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Tag: Science Fiction

Working on the Craft: No Ideas, But in Things

Published by Simeon on April 6, 2020

This exercise from The 3 A.M. Epiphany is in a section titled “Images”, and the goal is to tell a very short story (300 words) only in imagery. The character should be a part of it, but rather than show their thoughts or words, the author has to focus on their actions and movement instead. I found it eerily calming, as well as detached, which Kiteley says is a common effect of this exercise. Showing emotion through (in)action rather than word, is an extremely valuable skill (duh), and this was a very enjoyable way to explore i.

She walks out of the back door, and into the small garden. The muted light of the invisible sun paints the dome of mist in swirling pale gray. A small path leads from the house to where the two copper chains that hang on their short rods almost meet. Forming an exit, should she wish to exit their tenuous protection. She stops in the middle, staring at the meager yield of the mushrooms to her left. Avoids looking to the right. Sighing, she leans over, plucks a few that are ripe enough. She puts them in a small basket, but does not pick it up.

Her eyes move up, stop at the wall of mist behind the mushroom patch. She rises, slowly, and walks around, so she could approach the copper chain. It reaches to about her waist, and the gray wisps strain against it, as if pushing, wanting to invade the garden. Her face tightens. She reaches with a bare hand, and the mist pushes even closer. Her fingers are almost touching the tendrils when the metal bracelet on her wrist glows and a dagger materializes in her hand.

The mist recoils, as if burned, an angry hissing sound coming from where the silvery blade touched it. She smiles now. A cruel smile, but also brittle. Exhausted.

She turns back, and heads for the small house, leaning to snatch the basket on her way. Her eyes stay focused on the door, never straying to her right. But once her fingers are pushing against the grainy wood, she pauses.

Her eyes close. Tighten.

She looks behind her shoulder, at the small grave post in the mud. The soil there is still uneven, and her eyes trace its short length. One foot. Two feet. Stop.

She walks inside the house, her stride unsteady. But her eyes are dry.

Review: Bonds of Brass

Published by Simeon on April 3, 2020

I found out about Bonds of Brass by a random Twitter-induced happenstance. Someone I followed had liked a tweet by Emily Skrutskie, in which she described her upcoming YA novel. And the promise of a M/M romance, set in a space opera of imperial intrigues and starfighters, was all I needed to pre-order. Luckily, I also snagged an ARC of it at C2E2, and I devoured it in two sittings.

Bonds of Brass takes place in the distant future, in which humans have spread out into the galaxy and formed vast empires that now challenge each other. Ettian is a young pilot, training to fight for the brutal empire that destroyed the one he was born in. Having shed the past during two grueling years of living on the streets, he now only has eyes for his own future. As well as his handsome bunkmate and best friend Gal. But when an almost successful assassination attempt reveals Gal to be the heir to the empire that made him an orphan, Ettian has to decide whether his loyalties lie with the ghosts of his shattered past, or his feelings for a boy who is destined to inherit the most horrifying power in the galaxy.

I loved, loved, loved this book! Skrutskie’s effortless prose, kept in a tight first person from Ettian’s perspective, tells an exciting tale of adventure with anime undertones (coming accessorized with power suits, for extra otaku points). The action is fast-paced, the language — extremely evocative. We can smell and feel the world on every page, be it confined to the cabin of a space ship, or a vast cityscape.

But what’s even better, the novel paints a beautiful relationship between two boys, persevering despite being designed to fail in all manner of spectacular ways. Ettian’s feelings — and through his eyes, Gal’s as well — are raw and earnest, unfiltered by his telling of the story, and the adventure the two are forced into puts those to the test. In moments of intimacy, the painful ache of desire also takes on a very physical, if adorably chaste, tone. Skrutskie takes us all the way into the eyes of Ettian, as they hunger over the details in physicality and mannerism that made him fall for Gal.

Bonds of Brass is fast paced and action packed, but somehow, there is always time for character building. Both of the book’s heroes are complex, neither one falling into black-and-white stereotypes. If anything, both get up to some highly questionable shit, ethically speaking, and the ending left me with a deep sense of uncertainty as to who I was actually rooting for. On that note, it bears noting that this is only a first part of a trilogy, and it is wide open.

If I have one problem with Bonds of Brass, it is extra-literary, and personal, and has nothing to do with the book’s merits. On Emily Skrutskie’s pinned tweet, she describes the characters as “two bisexual disasters”. And I have no problem believing that Gal is bi. But, um, as a gay man, Ettian reads gay to me. This is a made-up character, and everything that exists of him is in this book. And in this book he is coded as fully focused on a single person, who happens to be male-identified. No hints are given of any interest he has ever had in other people, not even a throwaway sentence or a stray thought. The only other relationship he has, is aggressively platonic, and firmly defined by shared experiences. The only time, in fact, when he has any romantic/sexual thought not focused on Gal, it is to observe two boys making out in a cantina, and feel jealous.

I recognize that this is not a real issue, and labels aren’t terribly relevant in a made-up future space opera. And to be absolutely clear, I love reading about bisexual characters. But to me it read somewhat like “Dumbledore is gay”, as well as made me a bit sad on a personal level. It seems there are barely any gay male-identified protagonists in current SFF, confusing though that might be, considering how progressive the field has become in recent years. And not that I am that desperate for explicit identification, but it still felt nice when the novel was giving me a very clear signal that this was what I was getting. And then it seemed that the author herself did not support that signal.

This is, however, my own personal issue, and ultimately it only rubbed me the wrong way for a moment, before being drowned by the sheer awesomeness of Bonds of Brass. If royal intrigue, space warfare, planetary adventures, and boys in love are your game, then this book plays it perfectly. My only problem at present is that it isn’t even out yet (release date is 4/7), and I am already itching for the second part of the trilogy.

Review: The Last Human

Published by Simeon on April 1, 2020

I met Zack Jordan at Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo earlier this year, and I was immediately impressed by his approach to promoting his work. I even talked about his Last Human-themed installation in my C2E2 Panel Report. That was also where I acquired the ARC for his debut novel, and I was really excited to read it.

The Last Human takes place in the distant future, in a galactic civilization of monumental proportions, called The Network. Millions of sentient species are part of this society, but it does not differentiate between the organic and the artificial. Instead, it is designed around tiers of intelligences, each of which more complex than the previous by a magnitude of twelve. To be a Citizen of the Network, an intelligence requires a tier of 1.8 or higher, with trillions upon trillions of artificial helper minds just below the legal level, operating every aspect of existence, from security and loading drones to Network implants and sanitation stations.

In this vast and diverse community, on a water-mining station orbiting the rings of a gas giant, live Senya the Mother and her dopted child Sarya the Daughter. Senya is a Widow — member of a species of giant arachnid hunters who spent millennia honing their murderous instincts before joining galactic society.

Sarya, meanwhile, is the last human in the universe.

You see, humans were an aberration within the Network — a species that chose not to join a galaxy of order and optimization, but rather to try and conquer it. And so, they had to be exterminated.

Naturally, Sarya dreams of finding others of her kind. And a seemingly chance encounter with a group mind of godlike intelligence visiting her station sets her on a dangerous journey that might fulfill that dream. But likely not in the way she has ever imagined.

The Last Human is an exploration of consciousness on a galactic scale that lit a fire under my imagination. The book has some characterization and pacing flaws — many of which understandable considering it is Jordan’s first work — but it makes up for them with a sweeping vision of societies as organisms, in which an individual can both be extremely important, and at the same time just a cell in a higher consciousness.

The book is not heavy on the tech and science lingo, which I personally consider a plus. In fact, the first chapters even create a somewhat misleading Young Adult impression. However, the darker themes and psychological and philosophical explorations Sarya embarks on create a core around which the idea of intelligence is developed through fantastical — if theoretically possible — technology.

Ultimately, The Last Human is an inspired debut, set in a thought-provoking universe, where adventure is gateway to higher cosmology. I am really stoked to read Zack Jordan’s next work, and in the mean time, this one is definitely a recommendation from me.

P.S. The little Network ID I got at C2E2 has my intelligence tier listed at 1.82, which I now know is SHADE.

The Dumping of Info in Secondary World Fiction

Published by Simeon on March 27, 2020

This one is narrowly focused on writing a specific type of science fiction and fantasy, but it’s a fairly prevalent issue, so I figured I would drop my two cents in that particular slot.

Something I had to deal with from pretty much the first paragraph of my current book, was how to naturally insert the necessary information, so that readers would have any chance of understanding what the F is going on. I believe I have overcome this issue with some level of competence (courtesy of obsessing over it for literal years), but it did make me evaluate the role of infodumps in secondary world fantasy and science fiction.

First of all, the terms, for that one person who potentially doesn’t know what I am talking about:

Infodumps are compressed chunks of information about the story, world, or characters in fiction. It is, by definition, something to avoid, as it stops the narrative in its tracks. Rather than the reader submerging themselves into your work, they are taken out of the story in order to read a glossary.

Secondary worlds, on the other hand, are locales that exist outside of our present day world or its known past. Your Middle Earths, Narnias, Westeroses, and Roshars, for sure. But just as much your Cultures, Dunes, Urths, and Foundations, because whether an alternate reality, or a distant future, the further away you get from the reader’s point of origin, the more terminology and circumstance they will have to learn, in order to become part of your worlds.

So, with that said, it is staggering how many ways there are to present information poorly. Talking heads (which I’ve heard described as “Maid and Butler dialogue” and “As you know, Bob…” as well) that spout exposition when they have no reason to be having such conversations. Farm boys or fresh-out-of-the-portal/cryochamber earthers who need everything explained to them. Students in magical/SF military schools who supposedly know a lot, but get to still give the reader tutorials through their daily experiences.

And of course, the old faithful – the omniscient point of view in which the author’s voice itself stops everything to explain to us what we are reading and how it works.

The types of infodumping are infinite, but what struck me, as I was thinking of how best to reveal my own worldbuilding to the reader, was that when it comes to secondary worlds, not all in-depth explanations are infodumps. And the delivery of information is not a binary, but a spectrum.

To give examples, on one end you have a Brandon Sanderson. He likes everything neatly explained and structured, from the magic to the workings of the world, to cosmology and theology. And if something is a mystery, the reader knows it is a matter of time for it to be revealed. However, he rarely falls into the trap of artificial explanations. He worldbuilds with the reader, but he does it organically, and this approach to writing is at the core of his work.

On the other end, you have someone like Steven Erikson, who — in Gardens of the Moon — parachutes the reader into the middle of a war in an unknown land, right as some kind of dark elf on a flying mountain has a chaotic magic battle with a group of humans. Names, titles, factions, and plot points fly around and bounce off of each other, and none of it is explained. You are left to slowly build your own picture of the Malazan world, if you have the patience for it.

I tend to prefer understanding a world by myself, absorbing it through the eyes of characters who are part of it. As I empathize with them, I can empathize with their reality and circumstances, and it is my favorite type of “learning curve”. However, I still need some core principles and terminology to be if not explained, then immediately obvious (and there are many naming conventions that help with that). Otherwise, curiosity turns to confused frustration.

Meanwhile, the opposite approach has great merit as well. A gem like Mistborn does not work if Kelsier is not around to explain allomancy to Vin. The glorious battle scenes of that book only impress because we understand the “science” of what the characters are doing. Some stories need the reader to have a firm grasp on their setting in order to tell the story they want to tell.

Both extremes, and anything in-between can be done well, or poorly. But I have come to realize that whether you want drop the reader in the middle of your world, or introduce them slowly to it, some measure of infodumping is unavoidable, at least for larger works of secondary world speculative fiction. In this aspect, SFF is fairly unique in comparison to any other genre, which can lean on the real world for support in its narrative. We don’t have that luxury, and so we must use tricks and shortcuts to give the reader enough to work with.

Ultimately, I don’t mind some direct infodumps in the books I read. If the world, magic, space-faring tech, or the complicated relationships between characters and factions, are key to understanding the plot, but not the point of the plot, I’d rather know enough about them from the get go, rather than trying to piece them together, while figuring out where the story is going. Some of my all-time favorite authors are able to do that seamlessly enough that I don’t even notice information has been dumped on me.

And so, this is what I aspire to as well. Because, really, you try telling a space fantasy story comped as “Final Fantasy meets Mistborn on a terraformed gas giant” without some infodumps!

Reading Update 03/25/20 – Conscientious Purchases

Published by Simeon on March 25, 2020

Navigating any field when you want social justice to be a consideration, is tricky. Literature has its own fair (read “gargantuan”) share of awful people, well meaning mishaps, toxicity, representation issues, and good old-fashioned bigotry.

On that last note, I have no trouble admitting that Orson Scott Card is probably the ONE famous name in the field of Speculative Fiction that I have no qualms over trashing. He is a horrible human being. Not uniquely horrible. In fact, chances are he probably isn’t close to the MOST horrible person even in SFF. However, I take his horribleness personally, because A) I used to love his work and it was a huge drive for my love of science fiction; and B) he hates homosexuality, and I am very intensely homosexual.

All that said, it is a rule of mine to never directly support people that I consider to be problematic in ways that are important to me. And by that I don’t mean my tween gesture of throwing my copy of Ender’s Game into the trash back in the day, when Card announced that any government that would support gay marriage was his enemy, and he would take up arms against it. No, I am talking about money. I cannot purchase a book by a person like that, knowing that even a fraction of my dollars would go to their wallet.

However, for all his character flaws (and supposed massive drop in writing quality, which I would not know anything about, as it’s been a decade since I have read any of his work), Orson Scott Card remains someone with a lot of knowledge about the craft of writing. After finding his How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy in a used bookstore last year, I had decided that despite the sexist undertones, I could learn a lot from him. Which is the end of my extremely and unnecessarily long prelude to the admission that I just got Characters & Viewpoint through a second hand retailer, and I now feel vaguely gross, despite knowing Card won’t see a red cent from the transaction. But I think that if one wants to read a work by a problematic person for whatever reason, second-hand is the only conscientious way of going about it. Bigots shouldn’t get your money.

Working on the Craft: Implication

Published by Simeon on March 23, 2020

Today’s exercise comes from Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft. In both of its parts, the author has to describe something without the help of characters. Part 1 is dedicated to a room, which should describe its occupant without them being present at the time. In Part 2, the goal is to depict the aftermath of an event without anyone currently participating in it. I really enjoyed both segments. The exercise seems very useful as a tool in writing longer works, and Le Guin herself points out that it doesn’t have to be limited to omniscient authorial view. A character could be describing these things from their own point of view (though I opted for the former option).

Part 1:

The room was more statement than office. Every aspect of it designed for a marriage of utility and the demonstration of rank. From the first step one took inside, a portrait of the House’s first ruler greeted them, hung on the wall behind a massive oak desk. Its height was perfectly positioned so that the stern face of the ancient noble would look above the head of the desk’s occupant, adding weight to their every meeting. The desk itself was designed for full integration with the Network, smart surface seamlessly crafted into hand-worked wood, of the kind one had to import from off-world at obscene cost.

Floor to ceiling bookcases covered the dark blue walls to each side of the desk, their shelves packed with physical books – tomes that were clearly priceless artifacts, yet meticulously selected for their relevance to the House lord’s projects. The faintest smell of ozone marked the high-end security fields protecting the paper from entropy or unauthorized fingers.

The office was equipped with complete overlay capabilities as well – projectors and forcefield generators designed to meld with the walls. Yet none of them were ever active, unless necessary for e presentation. Where lesser nobility might simulate expensive art or other objects of great value, this room belonged to a House that could possess anything it wanted in the real world.

And often used that capability, for the sake of demonstration, because it sent a clear message to rival Houses: Anything could be bought.

Part 2:

The sweet smell of rotten wood permeated the small clearing, the bent limbs of branches reaching out with arthritic fingers from the wall of mist, yellow poison seeping out of split bark like pus.

It was almost enough to mask the stench of blood from the bodies on the stunted grass. The tableau told the story of sudden violence. Limbs splayed in unnatural positions, farm-made clothing torn to shreds by sharp claws that had gouged ragged groves into the flesh beneath. And the look of frozen terror on slashed faces, no longer seeing the monster that had taken their lives.

Each body had a totem attached to its wrist – a bracelet of simple copper and High Technology meant to protect in a world where the very air could manifest teeth, even when one could see beyond three feet into the mist. The ancient devices had helped not at all, for the protection they offered was a chance, and not a promise.

The mist advanced now, swallowing the bloated limbs of the diseased trees, closing in on the corpses as their totems no longer repelled it. Grey wisps slithered over dying grass, like a thing alive questing for food. They closed in on the bodies, caressing shredded clothing, covering wounds.

Before the clearing was fully swallowed, the first corpse began moving.

Reading Update 03/18/20 – The Forgotten Pile

Published by Simeon on March 18, 2020

In honor of self-quarantining (which, I am told, is now official euphemism for masturbation), I figured I should reveal the shame of what is currently occupying my nightstand. Those are books I have at one point or another bought on a whim, thought to pull out of my bookcases because I “really wanted to check them out”, etc. An odds-and-ends affair, patiently waiting for a better world, in which I read something like five books a week, or have otherwise magically caught up with all my “urgent” reading. Thoughts and prayers.

Working on the Craft: The Royal We

Published by Simeon on March 16, 2020

Another exercise from The 3 A.M. Epiphany, aiming at a split personality first person plural narrative, in which the perspective is from the point of view of the group, while each individual member is described in third. The point is to describe a melding of thoughts and feelings within a tight-knit group. For some reason, this instantly made me think of telepathy or data-share, which naturally led me to dystopian cyberpunk, because my brain is extremely predictable. I opted out of geshtalt-writing, because that felt like cheating. Anyway, here is my 600-word attempt.

We climbed to the top of the crater at dawn, and the Cluster bloomed in front of us. An ugly, disjointed sprawl of prefab housing cubes, piled precariously on top of each other, surrounding the dome of Paris like filthy beggars reaching desperately for scraps. Which they were.

Jeriko flashed the sight to Axe, who was being led by Shim while her goggles rebooted. Axe’s eyes had been taken the year past, sold to some Corpling by her douchebag father, and replaced by a subpar implant that kept glitching more and more with each passing month. She beamed now, happy to see what Jeriko did. Shin tried her best too, with her sinth-leg being the half-assed job that it was. Jeriko got flashes from her, discomfort making her lose control of her priv-filters.

We were all broken in one way or another, none of us mint. But together we were whole. The three of us were all we had, and we were about to make a play for the big leagues.

Her goggles rebooted, Axe let go of Shim’s hand and walked to where Jeriko stood, staring at the expanse of the Cluster. We flashed comfort at one another, like little bursts of tranq, to keep us afloat. We knew the dangers of crawling out of the crater were nothing, compared to those lying ahead. Miles upon miles of slums, where cy- and chem-drugs were the norm, you were either in a gang, or at the mercy of one, and everything that could be sold, was fair game for trafficking. We had escaped poverty and were about to enter desolation.

Shim checked the blades in her arms, humming with satisfaction when they vibrated in response under her skin. Jeriko’s hand rested on the hilt of the sword on his back, and Axe’s memes were armed, ready to debilitate any system that even so much as looked at us.

We had to make it through the warrens of the Cluster, hopefully in one piece, or close to. We could ill afford to lose parts at the best of times, and no time was less “best” than the times ahead. If we were hacked or dismantled, the only help we could hope for, would be for a price, and we could not pay. Axe’s weaponized meme-engine, Jeriko’s claymore, and rations for a week’s journey had depleted our already non-existent resources.

All three of us had agreed that this was a one-way trip, and it would end in one of two ways. Success. Or… not.

Because beyond the Cluster lay the dome of Paris. Few corp-cities left on the ground, most of them having gone orbital a generation ago. And fewer still even considered allowing outsiders in. And none of those were anywhere the three of us could reach on foot. So Paris it was. Not a paradise, by any stretch of the imagination. Corps had seen to that. But better than where we had grown up, better than what future we had out here.

Axe knew deep-server ops. Jeriko was auged for strength and speed. And Shin had connections sprawling throughout the Cluster. Not enough for safe passage, of course. But between the three of us, we had a chance for a foot at the door, and a hand hopefully strong enough to hold said door from slamming on said foot.

The Cluster awaited us. Beyond that – the corp-dome. And beyond that still, maybe a chance at the stars. We flashed emotion at each other, the three of us sharing this experience, standing at the threshold of a journey with no certain end. A hand reached, and another clasped it. A muscle smile here, a flashed one there.

We started forward.

Reading Update: 03/11/20 – The Relentless Arc!!!

Published by Simeon on March 11, 2020

Another braggy post, but I can’t contain myself! I thoroughly adore the Lady Astronaut books by Mary Robinette Kowal, and have been eagerly awaiting The Relentless Moon. And now I get to read it months in advance! However, I shall be strong. Not keeping to reading schedules is the mind killer. It is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my reading schedule, and integrate The Relentless Moon into it, rather than blasting it to smithereens (again). I will permit it to pass through me, and… Ok, you get it. I’ve read Dune.

But still, The Relentless Moon! Squee!

Working on the Craft: Journalism

Published by Simeon on March 9, 2020

Continuing with the exercises from The 3 A.M. Epiphany , today’s pick is Exercise 5, titled Journalism. The idea is to tell a short story through journal entries and try to convey important parts of it in the gaps between what is written. A play on the writer’s perceptions and the reader’s expectations. Which, of course, made me think of Gene Wolfe, and his Seven American Nights, which to this day is one of the best short stories I have ever read. So, without further ado, here is my mediocre tribute to Gene Wolfe.

January 7: I arrived in Reprobation at sunset. It’s a small, shitty place, way out of any trade route that still exists in this blasted wasteland. One of those townships where prospectors gathered back when everyone thought they would strike crystal if they only dug deep enough. And once it was clear this asswipe of a land would rather swallow them up than give anything of value, the dregs remained, too obstinate or too desperate to move.

I got a room in what passes for an inn around here. Too expensive for what it is. But I think the guy saw the hand cannon and decided I would want to do this question-free style. He is right.

Everyone is weird. They act almost like normal folk, but then give me these long looks, like they measure me for a coffin. Doesn’t matter. If anybody is moron enough to try something, my gun loves making examples.

Moonless night. Reprobation is too quiet. Maybe it’s such a depressing town that even those whiny murder lizards  from the wilds don’t want to be nearby and make noise. I miss the moons. That was a dumb war.

He is here. And if he isn’t, he sure as fuck passed through, and someone knows where he went.

January 9: This town has fewer than a 300 people, only one purifier station, no means of long-range communication, and so little high technology that it might as well be from before the diaspora. Yet, some-forsaken-how, it has a church! Because obviously it would. People who stay in places like Reprobation tend to find gods. Or worse – a God, singular. Still, made sense to go there first thing yesterday.

Why do religions with just one dude – and it’s always a dude – in charge suck so much more ass than those with a merry crowd of drunks and sex abusers?

This one had three gods, maybe. Or four. Barely any finery. No icons, just a drab alter and some carvings on the walls. Creepy stuff. Tentacles and fangs, and big bulging eyes. What fucking religion is this?

A single woman taking care of the whole thing. Priestess. Or High Bishop, Supreme Wizard, whatever. I guess she told me, but who cares. Weird like the rest of the township. Stared at me like she wanted to mate with me and feed my body to her young. And she knew nothing. Which is bad, because it seems most of this glorified latrine passes through her hovel on whichever day service is. So either he is hiding better than I thought he could, or she is lying to me.

Or he passed by so quietly, that nobody noticed.

But he didn’t. Not his style. And a place this small will notice the corpses.

Still, the day wasn’t a total waste of life. Inn has a bar. Reprobation has drunks. Drunks love talking. When they don’t love talking, a hand cannon in the face makes them talk. And mine is fancy. Exo-tech. It whispers to them, so they get extra scared.

They still looked at me funny, but I guess alcohol loosens their buttholes a bit. Got some information there. Someone did pass through, a week ago. They didn’t want to tell me, and I doubt they knew much. I don’t know if they’re secretive, or unobservant. Perhaps both.

But why would the Grand Hierophantess not want me to know?

Going to check the nearby caves today. Mine didn’t work out, but tunnels still make great hidey holes. They say people go in there sometimes, to avoid trouble. If he is still around, that’s where he would go.

Innkeeper looks like he will try to go through my things while I’m gone. If he hasn’t already. Doesn’t matter, everything I care about is in the holster at my hip.

And maybe the nearby caves.

January ???: I don’t know

Woke up in room how did I get here

Hurts so much but only when I breathe should stop breathing

I can barely move. Don’t know how I got back to the inn. I am not sure what happened in the mine. Got shot. Maybe stabbed.

Bitten? Why would that be an option?

I remember noise. Loud. And then something was on me, and I think I fell. I remember the pain, but nothing after. Was there bulging eyes?

Don’t know how long I was out, or what day it is. Panicked real good when I could think straight. No pants and no shirt is fine, but if they took my hand cannon, I am fucked.

It was fine. Gun was in its holster on the chair. Not fucked.

Maybe a bit fucked. My side is all bandaged up. Wasn’t me. Inkeeper guy? The Archpopetress? Fresh bandage too, so they changed it at least once. Hurts when I breathe. But manageable.

Thank you for the memories, Reprobation, you lizard nutsack.

But also, no memories. What happened in the mine? My thoughts keep going back to the church for some reason. Who in the endless starless void worships things with tentacles? This is some fifty-million-years-ago shit.

Must go back to tunnels, but hurts too much. Gotta gather my strength. Should rest now. Maybe getting feverish.

January 12: I woke up and felt wonderful. The bandages were such a great relief, and I was thankful to the kind soul who had taken such good care of me, nurturing me to good health so quickly. If I ever find who they are, they shall have my love.

I endeavor to leave this place now, for what I seek was not here. Perhaps I shall abandon this journey and settle down elsewhere. Certainly far from here, even if Reprobation has proven a worthy township.

This will be my last entry. I leave this journal here, as a memorial to the life I leave behind, and a promise for a bright, beautiful future in a distant land.

Do not look for me.