skonen_blades

"Although you'd never know it from reading the papers or watching TV, there are between 20 and 30 separate wars going on today. Because most countries are too poor to afford luxuries like female noncombatants, many of the battle are fought by women.
However, in the world's dominant military-aggressor nation, women are barred from combat positions. The armed forces is one of the last bastions of old-fashioned gender roles in the American job market, along with Hooters and, of course, Hollywood."

What do you think? I don't even know if that's true anymore. Are women allowed into 'hot zones' in the theater of war by the American military? Or are they relegated to support?


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James was sick of his grandfather’s racism. He didn’t care if he was a war hero.

“They’re not people, Jimmy. They have no feelings.” His grandfather shouted from the other room. James loaded up the dishwasher, closed it, and took a deep breath, preparing for going back into the living room. Once a week, James came by to cook his grandfather dinner and keep him company. It was getting to be more and more of a test of patience.

“I mean, I have a brain, right? I know I’m smart. I was raised differently than them. Not in a lab. I had a mother and a father. I know how to be kind to other people. People, Jimmy. People. That dishwasher in there has more compassion than them. I’ve seen what they do to people like you and I on the ‘vision.”

His grandfather was referring to the war footage from the nightly news. Recently the Chinamerican automated soldiers had invaded parts of Eastern Europe to keep the peace. It was their first solo campaign and it was successful. Video of their angular heads and antennae bobbing through the ruined villages was run constantly with updates of our victorious battles.

“I don’t care about these intelligence tests and emotional accelerators they keep talking about. It’s all smoke and mirrors. They’re not flesh and blood. They’re just equations. They don’t eat, they don’t have trust issues, they don’t cry, they just follow orders. They’re just guns that can walk around.”

In recent years, the A.I. on the automated soldiers had gotten to a point that they’d been given basic rights. Some had been promoted. None of them had been granted civilian status yet but many of them had been given passes and allowed supervised visits outside of their compounds with other soldiers.

Soldiers like James. James was fourth generation Army.

“I have to go, Grandpa. I have friends to see. It was a nice dinner.”

“Well you just be careful. I worry about you. The army isn’t what it used to be. Don’t trust those tin cans.” His grandfather said with an angry jut of his chin.

Outside, James clambered into his patrol vehicle to return to base. A body with an angular head and antennae sat asleep at the driver’s wheel. When James closed the door, lights blinked on and the construct at the wheel woke up.

“Hey. Sorry. I was recharging. How’d it go? Do I get to meet him tonight? I mean, that’s General Daimus in there. Some of his strategy helped us win War IV. I’ve reviewed the records but I always get more from someone who was actually there, y’know?” said an articulate voice from the front faceplate of the construct.

“Not tonight, Darren.” Said James. “Maybe next week. But don’t hold your breath.”

“I have no breath to hold,” joked Darren898. James didn’t laugh. Darren898 felt bad immediately. Humour was a hard thing to understand and he knew he’d gotten it wrong this time. Again. Even though both of them had been through three battles together now and saved each other’s lives a few times, Darren898 still couldn’t make James laugh after a visit with his grandpa.

They drove back to the base in silence, both lost in thought and trying to shake the shame they felt for different reasons.




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A typical facet of how the aliens failed to understand us was their policy with their pilots.

I was an air force pilot. I explained to the alien assigned to me that pilots were usually given nicknames and carried lucky charms to help them. I told him that the names helped camaraderie and that the charms gave us hope. Bonds and superstition can win a battle, I told him. The alien was silent, thanked me, and returned to his base.

He came bounding back to me like an excited pet six hour later and told me that his nickname was Generator Commander Tropical Premium and he showed me the fork that he’d taken from the mess hall and told me that it was his lucky charm.

I thought it was hilarious and I told him that he’d got it exactly right.

Now all the aliens have four-word random nicknames and carry whatever they saw first as a lucky charm. They don’t truly understand sentimental value. I’ve seen socks, bootlaces, chalk, gravel, and on one stinky occasion, cheese.

Even when I tried to explain to him that he’d got it wrong, he didn’t care. He said it was helping a great deal.

So now I’m flying a four-seater with Generator Commander Tropical Premium and his two friends Ticket Lamp Helmet Cooler and Batwing Christmas Cartridge Storm. Hanging around Ticket Lamp’s neck is an empty coke can and Cartridge Storm is carrying a rubber wedge in his pocket.

I have to admit it. It worked. I like them more and it’s helped us become a team.






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I don’t push red buttons anymore.

I remember it blinking, lighting up the cockpit in the darkness. Janice was gone. She sat staring around the bullet hole beside me, a little dime-sized hole in the windshield just in front of her beautiful face. There was unbroken silence outside in the forest. I had no idea if it had been stray bullets or automated systems that had taken us down.

I hadn’t received any restricted access warnings and I didn’t think we were close to any battles. The only other option was that we had been purposefully targeted. I lay there, suspended by the seatbelt beside the body of the co-pilot girlfriend I’d escaped with. I looked up at the stars with tears in my eyes. We were only two miles from the safe house I’d found in the confidential files.

We’d both been in a remote med-psych military fac when we came up with the plan to escape. It was minimum security. We’d stolen the mech with codes and keys from a guard I’d befriended. She got the keys with her wiles, I got the codes with booze and fake friendship. The guard knew that we couldn’t use the keys without the codes and vice versa so he gave them up easily enough. He didn’t realize that Janice and I were working together.

We killed him and took the mech out on stealth. The prep had been a hard six months of subterfuge and intense playacting but the trip itself should have been routine.

I saw a few crows fly up from the treetops outside. The wind outside continued to make the trees whisper. The only sound was the click of the red light lighting up the cockpit. On. Off. On. Off.

I don’t push red buttons anymore.



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I hate my children.

They are the culmination of a lifetime of hard labour. I started out as a bright-eyed 18-year-old genius picked by the government for my brilliance. I’m 68 now. Fifty years. It all gets a little blurry. My entire life has been lived in a series of government installation sub-basements, bunkers, test sites and laboratories. I’m looking at my children now and thinking back over the history of their creation.

The setbacks. The breakthroughs.

There are seventeen women and fifteen men. They are all nearly nine feet tall and built like gods. They should walk like they’re heavy but they don’t. They walk like gymnasts. To even look at them fills me with self-hatred. I’m a biological mess compared to the perfection we’ve bred into them. I have liver spots, hair loss, laboured breathing, scoliosis, psoriasis, etc, etc. It’s a mundane collection of biological infirmities that only confirm the fact that I’m human. I’m an aging watery bag of recessive traits.

These god-like children I’m looking at will never know these failures of creation.

In months they will be even smarter than me once we start the brainplants.

Parents are supposed to be proud of their children’s achievements. Parents are supposed to glow with an intense inner joy when their children succeed. I look back on the innocence of the scientist I used to be at the beginning of this, my life’s work, and I shake my head.

All I feel now is jealousy and a bitter, bitter resentment.

They will be used as soldiers. They will outthink their superiors. They will find a way to bypass the fail-safes. They will hide. They will breed. They will take over. It’s as clear as my brilliance. By the end of this century, they will run the earth. All that remains to be seen is if they’ll do it covertly or overtly. Will they keep us around? I think that in the new era of gods that they will bring, there will be no place for mere humans. We pressed fast forward on evolution.

All the military can see is a new weapon. I promised perfection and I delivered. I am happy I will die before they dominate.

My children are the future and I hate them.




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I notice these are getting longer. I guess that's good.

There's a book out where this artist takes kids drawings and does them up proper style with the ability of his craft. He has this cool foreword:

It started simply at the Jersey shore in 1998. While I played in the water, my six year old niece, Jessica, an avid drawer herself, snatched my sketchbook from my towel and filled it with strange creatures. As she went off to play, I marveled at how each creature stood without the benefit of a skeleton, and how the shoulder of a beautiful woman could be attached to her jawbone. Kids just don't worry about proportions or judgmental criticism - they just draw - and that's the reason they surpass adults in creativity.

The problem is was that few of my students respected abstract expressionism. Basically, if they were going to draw comic books, they'd need to make up figures, buildings, vehicles, and landscapes - but also elements like mystical dimensions, explosions, mutations and things unseen, all of which require abstract design. When drawing the insides of a demon's belly or the outer reaches of the subatomic microverse, there aren't any reference photos.

Awesome.

Check the book here.

It’s all about the transformation.
I remember entering the room. I was eighteen, cold, naked except for the paper underwear, bred for this and still nervous. I suppose terrified is more like it. Even after the rigorous physical training I was still very skinny. My breathing came in quick gasps as I struggled not to cross my arms or shiver. I came to a stop and stood at attention in the middle of the circular metal trapdoor grill under the light. I was barefoot. My head was shaved. My identification tattoos and punishment wires were out there for all to see. Gooseflesh ran over me and I could see the little puffs of my breath. Primed and ready. They drugs they had given me this morning to ease the transition were working. I felt more alert and attentive than ever. I felt curious about the future, eager to take part and slightly dreamy. I also felt a little itchy.
A blue light scanned up, over and through me.
I saw some indicators come up on some panels in the darkness. Just like in the instructional videos.
I’d been confirmed and we were a go.
I wish I could say I felt the moist eyes of my family and friends staring out hopefully from the observation enclosure. This was a proud day for most people. Most families gave one kid up to the SAPCorps. If you gave a child to the SAPCorps, it meant more birthing privileges.
SAPCorps was also the country’s orphanage. In some cases, it was also the juvenile detention center. I could still remember the day when I found out that this wasn’t a hospital and that my parents and sister were gone. That was ten years before. The doctor who had told me also remembered, I think, going by the scar on his face that he didn’t bother to get removed and the fact that he had requested to pull the lever for me on this occasion.
He looked down at me. Doctor Fines. My stepfather, for lack of a better word.
He twitched a smile at me. We were being monitored but other than that, it was just the two of us. I stood in the middle of the trapdoor. Our relationship had always been antagonistic but defined and limited. I don’t think anyone on the outside world would have referred to him as paternal but he was the closest I had.
“David.” He said. He nodded at me.
“Sir.” I replied. I stared straight ahead, willing him to get this underway.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Absolutely sir. Let’s do it.” I replied. I trembled a little.
“Here we go. I hope that…well. Here we go.” He said and flexed his hand on the handle.
He yanked back.
The trapdoor opened and I fell down the well into the liquid.
It’s all about the transformation.

I look down at my skin and see the moonlight reflect off its purple brick like surface. I see the little octagons that my pores have become breathing in the night air. It’s good that they do seeing as I don’t have a mouth anymore. I was a lucky one. My transformation turned out to be beneficial to the military. I’m dwarfstar dense with my human intelligence retained. Nothing manmade can really stand in my way and most conventional projectile weapons can't harm me. I don’t seem to have internal organs. My arms are huge and my legs are thick and short. I still have eyes but they’re hyper sensitive and covered up with military visiongogs. It’s been this way for years now.

I’m standing in the rain in the night time graveyard beside the grave of Dr. Fines. He died two days ago. I can’t define what I’m feeling. We’d talked every now and then but his death was sudden and I didn’t find out immediately. He was my last tie to my humanity. The last person who could remember who I was ‘before’.

I turn and walk away into the night and back to base.



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