The Poems of Madam Albithurst: There-And-Back

Now of course, I didn’t believe a word of what my dear Captain said. The High on High never involved themselves with anything without the firm insistence that their busybodying would prevent, or at least hinder, some catastrophe to the Myriad Worlds themselves. I, of course, rarely believed their prattle, but to release the Torquates…well, let me just say that I had experienced their incessant intensity before, and I was not willing to brush off their involvement so casually as my dear Captain wanted me to.

The Watch in the Sand: Part 4

October 20, 2020 Geoff Bugess, a student at UC Berkeley, creates the Line Standard, or LSTD. This internet protocol is an incredibly fast and secure method of allowing individual devices to connect to a single wireless signal. LSTD is released as Open Source for use in the Line when it is completed. March 29, 2021 The first Zettabyte server is designed and built by the Bundestag of Germany in Pottsdam. Holding more than one trillion gigabytes of data, several prominent politicians demand this server be given to the people, providing one free web-page to every citizen of Germany.

The Poems of Madam Albithurst: A Crime Scene

I suppose, as it was the first thing that caught my eye when I entered the room, I must first describe the splatter of blood that covered the bone white flower petals of the potted plant as it rested on the sideboard. It rather put me in mind of a particular pattern I had seen before: that of a curiously spotted animal that caught my eye over the edge of a Golden Howdah during one of my many jaunts.

From Raiselig to Albithurst

The End Did I succeed in my efforts with The Raiselig Dossier? An interesting question to think about, for me. A lot of my intent was to play around in a world, to take a specific “what if” and drag it to its logical conclusion. What would a magical fantasy world be like, if magic were legislated to near extinction? Because that’s what became obvious, as I wrote. More and more the magical beings and spells of the ancient times faded away, not because “the world has moved on,” but because the laws of magic themselves became too onerous.

The Raiselig Dossier: The Festival of Light Part 3

After a goodly time, Raiselig sat on a rock. The rock was beside the road. It was a diversion Raiselig had not given themself in some time. Nevertheless, the road and the rock. Down and up the road lay in different directions than either down or up. Indeed, their only relation to each other was direct opposition. It had always bothered Raiselig, more-so that it didn’t seem to bother anyone else.

The Watch in the Sand: Part 3

February 15, 2015 Facebook successfully acquires Twitter in the largest tech merger in world history. Before the end of the business day, the number of Facebook accounts passes the two-billion mark. Researchers guess that of the two billion accounts, only 1.2 billion users actually exist. The rest are duplicates, dummy accounts, or inactive. April 6, 2015 The Jericho Hack strikes the Internet. Two million people find their names, addresses, family trees, place of work, salaries, blood type, allergies, favorite foods, medical histories, and sexual preferences posted to the Internet.

The Raiselig Dossier: The Festival of Light Part 2

The Kingdom of Tyw stood tall and proud against the white hills. From atop the king’s tallest tower, the whole of the horizon was his to call his own. There were no other rulers who dared challenge his might, nor who chafed too harshly under his rule. The people of Tyw were hearty and strong, and unified in their delight of the one thing that was their birthright; life itself.

The Raiselig Dossier: The Festival of Light Part 1

Time passed, as it ever did. It is a joke — or perhaps if not a joke, a shared understanding — between the Scriveners that the world was like a scale nested on by an indecisive bird. The seasons changed, the herds migrated, wars and festivals were held with equal amounts of enjoyment and obligation… And then the bird hopped to the other side of the scale, and it all began again.

The Raiselig Dossier: Here, in the Castle at the Edge

The letter was written on dry leather. It was written with black ink taken from the glands of a deep-sea monster. It was shaped with a pen carved from the finger-bone of a dead god. It was dusted with the sands made from ancient cities long since crumbled away. The wax of the seal was made from the blood of a man who had been hanged for killing his lover in fear of what she had birthed, and mixed with the rendered fat of a stillborn horse.

The Watch in the Sand: Part 2

July 2, 2012 MIT and University of British Columbia scientists develop a new method of treating disease using tiny capsules containing DNA and other biological machinery for making a drug. The nanoscale production units are tiny spheres encapsulating synthetic RNA like that found in living cells. The resulting nanoparticles produce active proteins on demand when the researchers shine a laser light on them. August 3, 2012 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants approval for “ingestible sensors” invented by Proteus Digital Health.