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Plight of the Transformer - Part Seven
2007-05-14 20:47:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your action-adventure host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "My good man, in the field one learns never to count on anything that can't be supplied at the local chemist's." Our story continues: 7/8 Duty is duty. Despite complications, one must not lose sight of the goal. This is the mantra I repeated to myself on the eve of action as I made my transformative preparations and likewise readied my collaborator for his role. Franco Fiorio, bless his heart, slept through the whole thing. This was appropriate: he had been goosed with enough tranquilizer to keep him horizontal until sunrise. "This is risky," observed Lallo as he studied his make-up in the mirror. "We should just kill the library guy." "Certainly not," I replied crisply as I timed Franco's pulse against my watch. "I am a Christian, sir. I am not a killer." "You wear blinders, Englishman. You aid and abet. Y...
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Plight of the Transformer - Part Six
2007-05-10 16:20:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your captured host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "What -- killing just to kill people, for kicks? No no, I haven't done that for ages. Ah, youth!" Our story continues: 6/8 Trouble is trouble. It isn't thrilling and it isn't a rush: it's just bad news. I sat in a reading chair by the window, but I wasn't reading. My wrists lay in my lap, bound. My ankles were likewise tied, and knotted to my wrists for good measure. I was not gagged but I found I did not have much to say. My captor, a beast of a man, was engaged in loading Mick's limp body into a long duffel bag. He muttered unrecognizable profanity under his breath as he fought to get the knees past the zipper. He winced and grunted and there sounded a loud cracking noise, after which Mick's legs bent freely if sickenly. "There we go now," he coughed, wiping his muzzle on his hand as he turned about the room i...
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Plight of the Transformer - Part Five
2007-05-08 17:58:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your nefarious host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "Ain't I a stinker?" Our story continues: 5/8 Order is order; chaos is chaos. Their shared border can be hazy. In any other circumstance I would have aborted the mission immediately -- I had compromised my security envelope by being seen on an evening the target was occupied, news certain to be shared between friends; and I was being stalked by a ghoulish beggar who had managed to tail me directly to my base of operations. Unacceptable. Utterly unacceptable. But did I have any alternative? I was in the field without support, with none but the Sovereign to report to. I had no access to additional intelligence, no method to check whether the assignment's integrity had truly been punctured or whether it simply teetered on the verge thereof. I was close enough to smell the chaos, and it made me afraid. The beauty of chaos...
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Plight of the Transformer - Part Four
2007-05-04 16:42:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your Brio-drinking host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "Now you can't escape your friends, Franco. Come -- we're going to the cabaret." Our story continues: 4/8 Men are men. Neither country nor era make a significant difference. I considered this as I sat on the roof of a quaint bistro whose greasy fumes spilled from a battery of pipes beside my folding chair. In my lap I cradled a Hasselblad view camera whose over-sized lens was, in fact, the dish of a parabolic microphone. Fine-wired headphones ran from the back of the Hasselblad and plugged into my ears, my line to the curiously detached world of focused sound. The dish was oriented toward a tavern across the street where Franco Fiorio was taking lunch with his pals Luigi and Marcello. The clink of their cutlery was a crisp and well-defined foreground, sounding as if the plates were right beside my ears. "Come on, F...
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Plight of the Transformer - Part Three
2007-05-01 19:34:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your transnational host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "Piece by piece, a virtual Doppelganger is woven: my toy, my puppet, my pet -- and then, eventually, my self." Our story continues: 3/8 Ports are ports are ports; borders are borders -- travel is travel. This is the new century, and the roads and waystations have eyes. Thus it was that I made the flight to the Veneto under an assumed face, one of a dozen generic personas I employ for general movement among the public while on assignment. Though disguised it was my habit to play coy with any closed circuit camera. One never knows to where its vision may be networked. The customs officer gave me a longer look than I would have preferred, but don't they always? He blinked his cow-like eyes and mumbled, "Business or pleasure?" "Business, signore." "What is the nature of your business?" "I have been engaged to write a t...
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Plight of the Transformer - Part Two
2007-04-26 18:04:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your loyal host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "Arrest your reason and listen a while, Mr. Smith. This is not a sane tale, but it is an important one." Our story continues: 2/8 Castles are castles are castles. They are boxes for the well disposed, should order fail. There is a certain pessimism inherent in the architecture: a castle stands in wait of attack. Its defenses are at worst ornamental references, in desperation starkly functional, and in the best of circumstances a sleight-of-light combination of the two. My car meandered through the Home Park. I sat in the back. The driver had a boil on the back of his neck. Through the windscreen I watched Windsor Castle crest the horizon, banners limp in the still October morning. Tourists queued by the King Henry VIII Gateway in their garish T-shirts and fluorescent hip-sacks, taking photographs and movies of one another w...
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Plight of the Transformer - Part One
2007-04-23 17:24:00
Plight of the Trans former is a story told in eight episodes, posted serially by me, your camouflaged host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8 "At any time, I am any man." Let's begin: 1/8 Banks are banks are banks; tellers are tellers are tellers. Unless, of course, one has a special relationship. It's at this point that we require a modicum of guile, craft and -- yes, even -- art. Where there's a special relationship it can be difficult to judge which details have become fixed in the client's mind: a habitually chewed fingernail, a particular flick of the eyes, a predictable lilt when speaking certain phrases, standing out against others dulled by repetition... "Can I help the next customer in line, please?" I was in Geneva. The weather was unseasonably brisk, a coolness that seemed to be intensified by the cold marble columns and intricately tiled, ice shiny floor of the opulent old bank on Rue de Montbrillant. The frescoes were eighteenth century, Baro...
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Three Face Flip - Part Four
2007-04-19 17:02:00
Three Face Flip is a story told in quarters, posted serially by me, your fate weaving host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4 "Drago didn't have time to think, but Dragana's ghost did." Today is all comes together: 4/4 When Nicole Gavrilovna was nine years old her life was saved by a watermelon. You know what they say: fruit is good for you. She was walking home from school to have lunch with her father over a game of chess. He always let her be white. He sometimes let her win. She never told anyone, because if her mother found out she'd be grounded forever. She brought scented hand-wipes, because everything in her father's studio was covered in paint or pigment or turpentine or oil. He mixed his own colours from ingredients bought at the chemist or ordered through the Web. When she went back to school she usually smelled like talcum but sometimes like lavender. She had two different flavours of hand-wipes hidden under her bed at home, and chose which to carry...
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Three Face Flip - Part Three
2007-04-16 15:49:00
Three Face Flip is a story told in quarters, posted serially by me, your still ticking host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4 "Your revenge is cauliflower?" And now, the third episode of our four-part tale: 3/4 Like so. This summed up the sacred for Thomas: when things fit like so. The world, he knew, was resplendent with chaos. In small pockets there were isles of natural order accumulated by the aeons -- isles in whose shelter a thing like a man might grow and live to cast his lot upon the froth. All he can do is exercise what little control he has available to build a bridge between his life and the spume: a woven cloth, gathered wood with flame, a source for water and a market for meat. Whatever could be juggled into brief harmony, whatever could be arranged to work like so, might cohere long enough to do a man a service. And so with this in mind Thomas rotated a final screw into place and then sat back to admire the architecture of gears inside the now restored...
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Three Face Flip - Part Two
2007-04-11 19:01:00
Three Face Flip is a story told in quarters, posted serially by me, your irreducible host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4 "Unwilling to abandon the algorithm, Drago chose to put his head between his knees." And now, we continue our tale: 2/4 Drago feverishly optimized an algorithm with a stub of splintered pencil and a profound erection. It was noon. He was hunched over his desk, standing in his underwear, a perfectly functional ballpoint pen tucked behind his ear and therefore lost. His scrawny body still carried the imprint of the bedsheet's pressed folds, two dimensions of its dream-tossed topography tattooed in pink across his pale back. The pencil broke. Drago swore. He patted where his pockets would be if he were wearing clothes, then swore again. He spun to face his roommate. "You have the penicil?" Guillaume looked up from his desk wearily, his handsome features broadcasting from their every inch a profoundly Gallic depth of contempt for the half-naked...
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Three Face Flip - Part One
2007-04-09 16:53:00
Three Face Flip is a story told in quarters, posted serially by me, your only slightly improbable host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4 "Don't blame me, blame the coin." And now, we begin: 1/4 Linger flipped a grimy Euro while Miriam sought faces in the whorls of wood. It was noon. The studio was small, quaintly twentieth century, steamy from the whistling kettle. "Heads, I get the kettle," drawled Linger from under heavy, half-closed eyelids. "Tails, you do." "I'm busy," said Miriam. The coin sang as it spun, bimetallic face flashing in the sun. Linger smacked it down against the inside of his bony wrist. "Ready?" he asked. "I'm busy," repeated Miriam, eyes on the wood. Without turning away she reached to her workbench and selected a chisel. She touched its keen edge with her callused thumb, enjoying the quiet rasp. Linger peeked under his hand. "Tails." The kettle piped on. Miriam raised her hammer and tapped at the chisel's base, just enough to let ...
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Tim, Destroyer of Worlds - Part Seven
2007-04-05 18:05:00
Tim, Destroyer of World s is a story told in seven parts, posted serially by me, your world-smashing host, Cheeseburger Brown. Chapters: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7 "I aspire for something greater than being a walking metabolism." And now, our story concludes: 7/7 When we were in school, when I was a kid, the most boring part of history was -- for some reason -- the administration's idea of a good way to introduce us to the subject: the Pioneer Days. Basically, it boiled down to this: pioneers lived in crappy conditions, being a pioneer sucked, and lots of pioneers died young either because they couldn't stand the sucking anymore or because their crappy houses fell apart and the planet claimed them. Our teachers wanted us to be grateful for our lifestyles. We were always being told how pioneers didn't get to watch movies or play in depthies or screw around with dilly all day. They toiled. They grinned and bore it. They were doing their bit for Ares, tough and uncomplaining, securing...
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