Abnegation

Used in a sentence:

• There had been an abnegation of key facts in the case, despite his using every lawful trick in the book he could remember, leading to its dismissal.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

So another fancy way of saying renunciation or negate or both! You’re welcome!

Not Enough Memory
By Nojh Livic

“Here is what I don’t understand,” Amon began, waving his hand towards the assembling crowds. Hasim used an infinite amount of willpower not to roll his eyes at his friend, mostly by focusing his attention on the crowds. The stadium was filling in quickly with over three-quarters of standing room filled in under a half an hour. Amon and Hasim had been one of the first inside and were therefore accorded a prime view of the stadium floor, after the eram, who used the three rows of benches ahead of them. The eram, unlike the masses of terum, had the luxury a guaranteed unobstructed view of the coming proceedings and therefore were less inclined to rush to their seats when the doors opened. This left Amon a nice clear view of the floor where a blue orb was set into the ground inside a huge inscribed circle. It pulsed slowly and rhythmically with light.

“Don’t you think?” Amon finished, turning his attention to his friend, only to find him staring at the floor below. Amon smacked Hasim on the shoulder. “Hey! Don’t stare!” the older man hissed quickly. Hasim shook his head and turned away slightly.

“Sorry. I got distracted,” Hasim said even as his eyes began to slide back to the floor. Amon grabbed his shoulder and turned him around to face him, much like most of the others in the crowd were doing. Eyes averted looking directly at the gleaming orb emitting light up towards the open sky of the stadium. Those who brought their children were having to keep them from looking as well. They all, however, felt the allure of the light.

“Exactly. We all trundle in here like camels to an oasis, knowing we’re denied the pleasures of the light. There’s no point. We might as well all stay home. None of us will be chosen,” Amon ranted. Hasim noted his friend was drawing a few looks from those behind him. He gave his friend a meaningful look, nodding. Amon didn’t take the hint. “Yet worse, you and I are near the head of the pack. At least the ones in the back won’t feel it as badly. You know I hear they measured width of the power. That the only reason why there are seats from this point on is that one doesn’t have the strength to stand so close for the length of the ceremony.”

Amon was trudging very close to heresy and was now drawing looks from a few of the parents in the crowd. Hasim jabbed his friend in the stomach once, hard. Amon, who was taking in a breath to say more, had it knocked out of him. He would have tumbled forward if Amon hadn’t caught him. They leaned against the diving stone railing that kept them from the eram seats. “Careful my friend. There are words reserved for drawn curtains,” he advised the older man. Amon seemed to nod, although he might have simply been gasping for breath.

Hasim patted his friend on the back and spared a quick glance towards the light again, disappointed to find that enough of the eram in their blue robes had taken seats to block a good view of the stadium floor. He grew both excited and nervous as the number meant that the ceremony would start soon.

“I will recall it this time,” Hasim vowed quietly, more to himself than Amon. Amon, who had mostly recovered his breath, didn’t bother to hide his disdain filled eye rolls. Hasim understood. Nobody remembered the ceremony. This would be his fifth attendance. He had resolved to remember everything that happened, rather than the vague dreamlike memories he had from prior visits that everybody experienced. Everybody’s accounts varied save for the sense of overwhelming calm and peace, as well as the longing to find that calm and peace again.

“Your memory techniques?” Amon asked. Hasim only nodded.

“You know you almost feel entranced not a few moments ago. Where were you memory techniques then?” Amon asked.

“I wasn’t prepared,” Hasim admitted. Most of the benches were full. A hush was slowly settling over the crowds.

“Well better start. Here come the priestess,” Amon pointed towards the glint of silver appearing in the gaps between the blue robes of the eram in front of them.

Hasim held his breath and began to focus. Unlike the others of the crowds in the standing room, who turned their backs to the ceremony, he remained looking forward like the eram. He concentrated on letting his eyes unfocused and slowly let out his breath, trying to direct his attention out and around him while keeping focusing on taking long deep breaths. He would reme-

—

Great lights so bright they blinded him twice over. He felt pain in every inch of his body. Pleasure too but only as a light salt to the sweetness of the pain. There was agony all around him; cries both human and inhuman echoing through the stadium. Escape was all he could think of. He walked. He pushed. He ran. He jumped. Nothing changed but he knew he was making progress. Red filled his vision, then silver, then blue. The screams where omnipresent but further away now. The chanting was closer. There was warmth but greater pain.

Then there was clarity.

He knew not the creature before him. It denied all words of description he had been taught. Around it were the priestess, their robes discarded, prostrate in a circle around it. He stood just inside the great circle but outside of it were the masses. Light streamed from every direction, a multitude of flowing colors, from the crowds that he had been apart of towards the creature. If it had something resembling an orifice, he was unsure, it used it to feed upon this light, while other parts of its anatomy writhed across the floor to touch not just the priestess but the eram in the seated benches before it.

He stood transfixed, taking all of this in. He was not alone. Where were several other fellow terum who had made it to the circle. They too stood looked around in confusion. One he recognized. The woman who had taught him the memory techniques. He opened his mouth to call out to her.

Then the creature touched him.

—

-ber. Hasim screamed. The rest of the people around him were shaking their heads as if trying to shake grogginess from their minds. Several startled and back peddled away from Hasim. Hasim clutched at his head. There was no calm. There was no peace. No fuzzy memories. He remembered the pain. He remembered it all. And all of it pained him.

“Hasim? You’ve been chosen?” Amon asked worriedly, reaching out to touch his friend who was wildly looking down towards the stadium floor now. The eram and the priestess were gone, as was usual. “Hasim? What’s wrong?” Amon asked, grabbing the younger man’s shoulders. The orb too was dim, shedding no light. There was no sign of it. Hasim broke the older man’s grip and leapt over the stone divide, into the forbidden place of the eram and towards the circle. Amon reached to grab him but it was too late. “Hasim!” Amon yelled.

Hasim ran for the circle, tugging at his robes. He could feel where it had touched him. There was not just a numbness but an emptiness so profound. His robes fell away as he entered the circle. Already the guards of the eram were filling into the floor, spears pointed towards him but he gave them no mind. Those who looked directly upon his chest actually hesitated a step.

He was marked. His skin a horrible pale stain of asymmetric design that resembled nothing natural. Hasim touched it and felt nothing, not even the tips of his fingers. What was worse he could feel the mark growing. Not across his skin but down into it. He had to stop it.

“Hasim!” Amon yelled again, as if he could scream some sense into his friend from afar, but Hasim realized that his voice was too close. He turned to see his older friend had followed him to the floor of the stadium. He was also yelling to warn him of the guard who brandished a spear and charging at Hasim. By turning around he showed his disfigurement to the charging guard. The guard’s eyes bulged at the sight and he stumbled back involuntarily. Amon too, being several strides away, halted his run with a skid, staring.

“I have no heart!” Hasim screamed up towards the darkening sky. It was true. He could no longer feel his heart beat nor his lungs filling with air. He was numb on the inside and the feeling only grew. As if to assist his claim, the guard who had stumbled back gathered his courage and thrust the spear forward. A solid blow driven into where Hasim’s heart should have been. Instead the spear struck the pale mark and was swallowed, no blood spewing forth. The tip and haft simply sunk into the man impossibly far, not merging from the opposite side.

The guards fled then. The few spectators in the stadium who had the willpower to stay now too found their courage fleeing them and left to chase it. Only Amon remained, kneeling in the sandy floor strides from his friend. Hasim looked at Amon sadly. Amon stared blankly at his friend, his mouth agape.

Hasim carefully pulled the spear from his breast intact, his the mark unmarred. He was numb now, from the neck down. He knew he would be dead. His body might yet remain animated but that which made him Hasim would cease to exist in moments. “Good bye, my friend. Please, do not remember,” Hasim said to Amon, then turned and fell head first upon his spear. His body and the spear clattered to the ground, spraying blood upon the orb.

Amon continued to stare in shock, only barely registering his friend’s suicide, or that the orb beneath him had begun to glow. In that blue glow he reme-

—

He felt the pain and the pleasure but he did not scream like the others. He felt it not as they did but as he would around them. Their pain and their pleasure radiated from them. Beside him his partner and friend screamed the loudest. He always screamed the loudest. Unlike before he was flailing. The eram had taken notice and were removing him from the stands, carrying him to the circle where it stood. He couldn’t look at it. He knew that if he did, it would notice him and he would feel the pain the others hand. He had to pretend. He had to shake, writhe, and worship. It was the only way to survive.

—

-bered, his own repressed memories surfacing. “No,” Amon whispered, defiantly climbing to his feet. More guards had appeared, as did several priestesses. The guards kept their distance but the silver swathed women were hurrying towards him. Each step he took strengthened his resolve and he covered the strides between himself and his friend’s body easily. He grabbed the haft of the spear and pulled it free. The tip was stained with Hasim’s blood.

“No!” hissed the closest woman as he held the spear in two hands above his head and pointed the tip down towards the orb. Up close it glowed brightly and while it held his attention, his anger and fear kept his wits from being absorbed by its false promise.

He thrust the spear down. The orb shattered. Amon knew nothing more.

Estuary

Used in a sentence:

• The horse had alacrity but it just didn’t have nimbleness it needed to dodge the obstacles.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

I want to say this word was on one of my spelling lists back in grade school. It is hauntingly familiar. While not as fun to pronounce as some of our words it is still a very useful word to know if you’re trying to describe a map or a location a long a coast. What person hasn’t had that come up in conversation every other day or so?

Writing Sessions

Word Count: ~800

Actually it might be more. Hi! Its been awhile. I’ve been writing, mostly. Perhaps not as much as I should or as diligently as I’d like. I’ve written 3,593 words on everlasting since my last update, and fleshed out around five pages of Matrix since then. Also been keeping up with my free writes for the website, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. That’s been taking up my hour and a half or less long session of writing twice a week. If I get any more done, I’ll probably need to start scheduling more time.

Writing sessions have been chaotic affairs. As per norm they mostly encompass me or sometimes Daniel. I’ve found no one else interested in joining regularly. I’m starting to get to the point where I’m going to need critique on my work, so I may have to resort to looking for writing groups in my area, which will be hard for me. We’ll see though.

Everlasting Update

Word Count: 111, 434

I emailed Mur Lafferty of I Should Be Writing regarding if I should keep working on Everlasting or just skip to writing the ending and get to editing. Her advice, of course, was just to push through. Which is what I am doing. Writing today came rather easily. I’m trying not to judge or edit as I think about it, but I so want to sit down and plan out a better outline and flow for this story. I’m not even sure I like the ending I have planned anymore. Since its been two months and I’ve only written 3000+ words, I obviously haven’t been writing much on it, which means I’ve been taking a break. Actually I wrote a short story, which now needs editing. But obviously that break didn’t do much to help my motivation. I just need to keep chugging along.

Short Story: Station

Word Count: 6,799

Its working title is Station. It actually came out of a writing prompt from Writing Excuses. I was attempting to write some  Free Writing and it ended up running way longer than a free write but I was enjoying it. So I wrote it. I’ll go back to edit it sometime soon. After I’ve made some more headway in Everlasting.

The basic plot point is a space gas station attendant is bored because she took an extended week-long shift. Due to a strange but well-known astrological effect, all communication with the planet is cut off for the entire week. So no ships were going to refuel at her station. She was basically there in case something went wrong. She planned on using the time to catch up on her entertainment media and get some alone time, only to find out someone had erased all her media. So after a few days of going stir crazy, she wishes for something, anything, to happen. And that’s when something does.

It is a far future transhuman sci-fi story. I’ll probably talk about it more when I get back to editing it.

—

So that’s it for me. I’ll try to post more regularly.

The Viewers
By Nojh Livic

“And… release,” Justin ordered, smoothly pointing towards the screen. The technician at station two hit a button and the screen when white only to be followed by static. Justin did not have to make a motion for an image filled the screen again, this time displaying camera two’s field of view according to the label at the bottom of the screen. It showed two figures backlit by a huge explosion. They were running away only to be blown forward off their feet. The pair managed to keep a death grip on each other’s hands as they fell forward. The man fell on his face while the woman kept a knee under her.

Justin could feel the tension in the room. He slowly pushed his hand forward and the image on the screen slowly zoomed in towards the fallen man. He was perhaps in his mid twenties wearing a jumpsuit of brown and blue. He was not moving. Justin’s eyes flickered to a smaller screen in a console in front of him which was showing the feed from camera five. An operator at station three was keeping camera five trained directly on the woman’s face. She was coughing and recovering from the explosion. With a flicker on his other hand that feed was now on the dominant screen. He panned it slightly so that both her face and her grip on man’s hand was in view. “Stand by audio two,” Justin said to the room. Behind him the lead audio engineer began typing at his console. Most of the rest of the room, in contrast, had their eyes glued to the screen.

The woman tugged at the man’s hand as she tried to wave away smoke from in front of her face. She opened her mouth to say something. “Audio,” Justin ordered.

“David,” the woman coughed and tugged on the man’s hand again. Justin switched to the wider view, framing both David and the woman, who also wore a jump suit like the man save that hers was red and gray. With his other hand he took direct control of camera five and  manipulated it to zoom in on the woman’s face again. The was not making any attempt to stand up. “David?” the woman repeated, turning towards the fallen man, still on her knees.

“Clean the air!” Justin barked. More technicians began typing away at their consoles. Within a second the view of both of them was clear of the smoke from the explosion. The woman didn’t notice. She shifting her glances between the man’s head and the death grip he had on her hand while trying to shake him awake.

“David, get up. David!” the woman’s cry was far more urgent now. She spared a glance back in the direction of the explosion’s origin. On camera three the operator had a close up of the face down man but it didn’t tell Justin anything. Instead, he glanced at his own console which had to the side a vitals read out. Justin nodded to himself. He scanned the row of small monitors, looking for the prime shot.

“Sir! Camera one is operational again,” the operator at station one reported. Justin saw his smaller monitor of camera one flicker back to life. The static had been replaced with the exact image he was looking for. He waved one hand at the view of the two people and it vanished. A blasted landscape replaced them at the edge of which lay a humanoid robot, scorched and mostly in pieces, twitching. Justin let that image hang for several heart beats before he panned the camera slowly up. Several robotic legs, followed by torsos, arms, and heads, were revealed as they marched forward into view, obviously unmarred metallic skin gleaming in the dusk light. Their optic ports glowing a menacing red.

“Oh no. David, please no,” the woman’s voice was carrying over the speakers even as the view showed the relentless march of at least three more drones. Justin checked his monitors before flipping back to three for the wide view of the pair. The man was now on his side and the woman was touching his face with her free hand. Camera five had a good close up on his face. His eyes were closed and his lip and nose were bloody. He wasn’t responding to anything the woman said.

“Ready cut!” Justin called out. He kept one eye on the main screen, another on camera five, and yet another on camera one. Each time the woman glanced back over her shoulder, he switched to camera one and the relentless march. The woman had stopped pleading for David to wake up and was now just pulling on him and grunting. She showed muscle through her gray and red jumpsuit but she couldn’t bodily lift David. Each time Justin switched back the man’s grip on the woman’s hand was the focal point of the camera.

Time seemed to crawl for everybody in the room. Justin found he was holding his breath. The rest of the staff were leaning forward towards the main view screen or their own consoles. Then Justin’s console flashed a time warning. Justin let his left hand fall and camera five dominated the screen. David’s face filled the entire screen. “Boost audio!” Justin yelled as the side of the woman’s face appeared on the screen. She was leaning in close to press her lips to David’s. Justin’s hand slid to his console and he pressed a single button. David writhed suddenly, mid-kiss, and bucked. The woman gasped and the man’s eyes shot open. “Catherine!” he exclaimed.

“CUT!” Justin barked and the main engineer slapped their console. The main screen went gray and the audio of the two died. Catherine was saying something animatedly, pointing towards the direction of the robots, and tugging on David’s arm, who was now groggily standing up but most of the room was ignoring that. Instead there was applause and even a few cheers.

Justin, at the main chair in the center of the room, looked around the control station, grinned broadly, and raised a hand to acknowledge the applauds. “Thank you, thank you. Settle down. First things first. Post! I need a standard graying between sections four and five. See if you can add a slight hum or ringing. I also need player five a bit more on the pale side until the kiss. And let time slot six know player three has a romantic entanglement and they’ll want to piggy back our raw feed. We’ll all get some bonuses out of this, guys. Good job, all of you.”

The entire room was now abuzz with excitement and some more cheering. Operators stood up and stretched from their pods while engineers clustered to follow Justin’s last commands. From behind him came a quiet clearing of the throat. Justin turned to see a network assistant, out-of-place in her suit and heels. She also wore a not so out-of-place smirk, although most of her attention was still on the data pad she held in one manicured hand.

“Congratulations. The feeds are already reporting the highest viewership yet. Once those scenes past delay you’ll likely have shattered every reality television record for the last ten years,” the woman said. Her tone was cool but Justin could sense the admiration behind the mask.

Justin just smiled broadly and inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Anything for the viewership,” he said, waving to the screen where the pair were fleeing their robotic pursuers slowly. David was leaning on Catherine to support an obvious hurt leg. Terror was evident on both of their faces.

The assistant simply tapped her pad and the monitor turned off, sending the couple to another time slot room to handle. “Indeed,” she agreed. “Anything for the viewers.”

Lacuna

Used in a sentence:

• Lacunae covered the carapace of the creature, providing a false sense of hope that one might find some sort of hole through which to pierce through.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

Formerly Latin and then Italian, the question is was it an English word before it was a scientific word, or vice versa? Another weird word that I like the sound of. Also much easier to say than “a small pit or depression”.  I’ll be trying to work this into my descriptions.

A free writing we will go…

~~~~~~

A Charge for an Arm and a Leg
By Nojh Livic

“Good evening! Good evening,” Rylie greeted the pair of cloaked figures as they hurried to the gate. She moved to stand at the gate, ready to let them in, although her hands remained concealed within her own robes, one wrapped firmly around her focus orb, the other on the pommel of a sheathed dagger. Her smile continued even as the figured drew up short to stand in front of the gate. “Welcome,” she greeted again but made no move to open the iron bars for them. The pair hesitated and Rylie’s smile began to fade.

“Powder Blue Moon,” croaked the smaller of the two cloaked figures, his voice raspy but understandable. Rylie’s smile grew wider and she let go of her dagger and drew her hand out of a pocket and began to make a complicated series of finger gestures in front of the gate. She felt her orb glow faintly warm but then the chains that held the gate locked glowed and began to unravel themselves. She stepped back and the gates opened for the pair and they took several steps inside. The gates shut and the chains locked themselves back up.

Rylie drew out her remaining hand and spread her arms wide, bowing her head slightly. “Welcome to Mezzel’s Emporium for the Dead! Repeat customers I see? You’re welcome to lower your hoods. The scrying protections about the grounds are top-notch, let me assure you. Now, how may I serve you this evening?”

—

“And over there we have our latest batch, freshly interred this sun down,” Rylie motioned to a patch of dirt that had six obviously freshly disturbed mounds. “They’ll be up and at them in a few hours no doubt. Plus we have home, lair, or dungeon delivery, if you’d prefer not to hassle yourself with the details.” The shorter of the pair, who turned out to be the husband of the pair of necromancers, looked eager to go and inspect the selection. His wife who seemed the far more practical one, was looking towards an area marked “Spare Not-So-Spare Parts” in arcane runes. The woman had mismatched eyes and she kept her left arm hidden under her cloak. She likely wanted some new grafts. If Rylie let the customer into the item bins she might as well as kiss her commission good-bye.

“Newly animated, of course, have some of the freshest parts,” Rylie explained, catching the woman’s attention again. “I have depictions stored in gems of our selection that you might peruse through. All ages and body types.” Rylie smiled as the woman focused her attention on the crèche. She could almost  hear the gold coins clanging.

—

Rylie looked over her notes, directing the quill with a slight wave of her hand. She sat in what served as the general sales office that any of the staff could use. It was decorated generally enough to be anybody’s office but the manager felt offices somehow made the deal feel more official to the client. Less chances of them deciding to send a horde as payment rather than gold.

“That’ll be two small, one large, and the petite. Extra soft dirt on the petite. Extra ravenous on the large. A rush order on all four?” Rylie confirmed. The pair nodded their agreement and Rylie passed the clipboard for them to look it over and empower their mark into. “Just cast into the circle provided and we’ll be set.” She hadn’t guessed these two would be such a gold mind when they approached. The way they hesitated to give the password actually had her nervous but now with the cut from this commission she could bribe her way into a cushy managerial position or perhaps even take a day off!

As she watched the pair sign, there was a slight itching sensation she had only felt once before. It was so long ago that she didn’t immediately place what it meant. She didn’t have time to ponder it as everything started to go wrong. She felt the barriers around the emporium fall before the stone of alarms began to blare. Shouts of the authorities began to echo through the castle as well as moans of hunger as the automated defenders rose from their cubby holes to meet the unwelcome intruders. Rylie stood and began to udder a platitude of comfort for the pair when she saw the woman had removed her cloak completely. Under it was not an arm grafted to the shoulder made of dead flesh as she had expected but a ghostly ectoplasmic appendage that mimicked an arm and held, much to the young woman’s chargin, a seal of the Royal Adventurer’s Brigade. The woman was a psionist.

Rylie shoved her hands into her robe, drawing her dagger and wrapping her hand around her orb tied at her belt. The shorter man suddenly slumped over onto her desk, as if he were a puppet who strings had just been cut. The woman stood and was shouting for her drop her weapon and Rylie was happy to oblige. The dagger fell from her hand but rather than fall to the ground, it rocketed forward directly at the adventurer who was taken off guard. The dagger only managed to embed itself in the woman’s shoulder but that would be enough. As if on cue, the door to the office exploded open and two zombies stumbled in and lunged.

The dagger would be a beacon to any unintelligent undead, not just drawing them but angering them. It had been a defensive charm Rylie had devised herself. She hadn’t properly tested it but she didn’t feel the need to stand around to see how well it worked. She began chanting quickly under her breath. Her orb began to burn quickly and the light could be seen even from under her robes.

The adventurer had dodges the first zombie but the second had her in a grapple. Her ectoplasmic arm whipped around the zombie’s neck and with a snarl she pulled it free, serving the half skeletal neck from the zombie’s shoulders. The first zombie had slightly recovered from its lunge but the adventurer gave it a swift kick that sent it back to the ground. Pulling out the dagger with a slight cry she turned and threw it at Rylie with an expert hand.

Rylie watched the tip spin directly at her head, her eyes wide as she muttered as quickly as possible. With the dagger less than a hand’s width from her face, she felt her gut wrench and then suddenly there was darkness.

—

Some hours later, the young necromancer sat on the ground, robes spread around her, watching her former place of employment go up in flames. Leek, Gorbash, and Quentin had joined her some time ago but they were staying inside the tree line where they couldn’t be spotted. Below a handful of Royal Adventurers were escorting prisoners out of the gates and chopping the heads off of her merchandise. She sighed. “I hate writing resumes. I wonder if Deadmart is hiring…”

~~~~~~

So this time I felt I was very up front about everything. There was magic. The place was selling dead or undead things. The ending wasn’t well forecasted but I wouldn’t say it was a twist like some (read: most) of my other flash fiction. This story came out of a small idea I had where someone would sell zombies like a salesperson might sell a fine wine. That didn’t come out when I started to write but I rather like the idea that did come out. The plot could probably use some shaping up. What do you think?

Alacrity

Used in a sentence:

• The horse had alacrity but it just didn’t have nimbleness it needed to dodge the obstacles.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

What a fun word. Unusual. Fun to say. Has a meaning that would make it easy to work into normal conversation! I have alacrity for the word alacrity!

I think one of the hardest parts of free writing is coming up with good titles.

~~~~~~

A Very Important Question
by Nojh Livic

“Ye-” Daring started to say when his visor went dark. He reached up and hit the side of it once, twice, but his vision didn’t return. He also realized that the background music he had been listening to was no longer being piped into his ears. The old thing had likely shorted out. He had been meaning to replace it for a month now.

Daring cursed and ripped off the visor. He reached out and pulled the touch pad from its slot next to the main box into his lap and began tapping at it to force the machine into wide display mode. He he was halfway through the commands when he realized that the room was dark and the main box’s power light was missing. He reached out to hit it once but he already knew the problem wasn’t with the box. His apartment had no power.

Cursing more, he pushed himself from his beanbag chair and made a dash for his bag.

He was in the middle of an important conversation with Quizzical, who he had been dating for three years. Quizzical was an online handle just like Daring. More offline people knew him by Daring than his birth name, however. Daring’s avatar would be just standing there staring at Quizzical. He had been about to answer a very important question and his avatar staring blankly was worse than any answer he could actually give. He needed to message Quiz right now, vide0, voice, or text the medium didn’t matter.

He pulled out the small plastic brick from his bag that served as his MCD. Except that it was acting far more like a brick now than a communication device. He had forgotten to charge it. Daring blinked several times. He felt sweat begin to form on his brow. Forgetting to curse he made a dash to the front door, swung it wide, and then dashed the few steps to the opposite door, the front entrance of his neighbor’s apartment. He knocked furiously. “Hey! Dasher! You in?” he called to the door. Dasher had a top of the line box he could use, assuming she would answer the door. She had a tendency to zone out. He had been offline for a minute now. His avatar would likely auto log out any second. Quiz would think he had logged out on purpose.

He didn’t have time to wait.

Flying more than jumping down the stairs, he exited his apartment building onto the sidewalk. It was mid afternoon and fairly busy. A little cold but Daring wasn’t about to waste time going back up to get his jacket. Across the street was a net cafe that he sometimes used on occasions like this when his main box fried or he forgot to pay his carbon debt. It wasn’t common but he had been glad it was there. He played frogger with the traffic, pulling open the glass door wide and running to a automated kiosk that proudly listed the prices for net time. He reached for his bag and froze. No bag. No wallet. No account feeds. No cash. No net.

His heart was racing now. He wasn’t sure what to do. It had been at least two or three minutes. Was he too late? Had Quiz logged off already? This was turning into a nightmare. He considered, briefly, knocking on the door and pleading his case to an actual person when movement outside caught his attention. A woman holding an MCD to her ear walked by.

He burst out of business and waved his hand to the woman. “Hey. Excuse me. This is an emergency. Can I borrow your ceedee?” Daring panted as he came to a stop next to the woman. She was staring at him in surprise. He was flushed and sweating now. He tried to seem earnest but he could tell he was creeping the woman out. As she debated it he raised his hands. “No it’s okay. Can you just message someone for me. The id is-” He realized he didn’t have Quiz’s id memorized. Who memorized ids anymore when you had your MCDs and your boxes to keep track of them for you? He cursed again, loudly, and the woman gave up and ran away. Several other pedestrians were now staring at him and the exchange, looking worried.

“Come on… think!” He chided to himself, clenching his fists as he watched the vehicles hover past. He bounced up and down on this toes, feeling the frantic need to go somewhere, anywhere, as if he could somehow outrun this problem. He stared into the increasing traffic. A bike zipped in between two conveyors, breaking at least three traffic laws, and sped off. Daring froze in place.

Daring had a full communication suite in his bike.

His feet began moving before he had even decided to run to the garage. There was a line for the vehicle retrieval kiosk. He cut it,  the other would be motorists protesting with angry cries. He exclaimed it was an emergency which did very little to pacify them. It took an agonizing ten seconds for his bike to be delivered to one of the garage receptacles.

He didn’t bother trying to leave the garage but keyed the bike’s entry code, booting the bike’s internal ceedee. A holographic display welcoming him and offering an array of music channels and navigation points hovered an inch above the main screen. He wiped it away to the messaging system. A few more gestures and he access to his account and contacts list, showing everybody who was still connected and their status.

Quiz was still online but an away icon was being displayed.

His fingers motioned furiously, typing out a text-only message as quickly as possible. When he finally keyed send, no relief came. His heart thundered in his ears as he stared at the conversation log. He wiped the refresh nodule several times, until the new message icon flashed green with a confirmation and new text appeared. He blinked several times then laughed a semi-hysterical laugh. He then fell off his bike.

Two strangers ran over to see what was the issue. They help him to his feet. He was feeling light-headed, which helped to dull all the other raging emotions within him: worry, joy, relief, and excitement. When the strangers asked what was wrong he found he couldn’t speak and instead just pointed at the message dialog. It read:

Daring: “Sorry! I lost power! YES! Yes I will marry you!”
Quizzical: “Are you on your bike? How many times have I told you to not text me while driving? Shut up and get over here so we can celebrate properly!”

 ~~~~~~

I actually pre-planned this one out a little before writing it. Several things changed during writing. When I wrote the summary plot, it wasn’t futuristic but the present day, at least until I came up with the idea of a communication device (Ceedee? Get it? Nevermind) in a bike. I also didn’t know that I was going to keep the gender of Daring’s significant other ambiguous. Did you even notice that I didn’t even reference the gender at all? You might also be questioning the feasibility of someone asking someone else to marry them over the net. I suggest searching the web for terms like ‘geeky marriage proposals’ and see the multitude of video games, online comics, message boards, and other mediums used to propose to someone.

Oh and despite what I said at the beginning, the title for this story was actually rather easy.

Hope you enjoyed the story!

Flagrant

Used in a sentence:

• The use of a word that obviously wasn’t very weird was a flagrant misuse of Nojh’s editorial power over A Singularity.

Source: Wiktionary

Commentary:

Okay okay so flagrant isn’t really a weird word. I hear it a lot on television, particularly law shows. It is a word that I like the pronunciation, although I also tend to misspell the word as fragrant, which is kinda funny. I challenge you to go read something that uses the word flagrant and mis-read it as fragrant. Also the archaic meaning is kinda interesting. “That was a flagrant abuse of the law!” “Well go get some water then!”