavery.

load, n. A mass data transfer, usually of highly related material.  E.g. "case load".  One way to transfer load is via a load pellet, produced via the navel by
an organoid, and consumed orally.

macaque, n.  A kind of chimera.  In appearance, a macaque resembles the Formosan rock macaque (see Wikipedia: "... macaques measure 50-60 cm and weigh 5-12 kg, generally females are smaller. Their tails are moderately long and measure 26-45 cm. This macaque is brown or gray in color. ...").

mome, n. Sork.

Monsanto Fuckup, p.n.  The accidental release of the biological weapon which caused The Blow. 9 May 2365, Minneapolis at Earth.

New Berkeley, p.n.  The first New World.  New Berkeley was discovered by Hawking bridging in 2210.

Newby, n.  An inhabitant of New Berkeley.

Noir, Rio, p.n. A palindrome.

organoid, n. Any of a number of common special-purpose artificial organs.

orangutan, n.  A kind of chimera.  In appearance, an orangutan resembles the Sumatran orangutan.

peep, n.  People.

perceptual space, n.  The inter-sys protocolic ground for implementing shared perception of e.g. pseudo-objects.

ping, n, v.  To communicate with another individual via big sys.  Pinging is a combination of telephone and email.  It's usually audio.

ping cloud, n.  The information big sys keeps about your pings.

pseudo-object, n.  An ostensible object, implemented by shared perceptual spaces, but having no existence in reality.

purbleu, n., adj. A color in ultraviolet light.

quantcomp, n. Quantum computer.

reigraphy, n.  The practice of recording reality in a form which preserves the extended sensorium, and thus enhances the verisimilitude of playback.

snout, n.  Cop.  From Swedish "snut."

scrote, n. Mome.

sork, n. Scrote.

speesh, n.  People.  From "species".

Swedish Enforcement, n.  The Swedish Armed Forces

sys, n. The total on-board cyber-genetic-enhancement system of the modern human being.  One's sys implements the extended sensorium, among much else.

tang, n.  Orangutan.

Tanglish, n. An Orangutan-Swedish creole language.

tribright, adj.  Bright across the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectrum.

uvlight, n. Ultraviolet light, made perceptible by the extended sensorium.

vagabonded, adj.  Bonded to a state or municipality and licensed to beg on its behalf.

y, yman, n, adj. Male.

x, xman, n, adj. Female.
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scuppernong - 1

This post comprises the first part of Scuppernong (working title - got a suggestion?).

There's a nickel for you if you recognize who I'm stealing from. Please comment.

25 November 2410 13:20 GMT, Stockholm at Earth

The office of the college president looked like the lobby of a prosperous Reaganesque whorehouse. It had brown sisal carpets on a glazed red-tinted concrete floor, and stainless steel counters behind a chrome-legged Atomic Age dining table. There were heavy hemispherical frosted glass lamp shades hanging on thin woven wire cables, and a cast-iron spiral staircase with perforated treads leading up to a mezzanine. The office was much nicer than the public areas. Maybe I should have worn a shirt.

Magnus Q. Perpindik, the president, was appallingly thin - sparse headhair, spotty yellowish beard and teeth, strands like tiny black rebar rods sticking out of his concrete-gray eyebrows. He wore a pink custom-tailored silk sari with a gold Phi Beta Kappa key hanging from a chain onto his incongruously convex belly. His shoes were high-gloss black leather lace-ups, and his gray wool knee length socks had tiny pink starbursts to match the silk.

Perpindik spoke Swedish with a strong southern accent. As he talked, he tilted back in a red chrome and vinyl chair and watched his reflection in a porthole window. Flakes of the season's first snow fell outside, melting against the glass and trickling down to the circular bolted window housing. It was gray twilight out, a drab November grayness unique to Stockholm in late fall. The autumnal dark seemed to fit Perpindik's drone.

Perpindik was telling me about the sensitive nature of a college president's job, and he had a lot to say about it. I'd been there listening to him for ten minutes and my brain was beginning to buzz. I wondered if I should tell him his office reminded me of a whorehouse.

"You do see my position, Herr Boldt," he said, and swiveled to face me, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table and his palms to the sides of his head. His nails were pink too.

"Yes sir," I said, "we integs see really deep."

Perpindik frowned and went on.

"It is a matter of utmost sensitivity, Herr Boldt" - he'd turned to see his reflection again - "requiring restraint, gentility, circumspection, and a high degree of professionalism. I don't know the kinds of people who usually employ you, but -"

I interrupted. "Look, Herr Perpindik, I went to college, I won't spit in the soup. If a link comes along and bites me, I grab it, I'm not a Buddhist nun, I'm a private integ. Are there things you'd like me to integrate, or are you warming up for a board meeting?"

Perpindik put his head back and inhaled deeply through his nose. "District Vigilant Larsson said you were sarcastic and arrogant. Tell him, Herr Slott."

Slott stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning and opened a fold. He was short and thick, with a werewolf cosmet - long, coarse sideburns, toothy grin, and a velvety black nose. He wore buckled biker boots and a tan safari jacket with epaulets and bone buttons. He put one boot up on a chair and indicated the fold: an image of a book cover. Dark black hair showed between his khaki trouser cuff and the upper edge of his elevated boot.

"Karl Slott, head of college security," he said. "Fifteen hours ago, a valuable twenty-first century graphic novel was stolen from our library."

"What's a graphic novel?"

"An illustrated book with colored pictures which augment the narrative, sometimes drawn by the author. This book is in English, and contains a rare contemporary allusion to Jude King, the twentieth century American facilitator. It was discovered seventy-two years ago under the wooden floor of a ruined fuel station in California. It's thought to have been hidden there during the pillage of the universities that followed Swaggernegger's break with Washington." He nodded to the fold.

"Aha," I said, "that's a graphic novel."

"Right," said Slott briskly, "I'll fill you in with case load, right now we want to sketch the general picture. This morning President Perpindik received ping from someone purporting to represent an off-world chimera organization. The sender said they had the graphic novel and would return it if we would give a million crowns to a chim school at New Berkeley."

"Why not give it to them?"

Perpindik answered. "We don't have a million crowns, Herr Boldt. We don't even have a million bucks."

I looked around. "You could rent out the first floor of your office as off-street housing," I said. Slott stifled a snort, and Perpindik inhaled again, noisily.

"I think I can take it from here, Herr President," Slott said. "I'm used to dealing with people like him. We'll go to my office." Perpindik nodded silently. Slott shut the fold and indicated a door to my right. As we left, Perpindik was staring out the porthole, watching the snow fall.

The security wing was made of concrete cubes with gray lynol floors and bile green wall paint. The temperature was inadequate for a man with no shirt. We walked down a corridor faced with frosted glass doors. Slott's office was one-piece, in padded beige plastic. Slott bent to get into his seat and began to work through his head hair with an itchpick. I could smell his gamey cologne.

"It's really manly how you can charm a patron," said Slott. I sat on the visitor seat and didn't reply. "He's long-winded, OK, but he's good peep, and a fine admin."

"Sure," I said, "he's awesome. The very model of a modern major gentleman. What about the graphic novel?"

"Right," said Slott. He opened a fold to show me a striking hand-drawn book lying on a table. The words were in English and the pages were paneled into subfolds of stark black, white, yellow, red, and green. There were ymen with guns and naked xmen and cars and blood and drugs and smoke and strange gargoyle monsters. Twentieth century realism.

"It was taken fifteen point six hours ago from the rare book room. The watcher looked in at two and again at two five, when it found the case open and the book gone. It couldn't be positive the book was there at two, but we assume it would have noticed. It's hard to prove a negative. The log's in the load, you want to look at it?"

"No, that's routine inforensics, leave it to the snouts. Got any suspects?"

"Chimera Libra," said Slott at once. "I think it's them. That's who the ping was from. They're speesh in New Berkeley. The membership shifts quicker than sand, but they're all troublemakers, committed libers, and some are students here. They've got support from the literalist Cretiens in the New Berkeley hills. It's all in the load." He tossed me a pellet.

Great, I thought, religious libers. Ever since New Berkeley had freed its chims, the libers had been agitating and lobbying at Earth, but here chims weren't even beings in the eyes of the law, never mind in the eyes of the people - or the chims themselves.

We discussed my fee. Slott agreed, with one condition. "We want one of our chims on the job with you. It's a tang, smart for a chim, teaches combat here, but of course it'll slave to human. You don't mind working with an apeman, do you? It can carry your bags."

"Some of my best friends are hominids," I said. I swallowed his load pellet.

Slott laughed uneasily. "You're not a chigger-lover, are you?"

I stood up. "I'll talk with your chim," I said, "and with Leet Larsson. You'll get realtime accounts receivable while I'm at Earth, and daily by messenger if I'm at another world. I'll report when I know something."

I leaned over Slott's desk and pointed at the itchpick. "And Karl," I said, "real men don't use flea combs."