For anybody who's worried or sad or upset...

Chedk out this Ted Talk by Emily Levine(the REAL Frankie?), whith whom I share a few opinions, like: to be anti-death is to be anti-woman because it's anti-Nature. 

https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_levine_how_i_made_friends_with_reality/transcript?language=en#t-936133

My favorite quote, though, because OMG ME TOO:  "One of the "yay!"s of dying:  my executive brain function won't have me to kick around anymore."  Emily Levine

If life is a banquet, I overate ( and I did that, too, a LOT).  I don't have a bucket list.  When I told my friend Kim this she said, "Well, what's LEFT?" (Thank you wonderful Kim! But it's true that that I never DID get to England or get my Master's in Litreraure or Theatre, so I lived a very blue-collar, rock and roll banquet. Cue Sid Vicious:  "OI did it MOyyyyyyyyyyyy...WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!")

I believe it's a Crow Nation story about death that when you die you meet all the animals you ate.  And you want to be able to say to them, "I respected the life you gave me.  I worked to feed my people (or just took care of my people).  I loved as HARD as I knew how." and then you bow to them and lay your body down because it's YOUR TURN.

I LOVE THAT.

ANd this video too, because I believe Death is compassionate.  Without Her, we'd just fall behind, stiff and achy and unable to keep up, and we'd never get to rest. 

https://vimeo.com/154739710

Thw music sucks, though.

A Geek's Journey into Brain Cancer: Memorials...

...are for the living.

Peronally I think it's a way to spend money, like a wedding.  And there's not even cake (those stale alices leaning next to the deli sandwiches don'd count).

But my big ego apparently knows no bounds, because my skin crawls every time I think of people saying someone "Lost his battle with cancer."

How dare you?!

YOU don't know, in fact, what he lost or what he gained.  Cancer is the dark fairy at the christening.  It gives by taking away. It's deeply personal in that way.  So don't go shouting tired platitudes you know nothing about.

I would hate someone saying I "lost the battle".

Use a little imaginaion, and say instead that, "After a painful altercation with Robbie, Cancer limped away to try to start over.  Remember it is always starting over.  That's what Cancer does."

There's your plot twist, public service billboard and call to action all in one.

Seriously, we need to stop allowing vogons to write copy.

A Geek's Journey into Brain Cancer Part 5: Say Goodbye To My Lil "Friend"

Tomorrow morning I'll be stumbling into the hospital, bleary and dehydrated, with a screaming headache that's about to get a lot worse and then-possibly-a lot better after that.

They'll put plasic tubes in my arms, weigh me, shave half of my head (PUNK ROCK!) then draw a map on my head ("can you guys draw a kitty on me?") and take vitals.

They'll give my cranium shots of lidocaine; apparently it's an excrutiating prodcedure, but not long-lived.

Then they'll take me into the OR, put my head in the head holder, open up my cranium and scoop out the glioma.  They'll wake me up when they get to the part of the tumor that is closest to my motor strip and make me do vocal warm-ups and other exersizes.  These passionate brain geeks don't just want the tumor out.  They want to restore my full function vocally, which has been reduced and weakened by the tumor.  In the pre-op appointment, during which Dr. Romeo enthusiastically pointed to parts of the tumor and my brain on the screen like a military strategist plotting a complex battle manuver, Jim asked, "So is the tumor just pressing on the motor strip or is it impinging on it?"  Dr Romeo spun around, pointed at Jim, and said, "That's a good question!"

I puffed up a little.  Yep, that's my brilliant boyfriend.

Apparently they won't be able to tell until they get in there.  I might be partially paralyzed, temporarily or for longer. 

 It's a mix of feelings on my end:  "What, all this for lil' ol' me?"  and "Yeaaaahhh, let's kick it's ass for all the young people this fucker could go after!" I've had a damn good run, after all.  Imagine getting this alien invader when you are a child.

Pwople hav been saying, "Good luck!" lately.  The actor in me wants to say, "It's bad luck to wish someone good luck on operning night.  Just tell me to 'break a leg.'"

But the truth is, this is a great surgical team.  One wife of an employee of Jim's had brain surgery with this team nine years ago, and she's good to this day. That's the anecdotal.  Dr Romeo is a tumor specialist, and the rest of the people who will be in the OR are straight up brain geeks.  It's not just that this is what they do.  They have dogs in this fight: reputation, how they feel about the state of their art, and the accumulation of science for the future.  They know what they're doing and they care deeply about it.  Forget luck.  I'll take human passion and pride over luck anyday.  If I needed luck at this juncture I'd be well and truly hosed.
Plus, I am fortunate to get this surgery.  Without treatment, including this surgery, I'd be looking at just a few more weeks here on the planet.  This could buy me months, or best case, possibly even years.  And, I'm hoping, without those brutal headaches. 
 I've already been booked for thirty vocal rehab sessions after healing from the surgery, which takes six weeks.  Rght after the healing the chemo starts, because glio is an efficient, aggressive cancer and we need to start chasing it back and firing all our amo at it before it can go to ground; that's the strategy, anyway.  That's how you lead a bug hunt.

When I wake up in ICU I'll be sore, cranky, viciously dehydrated, stinky and whiney.  What a sweet package for the long-suffering boyfriend and my Mom, whom I haven't seen in person in a couple years.

But how incredibly lucky am I to be able to get this thing out of my skull?!  And to be in love with someone who shows up like Sam for Frodo.  Like I think-and hope- I would.

People love to talk prayers, and I think it's lovely to make yourself feel better with whatever works.  I like the Buddhist metta phrases*, myself.  But no amount of faith or hope or religion or New Age imaginings have prepared me for this.

Instead, I think D&D pepares you beautifully for this situation.

There's always that moment when you're attacked in a strange underground tunnel facing a Manticore who's been paid to kill you and the DM says, "Roll initiative".  You pick up the D20 and roll, and just for a second you close your eyes and prepare yourself.

Here we go.

Roll initiative.


* May all beings be safe.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be healthy.
May all beings live with ease.

The 8Things to Not Do

...When a friend is struck by illness, looming possibility of death, or disbility:
  don't dehumanize them.

This can be hard to resist, as described by Terry Prachett in his novel Mort.  Death's grandaughter in the book can step out of human temporal limitations and finds it difficult to relate to people because, "It was hard to deal with people when a tiny part of you saw them as atoms that would not be around in another few decades."  Terry Prachett also said, "Evil begins the minute you start treating people as things."

The thought of someone not being there anymore can shake you up.  But don't allow it to make you act like an asshole by dehumanizing them in the following ways:

1. Come at them with the pity pout.  If you come at them with your face all twisted up in pity, that's just inside-out superiority.  Get that pity off your face before you get hit by bus and killed before them and then look really stupid.

2.  Gush your grief all over them.  They are not suddenly your grief tampon.  Get a grip on yourself.

3.  Come slappin' labels on them, like "Tough" and "Strong".  Your friend is not suddenly an inspirational poster.  The disabled community knows this phenom well.  They call it inspiration porn.  Do not splay your friend out covered in labels you are picking for them.

4.  Tell them what's wrong with their karma because you read The Secret.  Leave the victim-blaming to the dude bros in the courts.  If you ever feel that someone who met with misfotune might have in any way had it coming, stay away from them for your own safety.  People who preach to cancer survivors about their bad karma get pushed down the basement satirs.  Or they would, if karma actually worked.

4.  Turn into a Hallmark Card.  Polyannaisms are insulting and demeaning.  Even, "I just know you'll be OK!" is arrogant.  Because you DON'T  know that.  It also basically temps fate.  Do not try to reasure someone with platitudes.

5.  Share your terror.  The operson who is acutually in the scary situation is handling it their own way.  Don't throw your own fear into the mix and ask them to handle it for you.  It's like tossing a bowling ball to ther person about to be hanged.  Handle your own fear your own way, and let them handle theirs in their way.  They are trying to hold it together already.

6.  Get ahead of the unfortunate on the gallows humor.  I did this once, making a joke to a friend about his loss of sight.  I had no idea how insentitive I was being since it seemed like the kind of joke he made a lot.  But that's the point to all of these-it was not my joke to make.  When you are too gleefully dark over someon'e misfortune, it's like you're running ahead to the gallows, giggling and brandishing your hanky and getting it ready to dunk.  It's creepy, insulting and dehumanizing.  Let them make their own humor when they need it, not when you do.

The basic principal behind of all of these Don'ts is, don't forget who this is actually happening to.  It might bring out your fear or grief or nervousness-in that case, bring soup and then go home. Don't spend your possibly final moments with someone you like or love objectifying them like that.  I know it's hard, but please make the effort, if only for yourself.

As a person who is in fact still living, they deserve to be treated with respect and humanity.  And it might be your last chance to give that to them.

SO, fair question:  What are the DOs?

1.  Check in with them.  Ask them how they are.  LISTEN to what they say.  Be on their side by accepting what they say, and back them on it.  If they are happy about their doctor, you can easily agree that medicine gets more amazing all the time.   This is how you support without pushing too hard.

2.  Give concrete support.  This is why soup is so appealing to give.  And soup IS nice.

3.  Check in with yourself to see if you honestly believe in your friend.  If you do, just let that resonate between you without slapping on labels like"strong" or Hallmark Carding them.  If you truly believe in them, there's no need to cheerlead. 

4.  Email or text someone with cancer.  Calls out of nowhere are tough becuae they sap energy, and cancer doesn't leave you much to play with.  Respect your friend's new limits. 

A Geek's Journey Into Brain Cancer, Part 3: Face The Raven

Clara was not my favorite Dr Who companion, and I've got company on that one.  She was too manic pixie for me, and somehow too American in her acting style, to be my favorite.

But she knocked me out with one line in the episode Face The Raven. (S9 ep10) Clara gets marked for death because, basically, she makes a bad gamble.  The Doctor tries to save Clara when he finds out what happened, but she stops him.  It was her bet to make, after all.  She ends up stepping into the street to face the Shade, and swoops her arms and head back while thrusting her chest out in a kind of half-arabesque as she says, "I accept this."

It's a New Age idea to "take reponsponsibility for everything that happens to you" becuase you karmically brought it on yourself somehow.  As a surivor of sexual assault this idea makes me want to brandish a crowbar on the whole world, becuase blaming the vicitim doesn't only happen in rape culture.  It's a defensive aversion method so rife in dysfunctional health culture that people feel free to be assholes to smokers who get lung cancer.

BUT there's a lovely grace in acceptance.

ANd if you're a huge egomaniac like me, you easily find the Chosen One mythology at work in the idea that you are marked by the Shade and Must Face The Raven.  Not Chosen like Buffy.  More like the Inca Mummy Girl in the episode of that name, who is chosen as a sacrifice to the gods and will never have a boyfriend, never live her life out.

That's a thing I always keep in mind, that young people get this.  People who haven't had careers and a chance to Make Their Mark or find The One They Love.  People give you that pittying look when they hear glioblastoma, but imagine being at the beginning of your life with this.

NO, I did NOT choose to keep an evil replicating fungus in my head to feast on my brain. 

But I can accept am privleged that I got to have a good life before accepting this.

Cleaned Up This Whiney-Ass Blog

Apologies for the journal enties posted as if they were readable.

Those responsible have been sacked.

Also, the Bastards who allowed those who were sacked to even post such horrificaly lame material in the first place have been sacked.

That's enough Holy Grail for now.  I am brave, brave, brave, brave* Sir Robyn.





*Or so everybody seems to think.....

Original Short Fiction, My Wild Friend

My Wild Friend

by Robbie Knight

My eyes were trapped in a screen, answering sales emails at 6:45 on Sunday night-but that's business. I kept glancing from monitor to phone.  I was waiting for a text.  My friend Camille was due from backpacking and gathering samples of mole poop or something in Wyoming, and I always looked forward to stories of her adventures.

In high school I had been the one who never figured out which guy got me pregnant at which party. I was the dropout. Camille was the yearbook supermodel with straight A's-an exchange of stereotypes back then. Over twenty years later I had a closet full of suits and a daughter about to graduate with a degree in engineering; she was the one with a list of life choices that would make the 700 Club cancel a broadcast in anticipation of end-time earthquakes. Camille was pretty mainstream now (for Colorado at least) but I was still the beige one.  And here we were, tight as ever, best friends. And she still called me “wild girl” or “my wild friend”.

When her text said, “Hey.” I put on my new reading glasses to stare at my phone. This was not how she announced her return from the back country. There should be azure and emerald photos of mountain vistas, herds of Dall sheep, pictures of her field samples and a long paragraph of profound hypotheses. “Hey”-with a period after it-I had never seen before.

I thought for a moment.

“Hey!” I texted, “Are you back?”

“I need your help,” she returned. The organs in my belly sank. Had she been attacked by some rednecks, assaulted?  Had Flight For Life brought her home with a busted femur?

“Want me to come over now?”

“Now. And I need you to take my cats.” 

Someone was pacing-or prowling-in front of Camille's house when I parked.  I slid my car keys between my fingers before opening the car door.  But when the prowler straightened up, it was Camille.

“What are you doing?” I said.

Her chest was heaving as if she'd been running.  She looked at her watch and then past me and above my head, at the sky.

“Hey,” she finally said, hugging me.  Her hands brushed my bare arms as she released me and she hissed with alarm.

“Oh, God! Did I scratch you?”

This was an old joke.  Camille loved her Goth manicures.  In high school she had loved leopard and zebra press-ons.  She had scratched me once and I had whined about it, so she  teased me for years whenever we had a disagreement or a tense moment.  “What, did I scratch you?” she'd say, and I would laugh.  But this time she was weirdly serious. 

Then I looked at her hands.  It was one of those Goth manicures, but I'd never seen this kind before.  Her nails were thick and curved under, glistening sharp in the streetlight. I decided not to tell her how hideous I thought it was.

“You didn't scratch me,” I said. She relaxed. “Camille-” I stopped, listening.  Yowling and hissing sounds were coming from her bedroom window.  “Are Bodi and Sattva fighting?”

“No,” she said, “Listen, can you take them right now but first do me a favor?”

“OK-But-”

“Lock me in my shed.”

“Now, look,” I said, “You need to explain some things to me-”

“No,” she said.  “This is not one of those times.  This is no questions.  This is the most important thing I've ever asked you to do.” 

I usually love the drive between our houses on the suburban plains east of Castlerock.  There are no streetlamps and when the moon is huge like this the whole world is rolling in soft silver, but tonight I hardly noticed.  I checked my phone for the time; it was 7:40, and I would have to start back at 3:00 AM to get here in time to let her out of her shed at the appointed time of 4:22. The rest of the drive I spent worrying about whether to call mental health services or her fiance, and about emergency cat boxes.  Although the territorial killing machines were now calm and quiet in their carriers, I cooed and talked soothingly to them.  Or was it to myself?

Lauren's voice on speaker was ragged.  “Jordan,” she said. “What?”

“Um.....I think something is going on with Camille and I should tell you-” I was wrestling with the bag of cat litter.

“So. Talk.”

“I think something's going on. Something really wrong,” I finally got the bag open.

Silence.

“Lauren, are you OK?”

“Not really,” she said with an odd brightness, “Camille broke up with me...” she trailed off, then, “...a few hours ago.”

“What?”  They had been engaged for three years.  They had been looking at properties.

“She broke up with me. In a fucking text,” Lauren said. “So, am I OK? No. Not really. And it's not really any of your business," she'd been speaking long enough that I could detect a slight languor, a slight slur. "So, I don't really care what's wrong with her right now. I'm going to finish this nice bottle of Merlot and maybe drink another one and then I'm going to bed. So, goodbye."

“OK.”

“Hey, Jordan!”

I waited.

"It's not you, is it?"

"Me?"

"Are you-have you guys-"

I laughed. "No." I said, "Still straight."

"Huh. Yeah. OK." then, cheerily, "Fuck off anyway, would you?" She hung up.

It was completely dark when I stumbled across Camille's backyard, viciously bruising my shin on one of her concrete Buddhas, to find her shed.  I sat in the grass with my back against the door of the shed and listened.  I respected the appointed time she had given me to let her out, even if I didn't understand it, but that didn't mean I was going to leave her alone. I couldn't sleep anyway, after locking my best friend in her shed (was she crazy, or was I?) so I wrapped my fleece jacket tight around me and tried to sleep. 

Memories scuttled over the surface of my mind in half-sleep. Shortly after the baby started to show, the mean girls at school had cornered me in the back of the room after class and poked me with pencils, taunting me with some joke about getting poked. Camille had stepped into the circle and with a slow, low voice talked about lead poisoning and law suits and how many of them were perfect anyway? When I graduated a year later (and a year late) Camille had sat proudly beside me at commencement, leveling her gaze at anyone who shot me so much as a disapproving sneer.  She had backed me up many times at the risk of her own standing, but standing up to people was like breathing to her. Camille's natural moral authority was irresistible and made her all the more likeable.  She was smart and calm.  Even with teachers.

I woke up to what sounded like a labored snoring through the wall, and I knew from decades of sleepovers that Camille didn't snore.  And it had started to rain.  I turned on my phone; the light from the screen pierced the darkness and blinded me.  3:55.  I couldn't deal anymore.

I banged on the shed door.  “Camille?”

“Hey, Jordan.” she sounded awake, more awake than I was.

“I'm letting you out.”

“Thanks, honey.” she threw her arms around my neck and then stood back, smiling up at the rain.  “God, you're an amazing friend.  You must think I'm insane.  You didn't call anyone, right?”

“I did call Lauren.”

“Oh,” it almost sounded like “Ow,” with a trailing drawl on the word. “Did she bite your head off?” She steadied me and started leading me across the yard.  She seemed very alert; I was stiff and cold from the ground, and tired.

“Just a little." 

“I owe you,”  A car went by on the street, headlights sweeping the yard and across Camille's face, briefly lighting up her eyes, which reflected the light like a raccoon's. 

I stumbled.  Did I see that?  Had I imagined it?  I must have imagined it-my eyes were still throbbing from turning on my phone in the dark.  She pulled me up. 

“You don't owe me anything,”  I said.

“I have two brains now.  Two minds.  I don't know," Camille said, two weeks later.  She played absently with a feather on a string on the couch between us-one of Bodi's toys.  She hadn't even asked about her cats.  “It's like everything I know, the whole world, looks completely different to me half the time.”

"What looks different?" I said.

"Humanity. That idea of humanity and why we don't have any. Why we prey on each other, turn on each other. Why people break up. Why friendships break up. Why can't we all be like war buddies and always keep our alliances, always stick by each other? What is wrong with primates?"

“Primates?”

“Humans! Us! The hatred we have for our own kind. The way we betray each other. We're a failure of nature,” Camille stopped, dragging air through her nose and mouth like a lioness. "You want a burger?" she blurted, jumping off the couch and heading for her kitchen.

“You?” I said. “At 10:00 AM?” I followed her.

“Why is it that people have all these rules about eating? That's another stupid thing.”

Camille pulled a knife from the rack and spun it in her hand; I noticed now that the horrible Goth manicure was gone. I opened the fridge, which always looked like it rightfully belonged to a biologist-Mason jars stuffed full of of herbs with their stems in water, more jars full of various sprouts, bottles of her home-made probiotic brews with particles of mysterious primordial living things swishing in the bottoms, and vegetables with the leaves and roots left on from the farmer's market, scattering soil. All the jars were gone, all the greenery was gone, replaced by stacks of neat, paper-wrapped packages with writing on them.

“Safe to say you're not a vegetarian anymore?”

Camille laughed. She tapped a spoonful from a jar of lard into the hot pan. "Toss me a pound of the bison!"

I did. She tore it open with her teeth, made two patties and threw them in the pan. She was left with a small handful of ground meat which she began chewing. Blood ran down her wrist and over the tasseled bracelet of wooden prayer beads.

My heart wasn't hammering, just thudding. A heavy thud.

Camille made a happy guttural sound as she turned one burger and flung the other onto a plate, raw side up. She looked up at me, stopping to stare at my expression, and her smile fell.

She set the plate on the counter. She looked at her hand. She bent and began to sob, gripping the counter edge behind her as blood dripped down the cabinets. I turned off the burner and put my arms around her.

"What's happening to me?"

"I don't know," I said. “Camille-what happened up there, in Laramie?

"I'm losing myself!" she broke loose and circled the kitchen. "I ended my engagement! I haven't been to work in a week!  I'm losing it all. I'm losing my life, me!” With her clean hand she was gripping a handful of her mane of fine hair, that hair guys would reach for in line at Starbucks. She had always been nice to them about it, choosing to see it as a compliment and then quietly instructing them about manners and respect in her soft, liquid voice, in a way that made them blush and try to buy her coffee as an apology. I wondered what would happen to one of those guys this morning. “Who even am I?" she said.

"We're in our forties," I said, "Change of life stuff? It can get weird."

She stopped pacing and stared at me with her head lowered. "Maybe," she said, relaxing. "Yeah. Maybe it's something like that,"  But another expression ghosted across her features, mocking and feral.  As if, inside, something was laughing.

“I need to ask a big favor,” said her text. I sighed, sitting back on my couch.  Camille seemed to have forgotten about her cats, who still lived here.  It was an inconvenient situation and I had been waiting for her to bring it up. 

“What's that?” I texted back.

“Go camping with me.”

I hate camping.  She knows I hate camping.  Things might be crazy for her right now, but I had gone through my divorce only a few months ago and I wanted to see every chick flick I'd missed for twenty years and catch up on the latest culinary trends in chocolate, not flick bugs out of my coffee while freezing my butt on a log. 

“No crazy back country stuff.  Just car camping. Please.”

Please?  That was a very strong word between us. 

“When?  For how long?”

“Can we leave Friday afternoon and come back Saturday? Then you won't even have to find a cat sitter and I promise I'll find homes for them when we get back.”

Headlines scrolled through my mind: “Biologist Kills Friend and Then Eats Her in Wilderness” and “Innocent Camping Trip Turns Deadly.” I giggled madly. I had been watching TV shows like Deadly Females.  Was I going crazy too?  Maybe we both were. 

I stared at my phone for a while.  Then I replied. “OK.”

We drove north to Medicine Bow on a clear, shimmering September afternoon; we were speeding to get to the camp site before dark fell.  The moon began sliding up, big and red as a blood orange in your hand.

We pulled onto the dirt road and found the camp site marker just as shadows from the trees were creeping over us, swallowing us.  I was about to bolt from the car to grab the tent.  Camille put her hand on my wrist; she had gone back to the Goth manicure.  Her nails were thick, curved, realistic-looking claws. The moonlight glinted milkily on them, in stark contrast to her increasingly velvety  skin. Goosebumps sprang up under her hand as she held onto my arm, but it wasn't just the manicure. 

“My wild friend,” she said, “We've been friends for almost thirty years.  Did you know that?” she was staring through the windshield at the inky forest.

I swallowed.  “Yes.”

“You are the most loyal person I know.  You are the only person I know who has ever just accepted me as I am.  You always have and you always do.”

“You have always done that for me, too,” my voice and my skin were faintly quivering.

“I haven't been able to sustain another friendship like this.  That really means everything, you know, loyalty.  Not judging.  Sticking by someone.”

“Yeah,”  my fear began to soften. I cleared my dry throat. “I know. Camille,” I said, “It's going to be OK.  We all go through stuff.  We'll get through this, too.”

“See?” she said, “That's why we will always be friends. Even in a ridiculous world of roads and bridges and malls and shopping and crap none of us really need.  Even with all our gadgets and ideas and man-gods. Reality is not that. Life was never supposed to be that.  None of that's real.”

I was pretty sure I knew what she meant.

“So,” she began to sniff. Tears were making their way down her cheeks.  Her voice deepened.  “I'm asking you to forgive me.”

“There's nothing to-”

Her hand was heavier on my wrist.  Were the nails longer, more curved?

“I'm sorry,” Camille said.

She scratched me.

A Geek's Journey Into Brain Cancer,The Prequell

Before you find out you have brain cancer, you will want to have some things.  This is a Microscopic fragment of  than any prequell by Brandon Sannderson, so fear not:

First, you will need someone who truly loves you and whom you love above anyone else.  Someone you would carry up Mt Doom.  So when this Amazing Person wants to carry You up Mt. Doom, it's more bearable.  Because you would have, you can understand and you can know you would.

You will need a dark, bizarre sense of humor.  You will need to face down a herd of Daleks with a Jammie Dodger and have fun doing it.

You will need grappling hooks of determination that emerge instantly from your living flesh and then disappear after use.

And you will need to know this:  That the first 100 days are the worst.  Get through the Dead Marshes of the first 100 days and you will again find calm when you need it, you will find equanimity, you will master your new "Got no time to bleed" Cancer Terseness, which is So like the Mandolorain, or even the Eastwoodian style of purportment (OK, right, they really are one and the same).

So, there's your pre-cancer checklist.  Git 'er done.

A Geek's Journey Into Brain Cancer, Pt 1

It begins with The Asteroid That Killed The Dinosaurs.

You might see the fiery trails in ths sky shortly before, but it really begins with the shattering of the atmo and the fountain of ocean and land mass in the sky, the deafening explosion, the shock wave that brings you to your knees and has you crawling on the ground, crying out for help in a land where everyone else has been knocked out by the shock.

You are crawling on your belly in the occaionally smouldering muck.  You are alone. Your world is gone.

The future is gone and the NOW is in ruins.

But you are the protagonist.  You can't just lie there.  You struggle to stand up.

Some around you cry out for YOUR help.  The strong ones. though strong, are also shattered.  They limp and squint and stare at you, hoping you'll tell them what you can't tell them.

They hold out bowls of soup to try to make it all better.

You accept the soup with a terse (becuase you are tired) grace (becuase you love them) like the Witcher on a campaign, or like The Mandolorean on a garden planet.  Then you stride on.

You're not completely unfamiliar with disaster so you know some potocols; you proceed to send out distress signals to all your Loved Ones.  Then you wade into the Death Marshes of paperwork, falling into occasional pools of it and wallowing until something makes sense and you get the right phone numbers. 

When you finally sleep it's fitful and haunted by visions of Being Awake During Brain Surgery and also by animations of gliomas blossoming into brain tissue like the thick rhythms of a lava lamp.

You scramble into more Death Paper Marshes, because someone who loves you wants to care for you and you need to set it up to be as easy as possible for them because it's going to be a nightmare for them.  You will need to write them lots of letters to see them through.

You wake up one morning on the foothills of Mount Doom and realize You Are Definitley Fucking Here.  This is where you are now.

You also realize that Your Sam is next to you, and you can forsee his nightmare ahead, and you want to fix it all ahead of time but there isn't time, and you are so tired. SO. Tired.

Short Story: The Girl Who Blew Up The Moon

original ficion by  Robbie Knight
copywrite 2019

The Girl Who Blew Up the Moon

By Robbie Knight

Home is just a dot, she thinks, craning her neck to look out the back portal at Mars. Then she laughs a dark laugh. Home.  She turns back to the console and looks through the front window and down. 

This was home once, this little pile of half-consolidated rubble they call Phobos. Her mother calls it The Moon, even though there are two zipping around Mars, and they’re no more than ugly little rocks caught in slowly dying orbits.

She looks into the approaching Limtoc crater; same old bunch of receiver dishes and the little cluster of pockmarked and dusted domes. It’s sad compared to when she was a little kid and it was a shining, slick new installation. Now it’s dead under a ghostly coating of crumbly gray. Moon dust and dark memories.

She flicks the remote life support systems switch to get air and heat going; it won’t take long for the little installation to be habitable. She steers the pod carefully down into Limtoc. Landing on this 15 kilometer-diameter zooming rock with no gravity is just about physics. The bottom of the pod weighs nine times more than the top, so the bottom-heavy mini-vehicle settles easily. Also, she remembers how to land. There’s a bitter feeling in it.

She sends the small hoverbot out to hook a line through the embedded iron handholds that punctuate the rugged surface of Phobos. The staple shapes march in criss-crossing lines as far as the eye can see, and beyond. She hooks her tether clip onto the line and walks carefully on the uneven surface, making sure one foot is always on the rock as she carries the bag of equipment to the right spot. Her wrist unit lights up when she reaches it. She rechecks her orientation, then pulls the hand-sized minerbots from the bag and clicks each on. She has preprogrammed them so they set right to work, anchoring themselves and beginning to laser out the rim of the narrow hole that will go all the way to the center of the moon. Their little bug-like bodies are now a blur as they spin and shoot blue bursts. She checks her wrist unit again to verify the bot settings. It will only take an hour, if that. 

She checks the exact time again. Time is important, because she wants the moon to shatter during the wedding.

She heads back for the complex, the tether clip sliding along the polymer-shielded fiber line. When she sees the greenhouse her guts twist and sink, as she knew they would, but then she freezes. She takes a breath. Because no one would have left the lights on. 

They flicker, then go black.

It happens in a flash, so quickly that she’s not sure it happened at all. Was it just a glitch as the life support systems came on? Was it a stray reflection in her helmet?

She’s always had trouble trusting herself. It’s hard when no one believes you about things. It makes you feel like you’ve floated off out of atmo, untethered; all your feelings and your knowledge, all the messages from your gut and your heart and your brain meaningless to everyone else. Ungrounded and unfounded. No grounds for accusation. Feelings unfounded. Just shut up. Quit your whining. It didn’t happen. And then her mother’s voice: “He was so good to you!”

Rage is juicing through her chest. Her breath in her ears is unsteady. She takes a moment to swallow and clamp down on it all. Clamp down, she had learned to do that. The old astronaut saying was: “There’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.” Her mother always added, “And feelings make everything worse.” Focus, she tells herself.

She shrugs off the equipment bag in the entry bay, checks the power panel to make sure reads are in the green, then enters the complex. She lifts the helmet and climbs out of her hard suit, hanging it up. She dry-scrubs her face with her palms and then rakes her fingers through her short, thick black hair, blows her nose, tucks the silk back into her pocket. The rush of air smells of dust but also moist soil, which can’t be right. Maybe there’s a leak somewhere. Her feet ache momentarily as the grav-magnifier kicks in, with that soft vibration pulling her down, her spine undulating into position as she puts weight on her feet for the first time in hours. The suit on the hook sags, her equipment bag flattens on the floor. She shakes her limbs and her feet, taking a moment for the leaden sensation to wear off, for the vertigo to settle. Then her empty stomach complains. She was too amped for breakfast before she left. But why eat? She came here to die.

This installation was only designed for a small staff of eight. When she had lived here, with her father and mother and uncle and his wife, there was room and time for privacy. Too much privacy.

She sets the equipment bag on the floor and stands in the common room for a time, staring into nothing. With a fingertip she writes in caps in the gritty dust on the table: 

SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR MOON 

She holds up her wrist unit to get a rough video, walking around the table so that it will take a moment or two for the words to make sense to them when they watch it, then lingers the camera unsteadily on the words. She swallows and stands very still for a time. She taps the screen, sending the file.

Suddenly she wants to play. Just a few minutes to warm up, she tells herself. 

She lifts the electric cello case from the equipment bag. She settles on a chair, her butt slipping around in the dust. Gripping the neck and the bow, she leans into the sound. The wall speakers pick up the signal and begin broadcasting the music through the entire complex. Her music is echoing back to her from every room, the delays of the notes eerie and haunting as they bounce from the greenhouse, the bunks, the engine room, the uplink center, the storage rooms, the halls. 

Shubert’s Death and the Maiden was written for a quartet, but she plays it pitched down, in the darkest notes she could transpose it to. The first jarring, dreadful strains sound like the panic of one being hunted, the pounding terror of the prey. She plays on allegro, through the loping, more cheerful passages and back into dread and horror and loss and sorrow. She’s all in the music now and memories from the greenhouse are nudging at her mind. She shakes them off. Tears are tumbling down the sides of her nose and making little spots on the red wood of the cello, darker red spots like blood, as she rocks in time. Another memory slaps her mind. She drops her bow; it clatters on the floor.

From the far end of the hallway, sniffling.

She gasps and jumps up, gripping her cello. She slides it onto the table, smearing the words in the dust. She creeps toward the hallway.

She notices now that the floor is clean. She turns and glances back at the angled walls of the common room. The windows are coated with dust like the table, like other objects, yet the floor is gleaming. So is the floor in the hallway. As she steps onto the hall floor the lights blink on automatically. 

Another sniff, from the storage area just around the corner.

“Hey!” she yells, half affronted, half fearful. 

A door slides shut. Though it’s been years, she knows the sound of every door in the complex. It was the door to the storage rooms. She freezes, wanting a weapon and remembering that the weapons are all in storage.

Anger feels better than fear. She grabs anger and charges on with it, feeding on outrage, marching into the hall. But then she stops. The walls are tighter than she remembers and…lumpy? No. They are covered in sculptures.

Faces emerge from the walls, familiar faces. For a moment, she forgets her mission. These are made from simple paste and food wrappers, but they are accurate to every feature. They are all sculptures of her own face. They must have come from pictures left behind on a hard drive left behind somewhere around here, or-her insides recoil-maybe from her uncle’s office. There’s one of her grinning; that’s from the day she got her first sitar and had just played her first notes. There’s one of her bent in concentration, with a strand of her then-long hair framing her cheek as she played the hammer dulcimer for a live broadcast. She’s been sculpted in moments of joy and unselfconsciousness.

She recognizes yet another of her sculpted faces from the picture with her uncle, before it happened. How happy she had been. How she had trusted him. Her gut flips over. The rage is back. How dare someone do this. This is a violation. She never gave her permission.

“Whoever in both hells you are you can’t be here! This is a private installation!” She bangs on the door. “Get out here!”

And then what? she wonders. 

The lock on the storage door pops. The door slides open by a few centimeters.

“Tea?” says an appealingly deep and soft man’s voice. A slip of scent, the buttery-tang of the brew, meets her nose. Her stomach growls like a small, angry animal.

She opens the door slowly, standing back. The storage room is in shadow. A small figure, half her height, wearing a long coat over a tunic and a woven fiber cap, is moving toward her. 

The hand offering the tea is covered in skin tags. It almost looks to be made of layers of candle drippings. The face emerges from shadow and it’s also covered in layers of cascading tags. His left eyelid is weighed down at the outer corner with an especially large lump of skin, giving his face a tinge of sadness. His eyes are huge and dark, not silver like her own. His are beautiful, tender, night-sky Earth eyes.

“You can’t catch it and there’s nothing in the cup but tea,” he says, with a cold edge.

She takes the cup, watching her skin brush his. It feels like warm, soft human skin, not strange at all. He turns away.

She stands still, her hand still stretched out awkwardly, as the thoughts follow one after the other. What a perfect place to be if you’re sick of people treating you like a monster, she thinks. I bet he just wants to be away from people. I bet he’s had a shit life.

She wants to apologize somehow. She sips the tea, which is very good, and which makes her realize how hungry she is. She remembers again: but I’m going to die now anyway. Then another thought, out loud:

“You made those sculptures.”

“And?”

“You had no right to.”

After a long moment he says, “Well, I wasn’t expecting you.”

She pauses, not having expected that answer. “This installation has been sold. Well, stolen, really.” 

“That so?”

“And you need to get out of here.”

“I thought you were here to do some recording.”

“No. Recording? Why did you think-”

“Pretty amazing solo rendition of Death and the Maiden. I’ve never heard anything like it. It got to me.”

Her heart leaps. It’s been a long time since anyone told her they liked her music. Since the broadcast performances, before her Dad got sick. Before he died and left her alone with that woman called Mother and the uncle who should be dying slowly of hypothermia and radiation poisoning in the Martian desert, if karma worked. But karma doesn’t work.

“I’m going to blow it up. All of it. I came here to blow up this whole moon.”

“How can I help?”

She tries to speak again and stumbles. She begins to explain. “You need to get out of here.”

“You don’t know what I need.” He’s playing with her, she feels it, but not like a predator. He’s watching her like a professor, like someone who wants to see what her next thoughts will be. It’s infuriating, but also reassuring. His liquid dark eyes hold hers for a moment. She looks away, around the room. There are curving, intricate shapes in the shadows.

“But why would you want to die here?” she says, then winces, biting her lip. Maybe she knows why. Maybe that was a stupid thing to say. But why is she caring what she says?

“You first,” he says, “Since you’re the one blowing it up. Why do you?”

They stare at each other. Her stomach growls again.

“I made bread. Hold on,” he says.

“No. I-there’s no reason-”

“To die hungry?” 

Put like that, it silenced her. Why should she die hungry? Why should she follow any rules anymore? 

Her eyes have gotten used to the dimness. She looks around the storage room, which is a small habitat now. He’s set up a makeshift kitchen, seating area, dining area, all from supply boxes. Everything is neat, but also pleasingly arranged. The arched shapes are sculptures, but not faces. They are all of living nature: branches of bristlecone pine populated with  ravens in various poses, a vixen and her pups in a sand cave, a meadow of trenchgrass with wandering sheep. There’s another in progress on the far wall, a sort of armature in the process of being covered with layers of glue holding on food wrappers. He’s filled this old place with art. He’s brilliantly talented. Any of these pieces would go for top yen on Mars.

He motions her to sit at the table made of boxes, sliding a plate to her. The bread is crispy-hot and rips open fluffy and steaming; he’s made it with a restored heirloom Hopi blue corn, which contains nearly every nutrient. It shimmers with flavor. She wipes the grease off her lip, her insides purring contentment. Then she remembers the bots, which are boring a hole to the center of the moon, and her stomach lurches again. She shouldn’t have eaten. It’s putting her off the mission.

She stands. “You can take my pod back home. Get off this moon. I’m on a schedule.”

“No.” He gazes up at her.

“Do you think I don’t mean it?” She looks down at the plate and remembers her manners. “Thank you.” It all feels ridiculous. Her plans are falling apart. She marches out of the room, back down the hall. She pauses, looking again at the exquisite renditions of her own face. Her feet won’t move.

These can’t just be destroyed, her heart is shouting, you can’t just destroy art, especially masterful art. And he’s clearly a very advanced artist. To kill him, to destroy this beauty he created, goes against everything she cherishes in life. No one else in her family is an artist, and they don’t understand the value of it. It’s why she went away to school, to be surrounded by people who understand the importance of art, of music. It’s all that matters to her. She’s crying again, in rage.

“Why did you do this?” There’s no answer. She marches back down the hall, past the supply rooms, toward the greenhouse. She’s not even sure why.

But when she reaches the hall to the greenhouse, she knows. She feels numb, suddenly. Not angry, not sad. She feels nothing. She presses her palm on the wall panel; the lights flicker on. Of course, he’s been keeping it functional. It’s full of rows and rows of tomatoes and corn and amaranth and other crops. He’s been doing well here, all by himself, away from people. He probably hates people. I hate them, too. Well, not everyone, mainly just-

Now the feeling returns. She can see her uncle clear and sharp, grinning from inside the greenhouse with what she thinks will be another fun prank or joke or flower he grew. She’d run inside, run to him, climb on his lap-

Her fists are tight, her front teeth sunk into her lower lip.

“What are you waiting for?” he says from behind her, startling her. She doesn’t answer him.

“Why not play the rest of Death and The Maiden? Just play it and then go home. Whatever it is that got you into your little teenage snit, it’s going to get better. Almost everything does. Not my skin, of course, or my size. You know how this kind of thing happens, with gene modifications. And then there’s just nothing to be done. I’m stuck in this little monstrous body. But you’re not stuck, you-”

“What do you know about me? You don’t know anything.”

“I know you’re young. It will get better.”

“Once things happen they can’t un-happen.”

“You’ll get over whatever it is.”

She turns on him, shoulders hunched. She takes two steps towards him; he backs off, stumbling slightly.

“That’s what people say when they think you’re less than a person. That whatever they did to you, you’ll get over it, because you don’t matter, your feelings don’t matter. I bet people have said some horrible things to you, really horrible things. And they got away with it. And you have to remember every horrible word. Are you over it?”

He’s steadied himself. “Pretty much.”

“Well, good for you. Don’t tell me my life because you don’t know anything. You don’t know what he did!”

His eyes are locked on hers. He’s become very serious, his voice low and soft. “What-what who did…?” his voice trails off.

She knows she can’t go in the greenhouse. She can’t go a lot of places, because of the shame that looms and the fear that creeps after her everywhere. She can’t stand to be close with anyone. She doesn’t trust anyone. So many things in her life were ruined, probably forever. And now her mother’s voice, again, in that whining denial, He was so good to you!

“You want to go get in the pod and get out of here,” she says.

“What happened in there?” his voice is just above a whisper.

“None of your business!” she bellows. She starts for the hall, then for the greenhouse, then she simply sits on the floor. She’s trapped. 

After several minutes he sits beside her. He puts a hand on her arm. His hand is broad and warm and gentle.

“You’ve ruined everything,” she says.

“I told you. I wasn’t expecting you. Or anyone.”

“They think they’re coming back here. My mother and him. She’s marrying him. She knows what he did to me, and she’s marrying him. My Dad died less than a year ago. And they think they’re going to come here and be all happy.”

After a long silence he says, “Your mother knew?”

“She denies it. Yeah, she knew. She made it easy for him.”

“And they’re going to get married and live here.”

“Well, they think they are.”

He’s nodding, or rocking; she can feel the motion through his hand. She looks up. His eyes pierce hers.

“But,” he says, “Why do you have to die?”

“I was…I mean-”

“You’d definitely make a point, I’ll give you that. But then you’ve destroyed you. And you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re just a kid,” he catches her expression and revises, “I mean…you’re so young. Whatever you want to do to this installation, or this moon, I understand. But there’s no point in you dying. It’s a waste.”

“It’s better than prison.”

“You’re a young offender. You won’t get life, just a couple years of boring therapy. And there’s an amnesty program, if you want to apply for-”

“There are minerbots on the way to the center of this moon right now. Then I’m going to drop a speaker down the hole and-”

“Ah. Cavitation,” he says. “The oscillations will shatter it apart. Like Tesla’s earthquake machine, but with your music.” He looks at her for a long moment. “You got style. Shame to destroy that.”

She’s overcome by weariness. She was worried about being a coward, not completing her mission because of faintness of heart. But now it’s just become tiresome. It’s too much to think about and she’s longing for a nap. “I’m so tired,” she says.

“So, don’t do it.”

She grits her teeth. “I have to do it. I sent video telling them I was already doing it. And the bots are…” she checks her wrist unit, “Done in about a half hour.” She stands, now panicking. “But your sculptures.”

He laughs. “You don’t think I laser scan my work?”

“There’s images of me. I mean…”

“Oh, those. Well, tell you what. You own the rights if you come back with me.”

“It’s the wedding today.”

“Perfect. Let’s run the specs. Will you need to distort the sound to find the right frequency to start oscillations? Or did you-”

“I already programmed the speaker to find the frequency. But I don’t know how this will all come apart, or how long it will take.” She pauses, wondering what it will be like. Will it be violent, or gradual? Will they be dumped into space, or float around on a little raft of rock and get caught in a stationary orbit? But no, she can’t take him with her. And suddenly the worst thing is happening; she doesn’t want to die as much as she did. She’s losing resolve. She’s a coward.

“There’s enough hydro to get anybody back to the surface from here,” he says, “Or do we just charge up that pod?”

“No, I can’t. I planned not to come back.”

“And I planned to catch a transport in a few sols. But this wasn’t the spiritual retreat I thought it would be. Truth? It’s been so boring I could barely stand it. You’ve brought some excitement into the mix.”

“But-will we even make it?”

“Might as well try.”

Her heart is pounding, because now it’s real. She’s really going to do it. “Why are you helping me?”

“Since my wife and daughter died, I don’t know why I do anything. I came here to work away from the usual pressure. It sounded so mysterious in my head, sculpting alone on the moon. But I just ended up doing the same work I’ve always liked doing. Except for the renditions of you. Those are new for me. I’ve never been interested in portraiture and you changed that. So, let’s just say I owe you.”

“Oh. I thought-”

“What?”

“I guess I thought you came here to get away from cruel people.”

“More to get away from demanding people. But I didn’t manage that, either.”

“So you’re not-hiding, or anything?”

“Oh, I was. But you thought I was hiding because I’m a hideous dwarf, right?”

Heat rushes up her neck and all the way to her hairline. 

He nods. “Most people presume that I hate myself.” 

Her wrist unit lights up and bleeps.

He smiles, his face shifting under the lumpy curtain of tags. “It’s time.”