Category: lost time incident

lost time incident 25
Here in the United States, we just had our 4th of July holiday. In theory, it’s intended for demonstrations of patriotism, but we’ve so quickly followed it with horrifying acts of violence that we’re left with a nationalist hangover.

So instead of thinking about that, let’s spend a little bit of time thinking about ghosts and spies, eh? Won’t that be nice? For a little while?

shaking my head

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Ever thought about what it might be like to be a ghost yourself? Unfinished business? Can’t pick stuff up? Just kinda hoping someone comes along that you can communicate with? And when it does happen, it’s just some reality TV pricks measuring cold spots and pretending to see stuff in corners? All the while, you’re doing your best to appear to them, screaming noiselessly in their stupid meat ears?

Just me?

Maybe there’s no such thing as ghosts. Maybe no one ever comes back with a message because when you die, that’s when you figure out that this place kinda sucks compared to the alternative. No matter how nice a life you’ve got going here, how many people you’re fond of, there’s just no contest. The next phase is a delight, time isn’t real, so everyone you love is going to be along behind you before you know it.

Maybe, maybe.

Or maybe what we think are ghosts aren’t former people. Maybe they’re advertisements. Sent from the next phase of existence with a message: “Look at me, a spooky thing that looks like you, but with out-of-date clothes. I look miserable, right? That’s you. I’m what you look like. This is the life you’re leading. Stuck in this building like I am. Wanting things. So hurry up and get life over with!”

We don’t see ghosts because they’re banner ads for suicide and the beyond and we’ve learned to tune them out, as with any advertising.

super double top secret
Agent Lucero reloaded his wrist-mounted crossbow as his pursuer’s body slipped off the roof of the train car. The enemy agent’s body bounced along the tracks briefly before careening into the pine forest that blurred alongside the passenger train. “I suppose that puts all my ducks in… arrow. No, that’s awful. Glad that’s over, as I was starting to get cross— bow. Ugh, even worse.”

He patted the courier bag slung over his shoulder and crept up towards the lead cars. Inside one of them, he knew he’d find his new identity, a roll of the local currency, and an experimental personal bubble-shaped crash-negating device. With the latter, he’d be able to throw himself off the train as soon as the train reached the border crossing. It would inflate around him, and protect him as he bounced his way to a safe stop.

—

Under the ocean, Lucero listened with the submarine crew to the groaning of the metal around them all. Their ears strained to hear any warning of coming depth charges. Lucero patted his courier bag and leaned to whisper into the oil-blackened ear of a sailor.

“Anyway, so even with the wind on top the the train, I managed to get this guy in the neck with a crossbow bolt from about half a train’s length away—”

“Shh!” hissed the sailor.

“No, yeah, I get it,” said Lucero. “But this is the best part. As he grabbed the bolt and it really sunk in that I got him, I said: ‘Well, Bathsworth, since you were determined to be a pain in my neck, it’s only fair I return the favor!'”

The sailor’s eyes darted along the rivets above. In his hands, a fire extinguisher at the ready.

“Did I mention his name was Bathsworth? Doesn’t matter.”

The soft pinging of radar.

“I guess I could have made a bath-based pun, now that I think of it.”

—

“Agent Lucero, you’ve made it back.” The chief, a heavy-set man with a flat-top and rumpled suit, rose as Lucero entered the room.

“I have indeed, Chief Apelbaum. It took some doing, but I got away from Bathsworth cleanly.” Lucero unslung his courier bag and sat down with the chief.

“Who’s Bathsworth?” asked Apelbaum.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Lucero.

“I never worry,” said Apelbaum. He leaned forward. “So. What have you learned?”

Lucero smiled. “So, so much.” From out of his pocket, he produced a roll of microfilm.

“You really got it,” said Apelbaum.

“I did,” said Lucero. “Photos of ladies’ underpants. A whole drawer full of them. ”

“Nice.”

“Right?”

“You’re the best agent we’ve got, Lucero. Dismissed.”

—

Other things Agent Lucero has learned on previous missions:

• The Prime Minister of Belarus has a crooked dick. Three people have confirmed on three separate occasions.
• The Queen Regent’s new wallpaper features ducks. Rows of ducks.
• Senator Quiggs got stood up on a blind date. A bartender says the woman came in, saw him, turned right back around.
• Doktor Nacht, inventor of the Hand-Held Face-Melt-o, can’t fall asleep unless there’s a Pixar movie playing.
• Wellesley had a member of her secret service kidnap a kid’s rare dwarf lop rabbit during the kid’s birthday party. She’s renamed it Ruffles.
• Agent Faszchlo wears tour t-shirts for the band Chicago under his tuxes at state functions. Including from the Peter Cetera era.

looking & listening
watching – A Very Secret Service – A French television series, a comedy set in the 60s, that follows a young agent entering a Kafka-esque new job surrounded by Mad Men-era fashions as special agents try to keep France’s colonies intact, hunt former Nazis, and be sure to wrap things up in time to turn the office into a dance party with drinks and dangling cigarettes by mid-afternoon. (Netflix)

listening – Hello From the Magic Tavern – An American podcast that follows Arnie, an average citizen of Chicago who fell through a dimension rift into the magical land of Foon. Having little else to do, he’s set up camp at The Vermilion Minotaur tavern to interview inhabitants and send his weekly podcast back to us via the wifi signal from a Burger King.

reading – Mostly the news. Not recommended.

playing – The Big Book of Madness – Up to 5 players join forces in this cooperative card game. You all play young student wizards who have opened a spellbook you shouldn’t have. Players pool their spells and resources to defeat the monsters unleashed by the book while fending of the accumulation of madness. Great fun, even with only 2 players.

ending theme song
We’re finished early! It’s not yet noon! Great, well, uh… I quit!

See you next week at the half year mark of this project.

–Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 24
It’s the 4th of July holiday here in the United States, when our country celebrates our victories over fingers and moisture by enduring hand injuries and starting fires with the aid of colorful explosives that, for safety’s sake, you have to drive 15 minutes outside of town to purchase in a tent.

A safety tent.

My wife Amanda and I have an invitation to leave our home and venture out into the weather. There’s a promise of hot dogs and friendship. Skies are blue out there in the world. I can see it through the window. We should be all right.

Time spent being social is time I can’t spend staring at this computer screen, trying to come up with new stuff, so… it’s a good thing I was busy on Twitter this week.

going up, getting down

on the shore

education was the real magic all along
At the beginning of the semester, the dining hall was full. It was the only time during the school year when that was true. The wizards and witches who stuck it out, year after year, attempting to educate the next generation of magic users would do their best.

They’d bring out the Book of All Flesh, each page an animated and living face of a former student, transfigured into a tome-shaped warning of the dangers of wandering off the well-lit paths of the library wing. Before the semester was over, the book would have about a dozen new pages, no matter where the staff hid the thing. From that point on, each former student would live mostly in darkness, their face flat as a page, having their cheeks tickled by the eyelashes of their cursed neighbor on the facing page. Conversation impossible in such compressed circumstances, reduced to merely feeling the vibration of speech and the wiggling of smashed lips somewhere on one’s face.

After the book, the faculty wheel out Corbyn Crowsbatten, his body a giant jagged ball of exposed bone. “Corbyn was an athlete, but he broke a bone,” a feather bedecked crone might say, gently patting what looks like an elephant’s tibia jutting out of Corbyn’s central mass. “He thought he knew enough to magically regrow the bone. How hard could it be? A hangman’s deck of cards, burned and applied with a wolf’s paw. The moonlight at the right angle in the window. A mouth full of corn. And yet. Something went wrong. Now Corbyn looks like this. Forever.”

The giant mass of living bones is then rolled back into the ward the faculty set up for Corbyn. His parents don’t know yet, because then the tuition checks would stop coming.

As the weeks go by, the student population begins to drop. Potion mishaps. Eaten by monsters, both encountered and created. Usually two or three students a year will become monsters and need to be hunted down in turn. Every student dance seems to have at least one jealousy-fueled fight that ends with someone being burned into a silhouette on a gymnasium wall.

It’s quite possible that the school is a mistake. That young minds, in a stew of hormones, struggling to figure out who they are, or who they can be, are not capable of gauging the dangers involved in applying your will to the powers drawn from the Glowing Realms.

Last year, as the final semester wound down, they thought they’d actually have a graduate this year. Charlotte Lumnack. Good marks in Boons & Hexes. Good attendance. Unfortunately, under interrogation it was determined that actually, Charlotte had fled the grounds, and left in her place a very detailed illusory version of herself to make the rounds through her classes. Regulations are quite strict about graduation requirements, and illusory copies of students don’t qualify as actual students.

Once again, a semester draws to a close. The wizards and witches sigh and walk empty corridors. Dress in formal robes to stand in an empty graduation hall. The sound of wind outside. The rustling of acceptance letters folding themselves, addressing themselves, and fluttering out into the world to find new students.

ending theme song
Tomorrow, as is American tradition, we will prowl the streets of our cities, looking for members of royal families. We’ll bait them into asking us for something, so we can deny the request. That’s where you’ll find me. Out in the streets.

We’ll see you again, before you know it.

–Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 23
Greetings from the mud pits of decrepitude. Almost a week back, while simply bending over, I managed to pull a muscle in my back that, judging by the number of times it’s given me discomfort since then, must have been important in the overall function of this dumb meat ship I’m trapped inside of. But the show must go on. Must it? Actually no. I could just lay face down in bed all day.

It would be so easy.

NO.

We’re working on a newsletter! We’re finding the essence that can follow existence! (Little existentialism shout-out there.) We’re pointedly not petting the cat that settled on us as soon as we sat down to write! Focus! Accomplishment!

And if that doesn’t work out, the bed is still there.

clinging to the outside
The hands were raised and counted and before you know it, we had all voted to exit the space station. Sure, oxygen rationing sucked, and our elected representatives always seemed to end up in the fanciest space suits with the shiniest, radiation-reflecting face plates, and the most responsive booster jets, but I didn’t think that meant it was a good idea to just leave.

But that’s how the vote went, so we climbed into our patchwork suits and filed to the nearest airlocks.

From outside the station, we had a terrific view of the purple planetary expanse we orbited around. No way to get down there anymore, though.

Did you know that when otters sleep, they hold hands so they don’t drift away from each other? We had to do the same thing, lashing limbs together and tying ourselves to the station to make sure none of us drifted off into the void.

Sure. Everything we ate going forward was going to come out of an external-facing pipe from the station and was going to come in liquid form. Sure, we had no way to clean ourselves.

But we had freedom. We had the stars for company. We could do whatever we wanted.

who you know
The recession hit and with so many people out of work, it just made sense that people would turn to forbidden libraries, long forgotten, to research new ways of being and becoming. A self-help guru with big teeth would appear at local malls and sell tickets to enormous crowds, all eager to hear stories about how a combination of anise, cutlery that has touched the teeth of a murderer, and being bitten by three dogs under a waning moon could grant any person a handsome wolf head to replace their own. The guru with the big teeth would comb his furry face, lure a few ticketed VIPs into joining his growing pack and before you knew it, we were used to seeing wolf-headed people going door-to-door, recruiting.

It turned out to be a literal pyramid scheme. The god Anubis had returned and its home pyramid was built on a foundation of bones, mostly belonging to early recruits who weren’t successful at bringing in more wolf-heads under them.

The local grocery is run by a djinn, who has a pretty good eye for fresh produce, but is maybe a little heavy on the variety of dates provided. I’d rather we had a wider variety of fresh greens, but we take what we can get when the exchange for goods has to be either with silver, drops of blood, or a tale of a broken oath.

Djinn love hearing about people who aren’t compelled to keep oaths. It’s good for a box of granola bars, anyway.

Beats joining one of those Circle of the Unsleeping corporations where you chant for years to weaken the Walls of the World, your eyes getting drier and drier, until the Undying Chief Executive Officer can breach into our world and end the recession, plus lower all dry land beneath the sobbing oceans.

Those folks are getting a raw deal.

So yeah. You wanna be my contact on LinkedIn, then?

ending theme song
Sunday’s wrapping up. Donuts were eaten with friends and we even got in a visit to the local comic book store so I could find an old Alpha Flight in the dollar bin. It features a scene where a First Nations shaman comes face to face with a demon made from scrambled eggs. Comics, everybody.

I’m stretched out on a couch, keeping my slow-to-recover back straight. It’s recruited a few neighboring muscle groups to its protest gathering, as they’ve had to pick up the slack and are tired of it. To heck with all of them. Just tie me to the back of one of those DARPA dog robots. I’ll help it avoid banana peels and it can keep me from ever using any of my muscles, ever again. What a team we’ll make. State of the art technology combined with a droopy jellyfish man.

–Michael Van Vleet

 lost time incident 22
The sun is shining out there, people, so you know what time it is! Time to hide inside, in front of a fan, listening to the soft strains of our downstairs neighbors vacuum cleaner while we kick off our 22nd installment! Yeah! High fives! Good weather can take a hike!

(I should go out there at some point.)

This doesn’t affect you. Don’t worry about the weather. You’re somewhere else. Somewhere in the future. They may have done away with weather. You may have to strap on some VR goggles to experience what weather used to be like, from the comfort of your nutrient-bath-slash-cyber-home. Just a bunch of plugged in weirdos living in puddles. That’s you.

Well I’m writing this back when things were NORMAL, damn it. And my fingers, without much conscious thought, just wiggle around on a flat platform with spring-loaded buttons and words appear magically on a screen through a mechanism I don’t understand. Something to do with math? Electrons?

Do you still have electrons where you are? Tell the electrons I said “What’s up?”

Man. Electrons. We had some good times.

let’s all go to the lobby

HISTORICAL DRAMAS FALL 2016
Patterson’s Arch
The Lady and the Dingo
A Pile of Leaves to Remember
Jane Austen: Save Often – [Time Travel, Romance, PG] – A hacker accidentally writes a program that takes him back in time to meet his favorite author: Jane Austen. But when her life is threatened, can he type fast enough to rewrite history and keep her safe, while also pursuing her hand in marriage?
Stammering Englishmen In Small Furnished Rooms

CYBER THRILLERS FALL 2016
Jane Austen: Save Often
I Understand And I Wish to Continue
WWW.DANGER.BIZ
Mother’s Maiden Name
Grandma Fell Off The Internet 2

that well known space saying: [cette histoire est terrible]
Last week, I shared an idea I had for a scifi story where an alien character spoke entirely in French, but the French wasn’t character dialogue… it was the translator complaining about the author. This week’s contribution is just a draft, trying to build the framework that the joke will be nestled inside for the final product.

Jack Quasar poked the brightly lit buttons that lined the cuff of his stellar gauntlets, but the chorus of bleeping sounds provoked by this button-pressing didn’t sound positive. He turned to his alien companion Stegh.

“Well, Stegh, we might be stuck in this prison cell for a little while longer. My stellar gauntlets can’t seem to scan through these walls. I can connect to the local network, but our captor’s anti-gauntlet measures are all up to date. I managed to get the passwords for a couple vending machines out there, but that’s it. Best I can do at this point is make sure our captors get the wrong item when they go for a snack. You got any ideas?”

Stegh’s fluting voice whistled between his foreteeth. Quasar was grateful once again for the Braglantian language courses he took on Stegh’s home world that allowed him to understand his alien friend. {place holder for Stegh dialogue}, said Stegh.

“I never would have thought of that. Stegh, you’re a genius!”

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

“Well. Of course.” Quasar removed his stellar gauntlets, tugged out some of the cables that ran along the inside, and twisted them together. “There. Polarity is reversed and… the door’s open!”

Outside the door stood the biggest, meanest alien Quasar and Stegh had ever seen. It was several meters tall, with razored limbs, wearing a hat that read “Make 105739-Gx& Great Again”. The creature held a sparking stick that promised electric discomfort, a textbook about legislative bodies on gas giants, and the look of someone who didn’t want the prison door open.

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

“You can say that again buddy,” echoed Quasar.

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

“That’s an Earth saying. You didn’t actually have to repeat yourself, buddy.” Quasar slapped Stegh on the back in a jovial fashion, tapping the same back area Steph’s ancestors would strike in order to begin a physical conflict over mating rights. Steph managed to restrain itself from removing Quasar’s arm. Sometimes galactic diplomacy requires a lot of struggle with one’s own biological imperatives.

“Good old Stegh,” said Quasar. “Now. What say we convince our jailor friend of the righteousness of our cause?”

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

—

Moments later, jogging down the station’s hallway, Quasar and Stegh kept low, following pictographic directions to the hangar bay where they hoped to find The Decommissioned Wreck, their starship.

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

“I don’t think it’s going to get infected, no,” said Quasar.

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

“Oh. You just wanted me to agree with you. Yes, then. It’s going to get infected.”

{place holder for Stegh dialogue}

ending theme song
Another week has come and gone and thanks are due yet again to my wife Amanda for contributing artwork. The distressed paperback cover feature the heroic Stegh you see above is an original work of hers.

dah dah dut dah du daa-daa. dah dah dut dah du daaaaa. dut dit doo dit doo dah dah. dah dit doo dah-duh-daa.

lost time incident 21
Gray hair is one of the obvious signs that a body has decided that it’s shutting things down. Color for hair? Why bother.

But there are other, subtler degradations of function. I have noticed that sometimes my body doesn’t bother getting thirsty. Water is for bodies that still have things they need to accomplish… a bright future ahead of them. Not this one.

Went through a good stretch of yesterday not feeling thirsty and so, not drinking anything. Naturally, that means that this morning was mostly spent feeling cruddy, like a cracked creek bed, slowly sipping water and hoping my headache will go away. Somewhere deep in my head are a pair of sinuses that refuse to stop aching, or empty out, resisting round after round of hot showers and over the counter medicine.

Slowly, senses are returning, so I’m typing these words instead of hiding under a pile of covers. But the recovery process is so… so slow.

[hours and hours of discomfort happened here]

And just like that, a Sunday disappears.

nothing but an idea
One of my long-time, dear friends translates English & French for a living. I’ve always found translation to be an amazing profession. When I was a little kid and too old to claim to want to be an astronaut, I would tell people I wanted to grow up to be a translator. In hindsight, I might have wanted to follow in the footsteps of a certain yellow protocol droid from a movie I watched over and over again.

I let that dream go and never got much further than learning barely enough Spanish to babble along with a 2 year old, but I still have a lot of respect for the art of translation. When I was flush with dot-com money, I found a translator through Craig’s List who would work with me on translating a Japanese manga series that I was in love with, but couldn’t read. I’d love reading through the translator’s notes about the choices she made, or her attempts to explain jokes, etc. so I could decide how to render them in the English language version I was composing in Photoshop for my own enjoyment.

Anyway. So I recently got an idea for a story that I thought I was going to start this week. The story’s just as an excuse to hire my friend to do some translation for me. It’ll be a science fiction setting. Some humans and an alien they work with. I don’t know the plot yet. It’s not important.

The thing that makes it interesting for me is that the alien will be speaking French as if French were an alien language. The other characters will react as if they understand the alien, but to anyone who— like me— doesn’t read French, it might as well be an alien tongue.

On top of that, I want all of the alien’s dialogue to actually be the voice of the translator, complaining about being underpaid for the translation job, insulting the premise of the story, and talking about unrelated things. A whole second narrative, hidden to those who— again, like me— don’t read French.

That’s what I meant to start today.

Instead, I napped a lot. Rolled my neck around so it cracked. Watched strangers play video games where they fought aliens, or built prisons. Watched movies I had seen before, so I could sleep through scenes and not miss anything. Wondered if I was going to have to throw up just so my sinuses would let go.

I didn’t, though.

The shadows are long outside.

looking & listening
watching – RUBBER: The tale of a tire that comes to life and learns to use its psychokinetic powers to destructive effect. An audience of strangers watch from a distance with binoculars and wonder what it all means. An exercise from the “why not?” school of film. Viewable on Netflix at present.
listening – “Devil Is Fine” by Zeal & Ardor. Most original thing I’ve heard in awhile. The sound of old spirituals blended with the spirit and sounds of Satanic death metal.
reading – “Memory of Passion” by Gil Brewer. A man, somewhat unhappy in his marriage, gets a call out of the blue from his high school sweetheart, who hasn’t aged at all. He knows it’s impossible, an imposter, somehow, but will he throw his life away to pursue her? (She’s really hot and totally wants to bang him and be his time-stuck sweetheart.) Will he figure out who she really is? Probably. Gil Brewer was big on noir narratives where man’s basest desires destroy him. We’ll see. I’m about 1/3rd into it.
playing – Far Cry Primal: Badger Employee Workplace Review – Spent some time yesterday playing FCP, where I get to roam a violent, Stone Age setting with animal friends. A badger companion wasn’t helping protect me from lions, so unfortunately, action had to be taken.

ending theme song
dah dah dut dah du daa-daa. dah dah dut dah du daaaaa. dut dit doo dit doo dah dah. dah dit doo dah-duh-daa.

lost time incident 20
What a week, what a week, huh, folks? There was that sportsball thing, and the political person said that thing and we were all like: WHAAAT!?!? I had a morning where I took one or two of every variety of pill in my backpack so I could feel like a functioning human and then there was that celebrity news! Oh man.

It’s fat housefly season in this household! We have two… or maybe three of them! Name suggestions are welcome. (Update: Have killed two out of three. Only one name suggestion will be considered.)

The sun is shining outside, but we’re ignoring it in favor of you, readers. Such a sacrifice.

Speaking of sacrifices…

playing monster
This last week, I’ve spent a bit of time watching players on YouTube try out a new game called “Dead by Daylight.” The game is still in beta, which makes things interesting, because you can see game elements being added and tweaked based on the date of the video.

Up to five players can play at a time, with one of them playing a movie slasher-style monster who chases the others around an overgrown abandoned lot, trying to beat them up, hang them on meat hooks, and sacrifice them to spider-leg-thorn-nightmare monsters in the sky.

The survivors/victims are racing around the game map, trying to stay silent, hide behind tall grasses and crates, dodge traps, and repair enough generators that they can open the doors blocking the path to escape.

When the killer is near, the survivors can hear their heartbeat get louder and louder, as a sort of radar warning, and menacing music starts to swell. Players in these videos get as freaked out as their cinematic forebears, scrambling to stay ahead of the killer.

And yet all that fear is forgotten when they get to take their turn chasing their friends with a blade… Then they’re perfectly happy to laugh and say “Where are you going?” as their friends try to vault obstacles, cackling as they drag them to their doom.

If that sounds fun, a great place to start is Serial Killers Everywhere hosted by ChilledChaos (or “Chilled” for short). You’ll see his face in the upper right corner of the screen. But the highlight of this video is his pal Seananners (Adam) who spends much of the vid creeping out his friends as the murderer, but demonstrates quite a knack for screaming when the tables are turned.

tweet tweet

she’s a cop, she’s a witch
“T’chyeah, like this witch has nothing better to do than curdle some milk and make a sow miscarry. Rrrrright. I got creepy little dolls with faces carved out of fallen crabapples to make so I’m a LIT-tle busy these days.”

Officer Foxhazel adjusted the amulet on her belt. She’d been a witch cop for dozens of moons, so dealing with a reluctant suspect was nothing new.

“Okay, Goodie,” said Foxhazel. “So maybe you weren’t troubling livestock or dairy supplies. But this isn’t the first complaint we’ve had about you this month. Or are you going to say you haven’t been cavorting in the woods either?”

“What woods?” sneered Goodie Crow, her stringy black hair hanging over her defiant eyes. “There’s a lot of woods around here.”

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” said Foxhazel, “but you know we keep a file on all the reliquaries and soul cages in the county, right? While you were spending your time talking to goats, or whatever you’ve been up to, the witch cops have been busy with paperwork and focusing ceremonies. A bit of scrying, a bit of dowsing, some group chanting and sacrifice, and pretty soon we had a comprehensive list of where every spell-slinger and potion-brewer in town was keeping their secrets.”

“You can’t—”

“I can walk right down this hall, find out which gnarled set of roots you’ve stashed your essence under, or which trunk with a cursed lock you used, and that’s it. We’ve got everyone’s secrets, on 4×6 cards, neatly labeled, stored in a walnut cabinet adorned with the bones of owls. Wouldn’t take me more than 10 minutes to look your name up.”

Crow swallowed.

“So I’m going to ask one more time about that curdled milk… and that miscarrying sow. Because we have the rites, so you can’t remain silent.”

WITCH COPS! Tune in with your far-sight gems this Fall!

looking & listening
watching: First episode of Preacher  – so far, transcending the source material
listening: Marta Ren – Stop Look Listen – modern retro Portuguese soul
playing: Fallout 4 – Tried to get around to finishing the game, but got distracted building a killer robot. It happens.
reading: Down Don’t Bother Me by Jason Miller – I was just following this guy on Twitter because he was funny, but he wrote a really great Southern crime novel about a mine worker who gets press-ganged into the role of private investigator by the owner of the mine.

ending theme song
Why do bookstores use stickers that don’t come off cleanly? Why?

Last night, I tried to peel a price sticker off an old paperback, only to see some of the cover come away with the sticker. So I used a citrus-based sticker-removing solution and watched that soak into the cover, staining it, so the worst of all outcomes. Now my $2 paperback looks like a $1 paperback. Since that’s the worst thing to happen all weekend, things are going pretty darn good.

Thanks are due to my wife Amanda for supplying the illustration of a blade-wielding video game maniac. The mocking dialogue was lifted directly from Seananner’s taunting in the linked video.

What else. I’ve been messing about with Snapchat recently. If this is also true of you, you can find me with a search for: signalstation

That’s probably it. Time to go fritter away the rest of the weekend. Later, gators.

—Michael Van Vleet

Today’s daylight hours were spent either typing away at the fiction you’ll see below, or watching strangers stream video games, while my wife and two cats dozed on the living room couch.

What else is going on.

I think the answer is “literally nothing else” so I should probably get this show on the road!

Here we go!

bee bee queue

Behind the Scenes: Originally, “Shy” was going to be “Meek” but I needed every character allotment I could get from Twitter’s 140 character limit. That’s also why I had to compromise and leave the ellipses to abut the colon in the BOSS dialogue… and so of course that’s where my eye goes, resentfully, every time I revisit the tweet.

The presence of the phrase “flavor profile,” though, makes it all worth it. I love its jargon-y mouthfeel.

unarmed
Two police officers looked into an interrogation room, hidden behind the reflective glass. Inside the room was a man, his left arm handcuffed to the table, his right arm centrally placed on the table, not connected to his torso. Its leather straps dangled over the table’s edge, a prosthetic limb, as still as the man in handcuffs.

“They say this guy Medhardt is the killer,” said Singh, his thumbs in his belt. Lopez frowned. “But so far, he’s sticking to his story that he was compelled to do it. By his prosthetic arm.”

“That doesn’t make any kind of sense,” said Lopez.

“Probably just laying the groundwork for an insanity plea, I imagine,” said Singh.

“I mean,” continued Lopez, “an arm can’t talk. So how does it convince you to do anything?”

“My understanding is that it’s more of a compulsion. He claims that he’s just found himself at the crime scenes, but that the prosthetic limb committed the murders he’s been accused of.”

“Weird,” said Lopez.

“YES IT IS,” boomed a voice from behind them. Singh and Lopez glanced back to see their colleague, Detective Yeti, standing behind them. Yeti was six and half feet tall of white furred justice, a friendly smile revealing yellowed, sharp teeth.

“Oh, hey Detective Yeti,” said Lopez. “How’s the day going? Pretty good, I hope, considering the lifestyle adjustment required to have moved from the Himalayas where you mostly ate goats to our town, where you’ve decided to dedicate your life to fighting crime, even though everyone has told you to please not do that because you’re not qualified.”

“I’m fine,” said Detective Yeti. “I am here to solve this crime.”

“Great,” said Singh, but it was evident he did not think this was great.

The mountain creature pushed his way into the interrogation room.

“What the heck ARE you?” asked Medhardt, the suspect.

“I… am a VERY GOOD DETECTIVE,” bellowed Yeti, causing the mirrored window to rattle in its frame. “On the mountain where I was born, the winds blow cold. Cold as the heart of killers. And I would know, because these very claws have traced cursive notes of hatred on the sinews of goats and sherpas, on the tendons of yaks and explorers who sought me out.”

Medhardt tugged at his handcuff, glancing over at the reflective glass. “Are those— are there any other guys who might want to ask me questions?”

“Finally, they caught me. Humans. I was slowed by drugs, entangled in nets. They brought me to a court of law. In my cell, I watched American television. I absorbed the lessons taught by crime shows. Law. Order. Mysteries. The fire in the blood that leads to murder. I knew it well.”

Detective Yeti leaned over the table and sniffed at the prosthetic arm.

“I was thought a myth. I am not. Likewise, my colleagues do not believe a prosthetic arm can kill. But I am open… to the POSSIBILITY!” Detective Yeti roared the final word at the arm itself, then leaned in closely, as if to be sure it was not moving in reaction.

“Are you a real cop?” asked Medhardt.

“We use fingerprints to identify individuals,” said Detective Yeti, ignoring the question. “This arm has no fingerprints. Suspicious. As if trying to hide its identity. Didn’t work. Now you’re in here with me. AND NO CRIME ESCAPES ME!”

“I CAN ONLY— oh, you’re done,” said Medhardt. “I can only cover half my ears when you yell, so could you not?”

“You can go,” said Detective Yeti.

“What?”

“I will remain here and speak with this arm. You will leave.” Yeti uncuffed the suspect and lead him out the door. “You are an alligator and I will see you later.”

“That’s not the saying,” said Lopez, standing outside the interrogation room.

Singh, standing next to Lopez, pointed after Medhardt. “Where’s he going?”

“It’s quite simple, my colleagues,” said Yeti. “So long as we don’t have any further murders where there are no fingerprints, then we know that our imprisoned arm, possessed by evil, has been prevented from continuing its dark work.”

Lopez looked puzzled. “But if that guy, who you just let leave, kills someone else, he’ll just be using his left arm and will HAVE to leave fingerprints, so… Wait. We already found his fingerprints at the scene of the crime, actually. Several of them.”

Singh ran down the hallway after Medhardt. “Not so fast, buddy! Get back here!”

Detective Yeti quietly slipped back into the interrogation room and pushed a chair under the door handle, ensuring that no one from outside could open the door.

“And now, fake arm… we begin the questions in earnest.”

From outside the room, the sounds of breaking furniture could be heard, but to be honest, no one was listening or watching.

think piece


ending theme song
We made it! When we set out, we weren’t sure what shape the road would take, but it took the shape of words in a single column. Finally, we found ourselves here, writing the outro because our stomach is growling and we have plans to go out to dinner. Peruvian. Hearty food for mountain living.

Why don’t the Andes have a version of the Sasquatch myth, I wonder?

[Quick Google search]

Oh, they do. The Patagon. Okay, that’s settled.

You’ll have to come back in later weeks to see if this is the seed that finally sprouts into a pastry shop AU with Pastry Chef Patagon, who is VERY GOOD AT CAKES.

See you in a week for the big TWO ZERO.

Thanks to my wife Amanda for the illustration of the diabolical prosthetic limb!

–Michael Van Vleet

find me elsewhere
signalstation – home
TinyLetter – archive/subscription
Twitter – short nonsense
Tumblr – reblogging
Goodreads – reading
Bandcamp – listening
Amazon – wishlist

lost time incident 18
Hey, folks. We’ve got a short one this week because the real world has intruded on our writing time. Entropy is visiting from out of town and things are breaking or malfunctioning all over. My Xbox has always had power problems, but in the last few weeks, it talked my receiver into turning itself off at random intervals. They’re not-working buddies. Then on Friday, my laptop’s power cord stopped working so my laptop only has so much battery left and can’t get any more. Today my headphones went on the fritz. Something in the plug has frayed so I just get bits of songs, half of conversations, in both ears.

I’ve been forced to actually go outside and run errands to fix all this nonsense during what should have been my leisure time. Time usually spent wool-gathering to fuel this creative effort. I’ve just been plugging and unplugging things. Untangling cables. Talking to customer service reps. Ordering things online. Trying to figure out if there’s any way to avoid having to pay an electrician to show up and stick gizmos in the wall sockets and confirm we’re not cursed.

Bleh.

Anyway. Time to get typing on one of the machines that still works.

cherry

It’s kinda weird, isn’t it, that of the first three facts that come to mind when I think of George Washington, two of them are fiction? (#1 is that he was the first President. That one is true.)

Wooden teeth. Cherry tree parable. Untrue.

I don’t feel like this is common for most famous figures, right?

Abraham Lincoln: Sixteenth President, had two left hands, won a knife fight with the King of Bees

Pope John Paul II: From Poland, could turn invisible at will, invented the Polish sausage

George Clooney: Stole fire from the gods by carrying a hot coal in his mouth, was punished by same gods by being chained to a rock and having an eagle feast on his eternally regenerating liver, always chooses “Rock” when playing “Rock Paper Scissors”

(I don’t actually know a single fact about George Clooney.)

fallout

knock knock
“Who’s there?”
Margaret
“Margaret who?”
Margaret me in! You’re my only hope! They’re behind me and I have to hide!
“I can’t risk it. If they catch you here, it’s the last straw. I’ll be vanished.”
Leaving me on your doorstep doesn’t make you any safer.
“Get in, get in. Get that lampshade on your head and stand still.”

…

Popular culture wants you to think that people who get drunk and are the life of the party put lampshades on their head, but 9 times out of 10, it’s someone hiding from the secret police.

Now you know. Never make eye contact with someone wearing a lampshade. Never accept a briefcase from someone wearing a lampshade. Never make a living as a vendor of lamps when your government is a totalitarian regime.

Orange you glad I didn’t say “Police, open up”?

looking & listening
watching: First episode of Outcast, an exorcism-centric series based on comics from Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead).
listening: Spontaneanation – Hosted by one of the comedy world’s quickest minds (Paul F. Tompkins), every episode is improvised from an initial guest monologue
reading: Manifest Destiny – Lewis and Clark explore the North American continent but it’s full of supernatural dangers. Let me know if you wanna read the first issue. I’ll buy you a copy.

ending theme song
I drank a few cups of coffee post-dinner just to make sure I’d have enough energy to manage even this tiny newsletter, but I already want to take a nap. I know it’s early on, but so far, I don’t care for my 40s. This is some bullshit.

Sleeping is just practice for being dead and I want no part of it.

No more sleep.

…

I might have to sleep.

Don’t do anything exciting while I’m not here.

[Thanks to my wife Amanda for providing the fallout shelter advertising poster!]

–Michael Van Vleet

find me elsewhere
signalstation – home
TinyLetter – archive/subscription
Twitter – short nonsense
Tumblr – reblogging
Goodreads – reading
Bandcamp – listening
Amazon – wishlist

lost time incident 17
The evenings this week were dedicated to board games, for the most part. Monday and Tuesday, the wife and I split duties, each taking responsibility for half of a four-man ghost-busting squad in a game— you guessed it— based on the Ghostbusters franchise. Wednesday I introduced work colleagues to Pandemic, and we almost saved the world, but nope, diseases for everyone, sorry. Thursday a friend dropped by to help us bust even MORE ghosts, which feels as good as they say it does. Then we ended the week struggling with some electronic woes as several of our plug-and-wire gizmos started having problems with staying powered on.

Say what you will about board games, but they power up every time.

In other news, crows and cats in the neighborhood aren’t getting along.

In the recent past, I spent a few months trying to get the attention of neighborhood crows. I’d whistle, then throw peanuts their way, hoping to make fast friends across species lines. (For the record, this is more concerted effort than I ever made to get to know my human neighbors.**) While I got crows to swoop down and take peanuts a number of times, I think they just thought I was a chump who didn’t know how to maintain proper nut control. They still don’t seem particularly happy to see me out and about, nor have any of them shown any interest in riding on my shoulder and whispering secrets into my ear as a dark familiar.

Earlier today, one of the neighborhood crows started making a non-stop racket right outside our living room window. Was this a concerted and loud peanut lobbying attempt? It was not. We looked outside and the ruckus was due to the presence of a black cat, poking around in the tree, pushing its luck.

I tossed some peanuts at the cat to convince it to find a different tree. Didn’t work. Bounced the peanuts off the tree. The cat wasn’t much interested in these bouncing peanuts. So now they’ll probably be found by the nocturnal raccoons who like to scream when fighting over who gets right of way, walking along the tops of fences.

No matter what, animals are going to make noise and everyone’s getting peanuts to eat around here.

**We have a next-door neighbor named Lisa who, upon moving in, assumed we’d be fascinated by her life’s story, eager to do favors for her, and has never in conversation tried to get to know a thing about us. She does ask after our cats, though. We have a downstairs neighbor named … I can never remember. Shares a name with a dish I don’t care for. Pasta-based. What is it. Linguinardo. No. Steve-ghetti. No. ALFREDO. Nice guy. Has a family. Don’t know their names at all. There’s another unit that could be full of aliens or serial killers. Don’t even know how many people are in there. And beyond this building, the neighborhood might as well be shrouded in mist and full of shivering creatures like in Silent Hill, for all the familiarity I have with the people who live around here.

Anyway. Who’s up for some fiction?

the atom age
We had to shut down the super collider. Up to that point, it had been a good week. We had bounced atoms off each other with spectacular success. Busted ’em up real good. We were internationally recognized for our work in atom collision. At the end of the shift, you could get bits of atoms off the floor, take ’em home for the kids. Supervisor didn’t care. You were saving the janitorial team on the night shift some trouble, actually, because otherwise they’re spending all their time sweeping up atoms.

But now the whole facility was at half power. People were leaning on machines that were usually too hot to touch, just killing time, checking their phones.

What’s the problem, I asked.

Computer’s got a virus, Wulf said. He pointed. Sure enough, there’s a virus sitting right on top of the computer they keep hooked up to the big red COLLIDE THE ATOMS button. Virus just looked over at us like: What. Daring us to do something. It would have lunged at us to make us jump if it could, so it could laugh if we flinched. You could see it in the eyes wobbling in its protein coat. Good thing it couldn’t lunge. Viruses don’t have the right kind of structure.

Gross, I said.

Hey, said some guy behind us. He had a clipboard. I got a whole truck load of atoms out back, someone going to sign for these? I gotta get ’em offloaded. Got to take a shipment of rain back to Colorado right after. And there’s trucks all backed up behind mine. Line’s going down the block. We gotta move. Who’s gonna sign for this?

—

Later, in the cafeteria, Wulf and I ate cold egg and bacon sandwiches. The virus sat at the next table sipping tea. The delivery guy ate at the table after that, but he wasn’t eating food. He was pointedly looking at print-outs of delivery schedules, then ripping them up and putting them in his mouth while trying to stare us down. Everything is our fault, sure buddy.

What are you going to do for the super collider talent show, I asked Wulf.

Magic show, he said.

You know magic?

Magic. Hypnotism.

You know hypnotism?

I made you forget that I know magic.

What, I exclaimed, and my top hat fell off, didn’t even know I was wearing one, bunnies spraying out of the hat in arcs as the hat bounced along the ground, a solid spray of rabbits, bouncing off the walls, colliding with each other, pellets shaking out of them like tiny atomic bits.

Oh yeah, now I remember, I told Wulf.

What are you going to do, Wulf asked me.

Probably some carpentry. Get my cousin’s tae kwon do class to come in, kick some boards in half, make a chair out of it.

Sounds like a great act, said Wulf.

Everybody likes chairs, I said.

—

The next morning, the super collider was up and running again. Noting the hints of aggression coming from the virus, someone on the night shift put up flyers around the compound advertising a ‘fight club’ in the basement, with tear-away coupon strips on the bottom for a free first punch, redeemable upon one’s first visit.

The virus was caught in a net trap as soon as it entered the basement rec room, torn off coupon still gripped in its tail fibers.

The night shift woke up the atom delivery guy, who had been sleeping in his truck, and all night long upright hand trucks were rolling their tiny wheels down the compound’s corridors, bundles of atoms offloaded and stacked in storage rooms or dropped down delivery chutes.

By the time we came in, everything was ready, so we strapped on our goggles and thought about how much better atoms are when they’re hurtling around. Looks like break time is over, Wulf, I said.

Atom-smashing time, he said.

And he hit the big red button.

golden age of tv
[SFX: rock music]
[stock footage: helicopter over a city landscape, a busy police office, a purse-snatcher running down the street, an empty church, a gravestone with handcuffs resting on top]

[TITLE: TBD ]

[footage: Following a beat cop as he walks a city street.]

NARRATOR: In the big city… crime doesn’t pay. The police force responds to hundreds of crime reports a day and if the criminal is found… they’re going down.

[footage: Beat cop goes up steps of burned out building.]

NARRATOR: And if the criminal has escaped, passing beyond the veil of this world, dying before they can be brought to justice–

[footage: A ghost cop falls into step with the beat cop, climbing stairs and going deeper into the building.]

NARRATOR: That’s where the ghost cops come in.

BEAT COP: Okay, partner. The arsonist’s spirit is in this next room. You ready to bring him in?

[GHOST COP turns, mouth open in a rictus, unable to talk… its hands pass through the door knob. Its eyes roll back. Nearby glass shakes in telekinetic frustration.]

BEAT COP: This was a terrible idea.

[GHOST COP wavers, its face in agony, fingers curled… then disappears.]

BEAT COP: … Great.

look listen
listening to: Berlin Community Radio
reading: The True Believer: Thoughts on Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. An interesting look at the driving factors behind and the members of society most susceptible to the allure of joining a mass movement of any variety: political, religious, etc.
watching: Sicario. Whoah. Super intense. Probably gives fits to anyone working in Mexico’s tourism industry.

ending theme song
That’s going to do it for us for this week. It’s about that time of the weekend when final errands must be run, meaning it’s time to go pick up some fruits, veggies and barley tea from the local Asian market. Then maybe read some comics. Listen to more music streaming from Berlin.

Happy birthday wishes go out to Team Pan this weekend. Thanks again to my wife Amanda for the original illustration.

Also, a guy I went to high school put up a photo that a 15-year-old me appears in. Good looking kid, though I remember he didn’t think so. Too bad I can’t pass him a note. Too bad it’s creepy to tell young people “You’re probably never going to look better than you do now! Be more confident!”

No wonder nobody told us.

As ever, thanks for reading.

— Michael Van Vleet

find me elsewhere
signalstation – home
TinyLetter – archive/subscription
Twitter – short nonsense
Tumblr – reblogging
Goodreads – reading
Bandcamp – listening
Amazon – wishlist

lost time incident 16
Hey folks! It’s probably too early to be sure, but it sure seems like if you force yourself to practice a creative pursuit, it does actually get easier. Or maybe I just got lucky and had a hot streak this weekend. Put out a lot of Twitter activity, recorded some video game stuff with my better half, filmed a truly dumb instructional video (which you’ll see below) and then there’s this thing!

My intention, when I started the newsletter, was to get back in the habit of being creative, because too much time was slipping past me with with work/passively watch something/sleep cycle. It might be working.

Time is still slipping away, but that might now be more linked to my own advanced age.

The photo above is one I took last year in India, documenting the cows who liked to hang out in the vacant field next to the office I was working out of. For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking about that trip again recently, which reminded me of this anecdote:

out-of-town money
Last year, I spent a few weeks in India for work. I got into town early so I’d have a weekend to recover before I had to turn up, be awake  and act respectable in the office on Monday morning. My first morning out, I figured I’d just walk out the front gate of the hotel I was staying at, pick a direction, and see where I ended up.

However, parked just outside the gate was a good-natured fellow who jumped out of his tuk-tuk-style cab and volunteered to drive me wherever I wanted to go. When I asked him his rates, he insisted he didn’t charge. “Oh, are you affiliated with the hotel?” I asked. He dodged the question, but was fine if that was something I wanted to believe.

As it turned out, he was just a charming guy with no working meter who found that if you can charm a foreigner into hopping into your cab, their guilt at not paying you will usually lead to them tipping you more than you would have collected… by a long shot.

If you’ve read any sort of travel advice, you’ll know there’s usually a section about how to avoid being taking advantage of as a foreigner-with-money. Sometimes it’s as simple as telling you that you can haggle. Sometimes it’s as terrifying as telling you that if your driver runs someone over or crashes the vehicle, you absolutely should not leave the vehicle until help arrives, due to the possibility that it’s all a trap to kidnap you.

(That last one is for Angola, by the way.)

But India’s not too bad.

One of the things you get warned about is that if your cab driver won’t start their meter, you shouldn’t go with them. You’ll also be told that some drivers have partnerships lined up with local vendors and they’ll offer to take you anywhere for free— so long as you don’t mind browsing at a shop first. And if you buy something there, so much the better, because they’re getting paid for dropping you and your wallet off, and the kickback’s sweeter if you actually buy something.

But I tell you, if you’re up too early in the morning on a Sunday and you genuinely have nothing else to do, going to a handicraft shop at the suggestion of a cab driver who says you don’t have to pay him at all isn’t a bad way to pass the time.

That’s how I ended up looking at carved wooden elephants while chatting with with an Indian-appearing fellow named Javaid who said he was actually born and raised in Russia. Though he now runs his family’s handicrafts store, convincing people like me that we need a heavy brass statue of Ganesha, he originally studied to be an engineer. After getting out of school, he found himself working at a coal mine up in Siberia. He bailed on the coal-flecked snows of Siberia when the Soviet Union’s economy collapsed.  Claimed he doesn’t miss it, if you can believe that.

“Where are you from” he asked. When I said “The US,” he asked who I thought our next President might be.

“Well, the odds are favoring Hillary Clinton,” I said. This was mid-2015.

“She would be the first female President, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Your country has been around for hundreds of years. Why do you think you haven’t had a female President yet?”

“Uh… because we’re a sexist country? Isn’t that obvious?”

Biggest laugh I got on the whole trip, my moment of honesty with Javaid.

e-book ideas

• So You’re Haunting a Rich Person
• My Gun Talks With Bullets
• A Pet Owner’s Guide to Kettle Corn
• B-bye 4ever – Suicide Notes from Children
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Binge-Watching
• Public Domain Fiction Make-Out Sessions

meanwhile somewhere else

interview with some vampire
“What is that? Will it hurt me? Or do you… do you use it to prepare food?”

The vampire was pointing, concerned, at my smartphone, which I had just placed on the table between us to record our conversation.

“… It’s harmless. Don’t worry about it.”

—

“I have traveled over mountain ranges of time and while I was doing so… I was studying the art… of sexy.” He picked nervously at a ragged fingernail. His nail beds were pale and recessed. “I am one of those sexy vampires.”

He smiled, his fangs poking out past his lips, yellow like table butter that’s been left on a picnic table under the summer sun. “Like in your fimms. Your movings.”

“You mean ‘movies’?”

“Do I? Perhaps? When I go to see a fimm, I sneak in … as a bat. Bat ears don’t hear human words so good.” He frowned. “I have never seen a moving that wasn’t upside down. And very blurry. Bats don’t see so good. But it was enough to be sure that I am sexy.”

—

jazz appreciation EP001

For those new to appreciating jazz, I put together a one minute introduction that will set you on the right path. Just some basic moves for beginners. Nothing too taxing.

ending theme song
Okay! We made it! One more lost time incident full of nonsense, out the door. As ever, we’ve got some amazing original illustrations from my wife Amanda. How about that, huh? An entire comic, we got from her this time!

If you like it, tell your friends. If you don’t like your friends… just keep this newsletter to yourself.

Thanks for showing up! See you next week!

–Michael Van Vleet