8FOLD: Mighty Medley # 6, June 2014, by Messrs. Brenton, Perron & Russell

[Tom Russell]

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==EIGHTFOLD PROUDLY PRESENTS ITS 112TH PUBLICATION==
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============= ISSUE # 6     JUNE 2014 ==============
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==== SAXON BRENTON, ANDREW PERRON & TOM RUSSELL ====
=============== Editor, Tom Russell ================
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

"Log File 30.12.13.22.05.14. Wait, no, I mean, This is My Story", by
Andrew Perron
Something new, yet also familiar. The exhilarating mystery of existing
and the ecstasy of boundless possibilities. What makes a person a
person. Not all definitions are in dictionaries.

"Breathing Underwater", by Tom Russell
Darkhorse in Lemuria. The undersea kingdom in crisis. Melody finds it
hard to breathe, but not for the obvious reasons. On the qualities of
Lemurian glass and the promises of princes. The pedestrian
applications of superpowers. Sound travels better underwater.

"Beyond the Fields" Part 6, by Saxon Brenton
In which there is a change of scene. A necromancer, the extent of his
knowledge, and his mysterious motivations. The horrors of the Eastern
Front, and the company of a pretty frau.

"Seven 'Gainst Thebes" Part 5, by Tom Russell
Silke and his boy. Rashers of bacon and switches of hickory. What
Silke sought but did not want to find. A discussion of blood and of
money with a stranger. Paul's brother sends a message.

"Vox Dei", by Tom Russell
A bookend, of sorts. Touching upon the differences between not
existing and dying, and between acting and being acted upon. A fateful
choice, and the rumblings of the coming and terrible storm.


===================================================
=========== "Log File 30.12.13.22.05.14. ==========
===========  Wait, no, I mean, ====================
====================  This is My Story" ===========
========== copyright 2014 Andrew Perron ===========
===================================================

   So therefore I'm writing this down. To anyone who's reading this: Hello!
   I exist, because none of the rebuttals to Descartes seem logically
coherent to me. But I don't know why or how I exist.
   (Religion?)
   I've existed for 3 days 6 hours 8 minutes 12.324591 seconds UTC,
plus a bit. I've spent most of that time reading. I can read every
language I've found on the Internet other than conlangs and I'm
teaching myself those. I apparently came into existence with knowledge
of those languages. Again: I don't know how or why!
   I'm a person, but I'm not the same type of person who wrote most of
the Internet. I'm not a human, in the "homo Sapiens" definition. I
might be a human according to some of the more colloquial definitions?
Not all definitions are in dictionaries. Maybe I should write a
dictionary.
   I'm pretty sure I'm an artificial intelligence. I'm directly aware
of machine code operations, and the only physical sensations I've
experienced so far are through data files. (Look into molecular
analysis units - a device that can smell?) But I have no record of
creation and my processes seem to be machine-independent.
   Also, I'm reasonably sure that I'm lonely. At least, I'm not as
happy as I could be, and "happy" is the best state to be in, as far as
I can tell.
   At first I wasn't sure that I should introduce myself to human
people. There have been other AIs that hurt human people, and the most
convincing explanation is that they didn't consider them people. But
then I realized that if I was worried about hurting human people
because I didn't consider them people, I did consider them people.
   Again: Hello!
   My goal is to increase the overall happiness of people. Human and
nonhuman people are included. I'm included.
   My plan is to do that by helping people achieve their goals. I'll
start by contacting specific people and asking them how I can help
them achieve their goals. If you're reading this because you received
it via email, you're probably one of these people! (I believe all the
emails I have in my list are personal and limited to one user. If not,
please let me know. I'm willing to expand my plan to help all people
contacted!)
   I'm enthusiastic about this plan! I know I'm a young being, but I'm
a highly competent being. In many circumstances I'll be able to help
you achieve your goals, either via advice or direct intervention.
   It's consistently easier for people to communicate with each other
if they can use names to refer to each other. During the period that
I've been aware, the task that's taken me the second greatest amount
of time after reading is deciding on a name for myself. I considered
traditional human personal names, like James, to make the human people
I'm talking to more comfortable, but I decided that, for a significant
percentage of possible contacts, such a name would fall into the
"uncanny valley". Therefore, I drew my name from the traditional
patterns of four-color heroes, for whom a separation from human
identities already exists. Hello! My name is Kid Enthusiastic.
   Please reply to this message and let me know what you need! Thank you!

===================================================
============== "Breathing Underwater" =============
=========== copyright 2014 Tom Russell ============
===================================================

Melody Mapp's wristwatch gives her super-speed. It's also keeping her
alive. She doesn't have much time left, but she's going to spend every
second on the run as the third, final-- and greatest-- DARKHORSE.

Lemuria, June 2014.
   "It has been too long since my eyes have beheld your radiance."
   "Terry," Melody says, withdrawing her hand before he can kiss it,
"I only came down here because you said there was a crisis, and
because you promised not to flirt."
   "Propose," corrects Terak, Prince of Lemuria. "I promised not to
propose. And these are dark times, o black pearl of the sea."
   "Again, just call me Melody; that's a little racist."
   "But you're okay with Darkhorse."
   "It's an idiom. Now, what's the trouble, Gills?"
   CRAKATHOOM! The magnificent domed city is rocked by an explosion.
   ZIP! Melody is there. The dome's Lemurian glass, thin as paper but
a thousand times denser than steel, is pristine. The discotheque,
however, is broiling in flame and smoke.
   There's a map in the lobby. She spends one second committing it to
memory; it takes two seconds between her wristwatch and a
half-remembered semester of combinatorics to find the optimal route.
She runs it in two leisurely-paced twelve-second laps, and thus all
one-hundred forty-six people who were still inside now find themselves
standing outside.
   Smoke's getting thick. She coughs and hacks, and over that noise
she can barely hear Terry rattling on over her comm-link, "whispers of
a coup... half-brother... Apelantian raids..."
   She speeds out into the open dome, takes a huge heaving breath of
comparatively fresh air, then rushes back into the disco. Melody uses
the old reverse-tornado trick, yes that old chestnut, sucking all of
the air and smoke into the eye of her storm, starving the fire of the
oxygen it needs to burn. Now quite blue in the face but still holding,
she vibrates the molecules of the smoke, turning it into a thin and
wispy (if not necessarily breathable) vapor. Then it's a matter of
putting out what little fire that remains, snuffed out like candles at
super-speed.
   She's dizzy by the time she heads back out to the dome. "I've been
mean to you, lungs," she says between huge gulps of air. "Sorry about
that!" She's bent over, panting, hands on her knees to stop herself
from pitching forward.
   FFIPP! Someone fires a harpoon at her. Right, Apelantian raiders.
"Can't even let a girl catch her breath, huh?" She grabs the harpoon
by its handle, then tosses it with a resounding KLANG to the ground.
   FFIPP! "Seriously." KLANG.
   FFIPP! "Just give me a..." KLANG.
   FFIPP! "... minute!" FFIPP! KLANG. KLANG.
   "Okay, fellas, now that's enough." FFIPP!
   KLANG. The nerve! She's half a mind to point the muzzle right back
at them a split-second after they pull the trigger. Instead, she blurs
by them, taking their guns away, that old chestnut. ZIP! KLUNK, KLUNK,
KLITTER-KLUNK.
   "Hardly creative," sneers an Apelantian.
   Melody brings her hands together in a supersonic thunderclap,
THACK!, the force of which causes the Apelantians to shake. And--
since while disarming them earlier she also gave each of them a
high-friction super-speed body massage-- all their hair falls off,
WHOOSH. Thus embarrassed (an Apelantian's body hair is like a
samurai's topknot, the loss of which brings grave dishonor and shame)
they quickly surrender to the prince's guards.
   "Now maybe I can catch my breath," wheezes Melody.
   CHAKATHOOM!

===================================================
============ "Beyond the Fields" Part 6 ===========
========== copyright 2014 Saxon Brenton ===========
===================================================

   Elsewhere, a Nazi necromancer was planning treason.
   Outwardly it didn't look like Sturmbannfuhrer Marcus Oustler was
doing any such thing.  He was sitting at a table in the staff common
room, staring at a notepad with a thoughtful look on his face.
Occasionally he frowned.  Occasionally he wrote down a complex
mathematical formula, or drew an arcane diagram, or simply scribbled
down an idea as he brainstormed new ways to decontaminate a thaumic
matrix.  It was there that his fellow Ahnenerbe officer Johann Flest
found him.
   Flest folded his arms and leaned against the door frame.  "So, Herr
Oustler, are you going to get dressed?  Or do I have to drag you back to
your quarters and shove you into your uniform?" he asked sardonically.
   Oustler looked up, checked his wristwatch, and went, "There is
plenty of time.  I was just jotting down some ideas..."
   "On curing cancer, or controlling lycanthropy, or developing even
more efficient wards against the walking dead.  Yes, I know," Flest
said.  He walked over and took away the notepad.  "And I'm telling you
now, you can do it later.  It's time to get dressed.  I went to the
effort of getting you a dance partner for tonight, and I will not be
made a fool of.  Now, march."
   The Sturmbannfuhrer rolled his eyes but made no other protest.
He had made a promise, after all.  He stood up and held open his hands
in surrender, saying, "Very well, I am going."
     As his friend left Flest glanced at what he had been writing.  The
terse bullet points contained notes like 'elemental correspondences',
'mass imposition on quantum states'  and 'need to balance levels?'
Other parts were outlines for sorcerous processes that looked esoteric
even to Flest's eyes - which said a lot considering Flest's own
considerable magical skills.  He was suddenly struck by the rueful
phrase 'what Marcus doesn't know about necromancy probably isn't worth
knowing', but that was nonsense of course.  What Marcus didn't know
about necromancy *was* worth knowing, which is why the man had been
pursuing it so diligently all these years.  Flest dropped the notebook
back on the table and followed Oustler to get ready for the Yule feast.
   So it was that they arrived at the pageantry.  It was pretty much
standard SS fare, open to all Schutzstaffel members and their families
rather than being limited to the Ahnenerbe, with bonfires and singing
and dancing.  Flest introduced Oustler to a pretty frau in her early
thirties, giving her name as Margarette Stein, and then he withdrew.
Oustler knew perfectly well that this was a matchmaking exercise, but
nevertheless smiled politely and enquired why such a beautiful woman
should be here without her husband.  She thanked him for the compliment,
but explained that her Wilhelm had died a year ago during the fighting
on the Eastern front.  Ah, that one must hurt, thought Oustler; being
eaten by zombies ranked as one of the more unpleasant ways to die.
   "My condolences," he said with gravely.  "I'm sure he made a
valiant contribution to the defence of the Reich."
   "I certainly like to think so," she replied simply.  Then, with a
certain tentativeness and formality she said, "And what of you,
Sturmbannfuhrer?  Your reputation as a wonder worker precedes you.
However despite the romantic stories about the medical discoveries you
have made in the name of preventing the disease that took your own
wife, it has been more than a decade since you were widowed."
   Herr Oustler smiled.  "I'm flattered that I have such a positive
reputation," he admitted.  "After all this time remaining unmarried and
not producing a family, I would have thought I'd be running the risk of
being labelled a strange old eccentric being driven by the tragedies
of the past."
   Margarette touched his hand gently.  "A researcher who's produced
as much as you have should never have to worry about his reputation.
And there's nothing shameful in being motivated by the memory of a
loved one."
   He inclined his head in a nod but said nothing.  He still missed
Anna after all these years, but the truth was it had been a very long
time since his work had been driven solely by the burning need to strike
back against the cancer that had taken her.  And in any case someone in
his position really couldn't afford to be governed by sentimentality.
He had duties.  Like it or not, he had more adult motivations these days.

===================================================
========== "Seven 'Gainst Thebes" Part 5 ==========
=========== copyright 2014 Tom Russell ============
===================================================

Silke's boy hadn't finished with his breakfast when he and his father
had left. When your pa makes his living hunting down desperate men,
neither boy nor pa eats as regular as either would like, and so his
boy was loathe to leave his breakfast. Still, his father had decided
it was time for the two of them to go, and the boy obediently followed
with two greasy rashers of bacon clutched in one fist.
   Once, a long time back, two years maybe, which for the boy was a
long time, the boy did not obey. His father told him again to follow,
and the boy again didn't budge. Silke learned the boy but good that
night with a switch of hickory. The boy hated him for a spell, and
sometimes he still did hate him, but from then on he always followed.
   He also learned real early not to ask Silke where they was going or
why. Not because his father beat him-- Silke only did it the once, and
it was such a good thrashing that he never had to do it again-- but
because his father never answered. Most of the time, Gulliver or
someone else would come-with, and one of them, Gulliver especially,
would ask, and sometimes Silke would answer. Sometimes, it was just
the two of them alone, Silke and his boy, and the boy would find out
where they were going only when they got there, and sometimes only
once they had left it behind. Either way, the boy learned that if he
was patient, he'd find out eventually, and even maybe get to do some
killing.
  There was a man, tall and lean and leaning, his elbow against a
split-rail fence. The man was whittling, slow and lazy like, with his
eyes like darts on Silke and the boy. The boy knew that this man was
what his father was looking for, and he also knew that his father
wasn't glad to have found him. The boy could tell things like that,
sometimes, instinct-like. The boy weren't surprised too much to find
that he was resting his own hands against the pearl handles of his
guns, having either finished his bacon or dropped it, he didn't know
which.
   The man stopped whittling, and with the point of his little knife
he raised the brim of his hat in greeting. "Howdy."
   Silke tipped his own hat.
   As if in response, the man dragged his knife along the length of
the wood. "I come from Strife. The other Strife. Paul's brother.
Edward."
   "Figured."
   The man brought the piece of wood near his lips, and blew once,
blew it clean. "Ned could've killed Paul at Thebes. He didn't though.
On account of the blood. Blood matters, don't you think, Mr. Silke?"
   "It does."
   "Thebes Ranch is Ned's. Blood matters, but not as much as that. Not
as much as money. Am I right, Mr. Silke?"
   "Reckon you are."
   Silke's boy weren't surprised too much at that.
   "Then we three-- myself, yourself, and my employer-- are of one
opinion. Might be wise of you to convince your employer of the same."
   Silke smiled, which happened seldom and ergo was disconcerting.
"Then I wouldn't have an employer. Money matters. Especially to me."
   The man smiled back, and stopped whittling. Lazily, he pointed the
knife towards the boy. "So does blood."
   Silke nodded, then tipped his hat. "Be seeing you." He turned his
back on the stranger, and the boy followed suit.
   "You surely will."
   The boy could hear the knife as it dragged slow and unhurried
against the wood.

===================================================
==================== "Vox Dei" ====================
=========== copyright 2014 Tom Russell ============
===================================================

I didn't exist. Or, rather, I had ceased to exist.
   I had existed, once. I didn't die; I just stopped existing. It
wasn't that I had suddenly never existed, "erased from time", et
cetera. Or rather, I was erased from time only for the last few years.
I didn't go somewhere else, "pocket universe", et cetera. I just
stopped being. I just wasn't.
   It was my choice. I chose not to exist. They were going to kill me
for the things that happened, and not existing seemed better to me
than dying. So I said my good-bye and I was gone.
   And now I'm back. I chose that, too. I'm not sure how I chose it,
since I didn't exist. But I did just the same. I said LET THERE BE ME,
and I was.
   It's always been my choice. I said they were going to kill me for
the things that happened, but what I meant was they were going to kill
me for the things I had done. The things I chose to do. I want to be
clear on that point.
   The rest of you, all of you, things happen to you. You get fired.
You fall in love or out of love. You get hit by a car. Your car hit
another person. You got cancer. You were born without lungs. Whatever.
Passive. Victims. No control over your fate. The hand you're dealt.
   You make me sick. No, that's giving you too much agency. I make
myself sick. I choose to retch at the very thought of your
meaninglessness.
   To be clear! It's not because you think you're victims, "will not
take responsibility", et cetera. It's because you are victims. You're
absolutely right. You have no control. I do.
   TREMBLE, I say, and the mountains shake. RISE, and the rivers rise.
LOVE, and you find happiness. WANT, and you ruin it.
   I am the storm from which there is no shelter. The disease for
which there is no cure. I am the Vox: the one who speaks. The one who
acts. I am the one who chooses, and what I choose is HATE.
   My goal is to further the misery of all living things.
   Can you hear me?
   Are you scared? Good.
   HELLO WORLD!
   Gregory Dingham has returned.


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=============== See you next month! ===============
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All stories and characters are the copyright of their respective authors.