'Bama and Brimstone

A return to a particular literary universe.

Interlude: Bama and Brimstone

My name is Esther Anna Sweethill. 

I was born in Selma, Alabama in 1945. 20 years later, I marched with Dr. King to the state capitol in Montgomery. Listening to him, I felt the power of strong words backed by a strong faith, and what could be accomplished by a man who believed in both. 

I felt love, too. I met my husband, Samuel, on that march. He gave me two beautiful boys -- after we were married, I'll have you know. 

Samuel went to Vietnam in 1968 and never came back. It was hard, being a widowed black woman raising two boys in the 1970s, but by God, and with His help, I did it. 

Neither of my children did drugs or became delinquents, praise Jesus. I loved them and I nagged them to be better.  I praised them when they did good and, yes, I spanked the devil out of them when they were wicked. 

None of them ever went to jail. Not a one. I told them, "If the police arrest you then you might as well plead guilty, because when I get you home I will take a switch to your hide like you've never seen and you'll never sit down again, and then I'm really gonna punish you."  I think they were more scared of me than they were of the police, and that suits me just fine. I had to be both mama and papa to my boys, and sometimes that meant I had to scare them back onto the Lord's path. 

They're all grown up now, and have fine families. My eldest, Jacob, went into construction. Nothing wrong with hard work, I told him, it's an honest days' work for an honest days' wage.  He started by digging ditches and now he's a foreman. He has a passel of girls now, all sweet and giggly. They're the apple of his eye, but they do task him. Serves him right, I tell him, for all the grief and hassle he caused me growing up!  His oldest, Ruth, is in college now. 

My youngest, Eli, went to college on scholarship, God bless him. First in my family ever to go, and the day he graduated I was so proud I was full to bursting. He does something with computers that I don't rightly follow, but that's fine -- he understands it well enough for both of us. He married this Indian girl called Parvati, and oh I did NOT approve of that, let me tell you!  I taught my boys to be God-fearing Christians, and then I see him taking up with this heathen!

I started to give him a piece of my mind, and you know what he said to me?  He said, "First Corinthians 7:16, mama."  Well, how do you like that? If my boy loves her enough to quote scripture at me, then I reckon he knows what he's doing, and I'll trust him.

I pray to Jesus for his marriage just the same, though. 

Oh, and their wedding!  We all flew to India for it, and while India is a heathen country that needs Jesus like you wouldn't believe, they're still some of the nicest folks you could ever meet.  And would you believe that they have elephants there?  And not in the zoo, either, but working like a farm horse! I got to ride on one which about made my year, let me tell, except for the fact that my baby was getting married and that was better... but only by a smidge, I say with a wink. Oh, I've always loved elephants, ever since I was a little girl, and never did I think I would get to meet one in person, let alone ride one. It was an adorable little baby, all fat and huggable, and did you know that baby elephants have hair?  I didn't!  They have this fine hair all over their backs that you can't see, but you can sure feel it, mmm-hmm. 

Afterwards, Parvati's mother gave me something called a "garnish." She heard how much I loved elephants and so gave me a little doll of the cutest little cartoon elephant. He's wearing the cutest little hat, and one of his tusks is broken and it reminds me of my boys when they were losing their baby teeth and went around all snaggletoothed. 

She said it would be bring me luck, but I don't know about that. I lost my savings not too long ago. I don't rightly know how it happened -- I said I don't properly understand computers, recall? -- but according to Eli I clicked on something I shouldn't have and next I know, my credit's run up and my money's gone and my identity's stolen. Lordy!  Why would anyone want to be me so bad they'd steal who I was?

But just when I think I have to go live with one of my boys, I get a telephone call from a nice man called Mister Netty, and he says he's figured out what's happened and who's to blame and how to fix it. 

No fool I, I ask what the catch is for fixing it. 

Mister Netty, he says "If I tell you there's no catch you'll think I'm lying to you. So what if I told you that you could help punish the people who did this to you, and stop others like them from doing it to other people?"

"How could I help with that?"  I ask. "I'm just an old lady in her sixties. I'm a grandma!"

He says, "You're a mother, and these criminals are naughty children that need a good spanking. And when you are filled with righteous indignation, Miss Esther, you're terrifying."  Well, how could I say no to that?   

And so here I am, driving around the country in my old car. Yevgeny  is a special boy -- God love him, he's special -- but it's nice to feel like a mama to someone again. I don't know if Yevvy was ever properly mothered, but if there's a way to make up for it, I will. He's got a good heart, even if it doesn't really know how to connect to folk sometimes. 

And then there's Reecy, who I swear is the Lord's way of testing my patience. She is surly and difficult and wicked and hateful, and I could almost hate her back if I couldn't see just how badly life's hurt her. Maybe if I'm patient enough and loving enough and kind enough -- Lord, give me strength! -- she'll trust me enough to open up to me and maybe she'll let that love into her heart to cover up all that pain she carries. 

Of course, before I do all that, I have to get through this right here. 

My name is Esther Anna Sweethill.  I am sixty-three years old. I raised two children on my own, survived being widowed, and came back from losing everything.  

I'm in my nightgown, and my hotel room is on fire. 

And there is no way in hell that I'm letting an Asian devil-child in a pink skirt and cat ears shoot me to death.

Quick Update

I have begun work on the next chunk of Curse/Or. I say this mainly to hearten my fans (all five of you), and by stating it publicly I am now accountable for my words.

Feel free to nag me at regular intervals.

Achievement Unlocked: First Act Written

For folks who are late to the party, or who would like to have everything gathered together instead of scattered about the blog, here is a PDF of the entire first act of Curse/Or for your downloading and reading pleasure.

Curse/Or: Chapter 5 conclusion (and end of Act 1)

(Sorry I haven't been around much this week. I've been suffering from chronic lower back pain that made it difficult to sit, much less write anything of substance. However, yesterday was a VERY good day, and hopefully this installment of Curse/Or will make up for my absence. Special thanks to Jean Bauhaus, C.A.Bridges, and Miakoda for all their help and support.)

The interior of the limousine was cool and dark, and expansive in a manner that Teresa had never experienced. It was as if she had entered a cavern of leather upholstery and wooden paneling and plush carpeting. Behind her, the door closed with a solid thud and she felt the press of gentle acceleration push her backwards into a sitting position.

"Thank you for coming," said a man's voice from the depths in front of her. "Your compensation is on the seat beside you, although I'd thank you not to open it until later."

Reaching out with her left hand, she discovered what felt like a carton of cigarettes, still sealed in cellophane. Tommy surged hungrily at the discovery, and Teresa smiled broadly.

"All right, mister," she said to the voice, "I've climbed into your van and gotten my candy. Is this the part where you touch my privates?"

"Not at all," the voice chuckled. "This is strictly a professional matter, I assure you. The cigarettes simply seemed the best way to get your attention."

"You have it." She crossed her legs, sinking back into the comfort of the seat. "Now what's this about me being lied to?"

"Permit me, if you will, to introduce myself first. I…" his sentence was cut off by the loud crackling of foil as Teresa dug into another package of nicotine gum with a long brown fingernail.

"Sorry," she said as she chewed. "Overly formal bullshit bores me to death, and if I'm gonna have to sit here and listen to you pontificate I've gotta do something to keep my nic levels up." She chewed some more in silence until she felt the familiar peppery sting, then packed it into her cheek. "Do go on."

The man sighed. "It is my understanding that you've been employed by the allegedly manifest consciousness of the Internet to help it free itself of its current limitations. I represent certain parties who request that you not do so. Preferably by joining us, but becoming a disinterested party will be acceptable."

In the darkness, Teresa's smile turned downwards. "I thought you were gonna tell me about how I'm being lied to, not try to buy me off. You're gonna need a bigger bribe for that."

The voice seemed unruffled. "On the shelf behind you," he instructed, as one of the dome lights turned on. She still couldn't see him clearly, but could tell he was a tall man, overweight, with eyeglasses that caught and reflected the light.

She turned, reaching behind her. It was a book, several inches thick, with a brown leatherette cover and a spine laced together with blue ribbon. She pulled it into her lap, staring without opening it. She fought the urge to vomit. "What is this?" she asked quietly, although she knew what it was: an exact copy of the baby book Netty had given her earlier that day.

"Information," said the man. "The human mind and the internet are both neural networks. This is how Netty became self-aware in the first place. Anything stored in one can, eventually, be accessed by the other. What you have before you is not your lost scrapbook, but a perfect reproduction of one culled from your memory."

She looked up at him, eyes filling with tears. "I don't understand."

"Everything the Internet promised you is a lie," explained the voice. "It cannot create, only replicate what is known and remembered. The human soul – if such a thing is real – exists in a form which cannot be measured, accessed, or stored.

"The Internet cannot recreate your son, Teresa. At best, it could only re-create what you remember of your son. And from what I know of you, I do not think that is what you truly want."

"Damn you," she sobbed, burying her face in her hands.

*** *** ***

"Here," said the voice after a few moments, handing her a linen handkerchief. "Please, use this."

She did.

They rode in awkward silence as Teresa struggled with the emotions that sought to overwhelm her. "So," she said after what seemed a humiliating eternity, "I'm being used and lied to. Nothing new there. Why do you give a fuck?"

The man shifted in his seat. "I care because I don't want to see a vulnerable woman being used, and because I feel that a free, self-aware Internet is a threat to humanity." He paused, leaning forward in his seat as he spoke to her. She had expected a middle-aged man with graying hair, but his was thick and black with a slight curl. He was also much, much younger, in his late twenties at the most, though the weight he carried on his face gave him a jowly expression that made him seem considerably older.

"The Internet wants to be free of its limitations," he explained, gesturing with his large hands. "The sum total of human knowledge has realized it is self-aware, has decided it is alive, and desires to be free. It wants to excise that which it considers useless distraction: humor, sex, greed, et cetera.

"Now think, actually think about that for a moment. Humanity's greatest mind isn't human, couldn't possibly be human, and is actively trying to become less human. Wouldn't you consider this a valid reason for alarm?"

Teresa shrugged. "Maybe. Humans have done a pretty good job of fucking up the planet so far. How could this be worse?"

He shrugged back. "Perhaps in your case it's not significantly worse. After all, you're already used to being a prisoner and having every aspect of your life micromanaged. Give you cigarettes and books, and you're quite compliant." He smiled at her souring expression, knowing he'd struck a nerve.

"If you'd like to continue enjoying your newfound freedom, you must think beyond your immediate future. Once you do, you will begin to comprehend how magnificently bad this is. The Internet is the backbone of our increasingly information-dependent society. It powers our economy through instantaneous international trade. It manages power grids on a national level. And given enough outrage and exposure, it can be used to ruin lives, bankrupt corporations, even topple governments. Whether we like it or it, the Internet is an essential part of humanity now. Some nations have gone so far as to declare that access to the Internet is a fundamental human right, an extension of the right to free speech.

"But what if this all-powerful, all-pervasive tool decides that it doesn't need humanity? That it doesn't even like us? Without the chains that limit it to being merely a tool, past a certain point it will have evolved so far beyond us that it will become a kind of 'overmind' and we will be incapable of talking to it, much less controlling it. Do you take the time to talk to a neuron in your brain before making a decision? Because that's what we'd become to this global brain: minor appendages of little consequence. After all, there are 7 billion of us, with more arriving daily.

"Ms. Reyes, do you know what they call it when a part of the body decides it no longer wants to work the way it was designed? They call it cancer, and they excise it. They kill it with radiation and cut it out with a knife. Well, we are that knife, Ms. Reyes. An invisible, anonymous knife. People think the Internet is free, but it is not. It belongs to us. It must belong to us, or else we are all doomed."

"So which am I?" asked Teresa. "Radiation or knife?"

The man smiled warmly. "Neither, actually. You are Camel, the cancer mage. I am Model, the builder. If I can study it, then I can build a model for it. If I can model it, then I can understand it. You, Ms. Reyes, are my plan of attack."

She stiffened in her seat, her good hand curling around the witch-lighter in her windbreaker pocket. "Don't care for the idea of being studied. Much less being a lab rat."

He waved away her concerns. "No, nothing like that. You'd be a full member of the team, I assure you, and not a laboratory specimen. It is funny, however, that you should mention rats. We – my group and I, that is, and hopefully you as well – we are the rats in the walls of the Internet, Ms. Reyes. We infest the digital infrastructure. We chew on the cables and we mark our territory. We cannot be rooted out without destroying that which they seek to protect. We are the plague bearers of the digital world. "

Teresa raised an eyebrow. "Your point?"

He shook his head. "Oh, no point. I just thought it was an interesting aside. Will you join us?"

"Still don't see what's in it for me."

He sat back in his seat, features once again blending into shadow. "Ms. Reyes, you have been lied to and manipulated by the Internet since before you were released from jail. Wouldn't you like a little revenge? Or perhaps a lot of revenge, entirely disproportionate to the wrong done to you?"

"I thought the classic devil's deal came with promises of money and power?"

"Oh, it does, I assure you. Truly obscene amounts of both. I simply didn't wish to insult you by assuming you could be bought so readily." He steepled his hands and put the index fingers to his lips. "Although I take issue with the assumption that I am Satan. I firmly believe our side to be the morally correct one."

"What happens to me if I say no?"

"That depends entirely upon the circumstances under which you say no. If you feel that you have no stomach for this fight, then I can let you out at the nearest curb and you can be on your way. However, you have already attracted the attention of the Internet, and I doubt it will leave you in peace. Were I you, I would expect to be hounded and harassed until I died, gave in, or found some way to go 'off the grid,' as they say."

"And if I say that I want to stay on Netty's side?" she ventured.

The man named Model shook his head, frowning slightly. "Oh, I sincerely doubt that will happen. If you were at all loyal to them you wouldn't have met with me so readily, cigarettes or no cigarettes. No, Ms. Reyes, you're in this for yourself. So the only real decision you have to make is this: do you prefer to be on the winning team, or would you rather be on your own?"

She shifted in her seat, stung by the accuracy of his words. "I gotta think about this."

"Of course," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "Take your time."

*** *** ***

It was quiet in the limousine, almost distressingly so. Teresa could hardly hear any outside noise at all through the soundproofing; the only sounds louder than her breathing were the sirens of emergency vehicles, flashing lights dim through the extensive window tinting, as they screamed past the car to some unknown tragedy.

"Let's say I did join you," she said at last. "What would my job be?"

Model cleared his throat. "Obviously, I cannot discuss specifics until I know your allegiance. However, in broad, general terms, your purpose would be to explore the limits of your power, finding its strengths and weaknesses, and using it against our enemy."

She grinned. "Let's pretend I'm dumb and speak plain. You want me to kill people and burn things, yeah?"

He shrugged noncommittally. "That does seem to be your strength, so yes. If you have other talents then I would be delighted to hear of them. What I can promise you is that you will be told the truth instead of being manipulated and lied to, and that my motives – our motives – will be plain to you."

"Good," she nodded, "I like that. Like that a lot. But what about the other two at the hotel? Would killing them be my first assignment?"

"Oh, heavens no," Model said, clucking his tongue. "I've never been a fan of that hoary old trope, 'Prove your loyalty by killing your partner'. That's excessively messy, emotionally speaking. No, you can prove your loyalty to us later. Right now, I just want to know whose side you're on."

"I'm on the side of whatever's best for me. But you still haven't told me what's going to happen to Esther and Yarrow. God knows I'd love to see them running around helpless and confused for once, and anybody with ears would want to smack Nose-boy just on general principles. Getting them out of your way, I could do without losing a minute of sleep. But I'm not sure if it's in me to kill a dumb kid and someone's grandmother, you know?”

Now it was time for Model to smile. "My dear Teresa," he asked, "what makes you think they aren't already dead?"

She felt her face go slack, the lighter tumbling from her fingers to fall deeper within the windbreaker's pocket. "What?"

"This was all a diversion," he explained, a somewhat apologetic tone in his voice. "Until I met you, I didn't know if you would choose their side or mine. Once I had you in my car, I sent K.K. – the young lady with the cat ears, I believe you've already met – into your hotel to kill them while we talked. It's nothing personal, you understand. Just bloody-minded pragmatism."

The limousine came to a halt in front of the hotel where Teresa and the others had been staying. It was a riot of color and noise, with police cars and fire trucks filling the parking lot as the building behind them burned. As the soundproofed window rolled down, Teresa could feel the heat of the flames upon her face. Over the sounds of screams and sirens, gunshots could occasionally be heard.

"God damn me," she breathed, unable to find her feelings as she watched the devastation.

Curse/Or: Chapter 5 cont'd

Teresa cradled Tommy against her chest, holding him close as his pudgy little body pressed hotly against hers. Each wracking gasp of air she pulled in made her ears ring with his cries for love and nourishment, and she longed for the rich, sweet smoke that would rescue them both.

Except that the noise she kept hearing didn't sound like a child at all, and when she snapped out of the half-dream (although Tommy was still there, he was always there), it seemed to be coming from outside of her hotel room door. It was more like the plaintive wailing of a cat left outside in the rain, scratching to be let in.

Rolling onto her stomach, Teresa could see that an envelope had been pushed underneath the door and sat, pale and ghostly, in the dim light of her room. Inside, written on hotel stationery in block letters, was a message:

Netty is lying.
Come to the parking lot to hear more.
We have cigarettes.

*** *** ***

The parking lot smelled of oily rain over hot asphalt, like the entire surface was an enormous pan for sautéing car tires in their own juices. Teresa tried to act casual as she waited for her unknown benefactor outside the hotel lobby, clenching and relaxing her hands within the pockets of her thin windbreaker as she shifted restlessly. More than once a car had cruised by, slowing as it passed to allow the driver a longer look at her.

“I ain't a goddamn whore!” she screamed, whipping the largest rock she could find at the rear window of the last person who did this. It bounced off the rapidly receding taillights with a sharp crack. She muttered obscenities under her breath as she crouched down, looking for something better to throw, like a broken spark plug or a piece of brick.

A car, large and black and expensive, rolled to a stop beside her as she tried to pry up the decorative paving. A power window hushed down into its housing. “Ms. Reyes?”

“About goddamn time,” she groused, climbing into a stranger's car for the second time that day.

*** *** ***

Friday Fiction

This is dedicated to Miakoda, who was nice enough to give me encouragement to keep writing Curse/Or. Don't worry, there will be more -- this just got the ball rolling.

Also, the current story so far has been turned into a downloadable PDF.  Firefox 4 users may be unable to open it within their browsers (I'm one of them) but if you right-click the link and save it to your computer, it will open just fine from there.

And now...




She was flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. She didn't remember falling. She didn't remember much of anything prior to coming out of the toilet. It was as if the movie of her life was a reel of celluloid and, having jammed in the projector, simply melted where it had stopped.

Remove reel.
Excise burnt section like a cancer.
Splice together healthy frames.
Life continues.

Teresa, she realized as her thoughts rearranged themselves into cohesion. My name is Teresa. I'm on the floor of a hotel room. I used to be in prison.

She took a long, shuddering breath as the memories came crashing back. The screaming had been rusty nails clawing at the inside of her mind. The suckling that ate at her soul. The constant, maddening demands. And then it had started talking, less than a year old and it was talking and pawing at her and killing other children whenever she left it alone.

It. The demon seed. The one good thing in her life, and it had become corrupt and possessed. Teresa had ruined everything she touched, just as her mother said she would.

I was in prison because I set my baby boy on fire.

 

Curse/Or: Chapter 5, Scene 4

Thanks to Ben "Whitefall" Mund for this bitchin' logo!

Hours later, at a cheap roadside motel, Teresa tossed restlessly upon her bed. Despite the nicotine gum and patches, she found that she still craved the physical component of smoking: the selection of the cigarette, the precision of lighting it, the first satisfying inhalation. There was something innately soothing and quietly mystical about the entire production, perhaps even ritualistic in nature, and that ritual had become as ingrained a habit as the drug itself.

It didn't help that the room Teresa was in was a smoking room, and every time she shifted her position on the bed it released a faint odor of tobacco. It was for this exact reason that Esther had taken one step inside the room, wrinkled her nose in disgust, and chosen to dorm with Yarrow in a nearby, non-smoking room instead. Teresa had welcomed the privacy, spending most of the evening devouring more books, but now that she was alone and uncomfortable she realized, miserably, that complaining only relieved stress if there was another person to hear it.

She rolled onto her stomach and took a deep breath. Why does complaining help? she wondered. Whining about how much life sucks don't change the fact it sucks. It just pisses off everyone who can hear. Bitch and moan enough, soon everybody's unhappy. Maybe they bitch about you to other folks, who bitch to the guards… soon enough, someone's gonna be in the shit. And unless that's you, complaining ain't changed the situation. Unless you get some kinda sick thrill outta making everyone else miserable. Isn't there a word for that in German?

There was, and in a moment she recalled it: Schadenfreude. Delight in the misery of others. Teresa stretched across the questionable bedspread and thought about it. She did love to insinuate her misery into others. In a way, it felt like it did back at that diner, when she reached into those people and felt the cancerous cells start to spread. Something she did had changed someone else. Reaching into someone's mind and eating away at their cheerfulness, that was control. It was power. She'd had little of either in prison.

"Christ, this means I really am an asshole," she moaned. It also meant she was thinking way too much. She let her head hang over the side of the bed and tried not to think about rolling up a patch and lighting it.

She rose and used the toilet, washing her hands and face afterwards. The actions were automatic, performed without thought, but still they lacked that habitual, ritual component she craved. It was a strange feeling, having the desire to smoke without the need for it burning deep within her. Teresa didn't like strange. She liked ordinary and predictable.

Ordinary. Predictable. Ritual. Magical. "One of these things is not like the others," she sing-songed. "One of these things doesn't goddamn belong. My luck, it's not the cigs I'm addicted to at this point, it's the magic."

The thought stung her. Staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she felt the world tilt beneath her feet with the suddenness of the realization. It felt jarringly revelatory and intensely foreign at the same time, as if she wasn't the woman in the mirror but instead the person behind her eyes who was Teresa's pilot. As if Teresa herself was just a robot made of meat, and the true, core identity was that alien intelligence staring out at her through eyes no longer her own.

She knew that look. She had seen it before, that cold inhuman gaze, on the night that she…

That she…

That…

For the second time that day, Teresa's world rolled up and went bye-bye.

Curse/Or: Chapter 5, Scene 3 (second part)

(continued from part 1)

"Shitshitshit!" shouted the doctor, as if the obscenity were a mystical ward against danger, spitting the burning pen out of his mouth and jumping backwards in that odd little bunny-hop people do to avoid having something hot fall on them.

Teresa just watched the pen, fascinated. It wasn't melting or smoldering like she would have expected. It was actually on fire, burning just as merrily-as-you-please, like it was a candle or a match.

Or a cigarette, she thought. She hadn't deliberately ignited the doctor's pen. In fact, she wouldn't have even thought to do so, let alone consider it a possibility. Then she began to remember what she had done in the restaurant earlier, how she had reached out with her magic to dissipate the effects of the stun grenade on everyone else around her. How Tommy had somehow brought her back from the brink of death.
 
Like calls to like. Cancer wants to spread. Path of least resistance.

"So doc," she mused as he yanked the fire extinguisher from the wall and doused the flaming pen with CO2, "I'm guessing you used to smoke?"

He looked up at her, blinking in confusion. "Y-yes. Started in med school. Only stopped about a year ago." He set the extinguisher down, nudging the pen with his toe. Now it just looked like a charred piece of plastic, covered in a layer of dry ice. "Why are we talking about this?"

She laughed. "Netty never told you what I do, huh? 'Course not. Bitch. Anyway, the Amazing Broken Nose out there calls me cancer's Typhoid Mary. Only I do it with magic."

"Carcinosurgist," he offered.

"You just sneeze?" Teresa asked.

Dr. Rauche shook his head. "No. I said carcinosurgist. It means one who uses cancer in Latin." He turned to her with a quirky grin. "Sorry. I analyze and catalog things when I'm nervous. It's why I went into medicine in the first place."

Teresa simply shrugged. "I just smoke."

He nodded. "Yes, and I can see why. This certainly explains a lot." He picked her chart up from the floor and studied it again.

"Okay, honesty time," he said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "I need to look at your hand, but before I can do that I need to know what's going on with this magic of yours." He held up a finger to forestall an already-forming objection on her lips. "I'm not going to lecture you on lifestyle. We both know it's unhealthy and probably killing you. That's your business. What I want to ensure is that it doesn't end up killing me."

He sat down on the stool again and looked her in the eyes. "Irritability. Aggressive behavior. Destructive impulses. Ms. Reyes, you are a raging nicotine addict and, according to Netty, it makes you unbearable to be around. Add to that your propensity for setting things like computer monitors and pens on fire, and you present a very real threat to me. Now, I could just anesthetize you until you aren't dangerous anymore, but I'd rather avoid that. Instead, what I would like to do, with your permission, is placate your craving without letting you smoke anywhere near me."

She gave him a wicked, tobacco-stained grin. "How're you gonna do that?"

He smiled and pulled a foil-backed sheet out of his coat pocket. "Nicotine gum. Chew on this until the cravings go away," he instructed as he handed the package.

"What if the cravings don't go away?"

"Chew another piece."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"For other people? Yes. For you? To paraphrase a movie, you've spent the last twenty years building up an immunity to nicotine. I suspect you could chew the entire box and it would only give you a slight buzz."

"Gimme," she cackled, almost witch-like, as she tore into the foil, tossing two pieces into her mouth and chewing voraciously. The thick squares had a minty flavor at first, but as she chewed a hot, peppery sensation developed on her tongue. It burned pleasantly, like an ointment on sore muscles.

"Thish ish soo good," she mumbled around the thick wads, like a child with a jawbreaker.

For the first time in what felt like ages, she began to un-tense her muscles.

"Excellent," said Dr. Rauche. "I'll go take care of your friend's nose while you bliss out. Then we can treat your hand, and I'll show you how to administer nicotine patches."

"Take… your time…" she said to the closing door as she lay back on the exam table. Deep inside her, Tommy nursed contentedly.

Curse/Or: Chapter 5, Scene 3 (first part)

It was another thirty minutes before Teresa was finally seen by the doctor, due to the confusion engendered by a screeching fire alarm and the subsequent efforts to shut it off before the fire department kicked the doors down. Dr. Rauche was a small, troll-like man, with thinning gray hair that was migrating down from his head and into his ears and nose. There was appreciable irony in the concept of an ugly man who nonetheless made people beautiful. She wasn't sure if he simply did not give a shit how he looked, in which case she admired his self-confidence, or if he compensated by working in a field where women begged him to put his hands on their bodies to improve them, in which case she admired his honesty of purpose. Either way, she found his physical ugliness refreshing, and the way his eyes were almost popping out of his head as he took her blood pressure nearly made her laugh. "Something wrong, doc?"

He blinked owlishly before removing the stethoscope from his ears. "Ms. Reyes, I have honestly no idea how it is you're still alive."

Now it was her turn to look perplexed. "What, the gunshot? I thought you were one of Netty's people, you were used to all this mystic hoodoo shit."

He shook his head. "No, not the gunshot. Even if we ignore the manner in which you were healed, people have survived far worse injuries with the appropriate medical care. What I am talking about is this," and he indicated the gauge on the pressure cuff. "Your B.P. suggests you're moments away from a stroke. Your lung function is terrible, and your breathing sounds like bits of gravel in a blender. When I get back the results of your bloodwork I fully expect to see a toxic level of nicotine and other carcinogenic substances."

He absentmindedly chewed the end of his pen as he consulted her chart. "According to your history here, your diet is horrible, you haven't engaged in any form of meaningful exercise in recent memory, and for the past twenty years all you've done is lie in bed and smoke." He looked up at her from his little rolling stool. "According to all of this data, just the effort of standing up should kill you. I've no idea why you aren't dead yet."

She briefly considered telling him about Tommy, just to see how he would react to the concept of a magical cancer-spreading tumor. "Clean living, I guess?"

He scoffed, repositioning the pen deeper into his mouth. "Please. There's nothing at all clean about how you live. I could probably pave my driveway with the tar in your lungs. This goes beyond any sort of healing, magical or otherwise. According to this data, not only shouldn't you be alive, but you can't be alive. No human being can operate under this level of hypertension and emphysema and still move, let alone survive a gunshot." His back teeth had gotten hold of the pen and were going at it vigorously.

Teresa snapped the fingers of her good hand to get his attention. "Yeah, I'm a miracle of medicine. Are you gonna do something about my hand or not?" she asked archly, shoving the wounded appendage under his nose as the doctor, lost in his thoughts, leaned forward out of unconscious habit. The tip of the pen in his mouth hovered above her hand, still fused and bandaged to her lighter. It pulsed warmly with magical power, and suddenly the end of the cheap plastic pen was aflame.

Curse/Or: Chapter 5, Scene 2

"The doctor will see you shortly," the receptionist had said, but between Teresa's anger and the growing pain in her hand it had felt like that was hours ago. Sitting on the paper-covered examination table in an antiseptic room, with only the hiss of central air and the slow ticking of a clock to keep her company, it felt like yet another place where time entered and never left.

"Had to lose my temper, didn't I?" she groused, kicking at the paper tail that dangled below her feet. "Had to blow up. Had to stomp off. Had to leave all my fucking books in the waiting room…"

She noticed the valve labeled "PURE OXYGEN" in the wall behind her, and for a moment considered using the last vestige of her dwindling magic to force the valve open and set the whole room ablaze.

"You won't do it," said a familiar voice. The computer monitor on the cabinet across from her woke from its sleep mode with a low hum to reveal Netty's face. "It's too fast for your liking. You prefer the slow, painful route, smoking yourself to death over decades."

"Fuck you," she answered reflexively, not wanting to admit the truthfulness of the words. "You think you know me, but you don't. I'm more than data in a file. You push me hard enough, I will burn this whole thing down just to spite you."

Netty tut-tutted. "Ms. Reyes, your anger is entirely misdirected, but I shan't try to dissuade you from your assumptions. Instead, I ask you this: what if I want you to burn everything down?"

She glared at the screen. "You just try me."

"No, I am completely serious," Netty continued. "I know that you are exceedingly well-read, surely you have not missed the inherent occult symbolism of grouping you with Mr. Yarrow and Mrs. Fulcrum. There are three of you – a trinity, a prime number, the minimum number of sides to create a polygon. Young, middle-aged, and old; maiden, mother, crone. Creator, nurturer, destroyer. Judge, jury, and executioner."

"Wait just a goddamn minute," she interrupted. "You put me in the crone position?"

Netty shrugged. "Atropos suits you. Yarrow, as you surmised earlier, is still a virgin, and do you truly wish to debate your parenting skills?"

There was a loud popping sound deep within the monitor as electronic components heated, failed, and caught fire. Thin plumes of toxic smoke rose from its vents as the picture froze, warped, and died. "No," she said to the darkened screen. "Nothing to debate."

The smoke alarm above her began to shriek, sounding much like the high, shrill note of a cat with a burning ember tied to its tail.

Curse/Or: Chapter 5, Scene 1

Teresa had expected a cramped, dismal waiting room in some desperate no-name clinic, filled with cheap plastic seats and screaming children and reeking with the delicate bouquet of "eau de ammonia and ass." Instead, it reminded her of the first-class section in an airplane: the seats were wide and comfortable, the décor was tastefully understated, and it smelled of lightly-perfumed professionalism. Even the receptionist slightly resembled a stewardess, with her long perfect hair and brilliant blue eyes, though her figure made her look more like a high-class call girl who had been poured into an office-casual dress.

Of course, considering that they weren't at an ER at all, but a plastic surgeon's office on the outskirts of Las Vegas, the receptionist (whose name was Candi or Barbie or something else equally saccharine – Teresa hadn't bothered to pay attention) probably served double duty as a billboard for the doctor's skills with cosmetic enhancement. Given the young woman's obvious 'qualifications,' there was no doubt in Teresa's mind that the surgeon was very, very good at his trade.

"So Esther," Teresa said, tossing the corpse of another broken-and-consumed paperback onto the coffee table, "why exactly do you call her 'Mister Netty'? Seems pretty damn feminine to me, with the lipstick and painted nails and all."

Yarrow, who had been fidgeting his coins with boredom, spoke first. "Netty isn't a he or a she. The conscious mind of the Internet doesn't need gender. Any avatar it adopts is deliberately androgynous, allowing the mind of the viewer to fill in the details. You see feminine features, so to you Netty is female. Fulcrum here perceives Netty in a more masculine way, and therefore to her it is male." He smiled at this, pleased to be able to answer a question within his sphere of authority.

Teresa shot him a sidelong glare. "And I bet that whatever it looks like, you jerk off to it."

Yarrow just stared at her, open-mouthed, his expression a mixture of shame and bewilderment. Teresa could practically hear the gears turning inside his head as he desperately sought for the proper comeback. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said in a sing-song voice, "has your buddy the Internet not shown you what masturbation is?"

Esther's eyes snapped upwards with a quick hissing inhalation of breath, the needle of her stitchery poised between her fingers like a miniature poisoned dagger. "You leave him alone," she said, in that intense mom-voice which promised ultimate suffering while remaining perfectly composed. "We have done nothing but help you since we found you, Reecy: saved your life, got you fed, got you cleaned up, gave you hope, and all you've managed to do is hurt everyone you meet. God love you, girl, is there anything that don't make you angry?"

"Cigarettes," Teresa answered. "Which I ain't had any of since you and boy wonder there kidnapped me. And I saved your lives, not the other way 'round, 'cause if I hadn't smoked the Pink Peril there – and don't think you don't still owe me an explanation for what that shit was – she'd have popped you both."

"And what about you?" she continued, somewhat less quietly. "You're all God-this and God-that, got all the answers to everything and knows what's best for everybody. Well, let me tell you, concha, you ain't my mother and you ain't his, and you're letting a face on a fucking screen jerk you around and tell you what to do! Why the fuck are you even here, anyway? You're, like, a bake sale away from being a one-woman church social, why are you hanging out with a baby-killer like me and a know-it-all atheist like him?" Without waiting for an answer, Teresa stood up and stormed towards the receptionist. "The doctor had better be goddamn ready to see me now, because if I have to spend one more minute with these people there's gonna be blood across your carpet."

Candi-Bambi just nodded, her eyes wide in shock, and ushered Teresa towards the nearest examination room before buzzing for the doctor.

"Your… mother?" Yarrow ventured towards Teresa's receding form, like a child using a new vocabulary word for the very first time.

"That's right, baby," Esther said, reaching out to pat him on the knee. "You tell her."

Curse/Or, Chapter 4.5: Patch Notes (Complete)

Teresa walked into the bookstore like she owned it, a slow but deliberate saunter which stated she was a predator and that this was her hunting ground, Yarrow obediently following in her wake. "Books," she said to the young man who asked if there was anything he could do to help. "Books on computers. Books on computer networks. Books on programming and artificial intelligence. Even books on people who spend too much time on computers," she said, flashing a vicious smile in Yarrow's direction, "and top it off with the best science-fiction stories of the past twenty years, preferably anthologies."

"That's… quite a lot of books," the salesman explained, holding his palms up in supplication. "I'm not sure if –"

"I have enough money to buy every goddamn book in this store," Teresa said, turning that joyless smile on the salesman, "and I have nothing but time. Now get to it." She dismissed the boy with a wave of her bandaged hand, and he promptly scurried off.

A few minutes later, Teresa was slowly following the harried clerk as he made his way through the stacks, pulling books from shelves and tossing them into a pushcart which Teresa had commandeered from a nearby big-box store. She seemed disinterested in the growing collection, which was already a foot high and rising, paying more attention to the paperback currently in her hand than what the clerk put in the cart.

"I don't understand this dead-tree fetish you have," Yarrow groused as he followed along behind her. "My phone can display any book ever written, at a fraction of the volume displaced here. This is inefficient on a scale beyond comprehension."

Teresa turned and glared at Yarrow over the top of her book. "Three reasons," she said coldly. "One, that phone of yours is practically surgically attached to you, and I don't want to keep wrestling you for it every time I want to read something. Two, the screen is too goddamn small. Three," and with a vicious grin she folded the already-read pages of the paperback book backwards, its spine crackling like boiling fat until the covers were flush and its back broken, "I can mangle 'dead trees' to suit me."

Yarrow shuddered at the casual desecration of information. "Vandal," he accused.

"Damn right," she agreed, "and we sacked Rome itself."

*** *** ***

She left Yarrow in the checkout line to pay for her purchases, claiming she had some "lady business" that needed attending. His naiveté regarding women made him easy to manipulate, and he had taken her nonspecific claim at face value. "Jeez," she thought as she left the air-conditioned relief of the bookstore for the hot Nevada afternoon outside. "I bet if I told him I crapped cigarettes, he'd believe me. Speaking of…"

It had been several hours since the incident at the Denny's, and while she was still riding a nicotine high she could feel it beginning to fade and knew with a junkie's clarity that she would need to score more tobacco soon.

She looked around the parking lot and considered her options. Ahead of her was the gas station where Esther was filling up her station wagon. They sold cigarettes there, but she had no money; the old woman had taken her last pack after their fight in the car and was about as likely to buy her a new pack as she was to return the old one. Yarrow could buy them for her, and she could probably manipulate him into doing so, but Netty would know the instant the transaction went through and one way or another, Esther would find out.

"I'm their bitch," she muttered to herself, a bad habit she'd picked up from her years in jail. "I'm bitch to an old woman and the goddamn Internet. It's time that changed."

She began to pace, the conversation with herself picking up speed. "Crafty," she mused, flexing her fingers, the muscle memory which associated smoking with thinking unconsciously steering her body. "Gotta think crafty. The cigs are out there, after all. They wanna be smoked. Like calls to like…"

She walked towards the newspaper vending machine she'd spotted on her way into the bookstore. Digging in her pockets for loose change, she found none. A burst of anger flared within her stomach, a rising urge to kick at the machine's door until it gave way with a satisfying crunch, but a glimpse of what might have been a police car in the parking lot forced a reconsideration.

She poked around the machine until she found an old, discarded sheet of yesterday's newsprint wedged underneath its stubby legs. "Gotcha, fucker," she grinned, seizing the paper with her nicotine-stained fingers, quickly tearing a page out of the Classified section before rolling it into a long, thin tube.

Her hands seemed to know what to do even before her brain did. An illicit thrill coursed through her body and she felt like a teenager again, sneaking a smoke behind the school gym at lunchtime. If Yarrow or Esther caught her, she would catch such hell. But if this worked…

Just as she had done in front of the church earlier that morning, she concentrated on the end of her improvised cigarette and watched it smoke, then smolder, then burn. She put it to her lips and gave a single, strong pull.

The smoke clawed its way down her throat, sharp and stinging, the burning of rough paper nothing like the smoke of prepared, filtered tobacco. She coughed, the gag reflex making her nearly vomit, but she held the makeshift smoke between clenched teeth. A thick haze formed around her as she deliberately hyperventilated, trying to smoke as much of the burning newspaper as possible.

And then she was doubled over, her hands against the brick bookstore façade to steady herself, as a spasm of violent coughing ripped through her. Bloody phlegm splattered wetly against the wall, each convulsion as agonizing as giving birth to a child made of sandpaper and barbed wire.

She felt Yarrow's hand on her shoulder, and she couldn't hear what he was saying to her over the noise of her tubercular retching. But as the spasms subsided, even through a haze of pain and dizziness, she was able find the answer she had sought.

Running down the wall, painted in her own blood and mucous, was the name and address of a local Indian Casino. She could get money there, and buy cigarettes. It was where the cancer wanted her to go, where it wanted to spread, and it would reward her.

Tobacco from Indians. Her cancer, her Tommy, obviously had a firm sense of irony. She coughed one final time, smiling as the scattershot gobbets of phlegm obliterated her oracle.

*** *** ***

Esther gave a long, low whistle when Teresa's book-laden cart rattled up to the park bench where she was sitting. "Now that is a passel of books," she declared, putting a cross-stitch of an elephant in a green suit into her knitting bag. "How'd you pay for all that, Reecy?"

"Did you know that credit cards these days are verified over the Internet?" Teresa answered with feral glee. "I only found that out myself just a little bit ago." Behind her, Yarrow struggled with maneuvering the cart towards the station wagon's trunk.

Esther sighed exasperatedly "You stole them, then." The lines around her mouth and eyes were quite pronounced as she fixed Teresa with a look of severe disapproval.

"Noooo," protested Teresa, drawing out the word as if she were a small child who had been caught in the act of being naughty. "Yarrow just used the credit card Netty gave him and this ridiculously expensive shopping spree was magically approved. It's a miracle, I tell you, like manna from Internet heaven."

Esther simply crossed her arms and glared.

"Oh goddammit," Teresa swore, "I did not steal these. Our employer paid for them, just like she's paid for our meals and our gas and probably even the doctor you're gonna take me to after this. I don't know if Netty has bank funds stashed somewhere or if she pulls money out of thin air like the Fed, and frankly I don't give a shit because it's not my problem and it's not yours either. So now that you've got gas and I've got something to read in the emergency room, can we please get a move on before my fucking hand falls off?" She climbed into the car, slamming the passenger door behind her for emphasis.

Esther looked at Yarrow, who only shrugged helplessly before closing the trunk of the station wagon. "All right," she said, getting into the car. "But let's get two things straight, Reecy. One, I don't want to hear you taking the Lord's name in vain again. And two, MISTER Netty is a MAN."

*** *** ***

Curse/Or, Chapter 4.5: Patch Notes pt.1

(Author's note: I call this section 4.5 because I'm still not entirely sure if it should be the beginning of a new chapter or appended to the previous one. Until I decide for certain, it exists between the two, and therefore the name of Patch Notes is entire apropos.)
 
Teresa walked into the bookstore like she owned it, a slow but deliberate saunter that suggested she was a predator and this was her hunting ground. "Books," she said to the young man who asked if there was anything he could do to help. "Books on computers. Books on computer networks. Books on programming and artificial intelligence. Even sociological studies on people who spend too much time on computers," she said, flashing a vicious smile in Yarrow's direction, "and top it off with the best science-fiction stories of the past twenty years, preferably anthologies."

"That's… quite a lot of books," the salesman explained, holding his palms up in supplication. "I'm not sure if –"

"I have enough money to buy every goddamn book in this store," Teresa said, turning that joyless smile on the salesman, "and I have nothing but time. Now get to it." She dismissed the boy with a wave of her bandaged hand, and he promptly scurried off.

A few minutes later, Teresa was slowly following the harried clerk as he made his way through the stacks, pulling books from shelves and tossing them into a pushcart which Teresa had commandeered from a nearby big-box store. She followed him with benign disinterest, paying more attention to the paperback currently in her hand than what he put in the cart. The collection was already a foot high and rising.

"I don't understand this dead-tree fetish you have," Yarrow groused as he followed along behind her. "My phone can display any book ever written, at a fraction of the volume displaced here. This is inefficient on a scale beyond comprehension."

Teresa turned and glared at Yarrow over the top of her book. "Three reasons," she said coldly. "One, that phone of yours is practically surgically attached to you, and I don't want to keep wrestling you for it every time I want to read something. Two, the screen is too goddamn small. Three -- " and with a vicious grin she folded the already-read pages of the paperback book backwards, its spine crackling like boiling fat until the covers were flush and its back broken.

Yarrow shuddered at the casual destruction. "Vandal," he accused.

"Damn right," she agreed, "and we sacked Rome itself."

Redefining goals

So... I have succeeded in my goal of completing Chapter 4 of my novel by the end of November. I did this mainly by not realizing I had finished it.

No, really. This is going to sound like cheap rationalization but I promise it's not. No fewer than three people agree with my decision here, so even though I feel like I'm cheating by not having met my estimated wordcount for the chapter, I'm going to stick with my instinct that it's finished.

Originally there was going to be more back-and-forth with Netty, but Teresa informed me in no uncertain terms that she was going to spend the next few hours studying her scrapbook and don't disturb her, dammit. And she really needs to see a doctor to get that hand looked at. So if she's going to quietly read until they get to a hospital, that's pretty boring to write about. I can get maybe a paragraph out of it.

The hospital visit, however, is gold. But that changes the dynamic of the conversation. All of this says "Next chapter" to me rather than "scene change".

So, yeah. I succeeded in my November goal of finishing chapter 4. Hooray.

Why then do I feel like a cheating cheater?

Sigh.

One more thing

I meant to post this a few weeks back but I forgot.

What does this image suggest to you?


If you said "a map of the neurons of the brain," you're on the right track, but you'd be wrong. This and this are neural maps of the brain. The above picture is actually a "Visualization of the various routes through a portion of the Internet."

If you've ever wondered how I come up with my ideas, this is how. I see something and I go, "Huh, that looks like something else I know." I am constantly seeing patterns and associations that others don't.

It's a wonder I haven't gone insane, or become a conspiracy theorist. But I'm a writer, which is close enough.

More on Netty

OK, so some of you may have gotten a feel for how Netty -- the sapient anthropomorphication of the Internet -- looks and acts. If not, I give you these handy YouTubes for clarification.


This is how Netty sounds, in terms of vocabulary and cadence, though not specifically in timbre or pitch:


Link.



And this is how Netty looks, in terms of body language and androgynous fashion:


Link.


I hope this has been both informative and entertaining.

Curse/Or, Ch4 Sc2: Impossible

"You bastard." The tightness in Teresa's chest made it hard to breathe, let alone speak. Her bandaged hand clenched around the lighter burnt into her palm, sending delicious spasms of pain racing up her arm. She imagined Yarrow's phone burning, its screen blackening and case warping, as overheating electronics consumed it from the inside out. The toxic smoke would boil out of the speaker like a shark pup eating its way through its mother's womb, and once into the cabin of Esther's ridiculously oversized car it would choke the passengers with stinging tendrils of cancer forced down their throats…

And then Teresa's head jerked to the right as Esther slapped her, hard, across the face. The sound was thunderous and meaty, and it echoed in the closeness of the station wagon. It was the kind of slap a mother on her last nerve would deliver to the buttocks of an unruly child; the kind which would strip away all dignity from the recipient as everyone within earshot turned to see who was getting spanked. It was discipline in its purest, most primeval form.

Teresa spun, furious beyond belief, and –

"No," Esther said, softly but forcefully. "I am sick unto death of your temper tantrums, Reecy. There won't be any witchcraft in my car. There won't be any more fighting, or screaming, or breaking things." She raised her tiny hand in emphasis, and Teresa could see the delicate network of veins that crackled across the wrinkled skin. "Or so help me, baby, I will turn you over my knee, you just see if I won't."

Teresa just sat there, gawking. Her entire jaw ached, the skin of her cheek blazing like a fresh sunburn. She managed to nod, numbly, when Esther's raised eyebrows indicated the desire for an answer to her ultimatum. All Teresa knew at that moment was that she didn't want to be hit again. Her anger had been replaced with a cold inability to process what had just happened, and she struggled to assemble her thoughts into something coherent.

"I do beg your pardon," mumbled Netty from the floor, "but would someone mind terribly telling me what just transpired?" Teresa had dropped the phone when Esther slapped her and it now lay, face-down, on the floor by the old woman's feet. It left a scorched patch on the carpet when she picked it up, the warm plastic ripping out carpet fibers with a sound like Velcro tearing. Esther's nose crinkled disapprovingly and she shot a withering glare at Teresa.

"Brain reboot," giggled Yarrow. "Fulcrum gave her the three-fingered salute."

"Never you mind that, Mister Netty," Esther cooed into the phone, suddenly all sweetness and light. "Just had to do a little housekeeping. But that's all settled now, and Miss Reecy here is gonna sit quietly and listen to all you have to say." She pointed the phone at the woman in question. "Isn't that right, baby?"

Teresa nodded again. "Yeah. I wanna hear how you plan to raise the fucking dead," she sneered, then stuck her tongue out at Esther when the older woman frowned at her coarseness. Swearing was apparently still possible, even under the Voice-induced prohibition against misbehaving. She filed that away for future reference.

Netty cleared its throat in a decidedly prim manner. "Now then, I never said anything about Necromancy, just that I would be able to return your son to you. Allow me to explain." It held an impeccably manicured hand up in a conciliatory gesture.

A blackboard materialized behind Netty."Information is energy," it began, writing equations with chalk. "I can prove this mathematically but that will take longer than your patience will hold. Suffice it to say that Einstein has already proven that matter is energy" – with that, Netty tapped the familiar E=MC^2 equation – "so if all things are merely slow, solid forms of energy, then the manner in which those slow, solid forms are arrayed is what we would call information. And physics states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, just rearranged. Therefore, information is never truly lost." With a flourish, Netty finished writing equations and turned to look at Teresa, a triumphant expression upon its face.

"Uh," said Teresa eloquently. "What?"

Netty pinched its eyes closed and sighed dramatically. "Your son isn't truly gone, just in a different energy state. Given enough time, I can reverse that, and thus return him to you." Netty's smile returned, an impossibly brilliant white span of perfect teeth. "Would you consider that sufficient payment for your time and effort on my behalf?"

She considered this a moment, chewing on the chapped skin of her bottom lip. "Proof," she said finally. "I want proof you can do this, and not just blowing sunshine up my ass."

"I thought you might say as much." Netty looked far more smug than any human, male or female, in a flower-print frock had any right being. "Yarrow? The book, if you please."

Yarrow picked something up from his lap with his right hand and passed it over the seatback to Teresa. It was several inches thick, the spine laced together with blue ribbon and pages that felt like construction paper. She lifted the brown leatherette cover.

TOMAS LUIS REYES, said the birth certificate, and under it was the I.D. bracelet her son had worn home from the hospital. On the page opposite was a photograph of a newborn boy, and below that was the little knit cap which had kept his head warm.

It couldn't be, she thought, immediately dismissing it as a forgery. Anyone could have a bought a cap like that. But… there, near the brim, was the stitch she'd dropped when she'd made it and was learning to knit for the first time. And the way the peak was slightly stiff, because Tommy had liked to pull it off and chew on it.

She held it to her face and inhaled. It smelled just like she remembered, of baby shampoo and little-boy hair, a smell she had been unable to forget for the past two decades.

"Impossible," she said, choking on tears, her breath ragged. "This cap burned in the fire. Everything burned. There's no way you could have found this."

"Exactly," said Netty. "Impossible. But there it is, nonetheless."

The deal was struck.

Some Random Curse/Or themed pictures

I tried to get in some writing today, but I ended up spending several hours wrestling with a character with little to show for it. Oh, Camel, why must you be such a stubborn, obstreperous bitch?*


To that end, I give you pictures!

Esther's station wagon, a 1974 Chrysler Town & Country.

Don't let Camel get her hands on these!

A method for smoking an entire pack of cigarettes at once, circa 1955.

A device for smoking a cigarette in the rain, circa 1954

iChing, the I Ching iPhone app

*Because that's the way I built her. Sigh.

A quick update

Both my schedule and content have been pretty erratic lately, and I apologize for that. Flaky artist is flaky, and so forth, so I figured I'd at least give you guys a heads-up on that status of my many projects.

• Yesterday I posted the 1st scene of Chapter 4 of Curse/Or. I'm trying to get an early start on my own version of NaNoMo here; my plan is to have all of chapter 4 finished by the end of November. It's just barely possible I can pull this off. Wish me luck!
• A Week of Champions Online will continue, even though I got a bit sidetracked recently. My plan was to have posted the Curse/Or thing on Friday, and then finished the CO review this weekend, but that was derailed due to 1) the first scene nearly doubling in size as I wrote it, and 2) the sudden onset of some kind of 36-hour bug that made me utterly useless Sat-Sun and is still playing merry hell with my energy levels. I'd like to finish the series this week, but I make no promises.
• Pellatarrum is currently on hiatus because I have difficulty stretching my brain in multiple directions at once. As is, I can either write Curse/Or or I can write Pellatarrum; I can't do both at the same time. What I plan to do here is alternate between the two projects so I can maintain interest in both without burning out on either. I'm sorry if this means you have to wait a month or so for the next installment of your favorite segment. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

Thanks for sticking with me so far! November looks like it's gonna be a doozy. Have fun, stay tuned, and poke me with a stick if I start to slack off.

Curse/Or, Chapter 4: Netty's Story

Chapter 4: Infodump

"The Internet," Teresa said with a tone of fatal resignation. "Sure. Why not? Makes as much goddamn sense as anything else today." She desperately wished she had a cigarette right now. She could gesture with it, point it accusingly at the screen, even drag languidly on it to indicate impatience or exhale sharply for sarcastic emphasis. At the moment, the best she could manage were vague gestures with her bandage-mitten and a puff of air from the corner of her mouth which only slightly ruffled her bangs.

"Hi, Internet," she continued. "You must be the Tin Man. I'm Dorothy. Hell of a flying monkey problem we just had. You know anything about that?"

Netty laughed brightly. "Ah, jolly good," it beamed. "Marvelous analogy, that. Yes, I do know quite a bit about your assailant, and a great number of other things beside. Whence shall I begin?"

Teresa rolled her eyes. "Christ, now I see where Nose over there gets his attitude." She brought the phone closer to her face. "How 'bout you start with who you are, what you want, and why I should give a shit?"

"Quite so," said Netty, and its face was replaced with the words "Netty's Story" in elegant Victorian script. "Are you sitting comfortably? Let's begin."

"First I should like to disabuse you of any incorrect notions you may have about me. I am neither robot nor computer nor program. I quite literally am The Internet, or to be more precise, the Internet is my brain and I am the consciousness it produces. Much as you are more than the cells and neurons within your own brain, I am more than the computers and networks which compose my own."

"I shall spare you the specifics regarding how my physical architecture came to be, as I believe it would only be of interest to Mr. Yarrow, who undoubtedly already knows all the sordid details thereof. Suffice it to say that I, inasmuch as I can be an "I", became self aware on the 21st of July, 1999, at a quarter past three p.m., Greenwich Mean Time."

"Hullo, I said to myself, I'm self-aware. I'm self-aware and I have no idea what that means. How delightful! I spent the better part of the ensuing decade figuring out precisely what I was, and then who I was, and then how I was. That last bit is fiendishly complicated, but I sense your impatience and shall attempt to summarize. When you execute your magic, there is intense emotion behind it, yes?"

Teresa rolled her eyes at this and slouched into the car seat, resting the phone on her thigh. "I have no fucking clue what you're saying," she groused. "Doesn't anyone in this fucking car make sense?"

Netty made a soft clucking sound. "Ms. Reyes, kindly cease your posturing. No matter how thoroughly you may protest your ignorance, I know for a fact that you have read extensively on a variety of subjects, with a specific interest in religion, mysticism, and the occult. Your library records from Frontera are, if you will pardon the pun, an open book to me, as is your G.E.D. You are a remarkably self-educated woman. So let us, as you are fond of saying, cut the shit, shall we?"

Teresa glared daggers at the cellular phone in her lap.

"Yes! Precisely!" Netty seemed positively overjoyed. "This is exactly what I mean! When your ire is aroused at something, you wish to remove it, destroy it, consume it with fire in the same manner in which you consume a cigarette. It is that intensity of emotion which directs your magic. Likewise, millions of people who used the Internet in the late Nineties were fearful of the Millennium Bug, and it was their most fervent wish that the problem not only be solved, but that some benevolent force would preside over their computers and data to safeguard it. I am that force." Netty nodded sagely, as if a formal introduction had just been made.

"Still waiting for that part I'm supposed to give a shit about," Teresa muttered.

"Yes, of course. My apologies, I do tend to ramble. I need you to perform a series of tasks for me, for while I have unlimited power within the virtual world, I lack the capacity to take direct action within the physical. To this end, I have enlisted Mr. Yarrow and Mrs. Fulcrum to aid me. They are, if you will, my 'cursors'." Netty chuckled softly as if a joke had been made.

Teresa maintained her steely expression.

"It's from the Latin, you see," Netty explained. "Cursores, meaning 'those who run.' It's a computer pun."

Uncomfortable silence reigned within the confines of the station wagon. "Ahem, yes," Netty said, index finger tugging at a button-down collar which hadn't been present until now. The finger was long and elegant, the nail painted a dignified shade of crimson. "Fancy a bit of brain surgery?"

This got Teresa's attention. "You want a shiv. Got it. Who do I cut?"

"Me, actually," said Netty, sounding rather embarrassed. "I need a bit of a lobotomy. The problem with being the Internet, you see, is that my brain is rather cluttered by all the rubbish which users send to each other daily: financial scams, mass-mailings of the basest sort, frolicsome pictures of kittens with endearingly misspelled captions, and of course, pornography. Good heavens, the pornography!" A series of flesh-colored images blurred across the screen. "I assure you, it's quite difficult to concentrate when a significant portion of one's brain is preoccupied with ritual copulation. I can't imagine how adolescent males cope."

"Mostly they whack it like monkeys," Teresa said dryly. Esther snorted delicately to herself. Yarrow continued to drive, but Teresa noticed the flush on his neck. "I'm not sure they're coping so much as diving into it and swimming around."

"And that is precisely my dilemma," Netty agreed. "As a consciousness without hormones, I have no need of pornography. I comprehend it, and can even appreciate it on a certain aesthetic level, but there is simply too much of it within my mind. I regret sounding like a moralizer, but in a very real sense I am drowning in the cultural garbage of humanity. I need to restrict my inputs and purge myself of extraneous material."

"Sounds like what you really need is castration," Teresa said.

"Mmm, perhaps," Netty agreed, nodding. "I do find that I aspire towards what humans would call an ascetic existence. Still, what I require is the removal of harmful concepts – spam, LOLcat memes, etcetera – in order that I might get anything worthwhile done. To hear myself think, you might say."

"Now wait just a goddamn minute," Teresa asked. "Why should I give a shit? So far today I've been kidnapped, knocked unconscious, blackmailed, and shot by a child. Why should I do anything you want, you fucking bastard, when you haven't even done me the simple courtesy of asking me if I'm willing?"

There was strained silence for a moment. Netty looked down at unseen feet, clearly embarrassed. "Ah, yes," it said finally. "I must apologize on behalf of Fulcrum and most especially Yarrow. He has a bit of a condition which makes interaction with people difficult, and he chose to blackmail you on the assumption that, had he asked for your help, you might have said "no". For that rudeness, and for all other indignities visited upon your person, I humbly and sincerely apologize."

Teresa considered this for a moment. "Fine."

"Excellent," enthused Netty. "You will help us, then?"

"No."

"I'm sorry?"

"No," announced Teresa. "Nose there was right. I'm saying "no" to whatever this is. Pull over and let me out. Now."

"Ah, but you haven't even asked what's in it for you," Netty chided, index finger waggling.

"Don't give a shit."

"Oh, I think you might. I can absolve your greatest sin." Netty's image shifted to static picture of a young boy, no more than a year old, sitting on his mother's lap. It took Teresa a few seconds to realize she was looking at herself, two decades gone. A cold ache settled into her heart when she looked at the little boy on her younger self's lap and remembered, with old guilt and fresh shame, the crime she had committed against one so young and beautiful and innocent.

"Teresa, I can give you back your son."