SF Novel of the Week: Winterize

There's a new household convenience in town, inter-dimensional energy. Established 50 years ago, inter-dimensional energy is both safe and cheap. Many different dimensions exist at a single point in space thereby solving the basic problems of environmental control. An inter-dimensional fan creates a small hole to an area of eternal winter: boom! Instant cooling. Create a hole into some radiating geothermal tomb and you never have to pay another heating bill. Portals to wells of inexhaustible energy generate electricity. And small windowshade-like contraptions shines beams of sun into your room, evening during the deep chills of winter.

Enter our hero, a shlub of a junior vice president of marketing, whose job it is to sell these plastic appliances to consumers.
One day, while flicking on a switch, a voice speaks out of his "Extreme Winterizer X359." It's a scientist from one of those alternate dimensions warning him of the grave consequences of tampering with the folds of reality. They converse over several days forming a strange (and possibly sexual connection through the whirring stream of cold air). At last he is convinced of the danger to his planet. Faced with convincing the public that the products he once promoted will likely destroy both the known and unknown universe, will he take refuge in denial? Or will this middle manager embark on a crusade to save humanity?

Laws of Thermodynamics: III

There Is No Zero

You cannot stop it. The city is there, full green in its many branches, hung bending and swaying with eagles, angles and headless knights. The river speaks in insalubrious innuendos. The stonemasons are laboring even now. After 300 years their hammers bang out persistence, gold spreading like a pestilence over the ogives, spilling onto alter cloths already heavy with dust. There is a place but it does not exist, a garden, with few doors but you may still reach it. Hidden behind bankers, retail junkies and sausage carts, you may find, yes you may try. It is a place of stillness where apples remain ungathered and old men sit upon the benches in checks while others mate in quiet corners without the aid of boards. And when one leaves, uncertain of her reception in the worlds of elsewhere, one may gather up a bit in her hand and put it in her pocket for a Wednesday. But that bit does not go with you, though you file it carefully away, For all flowers fade when plucked and become something altogether different, a remainder of what always was insubstantial, imperfect and gone.

Laws of Thermodynamics: II

Entropy is Eternal

In a small corner of my mind hovel there is a stair, cobwebbed and nitered with stick figured cave paintings. At the bottom on the stairs a dusty office opens its mouth. It is the kind for shady autodidacts, unsavory cotton candy spinners and sculptors in folding chairs.

In a single filing cabinet there I keep my lexicons. They have labels, peeling and faded, the corpses of dead spiders and reams of hopeful, empty pages. I open a drawer and step upon hanut, karpousi, el routoubia, accablé.
It is a an unpleasant place. I visit seldom. And though I am turnkey of this prison, I demand nourishment of my charges even when they are crumbling dust or the frayed ends of cotton dissolving slowly in a vat of bleach.

Laws of Thermodynamics: I

The Conservation of Matter

Poof! I press my forcefield belt. Poof! a pride of lines is running through my head, a hello, a cucumber, a screwdriver, a quay-side walk, the waves are running in verses and those versus are Gertrude Stein. When I go to the cornerstore I ask for four bananas, a kilo of apples and a zucchini with alligator skin and there are returned to me these objects in exchange for my words. And also a hello, a goodbye, a smile. These are bonus and they are set into my shopping bag along with the edibles. A strange thing the immaterialitly of our exchange. My imperfect words, my accusative mangled into ablatives (ablatives do not exist here), the bits of seraphs stuck like flypaper to the palate and non-palatables shrink the shrinking dance of chocolate in hot hands, changing states from the slightly sticky state to the sludge state, primal, in the order of states. It's true thought that I am a lexical junk master. I am the spiller of marinara stains in the shape of small forlorn countries. I am the bunchbacked garbage woman all covered over with the detritus of broken chairs, faulty mirrors and rotting banana peels. You say 235 please, and I want to say that nothing has changed.

The Lusty Month of May

CHAP. ХХV

How true love is likened to summer.

And thus it passed on from Candlemas until after Easter, that the month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom and to bring forth fruit ; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart, that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May, in some thing to constrain him to some manner of thing, more in that month than in any other month, for divers causes. For then all herbs and trees renew a man and woman, and in likewise lovers call again to their mind old gentleness and old service, and many kind deeds that were forgotten by negligence. For like as winter rasure doth always arase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman. For in many persons there is no stability, for we may see all day, for a little blast of winter's rasure, anon we shall deface and lay apart true love for little or nought, that cost much thing. This is no wisdom nor stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship whosoever useth this.

Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world, first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promised his faith unto, for there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman, but they loved one better than another: and worship in arms may never be foiled, but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady : and such love I call virtuous love.

But now-a-days men cannot love seven night but they must have all their desires, that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded, and hasty heat, soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love now-a-days ; soon hot, soon cold. This is no stability, but the old love was not so. Men and women could love together seven years, and no wanton lusts were between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. And lo in likewise was used love in king Arthur's days. Wherefore I liken love now-a-days unto summer and winter. For like as the one is hot and the other cold, so fareth love now-a-days. Therefore all ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did queen Guenever. For whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.

-Sir Thomas Malory in The Globe Edition of Morte D'Arthur, 1868

Train Problem

I have cracked the nut of death and spilled its meat from the shell. It was simple really, like most problems when you see the answer. You see, I was riding the other day, rocking away in the only cradle designed for babes out of arms. Half dozing, half cats-cradling, and three quarters thumb-twiddling when it came to me; they told us to meditate on speed and distance, clocks and schedules and other improbables that only further prove that maths are a clownish science and not the provenance of travelers. But if we turned things inside out (like an orange) and I was riding time instead of it riding me (like a string-pulling doll), every stop would be another hereafter. Each Cottage/grove/forest/town/shady/village its own kingdom of heaven and hippie commune. All are equals in immobility, I thought and felt a goose walk over my grave or maybe it was a six-legged metaphor. We're on schedule for infinity, baby, and on this route the whistle stops are without number.

cattle and loveplay

Call for me and I will tell you what I have learned, that we make an addiction of time and memory, eating and idleness. That chestnut leaves drape like the hands of effete gentlemen in the moments of their unfurling.

These are the days of softness and indolence. These are the days of rags and witches and ribbon covered flails. A candy-marshmallow-churning-bicycle whipped its way through the night forest. There are bells on the handlebars and I can hear it singing Shakespeare when it rumbles by.