Man-made mass casualty incidents seem increasingly common. But are medical teams actually learning enough from them? Are we really getting any better? The answers are unclear because in the United States since 1996, there has been an effective ban on federally funded research on firearm injuries. At that time, pro-gun members of Congress actually tried to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention simply because it was funding research on gun injuries. The members instead succeeded at removing $2.6 million from the House’s CDC budget—the exact amount of money allocated to firearm injury research. (The money was later reallocated specifically for research on traumatic brain injury.) At the time, Congress’ language was difficult to interpret, but the result of that language has been clear as day: The CDC stopped funding gun injury research. The National Institutes of Health followed suit. Almost everyone in the research community now errs on the “safe side.” Research on the epidemiology of who, why, and how people die as a result of gun injuries in America has virtually vanished.
VANISHED! I mean, how does a bullet traveling at supersonic speeds even penetrate human skin? Why does blood come out of the hole? Which is the worst place to get shot? We just don’t know. Damn you, gun lobby! [shakes fist at sky]
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A young woman banned form the Iranian national chess team, allegedly for attending an international competition without wearing an Islamic headscarf, has joined the U.S. team, an Iranian news agency reported Monday.
The semi-official ISNA reported that Dorsa Derakhshani refused to wear the headscarf, known as the hijab, during a February competition in Gibraltar, and joined the U.S. national team.
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has required women to wear the hijab in public places.
However, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported Monday that the president of Iran’s chess federation, Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh, said that Dorsa had in fact changed her national federation to the United States, which was not unusual among chess players.
Her brother was also banned from playing for the Iranian team for the dread crime of agreeing to play chess against an Isreali. He caught them Jew cooties!
Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.
Not that she gave it much thought. Until, that is, her senior year of high school, when she saw a picture of a strikingly similar robe in an art history class.
The teacher told the class about how the robe was used in spiritual ceremonies, Sara Jacobsen said. “I started to wonder why we have it in our house when we’re not Native American.”
She said she asked her dad a few questions about this robe. Her dad, Bruce Jacobsen, called that an understatement.
“I felt like I was on the wrong side of a protest rally, with terms like ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘sacred ceremonial robes’ and ‘completely inappropriate,’ and terms like that,” he said.
“I got defensive at first, of course,” he said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, Sara! This is more of the political stuff you all say these days.’”
But Sara didn’t back down. “I feel like in our country there are so many things that white people have taken that are not theirs, and I didn’t want to continue that pattern in our family,” she said.
The robe had been a centerpiece in the Jacobsen home. Bruce Jacobsen bought it from a gallery in Pioneer Square in 1986, when he first moved to Seattle. He had wanted to find a piece of Native art to express his appreciation of the region.
Appreciating the art of different cultures is straight up bigotry.
Tori be say for di last 3 days, police for Egypt don arrest 22 people wey get anything to do with LGBT rights.
Activists say since 23 September dem don count at least 33 people wey police arrest because di people raise one rainbow flag to support gay rights.
According to one lawyer, Amr Mohamed, wey dey represent two people wey police arrest, im say dem say na because dem “join group wey no dey obey law”.
Im say di authorities charge one of im clients, Sarah Hegazy, wey be di first woman wey dem go arrest for dis kain matter, for wetin dem call “promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery”
And di Supreme State Security Prosecution don order say make dem detain dem for 15 days.
No word on if bottoms were also arrested in the sweep.
Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is one of the great unadapted novels of modern science fiction, right up there with its granddaddy in the cyberpunk genre, William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Given how screen-ready some of Snow Crash’s most famous sequences are, though—most notably, the high-speed, action-heavy pizza delivery chase that opens the novel—it’s honestly kind of baffling that directors have never managed to get a handle on Stephenson’s world of katana-wielding pizza guys, nuke-toting motorcyclists, and virtual reality paradise. The closest Hollywood’s gotten to date is Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Ready Player One, especially since Ernest Cline’s reference-addicted original novel cribs heavily from Stephenson’s virtual worlds.
That might all be about to change, though; Variety reports that Amazon has started development on a Snow Crash TV series, with Ant Man writer Joe Cornish and Back To The Future producer Frank Marshall shepherding the show to the screen.
I mean, I already had to suffer through years of worrying about Hayden Christensen fucking up Neuromancer with his terrible acting and dead doll eyes–not to mention the highly questionable casting choices of the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Altered Carbon–so the garbage that could be wrung out of Snow Crash is worrying.
Gawker Media… Oops… Splinter? Univision Media? Whatever. The Part of the Flock of Shitbirds that Weren’t Sued Off The Internet has started up a new nest just for Nature and Gaia and Global Warming Climate Change Alarmism.
Earther’s mission is to write impactful stories about how humanity is affecting life on Earth, and what that means for our future. We love geeking out over the weather, sharing the latest conservation success stories, and reminding you that climate change is very real. We strive to make Earther a friendly, inclusive site for everyone interested in the future of life on the Blue Marble, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.
Kelly says: “People call me a lesbian a lot … I’m not a lesbian… I’ve heard that multiple times. I guess it’s something to try to get under my skin, but at the end of the day I know who I am.”
Poppy is very cute I love her that’s what makes her fun to watch because these ideas of hers are always new and exciting that’s what makes poppy the cutest girl ever I love you poppy☺????????????????????.
Finished the SPQR series by John Maddox Roberts. It stayed strong until the end of the books published so far in the series.
To finally quiet the people demanding that I read it so we could discuss it, I read The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson. I don’t know what is going on with Stephenson anymore. D.O.D.O. is either a horribly-ended book (a Stephenson specialty) or the beginning of a series I’m not all that interested in continuing. It cribbed and remixed a bunch of different time-travel ideas from a bunch of much better books (most notably, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis,) brewed it in a cauldron with a few characters that are either poorly-written or just uninteresting, poured it into an epistolary framework that did no one any favors and served the concoction indifferently as a competitor to far superior libations. A few interesting ideas flaccidly toyed with. Blah.
I moved on to something I was more interested in, the new Charles Stross Laundry Files novel, The Delirium Brief. Delirium Brief brings Bob back to the center of the action and a villian we thought long dead and mixes in the storyline from Mo’s stand-alone book, The Annihilation Score, and the serious political fallout from the events of The Nightmare Stacks. I get that Stross doesn’t want to write the same book over and over again–and I don’t want him to write the same book over and over again–but the mounting themes of middle-age ennui and marital strife are a drag, Chuck; “Less artsy, more fartsy” as Homer Simpson so eloquently put it.
And then I got to the book I had been waiting for for a long time, the end of the Transformations trilogy by Neal Asher, Infinity Engine. For those who haven’t had the pleasure, Asher is just all science fiction high concept, wide-screen, technicolor blowshitupism. Unfolding from the events of Asher’s stand-alone novel, The Technician, the Transformation series covers one man’s war of revenge against an insane Artifical Intelligence implicated in a monstrous war crime of which he is the only known survivor. Complications ensue–wonderful, violent complications that involve vast swaths of the Polity universe, Asher’s playground for fifteen of his novels so far. My only complaint is a small one: the series is not a traditional trilogy and is best read as one long book published in three parts; it should have been one massive tome.
Action-packed without being dumb, nuanced without being opaque, cosmic without disappearing up its own ass, Asher’s work is simply amazing. Read it. Read it now.
Brett L
I did my annual re-read of Taran Wanderer which is just about the most libertarian teen novel ever. If you have kids, or never got around to it, I highly recommend it. I also realized on this reading that I had long ago stolen a quotation from this book: “I’ve heard men complain about women’s work, and women complain about men’s work, but I’ve never heard the work complain about who does it.” I think my oldest is already tired of hearing: “the work doesn’t care who does it”.
Then I read The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie. Now maybe I’ve just completely burned out on the Sword & Sorcery genre, but I found this a completely inoffensive novel with some fun tweaks of the genre. And I have absolutely no desire to read the sequel. The once great kingdom has fallen to decadence, heroes are proven and gathered, and they are — at the end of the book, ready to set off on a Great Quest. That I don’t care about in the least.
Old Man With Candy
Besides the rather dull technical books that I love, I’ve been on an American writer kick. So to get myself out of that rut, I’ve returned to one of my favorite British writers, the one and only Eric Blair. Coming Up For Air was written and set in 1939 England, with the war about to engulf the island. It is structured as a memoir of a man who is living the proverbial life of quiet desperation and attempts to regain at least a small taste of the past. The wonderful thing about this novel is to see Blair becoming Orwell, with now-familiar motifs being presented in beta form. Absolutely delightful.
Riven
Well, I finished up the Sandman Slim series, or rather I finished reading all of the books that have been published. The end of The Kill Society would have been fine if there had been another book to pick up after it, but since that wasn’t the case, I was pretty disappointed. It was definitely not what I would consider a “real ending,” where most of the plot is wrapped up, nice and neat. I’ve heard it said that there will be more books to follow, and I do look forward to reading them. I’m hopeful the series will wrap at some point in the next couple/few books because I can’t stand when a series goes on long enough that it languishes. I have definitely enjoyed the ride, though. As I mentioned last month, I really dig the universe in which the story takes place. The fact that God and Lucifer are both just a couple of jerks, more or less, cracks me up, and all of the faith-based shenanigans and tomfoolery have been very entertaining, especially given my already tenuous grasp on the subject.
I received two recommendations after I lamented the end of current reading material in the Sandman Slim series–one from HM and one from SF. Go ahead and guess who recommended which:The Skinner and Pimp: The Story of My Life. Usually I’m a one-book-at-a-time kind of woman, but I’m trying to read both of these at the same time. We’ll see how that goes.
jesse.in.mb
After last month’s WAWR I finished two more Audible audiobooks: Moby-Dick, which was 21 hours of unabridged audiobook…21 hours. I’m glad I’ve checked it off my list, but my interested waxed and waned quite while mainlining this over a few days. Much shorter was Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed. After chancing on a collection of essays and short stories, I’ve been not quite on a kick, but paying more attention to Butler. Her works are still fresh and different (Wild Seed came out in 1980) without being so unconventional as to be pretentious or jarring. I highly recommend.
My Amazon’s Kindle First read was Soho Dead by Greg Keen. The novel was a light murder mystery in a seedy part of town and with seedy people who are trying to go straight.
Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. So I found out that there’s a potential chain of events that might lead to me moving on short notice right before Christmas and I figured now would be the right time to read a book on debulking. My main exposure to Kondo’s books—and the KonMari method in general—has been the strong responses, both cultish fandom and revulsion to her method. I don’t know that I completely buy into her position but she has decent advice on clearing away the cruft in one’s life and her perspective on our relationship to our stuff is an oddly Shinto-inflected utilitarianism, which keeps things interesting. For those who like more pictures and less text there is now The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story, which I’m half-tempted to read next.
“Luther! Luther! Pay attention you fuckin’ cracka!” Donald yelled. “Hit him in the panhandle! It’s his only weakest!”
Luther and Steve circled each other in the Montgomery Cockfighting Pit, the swankiest state capitol cockfighting pit of all the state capitol cockfighting pits. The handicappers for the fight had hobbled Steve and given Luther a set of steel spurs. They were sitting in their respective corners of the pit having their cloacas massaged by their trainers.
“This is barbaric,” the hair muttered. Donald slapped his own head to quiet him. The USA hat squealed in protest. “Moron,” the hair muttered.
“It’s won’t settle the election, but honest, hard-working people like Alabamians like to know you can fight before they vote for you,” Donald said.
“Don’t distract him, Donald. Steve is dangerous,” the hair said. Donald mumbled something and went back to his ice cream cone.
The stands around the pit were full of eager fans. The air was dead and the smell of sweat and beer and chaw and cigar smoke were mingled together and hanging heavy. Donald’s scalp was beginning to sweat and the hair held on with anxious tendrils.
“Dem two gonna fight ‘em?” USA hat asked.
“O-M-G, shutthefuckup,” the hat said.
“Steve could kill him,” Donald said and laughed.
“Why is he even out there? Shouldn’t be overseeing Breitbart or riding the rails? And where the fuck is Roy? Roy’s who should be in the ring,” the hair said.
“Roy had a date,” Donald said. “Skinny little guy, but he forwarded me the picture of his dick. Roy’s probably going to shit wrong for a week.”
“It’s the seat that Roy wants, so Roy should be fighting for it,” the hair said.
“Big Luther knows what he’s doing. Besides, I took out a little insurance. Watch.”
The trainer with Steve held his hand up to the editor’s face and Steve gobbled down whatever was there. Donald started laughing and rubbing his nipples.
“What did you do, Donald?” the hair asked.
“Just watch.”
“Can I have a popsicles?” USA hat asked.
“No,” the hair snapped, “You’ll get it all over me. Shut up.”
“Aww, don’t be like that, Touppie” the USA hat said.
“I told you not to call me that!” the hair yelled.
“Both of you stop it!” Donald said. “The fight’s starting.”
“I like watchin’ fights, yes I do, I surely do,” the USA hat said. The hair growled at him.
“Hey y’all,” Jeff said, emerging from the smoky dim outside the glare of the pit lights. “Yew mind if I sit by yew?”
“Sure, OK, whatever,” Donald said with no enthusiasm. “Just be quiet.”
“They’re fightin’ for mah old Senate seat, you know,” Jeff said, perching on the bench beside Donald like a wizened Elf on the Shelf.
“No shit,” the hat said.
“You say somethin’, Donald?” Jeff asked.
“I said ‘be quiet,’” he replied.
The referee raised his hand and the venue grew quiet, but when he dropped it, and Luther and Steve were shoved into the pit, the crowd roared.
Steve minced to the center of the ring, his feet tied together by a short length of rope. He raised his arms over his head and bellowed something unintelligible.
“Big Luther!” Donald yelled.
Luther scuttled forward quickly and slashed at Steve with an ankle spur. Steve hopped backward and brought his clasped hands down on Luther’s shoulder. Everyone could hear it dislocate and Luther stumbled back. The USA hat guffawed loudly.
“Uh, Donald…” the hair began.
Luther, holding his arm, stepped away from his opponent’s lumbering embrace, pivoted and brought his spur down, laying open Steve’s shin almost its entire length. Steve howled in agony and fell into the side of pit.
The hair noticed that Jeff was pawing at his own crotch frantically.
“Yeah!” Donald yelled. “Give him a taste of STRANGE!”
Luther rushed into punch Steve twice in the face as the homeless Svengali reeled drunkenly. A cut over his eye began to weep blood. The referee stopped the fight and sent them both out of the pit.
“That’s it? I though theys was gonna kill each udder,” the USA hat whined.
“Wow. What happened?” the hair asked, impressed.
“I paid off the trainer to slip Steve the one thing no hobo can resist,” Donald said smugly, “A pint of Sterno.”
“He’s not going to take me to the UN?!?” the hat screeched. “You’ve got to get me back in the game!”
“We’re just worried that you might relapse,” the hair replied.
“But it’s the UN. Nobody loves to hate on the UN like me! And you know I want to perv on Nikki.”
“Donald just doesn’t think you are ready yet.”
“Donald doesn’t think anything. Don’t give me that shit. Look at me,” the hat said. “I am strong.”
The hair had to admit that the hat looked better than he had in months. His color was back to a crisp red and the stitching on the MAGA logo was snow white and tight. He hadn’t thrown up thread or strap chunks in weeks.
“Donald needs me,” the hat argued, “That USA idiot is fucking everything up! A DACA compromise? A budget deal with the Crypt Keeper and the NYC Capon? He ate Chinese food with them! You know MSG gives him explosive gas!”
“The USA hat has very little to do with day-to-day policy decisions…”
“Fuck that,” the hat said hotly. “He’s losing the base, dammit. We’ve got to get those DACA fucks back to their shithole countries and we must Build That Wall. He got rid of Steve, costing us the critical hobo vote. He put Hope in charge of Sarah, which you know is going to run Sarah off. You can’t put a hottie in charge of a fattie; they naturally revolt!”
“You sound like you want us back on the campaign trail,” the hair said.
“We are on the campaign trail!” the hat thundered. “Get that ignorant fucking USA hat in here and I’ll rape that fucker right in half!”
“I’ll try and talk to Donald, get him to see how much he needs you,” the hair said.
The bank of TVs in the Trump Tower wig had finally been turned on when the hair felt the hat was ready to go back on a diet of the 24-hour news cycle. The hat jammed his bill angrily on the remote and the volume shot up.
“The Paris Accords? We’re not backing out of the Paris Accords?!?” he yelped.
“Calm down,” the hair said. “That hasn’t been decided yet.”
“Then why is CNN talking about it?”
“64th dimensional chess?” the hair said weakly.
“I’m going to kill that USA hat!” the hat fumed. “I’m going to ship him to North Korea in a crate of rat meat! I’m going to, I’m going to…”
“Calm down. Try some alternate nostril breathing.”
“I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING NOSTRILS!”
The hat began to seize, shuddering and grunting. The hair pressed the button for the on-call nurse and turned away.
“Stay here,” Wartimus’ father ordered. “Talk to the dildo.”
“Hello?” he asked again. He prodded the studded purple monstrosity with a tongue depressor.
“WARTIMUS RIESIGMANN. PARADOX PROTOCOL PREVENTS MOST PROGRAMMED INTERACTIONS,” it said.
“What are you?” he asked.
“PARADOX PROTOCOL PREVENTS…”
“OK, enough of that. What can you tell me?”
“VERY LITTLE. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.”
“They are in the house!” his father yelled from the security suite.
“Can you tell me who is attacking us?” Wartimus asked.
“IT MUST BE REDACTED. CONFIRM.”
“Yes. Redact. OK.”
“THEY ARE MEMBERS OF [BEEP]. THEY WORK TO PREVENT PARADOX BY [BEEP] AND SEQUESTERING [BEEP].”
“Do they work for the government or something? Like a secret division of some shadowy department or whatever?”
“NOT YOUR GOVERNMENT.”
“Dad!” he yelled. “They aren’t from the government!”
“Trespassers!” his father exclaimed and started laughing his third scariest laugh. Wartimus felt the guns guarding the inside of the house open up.
“Why did you react to my blood?”
[BEEP]
“Why did you call me ‘Warty Hugeman?’”
[BEEP]
“Why did you destroy those helicopters?”
“I PROTECT [BEEP].”
“Why did the guys upstairs call you an ‘out-time’ object?’”
“PARADOX.”
Wartimus snorted in disgust and walked over to his father. He watched over the older man’s shoulder as the house guns chewed the last of the attackers into wet hunks of meat.
“The, uh, dildo isn’t telling me much,” he said.
“It knows who you are,” his father said. “It reacted to your blood. It called you by a version of your name; ‘Huge Man’ is just our name in English. It’s told us plenty, my boy.”
Professor Riesigmann crossed the laboratory to loom over the dildo. “You are from the future,” he told it.
“PARADOX.”
“My son built you.”
“PARADOX.”
“Stop that,” Wartimus interjected. The dildo beeped dejectedly.
“He must have lost his penis at some point in the future and needed to replace it with you.”
Wartmus clutched his genitals without even realizing he was doing so.
“You are also a weapon,” his father continued. “A very powerful weapon. Somehow you have traveled backward in time. The people outside know you are not from this time and want you. And you being here is a violation of the timeline, the paradox you are so fond of pointing out. This all simple logic, my phallic friend.”
The dildo screeched and began to flash with a bright, purple light.
“LOCAL INCURSION! LOCAL INCURSION! PARADOX THREAT!”
“What are you talking about?” Wartimus demanded.
His father ran to the security screens. “I think I know, son.”
Wartimus joined his father and studied the exterior camera feeds. A ship bristling with guns was hanging over the house.
“LOCAL INCURSION!” the dildo squawked again.
“You mean the giant spaceship hovering over the house?” Wartimus asked sarcastically.
“I’m going to take that damn thing apart if it doesn’t tell us something useful,” his father muttered.
“PARADOX IS INEVITABLE. THE TIMELINE CANNOT BE MAINTAINED. THE TIME INSTITUTE WILL TRAP US IN A RECURSION LOOP.”
“What are you talking about?” Wartimus demanded. “Make sense.”
“YOU ARE THE PREGENITORSHIP OF WHAT/WHO I KNOW AS WARTY HUGEMAN, MY WILLBE/WAS OWNER/OPERATOR. THE TIME INSITUTE IS/WAS/WILL BE HIS ENEMY. THEY WILL COME/ARE HERE FOR ME BECAUSE THEY HOPE HE WILL/HAVE COME FOR ME. I AM OUT OF CONTEXT IN THIS LOCAL FRAME. I HAVE/WILL/DO SHALL PRESENT/ED A PARADOX TO THE LOCAL TIMELINE THAT WILL/HAS CAUSE/D ITS DESTRUCTION.”
“This giving me a headache,” the Professor grumbled.
“TRANS-TEMPORAL GRAMMAR IS VERY DIFFICULT.”
“What is the recursion loop?” Wartimus asked.
“IT IS HOW THE TIME INSTITUTE WILL REPAIR THE TIMELINE. THE TIME FROM THE MOMENT I ARRIVED IN THE LOCAL FRAME UNTIL THEY FINISH THE LOOP WILL BE FOLDED BACK ON ITSELF. ALL OF THIS WILL RECUR INFINITELY BUT OUTSIDE THE TIMELINE.”
“We will be edited out of time, son,” his father explained. “Trapped in a time loop and quarantined. A version of us that none of this happened to will go on.”
“How do we stop it?” Wartimus asked.
“We can’t. We are probably already in it. We’ve probably already had this conversation a billion times. Or maybe only twice.”
“We have to do something, right?”
“Maybe we did something the first time. Maybe we did nothing the first time. Maybe one path or the other causes the loop to close. Maybe the loop closes no matter what.” His father gave a fatalistic shrug and wandered back to the security monitors.
Wartimus snatched up the dildo. “Can you stop the loop from closing?”
“YOUR FATHER IS MOST LIKELY CORRECT, WARTIMUS RIESIGMANN. LOGIC DEMANDS IT.”
“Can you stop it or not?” he demanded, shaking it obscenely as if to force it to answer.
“I CAN DESTROY THE TIME INSTITUTE SHIP. IF I DO SO BEFORE THE LOOP IS CLOSED IT WOULD KEEP US FROM BEING TRAPPED.”
“Then do it. Destroy the ship.”
“THE TIMELINE WILL STILL BE ALTERED. THE POSSIBLE/WAS FUTURE WILL/WILL HAVE/WON’T EXIST/ED.”
“I don’t care. I order you to destroy the ship. I order you.”
“I MUST HAVE A HOST.”
“What do you mean?”
“I MUST HAVE A HOST. I DRAW ON LIFE ENERGIES TO FUNCTION.”
“So draw on mine,” the boy said.
“I MUST HAVE A HOST. I MUST BE INSTALLED.”
Realization dawned on Wartimus. Installation. Host. He became acutely aware of what he was holding.
“I can’t just hold you? Or stick you on my finger or something?”
“I MUST…”
“OK, OK.”
“USE THE DAMAGED ONE.”
“Huh?”
“THE HANDLESS.”
“I… I can’t do that to Simon. I caused this, or will cause this, or have caused or whatever.”
“YOU HAVE YOUR NATURAL PENIS FOR 23 MORE YEARS HENCE FROM THE LOCAL FRAME. YOU ENJOY MANY PEOPLE WITH YOUR PENIS AND EVEN MORE THINGS. HE IS MINDLESS, DEAD. GIVE HIM TO ME.”
“Simon is brain-dead?”
“YES.”
Wartimus sighed heavily. “Dad? I need you to do some, uh, surgery,” he called.
“NO NEED. TAKE US UPSTAIRS.”
*****
Wartimus tried not to look at Simon’s penis as he tugged down his shorts on the front lawn but it was inevitable. His small, pale pink member looked frightened and alone in the crazy light show generated by the Time Institute ship.
“What now?”
“TOUCH MY SOCKET END TO HIS MEMBER.”
Wartimus looked away, but gagged on the noise it made, like a sink disposal unit grinding on a chicken bone.
“STEP BACK.”
Simon rose into the air, arms and legs hanging limp, his new battle penis pulsing with an inner light, thrumming the air with power. As the tension in the air built, even Simon himself began to glow. With a thunderclap, the dildo from out of time shot skyward, dragging Wartimus’ friend behind it.
After that, Wartimus saw nothing but white, pure white, and heard nothing at all.
*****
Wartimus reclined on the roof of his father’s house and watched the stars glitter in the darkness of a moonless night. He had spent the summer making up his own erotic constellations and was languidly masturbating to them. He had spent the summer working in his father’s laboratory and hoped when he went back to school that he would finally meet someone who could be his best friend.
His ears ringing, his body bruised and aching, his eyes blurred, Wartimus came to on the lawn of his father’s estate with a ring of burning helicopter wreckage all around him and the broken body of his best friend just out of reach.
“Simon,” he croaked as he rolled over onto his stomach and crawled toward him.
The boy’s eyes and nose and ears were bleeding and Wartimus had to place a hand flat on his chest to tell if he was even breathing. He felt the wet rattling in his lungs and the weak beat of his heart. He shook him gently and said his name. When he rolled him onto his side into the recovery position, he saw that Simon’s right hand was burned right down to the bone, rendered to just a blackened claw that still clutched the purple dildo, the helicopter killer, the out-time object–whatever it was. Wartimus worked it loose with his hand wrapped in the tail of his filthy shirt and tossed it away awkwardly.
Wartimus levered himself off the lawn painfully and looked around. The house was still in a defensive posture, searchlights sweeping the skies and the perimeter of the house. He was still holding his communicator but the display was dead. He tossed it away and bent stiffly, gather up Simon and then staggered toward the house.
Professor Riesigmann was waiting for them both at the rear security bulkhead off the brick patio.
“What did you do?” he demanded angrily.
“Nothing,” Wartimus said, carrying Simon into the house.
“Well, it’s obviously not ‘nothing,’ The house is under attack!”
“Simon is hurt. Can we talk about this downstairs?”
His father waved him away and began to secure the bulkhead. Wartimus took Simon downstairs to his father laboratory and laid him on a table in the surgical suite. His father shouldered him out of the way after he had straightened his friend’s limbs.
“Go scrub up,” his father ordered curtly.
Wartimus pulled off his burned and tattered clothes and dropped them into the hazardous waste bin. He looked at himself in the mirror over the surgical sink. His face was streaked with mud and blood and soot. He had an 8-ball hemorrhage forming in his left eye and there was the blunt end of a piece of metal buried almost to the hilt in the hollow space of his right clavicle. He pried it out and dropped it in the sink. He barely felt it.
“What the hell happened to his hand?” his father demanded behind him. Wartimus ignored him and splashed water on his face and the washed off the fresh blood running down his chest. He disinfected his hands thoroughly and put on surgical gloves.
“You’re bleeding,” his father said. He was bent over Simon, checking his pupil reactions.
“I know,” Wartimus replied. He packed some gauze into the puncture wound and taped a bandage in place.
“Is he going to be OK?” he asked his father while he pulled out a set of surgical scrubs.
“I don’t know,” his father said. “What’s left of the hand will have to come off, obviously, but the more immediate concern is that he has a concussion and might have intracranial bleeding. Bandage the hand while you tell me what’s going on.”
Wartimus filled a rolling tray with supplies while he began: “It wasn’t a meteor that came down. It was some sort of a device.”
“Device? A machine?”
“I guess. I don’t know. It looks like a giant purple plastic dick, Dad.”
“A dick?” the Professor asked, his normally detached composure giving way.
“Like a dildo. Anyway. One of those helicopters met us as the crater and we ran back to the house.”
“Simon’s hand looks like he grabbed an electrical transmission line.”
“I’m getting to that. Simon was carrying the device while we ran back. It did something to him. He changed.”
“Changed?”
“Like spaced-out and then he said it was talking to him.”
“Talking to him? The dildo from outer space was talking to Simon?’
“I know how it sounds.”
There was a rumbling that they both felt through the foundations of the house.
“You finish that hand,” Wartimus’ father ordered as he hurried away.
Wartimus taped off the end of the bandage. He squeezed Simon’s shoulder and followed his father.
He found him at the security monitors. “They tried to explosive breach the front door,” his father said and let out an ugly little laugh. Wartimus could see black-clad and heavily-armed men rushing the front of the house. His father jabbed a button and twin jets of flame engulfed them.
“They aren’t too bright, my boy,” he father said. “I haven’t even had to turn on the autoturrets yet.”
“When we got back to the house, Simon walked out into the backyard and the helicopters surrounded him. The dildo shot them out of the sky.”
“Shot them out of the sky? Like anti-aircraft fire?”
“Electrical arcs. Lightning bolts. That’s what happened to Simon’s hand. That’s the one he was holding it in.”
“It’s a weapon? I thought you said it was a purple dildo.”
“It’s both, I think.”
“Well, I’ve just got to see this,” his father said, finally turning from the security monitors. “Where is it?”
“I left it outside.”
His father moved in close and loomed over him. “Outside? You left it outside?!?”
“I was afraid to touch it.”
“Afraid? Afraid? I’m pretty sure you were a boy when I saw you come out of your mother.”
“Dad…”
“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. Go back outside and get it.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“The armory is open. Draw arms and get to it.”
*****
In light-swallowing black body armor, Wartimus brought up the night-sight scope on his heavily-modified P90 and surveyed the backyard. His father had snorted derisively at the boxy gun, but Wartimus was comfortable with it from the range and had slung a second one for his left hand in case of dual-wield mayhem. The fires set by the helicopters were out and except for the random sweep of the roof-mounted security lights, the backyard was dark. His ears had recovered enough to hear the distant wail of sirens and thwump thwump thwump of another copter. He disabled the roof-lights with his replacement communicator and stepped off the patio, out of the cover of the herb garden wall, and walked carefully toward where Simon had been injured. He was immediately shot twice in the chest.
Wartimus grunted under the twin impacts and jumped back onto the patio. Silent bullets began chewing brick all around him as he rolled up against the wall. The fusillade ceased as quickly and as silently as it had begun. The armor on his chest had held and the rounds had only felt like being lightly punched in the chest twice. His father’s design.
He tapped a few commands into his communicator and the autoturrets on the roof deployed in smoothly. Wartimus flipped the monocle down from his helmet and surveyed the yard again through their sensors. Three hot spots under infrared, two prone, one elevated, maybe in a tree, east woodline. He waited for the turrets to pick up the targets and then sent a few hundred rounds into each, delayed to give him time to clamp his hands over his ears. It still sounded like the sky being ripped open.
“You should have used the turrets first,” his father’s disapproving voice crackled in his ear.
Not rising to the bait, he put the turrets on standby and surveyed the yard again. The sniper team still glowed hot, but so did the rapidly cooling splashes of light all around them.
“How does it feel, killer?” his father whispered. He ignored the assumption that these were the first people he had killed and dialed the volume as low as he could.
He stepped out on the lawn again and moved toward dildo quickly. He could see it easily as he approached, bright under infrared, blood-warm in the now cool night. He pulled a heavy insulated glove over his left hand and snatched it up. Running with it held out from his body, he headed back to the house. A shot rang out and tore up the grass in front of him and he skidded to a halt.
“DO NOT MOVE!” said a voice over a loudspeaker. Wartimus dropped to the ground.
“I SAID DON’T MOVE!”
Wartimus calmly switched over to the turret sensors. Low-light, infrared, millimeter wave, but the turrets weren’t picking anything up, not even movement.
“GIVE US THE OUT-TIME OBJECT!”
“You mean the dildo?” Wartimus yelled.
“GIVE US THE OUT-TIME OBJECT!”
“You mean the big, purple dildo?” Wartimus asked. He held it up and waggled it queasily for emphasis.
“Who are you talking to?” his father asked, no more than a faint whisper.
“There’s someone out here. They took a warning shot at me.”
“There’s nothing on the screens.”
“The turrets aren’t picking them up,” Wartimus whispered.
“Impossible.”
“OK. It’s impossible then.”
“Don’t be facetious, son. Get ready to run when I tell you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Cover fire pattern. Run straight for the rear security door. Straight at it.”
“Acknowledged.” Wartimus tucked the dildo into a pocket on his vest and shucked off the glove. He rolled over onto his knees and bunched his legs under him, a P90 in each hand.
“Ready?” his father asked faintly.
“Yes.”
The roof turrets started up as soon as he left the ground, all six of them, even the front yard batteries taking a low angle over the peaks of the roof. The yard and woods exploded all around him, bullets everywhere except for a three-foot path that led to the rear door. The loudspeaker said something completely drowned in the storm of bullets. Wartimus opened up with the P90s as well, spraying bullets in a flat arc all on both sides. He felt a bullet hit his right thigh, glancing away with no more force than a bird off a patio door. He dropped the P90s when they were out and leaped over the last couple of yards of lawn to land behind the garden wall. The turrets were still firing, spinning barrels glowing. When they finally whirred to a stop, Wartimus saw the back door swing open. He dived through it and slid across the kitchen floor.
*****
“This thing is just drenched in tachyons,” Professor Riesigmann said as he studied the dildo under the scanner.
“They called it an out-time device,” Wartimus replied. He had re-armed and re-armored after checking on Simon. The stump of the boy’s arm was just a bandaged club. While he was outside, his father had amputated the skeletonized hand. It floated in a specimen jar, the index finger straight out like an accusation. He had no idea how he was going to explain any of this to Simon’s parents.
“It’s definitely not any sort of current technology. It is seething with energy and full of densely packed machinery,” his father said.
“Why does it look like that?”
“See the end here?” his father asked. “It’s an attachment socket. It’s obviously meant to be worn.”
“Worn?”
“As in ‘instead of,’ son. It’s both a replacement penis and some sort of weapons platform.”
“Holy fuck,” Wartimus whispered.
“Not quite, son, but you’re on the right track.”
“Who made it? Who’s supposed to wear it?”
“Did you say that it spoke to Simon?”
“I don’t know. He thought it was, at least. And he said it knew me, whatever that means.”
“It’s time to experiment, my boy. I want you to touch it.” He retracted the fume hood until into the ceiling.
“No way. Did you see what it did to Simon’s hand?”
“I think that was just a defensive reaction. It’s should be perfectly safe in a laboratory environment.” His father grinned at him.
Dubious, and with a look of distaste, Wartimus reach out and touched the dildo from the future. He held his finger there as his father fiddled with dials and looked at readouts.
His father grumbled and walked away. Wartimus took the opportunity to pull his finger away from the slick surface. He rubbed his fingers together and then wiped them off on his shirt making a face. His father laughed.
“It’s self-lubing,” the Professor said cheerfully. “Give me your hand, son.”
He grabbed Wartimus and sank a lancet into the ball of his thumb before he could pull his hand away.
“Don’t be such a baby. It’s sterile,” his father said. He milked a fat drop of blood and let it fall on the socket end of the dildo. Wartimus jerked his hand back and sucked on the tiny wound.
“GREETINGS, WARTY HUGEMAN,” it said in a flat, synthesized voice. When Wartimus said nothing, his father elbowed him lightly in the side.
“Hello?” he finally asked.
“PARADOX,” the dildo from out of time said. “PARADOX. PARADOX.”
The estate’s proximity alarm began to scream from Wartimus’ communicator. He scooped the space dildo in the bucket and dragged Simon out of the pit. The spotlight on the helicopter followed them.
Under cover of stand trees, Wartimus looked his communicator and disabled the audible alarm. “Back to the house,” he grunted, “Someone is attacking the estate.”
The two boys began to run through the woods together, zig-zagging to elude the helicopter’s questing light. Wartimus estimated they were close to halfway back when the helicopter shut off its searchlight and quietly turned back in the direction of the crater. He and Simon crashed to the ground.
“Are they gone?” Simon gasped as Wartimus checked the communicator again.
“No,” he said in a rough whisper. He began flipping through the security camera feeds. “The far west wall has been explosively breached and there are several large armored vehicles in the front yard.”
“It’s so big,” Simon whispered. He had picked up the dildo from the bucket and was studying it. “Like huge. Why would it be this big? And so heavy?”
“I don’t know,” Wartimus replied absently, typing out a message for his father.
Simon held the dildo up next to Wartimus.
“It’s bigger than your entire forearm!”
The message to his father came back as undeliverable.
Simon dug in his backpack noisily and brought out a flashlight. Carefully shielding the lens with his fingers, he turned it on.
“And there’s some sort of socket on the end. Metal. A metal socket,” he said.
“Simon, there are armed men on the property. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” he said, shaking the dildo at Wartimus. “They are obviously here for this. Why would they be after a dildo? And why did it fall out of space?”
“Simon, we’ve got to get back to the house,” he said. He stood and shrugged out of his backpack. “Leave your pack. We’ve got to travel light. Even the flashlights, Geiger, everything.”
“But…”
“We can come back and get them in the morning.”
Simon nodded and turned off his flashlight. He dropped his backpack beside Wartimus’ and said, “I’m ready.” He held the dildo out to his friend.
“You can carry it.”
“It’s so warm,” Simon said, “And kind of slippery.”
“Simon…”
“I know,” he said morosely, “More running.”
“We’ll just walk the rest of the way. We need to be quiet and keep our eyes peeled.”
As they started off, Simon used the nickname he used so rarely and asked, “Warty? Why do you do think it’s purple?”
“No clue,” Wartimus admitted.
Simon didn’t say anything about how his friend was guiding through the moonless night without flashlights and concentrated on walking quietly. Wartimus dialed the light down on his communicator and silenced it. He tried to resend the message to his father again only for it to fail again. He was looking through the network settings when he realized Simon was no longer behind him. He had to backtrack almost a hundred feet. Simon was giggling in a small clearing as he swung the dildo around, making lightsaber noises.
“Simon,” Wartimus hissed. “We have to get back to the house.”
“It’s a weapon, Warty,” the boy said dreamily. “I can feel it. It’s doing something to me.” He had a two-handed grip on the dildo from outer space and a faraway look on his face. Wartimus could see that Simon’s pupils were fully dilated.
“Give it to me, Simon.”
“It’s a weapon,” he repeated. “Watch.”
Simon pointed the dildo at a nearby tree and twisted the base sharply until there was a muted click. A gout of fire arced out of the tip and hit the tree trunk and stuck, burning with a bright blue flame as it ran down to the ground like a thick fluid.
“Holy fuck!” Wartimus shouted in a hoarse whisper.
“It’s telling me how to use it,” Simon said and laughed. He twisted the base again and tossed the dildo to Wartimus. It writhed in his hands like something alive and he almost dropped it. When he looked closely he saw that dozens of tiny tongues had broken out all over the surface and lapped blindly at the night air like an erotic rash.
“Maybe you better hold on to it,” Wartimus said and tossed it back with a shudder of revulsion. It seemed to slap itself in Simon’s hand.
“It knows you, Warty Hugeman,” Simon said in a distant voice. “It thrills at your touch.”
Wartimus blinked a few times and then turned for the house without bothering to check if Simon was following.
*****
Wartimus crouched at the edge of the forest and lawn. Three helicopters hovered over the house, their spotlights playing over it, not bothering to run silently like the one that had followed them from the crater. Someone on board was shouting over loudspeakers, words that just ended up sounding like the feedback howls of faulty equipment. He hailed his father on the communicator, the network connection stronger here. Either the attackers were blocking communications on the estate or his father was blocking theirs to hinder coordination. Maybe they were both pumping electronic chaff into the air. He set the communicator to scan for active channels.
Wartimus turned at the crack of a twig to see Simon walking calmly toward him out of the woods. He cradled the purple dildo in the crook of his left arm and stroked it like a beloved pet.
“Get down, Simon,” he told his friend.
Simon ignored him and stepped out of the edge of the woods and onto the manicured expanse of lawn.
“SIMON!” Wartimus called but the boy continued walking at an unhurried pace. One of the spotlights on the helicopters picked him out. All three angled away from the house and came to hover over the boy, the grass flattened around him in three huge overlapping circles.
Wartimus’ communicator squealed angrily over the cacophonous noise of the helicopters and lit up. He had to jam it close to his ear and heard a babble of unfamiliar voices.
“The readings are clear!” someone said, the sound of helicopter blades echoing strangely. “He has the out-time object!”
“Who the fuck is this?” Wartimus screamed into the communicator.
“Take him!” the voice said, just an angry crackle.
“STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!” the helicopter loudspeakers shrieked. “WE WILL USE LETHAL FORCE!”
Simon stared up into the sky unmoving.
“SIMON!” Wartimus screamed again, useless in the hurricane of sound. He broke from the wood line on instinct, running toward Simon. He covered the distance in seconds, his muscular legs tearing up clumps of grass as he accelerated. He tackled Simon and covered him with his body.
“You’re going to get yourself killed!” he yelled in Simon’s face.
Simon smiled serenely and jammed the blunt end of the dildo into the exposed skin on the back of Wartimus’ hand. He felt a sharp sting and he rolled off of Simon in surprise. He could see in the actinic light of the helicopters that his hand was bleeding.
Beside him, Simon clambered to his feet and held the dildo aloft. It flashed once, a searing purple light that left a clear outline of it in Wartimus’ vision. As he raised his bloody hand to shield his eyes, thick snakes of electricity arced from the bulbous tip of the dildo in Simon’s hand and all three helicopters exploded simultaneously.
Trouble start for 2011 after one monkey wey dem dey call Naruto di macaque snap imself inside one jungle for Indonesia with David Slater camera.
Slater bin tell BBC say im bin make £2,000 from di photo before Wikipedia come publish am for dia site for anybody wey want am, free of charge.
Di website say no be him get di picture because na di monkey snap imsef. Slater come dey insist say na im set di camera on top tripod after im don already pally with di monkeys for three days inside di jungle.
Slater tell Wikipedia say make dem pay am for di picture or comot am from dia website but di website no give am face.
One animal rights campaign group wey dem dey call People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) na dem carry di case go court for 2015, say na di monkey suppose get di ownership of di picture.
That PETA was found to have any standing in the case in the first place makes the whole thing a farce. And “monkey selfie” should be the name of an unspeakable sex act.
Hurricane Irma caused massive destruction to Florida. But before the storm made landfall, more than 5 million residents – about one-third of the state’s population – were told to evacuate for their own safety. Governor Rick Scott even issued a plea for residents to “leave now, don’t wait.”
As people heeded Governor Scott’s orders and fled the state, a Pizza Hut restaurant in the storm’s path issued a much different warning to its crew.
In a now-viral post on Twitter, a Pizza Hut team member shared a photo of a printout pinned to a cork board that advised Pizza Hut employees on hurricane “guidelines.”
The paper, addressed “To all Team members,” starts with expectations “as hurricane Irma approaches Florida,” stating “our #1 priority is the safety and security of our team. But, we also have a responsibility and commitment to our community to be there when they need us. With that said, I/we need some guidelines in place to ensure both of those expectations are met.”
The sheet continued with general rules – the store will close 6-12 hours before a storm – and that if a team member plans to evacuate, they must alert a manager and let them know when they plan to return, citing that a member is only allowed a “24-hour period before storm ‘grace period’” and must be back from an evacuation within 72 hours.
I spent one of the worst couple of weeks of my entire life working at a Pizza Hut. The job didn’t have all that much to do with it but certainly didn’t help. I can never forget the little weaselly-looking guy who ordered a small, thin crust, double extra cheese, double extra anchovy. The rest of the crew said he had been coming in every Monday and ordered the same thing for as long as anyone could remember.
*****
Leftist denies anything bad happens because of leftists; circle jerk really a rhombus: Measuring the Mizzou Effect
Washington’s Evergreen State College, where raucous student protests and disturbing threats of violence made national headlines this spring, has fallen several million dollars in the hole, according to a recent memo from its public administrators. The memo blames the shortfall on both changes in state funding and a 5 percent decline in the school’s enrollment since fall 2016. Right-wing media outlets have another, simpler explanation: They’ve linked the woes at Evergreen to those at the University of Missouri, where a similar bout of campus turmoil in 2015 preceded an enrollment drop. Like Missouri, these sources argue, Evergreen is being punished for giving in to leftist thugs. “SHOCKER: Evergreen State Faces $2.1 MILLION Budget Crisis After Radical Students Go Berserk,” announced the Daily Caller. “Evergreen State College Wakes Up to the Cost of Wokeness,” wrote the website Ricochet. The alleged backlash to modern-day student protests even has a name: They’re calling it the “Mizzou Effect.”
Quick Note From Swiss Servator: The Hurricane Clearinghouse II has been “unstuck” it is still around, but back at its original date. It is NOT Warty Hugeman, bending space and time.
Simon shouldered his backpack. “How far do you think?” he asked.
“The descent was steep and the sound of the impact was right on top of the flash, so I’m pretty sure it’s on the estate grounds,” Wartimus said, storing the counter and settling his own backpack in place. He pointed to the thin column of smoke.
“I got due east,” Simon said looking at his compass.
Wartimus consulted the luminous face of his own compass. “Agreed. Due east,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The two boys crossed manicured lawn of the backyard and entered the mature woods beyond. The red gels over their flashlights preserved their night vision as they rustled through last year’s leaves. A dry summer had kept the undergrowth down and they made good time.
The woods on the estate had been their playground since they had first met in second grade. Hieronymus had insisted that Wartimus attend the local public school for—in his words—“the sheer lumpen experience of it.” Nearly all of the parents of the children he went to school worked for his father. Simon’s parents worked in the biosciences division, riding the funicular every day to where the factory of Riesigmann Industries clung to the top of the mountain like the enormous claw of an eagle. Simon was the only boy in his class not terrified of Wartimus, the brooding 8-year-old with visible abs and a father that owned the entire town. Wartimus was just happy to meet someone not in awe of his father.
Playing with Simon gave Wartimus the semblance of a normal childhood, as long as a normal childhood involved raiding the estate armory to stitch machine gun fire across enemy trees or engineering a mistletoe blight to ruin Christmas that caused robins maddened by the mutant berries to attack his entire class while on a field trip. Simon loved to spend time with Wartimus, even if he could never tell his mother that their tree house had a number of deadfall traps dug around its defensive perimeter and Simon was expected to run a homemade mortar in case of attack.
The second compass check was made in a small clearing they came upon twenty minutes from the gate.
“Is this…” Simon began.
“Yes,” Warty said. He swung his flashlight over to a blackened stump.
“I told you napalm was a bad idea,” Simon said.
“We contained it.”
“Your father was so angry.”
“Not really,” Wartimus said, “The propane tank didn’t blow. And it wasn’t like Tree House Mark One was anything he had helped build anyway.”
Wartimus straightened and held his hand up in the starlit night.
“You hear that?” he whispered to Simon and the boy shook his head.
Wartimus tugged Simon back under the cover of the trees as a downdraft of air blasted the clearing and a helicopter blotted out the sky. It was nearly silent and moving slowly. Eventually, it went behind the tops of trees at the far end of the clearing.
“It’s moving due east,” Wartimus spat. “I’m going on ahead,” he said and took off running.
He immediately left Simon behind. Alone, Wartimus no longer had to pretend he needed the flashlight and tucked into the holster on his belt, his pupils dilating to drink in starlight. He leaped over obstacles he would have had to walk around with Simon in tow. His lungs shifted in his chest to better strip oxygen from the night air and his heart hammered away. Simon had seen some of the things Hieronymus had engineered into Wartimus, but small things that could be dismissed, like skin a little too resistant to cuts or landing on his feet from a fall a little too far to survive unharmed. His strength and inhuman grace as he moved through the forest would have frightened Simon.
Wartimus outpaced the slow search pattern of the helicopter and skidded to a stop at the rim of the crater ahead of it. It was three meters across and almost as deep. The trees around the crater were down, blasted outward, blackened and still smoldering. There was no way the helicopter would miss this, he knew he had to hurry.
Wartimus peered over the edge looking for an impactor. There was a faint Tyrian glow from the center of the crater. He backed off and got out the Geiger counter. There was only the slow tick tick tick of normal background radiation as he circled the crater. The glow faded as he made it back to his starting point and Simon came crashing through the underbrush, specimen bucket rattling, his flashlight bouncing wildly, the red gel lost.
“How… long… have… you… been… here?” Simon managed, holding his side.
“Less than a minute,” Wartimus lied.
“Radiation?”
“Nothing. I can’t see anything in the crater. I’m going down there.”
Wartimus took the bucket from Simon as the boy continued to catch his breath. He removed the safety gloves and put them on. Handing the still ticking Geiger counter to Simon, Wartimus took a pair of heavy-duty tongs out and practiced working them with the awkward gloves.
As they walked around the crater looking for a good spot to climb down, the helicopter passed close enough to send a cloud of dead leaves and pine needles toward them. Wartimus estimated they would be right over the crater on the next pass.
“We have to go now!” Wartimus shouted and jumped over the edge and rode the slope down in controlled fall. Simon followed less gracefully, the specimen bucket rolling ahead of him. Wartimus caught him before he fell face-first. The Geiger counter didn’t change as Simon waved it close to the center of the crater.
“It’s OK to put that away,” Wartimus said as he fell to his knees and began brushing back the fine dust that had gathered at the lowest point. There was no residual heat or shock geology.
“It didn’t come down very fast,” Wartimus told Simon. Something was just visible in the shaky beam from Simon’s flashlight. He scraped a channel all around it and lifted it carefully, grunting under the unexpected weight. It was purple and studded and looked to be covered in open sores.
“It’s some sort of…” Wartimus began to say but a towering pillar of light stabbed down from the helicopter as it slid in place over them.
“Fuck that,” the hat said hotly. “He’s losing the base, dammit. We’ve got to get those DACA fucks back to their shithole countries and we must Build That Wall. He got rid of Steve, costing us the critical hobo vote. He put Hope in charge of Sarah, which you know is going to run Sarah off. You can’t put a hottie in charge of a fattie; they naturally revolt!”
And I guess I’m supposed to give you a link to a song.