This is the hull of Robbie Rafter’s new vessel. He will be meeting Boz … Boz in the rowboat in the shallow water, Robbie on the raft in the deep water … to discuss the forthcoming conditions.
This is the first time I’ve come to grips with Studs Not On Top (SNOT) bricks and angled plates in one of My Own Creations (moc). The problem here was the two hulls needing to be used upside down and connected to the deck plates which of course are set studs up.
Took me two and a half hours to produce the above and it is a fairly solid construction now. Although there are a couple of places where I may have used so-called illegal techniques, I was able to stabilize the area enough that elements aren’t falling off with handling.
The different colors on the underside speak of the same old same old. While I now have two IKEA Alexes and multiple little trays to store my whole parts collection in … I still don’t have enough of parts and colors to be able to construct even one color coordinated build. But never mind, the characters themselves are good at explaining away these little irregularities.
Top of as-yet-unbuilt-on hull … the dark grey platform will house the engine room, bridge, galley and the bunk room. The flaps at the ends are the gates/drive-on and off ramps. Similar to how a ferry works. The middle deck is for the cargo.
The walkway two studs wide on the near side, will allow Robby to save fuel and his propeller by ‘walking’ the boat through shallows … setting his pole in the mud and forcing the boat to move by walking in the opposite direction to where he’ll want to go.
Finally I could learn to hunt, and me a large middle-aged cat with a low-slung belly. As a kitten, and with my mother and my brothers and sisters, we were ‘contained’ in a cattery yard. Where my mother could teach us only how to hunt flies and cockroaches.
As a teenage cat, I was contained in the basement of a large house. A large basement that meant, but all of it indoors. Cockroaches there, too. Then I came here.
After studying my new territory, I decided that my first prey animals up from cockroaches would be garden skinks. About the length of my foreleg including my paw, and very fast.
These little lizards live on all the fences surrounding my backyard, about one per metre, but come down onto the ground to catch insects. Where I’ll catch them. When I get fast enough.
The first time I was nearly successful the pernickety old woman took a photo of me, as above, and then laughed.
She laughed at me?
“Too slow!” she chortled. “They know all about big black and white marauders, and have evolved to be very fast!”
I set out to prove her wrong. Days later, I managed to snag with my paw a look-alike from the house wall. I laid it proudly outside the laundry for the pernickety old woman to inspect.
“An Asian Gecko,” she said. “Very good! You can eat as many of those as you like. They’re not native and starting to be a real pest, running over people’s faces at night, and the like.”
I ate it but it was nothing like my kibbles. The tail had spines on it. Yuck!
All that the pernickety old woman expected me to live on until morning …
First thing this morning the pernickety old woman called me ‘Maggy’. Huh? Well I know she meant me, no one else present. I ignored her. I am Hand-of-God.
What the pernickety old woman and I are engaging in now, I’ll call the struggle for dominance, because that’s what I am about. You thought that was a dog thing? Ever seen a cat and dog stand off?
I overheard her say to a friend that she’s getting me accustomed to being awake in the daytime, and if that wasn’t enough, she’s getting me used to spending the majority of my waking hours indoors?
Well! We’ll see about that! I lay down on the mat in front of the backdoor—where sunlight beat through the glass and warmed me wonderfully. How could I not sleep for hours?
I did. I woke in the late afternoon. We could’ve had another stand-off about me going outside except that the woman distracted me with that red feather on stick.
She twirled the stick and I jumped and leapt and rolled at the twirling feather. We had a great time but that can’t happen again. I can’t let her win me over like this.
Then she showed me where she will feed me, in the kitchen. A white ceramic bowl filled with my favourite kibbles. Water right there beside them. I felt mollified and ate far too much.
I had another sleep and when I woke, I vomited up my kibbles. What a waste! Despite that I’m feeling wobbly in the middle, the old woman scooped me up, and ran me to the laundry.
She set me on the litter tray and waited expectantly. “Go on,” she said. “Sick up the rest.”
How embarrassing. I walked back to the drinking bowl in the kitchen. I drank. Waited by the food bowl for her to refresh the kibble supply.
Grumbling at herself, she cleaned up the vomit. “No more kibbles today,” she said.
What??!!! I’m telling you I created havoc that night!
Me, the Hand-of-God, trying to get out of the house
The pernickety old woman has many unnatural ideas about me, as I said. They cause a lot of strife and strangering between us, as you might expect.
Strangering is when someone pretends they are a stranger and they stalk away with their tail high and their self-respect intact.
Our first great struggle was about me intending to do my Hand-of-God work in the night. Let me tell you, I have stood hours at the back door, miaowing sternly, or piteously, begging, or forceful. “Open the cage door,” I would cry. “Let me explore the night!”
The first few times she told me about the nocturnal critters native to her backyard. She’d sworn that they’d go unmolested.
“I’m the Hand-of-God. I wanna get to know them,” I cried. She turned her back on me, got on with getting dinner.
The following dozen stand-offs at the backdoor, she told me about the little deaths delivered to her by a neighbouring tom. The morning he brought her a snakelet in three pieces, she decided that none of her pets would ever join in the nightly carnage.
“Pets?” I snarled. I’ll show her who the pet is in this house! I stalked into the bedroom and hid under the bed. Causing, I might add, a lengthy battle at her bedtime, with the easily deflected indoor broom.
“Go! Have the run of the house,” she said.
My last 20 or 30 attempts to gain the night, she served up several more excuses, the weakest one about the busy road out front where two of my predecessors met their demise. “I’m a super cat,” I cried. “The Hand-of-God!”
She apparently thinks she can wean me from my instincts. “If my instincts can be dampened down with enculturation,” she said. “So can yours!”
I showed her my teeth in disgust. Predictably, she laughed. “Like it or lump it,” she said.
Cort had three places to sit in his apartment and today he intended sitting in all of them. He began in the kitchen. Sitting on his wooden kitchen chair at his wooden kitchen table. He had the two vintage crystal wineglasses part-filled with water in front of him and the silver teaspoon ready for action.
Mrs Soup would be along soon. He’d earlier checked her progess by standing this side of his front door and listening. She lived-in in the block—in fact had an apartment not too far from Cort’s—and was employed by the Department of Human Services to provide nine of the block’s residents with their meals.
“Yoo-hoo?”
Cort ting-tinged with his fork against the right-hand glass.
“In the kitchen as usual,” Mrs Soup said. “Waiting for me, I suppose.”
He would’ve smiled if he could. Not safe now. Ting. This was the high note with which he put positive comments into the conversation. Mrs Soup wasn’t backward in supplying the words.
She set the dinner bag on the counter and unloaded the covered bowls. Cort’s teeth had given up the struggle and he’d graduated onto soups and stews that didn’t require chewing. “Both into the fridge?” she said.
Ting. He didn’t know yet when he’d have time to suck up the mid-day meal.
“Oh?” Mrs Soups said. “Expecting another caller?”
Ting. Cort pointed the teaspoon at a red square on the placemat.
“Ah, you’re expecting Red. A good man.” She took yesterday’s disinfected and sealed-up dishes in their plastic bags from the vegetable crisper.
He agreed. Ting. Red was the house medic. Employed under the same arrangement as Mrs Soup, he was overworked and underpaid. In Cort’s opinion. A lot more sick people in the scene than were fed by the house.
“Thank you for this disinfecting. You are such a dear,” Mrs Soup said. “Different to the old codger two floors down.”
Cort tapped the other, almost full glass. Tang.
“Red is with Mr Irascible right now, I’d say. He sidled in as I sailed out.”
Which gave him Red’s approximate arrival time. Ting.
————
For Red’s visit, Cort made himself comfortable in his old armchair. The arm rests were perfect for him to lay his arm on a pillow for Red to serve him up with an injection or a cannula for a dose of IV meds.
“Hey, old-timer,” Red said at the door. “How’s it going?”
Cort slipped his mask up over mouth and nose.
“That’s a new thing between us,” Red said at the mask, fetching the upright chair from the kitchen. “And I have been thinking I’d like to have a look at the problem?” He finished with his head on-side, asking.
Cort gestured futility with his fingers spread, hands upturned.
“There’s a thing growing in your mouth and what? You don’t want me to have a look-see, to see if it is cureable?”
Cort shook his head. Indicated down with his thumb.
“Is it bacterial?” Red said. “I’ve still got some antibiotics you haven’t had yet. Could hit it with them.”
Cort shook his head.
“Is it cancerous?”
Cort shook his head.
“Not cancerous.” Red wrapped the blood pressure guage around Cort’s upper arm. “Only one thing left. Show me and I’ll be able to prescribe something.”
Cort pointed at Red. Gestured Red’s probably fate with a finger across his throat.
Red frowned. “As bad as that? I can go to the ambo station, get some hospital-grade personal protection gear, see you again this afternoon.”
Cort grabbed one of his signs from beside his chair. THERE IS ONLY REVENGE.
Red’s eyes above his mask narrowed. He hissed. “I told them at the station there’s a killer in our scene. What’s he doing?”
Cort mimed diseases passing from one to the next. Infecting people. He got his second sign out. His mobile. A photo, a selfie from hell. His pursed mouth with the deep grooves of his aging face radiating from his thin lips pressed tight. Both the depths of the grooves and the lips painted a deathly white. The disease escaping its confines.
Red studied it with quick glances back and forth to Cort’s eyes, the rest of his face. He frowned thunder. “What can I do?”
Gesturing, Cort asked for help to get out of the chair and be settled on the couch. Cort with a towel over his head for extra protection for Red. His third sign. BURN THAT IN A MEDICAL FURNACE. 1100 DEGREES. He mimed. Make me look like a half-warm corpse.
Red grinned wolfishly. Got out his second mobile, set it to Record. “I’ll be at Mrs Soup’s, watching this. I insist,” he said to Cort’s head shakes. He laid it between Cort’s knees. “I’ll see that your revenge goes nowhere else.”
“He’s dead anyway,” Cort signed.
“Not soon enough. Don’t worry, I have a good plan. No one else is going to be farmed by this dude.” Last thing, Red fetched the red half-blanket from his kit. Spread it over Cort’s lap. He nodded. “Eleven hundred degrees.”
————
Next, the grower. What he called himself. Just a humble farmer popping in from time to time to see how the crop was growing he said. Cort savagely echoed him in his mind.
The man getting sicker, Cort saw the fucker think, his legs up on the couch like that and covered with an ambo’s little red blanket. Cort chuckled behind his mask, whatever that might sound like.
Grower checked that that ambo was not on the premises while fetching the upright chair from the kitchen. Three rooms and a bathroom. No ambo. He set the chair on the rug alongside the couch. Its outer limits but opposite Cort. “Can’t be too careful,” he said.
Cort grunted.
“I traded some of my stock this week and scored me some magnifying specs,” Grower said. He pulled them from his shirt pocket and Cort saw that they were an eye doctor’s magnifiers. Grower slid a couple of lenses into the left frame, three on the right.
Cort grinned close-mouthed behind his mask. Made an inquiring sound.
“You’re right,” Gtower said. “I do owe you an explanation or three.” He laughed. “Your name was the beginning of it.”
Cort raised his eyebrows. This was where he might’ve asked the damned farmer-in-the-dell to explain. Mouth too far gone. But don’t worry he consoled himself, this fucker will tell you because this fucker likes the sound of his own voice.
“In the bar they all called you Cort,” Grower began. “I knew rightaway the crop I’d want to try you out for. Then I learned that you were Allin Cort. Even better. It fits the genus and species naming system. In my literature—pamphlets, brochures and pricelists—I’ve started to call the crop I’ll be harvesting from you Cortinarius allin aff sapient.”
How would he get the delusional sapient to come closer? Cort grunted as disparagingly as he still could.
“It does sounds kind of weird,” Grower said. “But hey, you don’t seem to be doing that well?” He hitched the chair nearer. “The minute I went into job-lots of specifics for the laboratories, my life improved. I got rid of all the species that were too ornery. Too meh. The ones that had no poison and or no flavour if they were edible. I was thinking to get a sample today? Get it tested and so be able to offer my clients a specific rather than a general.”
Cort let his eyelids droop to half-mast, like he was a very sick man. Chuckle chuckle. Sicker than some, not sick enough to not want his revenge before he died.
The fellow hitched the chair even nearer, reached over the remaining distance and gently unhooked Cort’s mask. “Just want to see how we’re progressing, old boy.”
The sick man aka Cort relaxed back onto the couch armrest. He’d laugh if he still could. He gathered himself for his last lunge. Had to be good.
“Medic was here?” Grower said. “He give you some salve and that’s why your mouth and all those grooves are so white?”
Cort shook his head. He coughed through a narrow slot with a tearing paper sound. Pressed together his lips again.
“Right. Right. A little cough is the go. Let me get ready for the next one with a swab.” Grower scrabbled in his bag. Got out a swab. A glass container. A this. A that and a whatever.
Cort watched the madman’s face. Here he comes. Those crazed blue eyes.
“Ready when you are,” Grower said. Sitting on the edge of the chair, both his hands filled with the equipment to catch Cort’s … spores?
Cort grabbed the dead man’s upper arms with an iron grip and opened his mouth wide.
His lips crackled. Cracked. Flaked away.
The white felty interior stretched, the fibres sprang apart.
The spotted brown gills hanging from the roof of his mouth released a cloud of dark brown spores. Cort pursed his lips and blew more of them faster and further into the fellow’s face, his hair, his clothes. He blinded him with Cortinarius spores.
Grower would’ve reared back but Cort hugged him. Breathed spores into him. Kissed him to give him the taste. Cuddled the deluded dead thing to his chest.
Whispered lovingly. “Red will be here in a minute. He’ll tidy us up.”
It’s useless to be thinking about the future when you are starting out, on anything. You start your working life putting up signs, you have no clue that one day you might be working on high rises installing in glass walls with the help of a robot.
People starting out as writers are the same. I started with writing poetry. I had no idea then that one day I’d take on an sf trilogy.
Nearly everybody here in the Discord’s Writing Cartel has a world/universe that they are either writing into or using as scene setting for any number of creative projects. Yesterday I watched a short film on Youtube, there are people developing games, writing novels, short stories, you name it, it’s being written.
Every one of these worlds/galaxies/universes are huge. Many of us have spent every spare moment of our boring work lives thinking up detail. There will always be areas in any of these worlds that will stay private to their creator, and other areas that will see heavy traffic of stories.
We’re all doing it for the love of it. World building is one of the most satisfying mind games we all engage in, relaxing and psychologically uplifting. Next comes the harder thing. Convincing other people to put their own worlds aside for an hour, and engage with us in ours. So we write stories, develop adventure games, produce visuals, film about our worlds.
The Discord Writing Cartel community is all about sticking our toes in the waters of our worlds, writing though the shallows, and finally committing ourselves to writing fully fledged stories to share first with each other, then with the world.
Only then, with that last word, can you start thinking about how much money you might make. Though, of course, these are just my own thoughts. Take them well salted.
WhenI’m My characters out of time, in the first draft of Meld are stuck in a patch of mud and I ,part 2 of the Doomed series,as I am today, and don’t yet know how to write my characters them through that experience. I nowadays turn to another project.
Drat. The sentence above had 45 words as it stood. Why can’t I write long sentences in my fiction? (Editors and beta readers often complain.) But I guess I’d better unpack it in the interests of readability.
Something to look at in the meantime … one of my embroideries … Fleeing the Heat
Yes, so I murdered my first first sentence. I’m limited showing you exactly what I did, not yet knowing all the possible ins and outs of what I can do here. The new first sentence reads …
My characters in the first draft of Meld are stuck in a patch of mud and I don’t yet know how to write them through that experience.
When I’m in that kind of situation, I don’t call it writer’s block. That story-stew is merely waiting for new ingredients. Because it was a time jump that got them into their present predicament, the characters need to have a ‘where-are-we-in-space-and-time’ discussion while at the same time protecting themselves from the wild life. I need to research all the ways in which they can discover ‘when’ they are.
In the meantime it’s OK to write a blog post, work on a short story, or even re-organize your media collection so it can be housed on the internal hard drive. It’s all part of writing.
Rita de Heer 