skonen_blades: (Default)
You left me a message once
Your voice trapped in my phone
A moth in a jar softly hitting the edges
Telling me about a poem you thought I’d like
Reciting it
And you were right

Later you became a poem yourself
Leaving beautiful evidence of yourself behind
A finite wake of archaeological shards
Video clips and photographs
And a couple of books

I found a poem the other day that I thought you’d like
And I left you a message
By reciting it softly to the air
A moth free to find its way
To wherever your light is now



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skonen_blades: (didyoujust)
There’s a disturbing message on my answering machine.

It’s from someone proclaiming to be the surgeon-lieutenant of the United Albion Colonies. He told me that there was trouble with the neo-secessionists and that the states of North Cumbria, Aztexas, New Yorkshire, and Idaho’s Splinter were hanging in the balance.

He left a phone number with letters and exchanges in it. I tried to return the call but all I get is a recording asking me if I need help dialing a number. It doesn’t work.

I wonder how he got through to me. He seemed quite frantic. I hope everything works out.

The thing that scares me is that he referred to me as Prime Minister Elect. The thing that intrigues me even more than that is that he got my name right. He spoke as if we were old friends. He didn’t leave his name. I didn’t recognize the voice.

I never struck myself as a politically-minded person. I work in the entertainment district. I hope that whatever crisis is going on over in the U.A.C. is averted with a minimum of fuss.

Maybe I should consider running in the next local election.





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skonen_blades: (angryyes)
Messengers come and messengers go, it’s the message that stays constant.

It’s a rough job being a courier. ‘Time is of the essence’ is written on the ceiling above my bed so that as soon as my eyes are open, I know I’m already late. I put on the wings of my profession and pad down the hall to the coffee machine.

It’ll be hot enough today for me to do my job naked except for the shoes. I’m looking forward to that.

It’s the charm in the wings that has the power. They can be sewn onto any old pair of shoes or hat to do the job. Whatever the wings are attached to absorb the charm so they don’t burn off on re-entry or fly off in the turbulence.

I remember a Canadian back in the day who wore red socks and a red toque with the Canadian flag in the middle. He was a young kid, a snowboarder or something before he got the job. He loved it. His uniform was frowned on as a little too casual but his high performance feedback let him get away with a minimum of uniform-related reprimands.

With a smirk I remembered Jack Steel, the football player. Probably the biggest messenger ever chosen. He was a huge football player who had the wings glamoured onto the side of his Amercian football helmet and his cleats. He looked a little silly wearing the toga but nothing matched his power when he was running through the skies. That helmet had no peripheral vision, though. Rest in piece, Jack. Watch out for jets.

Cradling the nearly-finished cup of coffee in my hands, I thought back to the narcissistic tennis player we had in the early eighties. Pierre Willingdon. The wings were attached to his pristine white sweatband. He wore tight white tennis shorts and bright white tennis shoes. I remember his huge reflective pilot’s sunglasses. I think he slept wearing those glasses. With his long curly black hair and that white scarf, he cut quite a figure.

None of us could stand him at the time but now, looking back, I missed his eccentricity and sense of play.

We’re chosen for our drive and not our physical ability. We’ve had heavy messengers and slight ones. Hell, Old Shen was practically obese. Boy, he could laugh.

I read about Ophelia the Kid and Old Woman Jacobs.

'Bones' Johnson was skeletal. I remember him with that cigar always screwed into the corner of his mouth and his fedora pulled down over his eyes.

Being a woman, I’m in the minority here but I’m doing my best. I was a punk-rock calendar model back when I was chosen after my accident. I’m not a modest woman and getting a job where I get to criss-cross the known planets wearing completely nothing at all except for footwear is a dream come true. I want to do my best.

It’s a gutsy maneuver but I’ve attached the wings to very strong ear cuffs on either side of my long, green mohawk. I’ve dyed my pubic hair to match. I’m wearing calf-high leather books with metal caps on the heels so that I make sparks when I land. I’ve got some pretty extreme make-up on to make me look like an intimidating warrior.

When I look in the mirror, I like to think that I look like a regal valkyrie of some sort. An avenging angel of information.

It’s time for me to finish my coffee and walk out the front door into the sky. My heels click out the seconds as I make my way to the launch mat. I squint my eyes a little before kneeling like a diver from a Nagel painting on the front steps of my house in the clouds.

It’s a jump into the stratosphere and my day is started. The messages pour into my head. With a snarl, I sprint on the air towards Pickup One.



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skonen_blades: (Default)
Packages with instructions.

That’s what was sent out from Planet 5 in a massive ejaculation supernova of requests for contact. They pulsed out like lightspeed meteor dandelion seeds into the vacuum. Tiny asteroids with straight-line trajectories radiated out in a spherical pulse of spreading knowledge like dimples on a golf ball growing larger. White-hot comets of protected technological teaching devices designed to disseminate the knowledge needed to come and visit. A one-shot pulsar of aggressive pro-active solution-oriented loneliness. Messages in bottles.

Build a bridge between the stars, they said. Power it, they said. Here’s how to do it, they said. Lead your people here, they said. We would like to talk to you.

That was over two million years ago.

One of the boxes landed softly with a muffled thump in the back yard of 1385 South Cherry Street in Cooperstown, North Dakota at midnight last night.

It’s glowing and waiting for a touch. Soon, the family in the house will awaken and start their day.



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skonen_blades: (dark)
I woke up from the deep cryosleep with a bleary head and a taste in my mouth like I’d licked a battery. The gel washed off cleanly and I was standing in the hall with the other colonists in my underwear with the HR monitors still stuck to us like faithless remoras. I looked to my left but my wife wasn’t there.

An older woman stood beside me stretching with an expansive peaceful smile on her face. The smile of the landed settler. The trip is over, the smile said, and the now the hard work begins. Let’s get to it. I smiled back. I had gone under first and it was a big ship. Lisa had been put into another compartment

The lockers contained our clothes. We put them on and huddled around the monitors to get the reports on the atmosphere outside. I checked the colonist logs to see where my wife was.

The atmosphere was breathable and it was a sunny day. The doors hissed open and nearly all of us ran out with abandon and rolled around in the red flowers. Ten thousand humans played like children around the base of an iron mountain arkship in the middle of a field of alien flowers.

I didn’t. I just kept looking at the log list and at the message in my inbox. It was a message from my wife. I pressed play.

She didn’t get on the ship. She’d been seeing someone. She didn’t think that I’d understand. She was sorry that it had come to this. She didn’t think that running away together would solve the problems we had. She had added her fare to mine so that I’d have more points over in the new land and be a desirable mate. She was staying home.

I think I played it back three times. I let it sink in. Outside I could hear the whooping and yelling of people born again in a new world. Tears crawled down my face. She had seen me to my compartment. My last memory of her was watching her put her jacket in the locker next to mine. It had been a ruse to let me sleep easy.

I’d been asleep at over light speed for months.

The message was nearly five hundred years old.


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skonen_blades: (dark)
I am all that is left of my self.

Janice calls to me.

I read her note through wet, wet eyes. She said she’d left a message for me on the land line. I walked over to phone in the stunned daze of someone who cannot understand the moment.

There was one light blinking on the phone beside the big green ‘play’ button. I put my thumb down on it and pressed hard. I kept the pressure on. I stood there like that for fifteen minutes. When I released the button, the message would play.

I took a deep breath, took my thumb off of the button, and stood up straight as the machine lit up and whirred into motion.

Janice sprung to life in front of me. A little more blue than normal with an occasional stutter. It was an old phone that I didn’t have the money or the time to replace it.

She told me that she was leaving me because she was sick of me and the life we were living. She was sick of all the time I spent at work. She was sick of the cheap apartment and the cheap food. She was getting older and she wanted to have some fun before she got too old.

Most of all, she was sick of me not getting the hints she had been throwing my way for the last six months. She said to not try to find her and that I should try to forget her.

She probably shouldn’t have left me a recording of her.

I watch the recording every night before I go to bed. I watch it and look for a clue in the depths of her eyes that she’s kidding. I watch if and look for hope in her eyes that I’ll change. I watch it and look for a possibility of her return.

I never find it. Drunk or sober, I can tell that she means what she’s saying.

I have a beard now. My place is a mess. I was fired two weeks ago and I can’t pay the rent this month. Soon I’ll be homeless.

I am all that is left of my self.

Janice calls to me.




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