Cranefly Fiction -- 2016 onward

[Drunk Monk]

[cranefly]

Strident Embraces

     Stop, she told him as his hands cupped her small breasts, but she spoke it softly, and in Swahili ("Wa cha"), so he wouldn't understand, because she didn't really want him to stop; but he stopped nonetheless, looking annoyed and frustrated.
     "Where did you learn Swahili?" she asked.
     "In the Peace Corps.  Twenty-three years ago."
     Twenty-three years ago, longer than she was old.  She gazed up into his face, admiring his chiseled features, his wise crinkly eyes, the scars hinting at dangerous adventures...
     "Pretend," she breathed, leaning against his chest.  "Pretend you never went to Peace Corps."

Dedication:  Let's dedicate this one to romance novels.  No, really.

"Strident Embraces" (11,000 words), written April-May 2017

[cranefly]

Back in the '80s I worked on this monstrous kitchen-sink novel called The Fall of Deju Vu Castle.  I completed it in the '90s while living in the wilderness up north for about 3 years.  I doubt that 5 people ever read it (one of those long-suffering souls was DM).
Anyway, interspersed throughout the novel were little made-up encyclopedia entries.  One of them follows:

INCHWORM DRIVE, a faster-than-light drive invented by William E. Jasper in 2092 at Rymar Institute of Organic Thought.  This drive, and Jasper's Rhapsodian Theory upon which it was based, earned Jasper the 2094 Nobel Prize in Physics.  Certainly one of the great engineering marvels of all time, the drive untangles the dimensions of matter and rotates them into a single vector.  When this "stretched" matter is redimensionalized, it advances along the stretch vector.  In this way, matter is made to stretch and pull itself along through space.  While the displacement is not great (less than eight centimeters), through accelerated iterative methods the process can produce motion well in excess of the speed of light (universal constants are believed to impose a hard limit of 511.3911 c.).  Collimation techniques permit concentrated monodimensionalization of masses up to 200 million metric tons, sufficient for a large transport vehicle, crew, and cargo.

When humans first inchwormed to the stars in 2093, the Consortium of Civilized Worlds welcomed them into its fold with a promptness belying the Drive’s importance.  It far surpassed the capabilities of the Consortium’s own Identity-Exchange Drive.  Exploration and settlement of the Galaxy by the Consortium proceeded quickly in the following years.

There is near-universal agreement that the Inchworm Drive stands as the greatest single invention in the history of Humanity, expanding our horizons far beyond what we had previously thought possible, as well as the horizons of the sentients it brought us in contact with.

--from Great Inventions in the History of Humanity

Today, in the news, we have this article:

Scientists Are Starting to Take Warp Drives Seriously, Especially One Specific Concept
Here's an excerpt:

In layman's terms, the Alcubierre Drive achieves FTL travel by stretching the fabric of space-time in a wave, causing the space ahead of it to contract while the space behind it expands.

In theory, a spacecraft inside this wave would be able to ride this "warp bubble" and achieve velocities beyond the speed of light.

Inchworm Drive is a much better name, doncha think?

https://www.sciencealert.com/how-feasibl...he-science

[Drunk Monk]

This better not be that story I told you about when Nicole Kidman and I got trapped in the erotic circus...

Shoot. That reminds me. Margot Robbie still has my sleeping bag. 

I was going to get to that symbiosis story next but now I'm worried cf will use it in one of his fiction tales....

I've been inch-worm driven through time by this ttt, cf.  I could not remember when Nicole and I got trapped in the erotic circus nor why Margot had my sleeping bag so I went back in time to review the Symbiosis thread in hopes of jogging my memory but to no avail.  Drugs are bad when you lose memories like that.  Don't do drugs, mmkay?  

[Greg]

It seems like I've come across the name "Acubierre Drive" in my reading before.

Not so much with the Inchworm.

[cranefly]

Come, Mongoose, I Want to Play

The saloon doors still swung as the spotlight fell upon a peculiar figure.  Her triangular head glistened.  Her ears were the barest nubs.  Her arms hugged her body so tightly she might have worn a full body binder.  Giving all a squinty glare, she hissed.  That was all she did.  Then she slither-walked in, to weave among the tables on no discernible heading, doubling back a couple of times, before vanishing into the fog.

Dedication: To snakes in general, for being the next best thing to tentacles.

"Come, Mongoose, I Want to Play" (10,000 words), started 4/2012, finished 12/2019

[Drunk Monk]

Come, Mongoose, I Want to Play

I am both excited and wary of new cf writings, especially something titled 'I Want to Play'

I'll read this when I have a quiet moment where no one will hear me scream.

[Drunk Monk]

I got about halfway through this last night but had to bail because it was late and I had a huge dinner that made me sleepy.  Reading cf fiction is NOT DOOM recommended whilst tucking in and out of consciousness.  Or maybe it is.  Maybe that's the best time to read it.  

It's been amusing so far.  My halfway point thought was that it would make a great episode of Love Death + Robots.

[Drunk Monk]

"Hanging out with writer types, artists, other deadbeats, engaging in, in ... intellectual masturbation!"  DOOM in a nutshell.

Enjoyably existential.  Good to hear your writing voice again, cf.  That absurd pastiche of random imagery peppered with scientifical theories and underlying sexuality is uniquely yours.

I stand behind my earlier Love Death + Robots comment.

[cranefly]

Subterfuge

She looked more closely at the Deceptoid: Blockish body, eyes on stalks rising from the shoulders, large lenticular head, the face disturbingly dished-out and devoid of eyes or nose, just a tentacular tangle of barbels and hair of a sickly yellow and green. . .  Deceptoid or Stygian mimebot, he sat perfectly still, if awkwardly, in the human chair, stalks vertical, eyes fixed on the ceiling as was their manner of repose.  His environsuit was skintight, and elastic enough to accommodate his eyestalks and eyes through a wide range of motion, including extension/contraction.  It also revealed a body mostly covered in moire-patterned tattoos that played havoc with her tired eyes.  There were no glitches; all of his features meshed.  All seemed perfectly in order.  Of course, that meant nothing.  A mimebot could mimic it all.

Dedication: To moire patterns everywhere.

"Subterfuge" (12,000 words) started 2/17/2004, finished 6/17/2021

[Drunk Monk]

Enjoyable. I liked how you doled out sci-fi-jargon that worked well. The words, although made up, made sense. I also liked the dialog dynamics in the Deceptiod and Kabita in the first act (which felt a little like Spock v Norman), and then Kabita and Demitri in the second (which reminded me of a few tattoo discussions I've had with friends). Nice work. Thanks for sharing.

[cranefly]

The invite:

Hey Gary... we'd love to see you contribute a 300 word story to the Queer Sci Fi flash fiction contest this year! The theme is "Clarity," and the contest closes May 1st.

This wasn't a special invite.  I think all members of SFWA got blanketed with it.  Lady Cranefly got one.  Anyway, what the hell.  It seemed like an interesting challenge.  If LCF writes up an entry, I'll make certain she posts it as well on DOOM.

                                                                          FEMBOT BLUES

                                                                      Gary W. Shockley

      Daryl peered out at the woman on the step.  He had assumed the repairman would be male.  A further recognition then settled in.

      "Jenny?" he said.

      Her eyes brightened.  "Daryl?"

      They'd gone to high school together, dated for years, even talked of marriage.  What were the odds?

      Jenny cleared her throat.  "So.  One of our units is acting up?"

      Moments later they stood before an open closet.

      Jenn peered at the shadowy figure inside.  "Did you name it?"

      "Ursula."

      "Hi, Ursula."  Setting her cap and toolbox aside, she rocked Ursula out of the darkness.  Kneeling, she made a cursory inspection.  "Never seen a unit so tricked out.  You realize these pleasure mods void the warranty."

      "So.  You can't fix it."

      "I didn't say that."  She sat back on her haunches, thinking.  "Tell you what.  I'd be willing to turn a blind eye if you'd do something for me."

      "What's that?"

      She rose and stood alongside Ursula for comparison.  "Explain to me what went wrong.  With us.  How I failed to, well, measure up.  Was I too short?  Wrong hair color?  Some fatal character flaw?"

      He sighed.  "Jenn."

      "No.  Really.  I won't get mad.  I'd just like to know."

      The front door opened and a well-built man entered.  He went straight to the fridge for a beer, then flopped down on the living-room sofa.  Only then did he spy Jenn.

      "The name's Rob," he said, joining them.  "Didn't realize we had company.  Want a beer?"

      Jenn scrutinized them both.  "No."

      "So.  What's the verdict?"  He mussed Ursula's blond hair.  "Can she be fixed?"

      "Who uses this?" Jenn asked.

      "Does it matter?"  Rob clapped Daryl on the shoulder.  "Sure isn't this one-way guy."

      They winced at the door-slam.  Jenn was gone.  Rob looked askance at Daryl.  "Was it something I said?"

[Greg]

Ha!

[Drunk Monk]

Good one!

[Drunk Monk]

I'm impressed that you got Shakira to do the music video...



This just dropped...