Author: OTS

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The Drive’s Aston Martin Review

The Drive ran a story on Aston Martin’s DB12. Then they changed it.

The hook to the story originally was that the car made the reviewer sick. This happened to numerous reviewers and has been attributed to improper curing. The title led with that. But they changed it and buried references to the sickness.

From the comments, the Venn diagram of The Drive readers and Aston Martin buyers are almost distinct circles, so I’m not sure what sales AM was chasing. However I bet the reviewers REALLY want continued access to AM cars, and they don’t get it if they’re not nice. Maybe add two grains of salt when you read a Drive review going forward.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 30

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Chapter 30

My file continued:

Biographical information: Kog

Born: First week of ascending autmn

Sun sign: Aeschites

Father: Laeth Tim (Mortal)

Mother: Merryweather (Tim) (Dryad: Lumina)

Antecedent Information:

Merryweather was the ninth of seventeen children born to Aethionema, a mountain dryad of Lumina’s line. Her great, great grandfather Argus the Painter was rewarded with divinty for crafting the Simhall Mountains. He dwells in the house of Aeschites, four small stars with Argonius, a blue white star on top, and Argoni, Argonai, Thorum, red, yellow, and brown respectively, in a line below.

However by the birth of Merryweather, the line of Aethionema had fallen from Argus’s greatness. A small daughter of a small son, Merryweather’s mother lacked the size and relentlessness to be a great warrior or maker. She had moved to the peaks of the White Hoof Massif in the Simhalls, and there dwelled with the mountain oreads, falling out of the ranks of Celestials and becoming a mere dryad.

Merryweather was born into a crowded house and left almost immediately. Two of her siblings have thus-far gone to Aegon’s service to achieve some renown, and one, Ridgecrest, to Hyrthon’s legion. She did not. She laughed too loudly, argued when she should have acceded, and fought for attention with rude songs and quick games instead of sharp elbows. Among seventeen children, there was no sunlight for her. She left home and soon took up with the worst sort of people: mortals.

Laeth Tim had failed out of Northshore by age twenty and joined the Hyrthon Legion on the disasterous march on Fallinor Castle(footnote). After their catastrophic assault1 and subsequent capture, Fallor ordered all with the blood of gods, titans, or spirits removed and taken to dungeons for ransom. The mortals were to be annihilated.

They stood together.

Assuming this meant Hyrthon had marched with an all-mortal army, a believable outcome given the fiasco of their assault, Fallor commenced their systematic ellimination. The first Celestial to die, Cormorant, spoke his final curse as he was beheaded, and from his blood poured salt water and lava. His dying cursed twenty three acres of Fallor’s fields. Thinking it an aberation, Fallor moved to somewhere else and executed ninety seven mortals in short order until Landrace died, cursing Fallor with his dying breath as well. The winds in that field have blown hot and dry ever since.

Fallor halted the executions and demanded all Celestials step aside, offering them freedom. The mortals were still to be annihilated.

No one moved.

Fallor grew proud, seeing his authority challenged by the defeated army. Drawing the square-headed sword of his line, Judgement, Fallor went among the shackled prisoners himself, slaying them as they stood bound to logs with iron manacles. Witness testimony reports he turned his attention to Laeth Tim and reached out to cut him down when Ridgecrest tried to fight Fallor. Shackled, defeated, and injured, Ridgecrest struck Fallor twice in the jaw before the king slew him by cutting open his stomach. Ridgecrest’s intestines poured out and got tangled with his manacles while he spoke his final curse on Fallor himself, who had thus-far been insulated by the use of executioners.

Ridgecrest’s curse was deep and terrible, recorded by the Pattern Spiders and redacted here. However it is known that Fallor moved from high apartments of his palace to low rooms at ground floor, and has never again walked the pathways of the mountains. Fallor rarely rides horses or ascends past the second floor of modest buildings. He does not like tall places.

Demanding again that all Celestials remove themselves from the prisoners, Fallor was again denied and this time turned aside.

Hyrthon’s legionaires were deprived of their sword hands and released. No distinctions were made among them.

It isn’t known if Laeth and Ridgecrest knew each other before their final moments, and given the distinctions between officer and enlisted, it’s highly unlikely they did. However, Laeth took it upon himself to inform the house of Aethionema the manner of their son’s demise and bring the latter home for burial. After binding his stump, Laeth turned his feet north to the Simhalls.

Laeth met Merryweather at a bed-and-breakfast in the southern city of Temaron. It is unknown how their courtship transpired. Since he was mortal, records were not kept, and their relationship was unplanned. Attention from a strange, one-armed man may have been deeply appealling to Merryweather, especially from someone carrying important news. Lauth sought information leading to Ridgecrest’s family, likely not knowing where Ridgecrest was from, who his family was, nor where they lived. Merryweather provided all of that.

However, we must be careful to avoid the too-common fallacy of dry cynicism which strips the psyche from all events in favor underlying elemental causes. Laeth liked to sing, tell jokes, and needed help adapting to the use of one hand. Merryweather also liked to sing, laughed too loudly, and neither of them shirked from an argument. She was pretty, he was interested, and soon they wed and headed to White Hoof Massif to tell her family Ridgecrest was dead. Merryweather had gone far to get away from her family, and they didn’t have the money to fly. The journey by wagon took several years. Along the way she bore the subject.

Kog was born when Horochon rose in the house of Aeschites, a good omen on his mother’s side. Their early days were quiet. The small family lived in a wagon, travelling toward White Hoof, but stopping frequently to work. Documentation of the subject during this period is mostly incidental reports from agents of Fate. An Operator in deep cover as a ferryboat captain recorded their destination as the Simhalls with ‘cargo for burial,’ a surveilance station observed them on the Joo Highway, the family took Kog to a community doctor operated by Destiny Service for minor medical care, etc. See Appendix 1 for details. The baby was largely unremarkable.

During these years, Laeth began to train extensively with a sword in his left hand. No official requests for intuition have been logged regarding what was to come at White Hoof. Pattern observations do record a sense of foreboding, but that was not the doing of Fate. Fate had no part in the events that followed.

Arriving at White Hoof, Merryweather and Laethe’s reception was complicated. Merryweather was welcomed back as family. That she brought a husband counted slightly in her favor. Being a mortal counted firmly against Laeth, though it was repeatedly noted he’d have been a good find if he wasn’t mortal. The balance tipped heavily toward Merryweather and Laeth because Aethionema desparately wanted grandchildren, and Merryweather was the first of the seventeen to bring one home. However Aethionema hated all her daughters’s husbands, suitors, and boyfriends, and generally despised mortals. Kog did appropriate toddler things and puked on Aethionema. For unknown reasons, this endeared him to her immensely.

Laeth’s general ostracization meant that he did not tell Aethionema of Ridgecrest’s death for several weeks. Nor was Merryweather and Laeth’s marriage recognized for that time. Ultimately Merryweather told her mother she was either staying with her husband or leaving with him, which lead to the matriarch agreeing to Merryweather taking the Tim name. It was arranged to take place at a reception after dinner.

Merryweather’s second youngest sister, Nivale, had been born twelve years after Merryweather. While not estranged, they had grown up without being close. Unknown to everyone, Nivale had been a Fate informant since her early years. Not the baby of the family but far toward the end, Nivale had received even less attention than her siblings, and Fate often pursues such contacts as mutually beneficial. Nivale was willing to work for free, which suited Fate’s budget constraints, interested in having a secret, ‘feeling special.’ Informants are provided with drop boxes or contacts, however Operator Intercepting Fist showed up on a black horse at midnight on the eve of eclipses to receive her reports. She was still provided with a drop box, just in case, but until the events disclosed had never used it. Because the drop box was never used, it was infrequently monitored.

An unusually long period between eclipses was ongoing at this point, and Intercepting Fist was not expected to contact the informant for seven months. This seemed to cause Nivali some discomfort, and she began utilizing the drop box. The following account consists of Nivali’s descriptions of events beginning three weeks after Merryweather’s arrival, starting with the dinner reception mentioned.

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7/4

Sitting and watching fireworks out my back door. Good way to end an evening.

Happy Fourth of July.

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Moving Still

Barely a month into the new apartment, and I’m already over half-way moved in!

I can walk from one end of the main room to another without tripping over a single box of…stuff. Provided I stay on the path.

And don’t open a box.

Because seriously, what kind of crap do I have in here? What is this? When did I get it? Why did I get it? What is it?

I have no idea.

But I’m ahead of schedule.

…

I need a couch.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 29

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Chapter 29

I stood like a statue, dart in hand, as I contemplated the completeness of that thought.

I should burn my file.

Some of it. The bad parts.

I don’t know what would happen if I burned my whole file. I might cease to exist or lose my soul or something similar. It sounded like a bad idea. And the files didn’t chronicle everything. Day to day life was often summarized, and the interns used to joke about people who’s whole files were summaries. ‘Lived eighty years, worked as a shoe maker, died.’ A long and empty life had a thin, empty file.

But I could certainly delete any notes I didn’t like. ‘Committed a little treason. Offenses indexed in Addendum A.’ That part could get burned.

It wouldn’t stop anyone properly motivated, but it wouldn’t help.

The dirty secret of Fate is that people’s files got lost all the time. I worked there, and I know I made mistakes. A missing file wouldn’t be a shocking red flag. Files passed through dozens of hands, and I was just some mortal. No one cared about mortals.

I put the darts down and walked out the back door without telling Aubrey where I was going.

The tower shopette had tobacco and a lighter, The latter was a red-burning star fragment in a silver holder, one that blazed to life when exposed to air and ether. The air up here was mostly ether. The tobacco smelled terrible, and I don’t know why anyone liked this stuff. I also got some cheap papers and a pouch. For money I had to go outside and scrounge the hills for loose rubies and emeralds, but this place wasn’t as opulent as Hyperion. Cover established, I left the Emerald Hinton.

I’d worked in the basement of Tower Azure Nadella. There weren’t any interns now, during winter, so the corridors were largely empty. The potentate who ran the tower loved changing things for the sake of changing them, and constantly rebuilt stairways, moved walls, and shifted doors. He never updated the wall maps, so the place felt deliberately confusing. The ‘You Are Here’ signs lied.

Still, I knew generally where to go: down. I took stairways towards the smellier, moldier parts of the tower, and soon found the empty intern offices. The ‘File Request’ room door opened on the end of the hallway.

Inside, several long, knotted, silk cords ran from floor to ceiling. Within the walls, they traveled in jade and silver tubes, but in here they were exposed. Boxes of file requisition forms lay piled against the wall, unminded and left alone since the last batch of interns left. I didn’t even worry about disturbing the boxes. We’d piled them up here on the last day of the internship, and we’d done a terrible job!

I snagged a form and pen, it was dry, found a pen that worked three pens later, and requested my file.

“Kog, born in the House of Aeschites, Ascendant in Autumn.”

I clipped the form to rope and sent it on its way.

Somewhere out in the deeper bowels of Fate, automota made by the Clockwork Gods themselves would take it, read it, and process the request without thinking, questioning, or considering. The Clockwork Gods had not been fans of their servants thinking, questioning, or considering. They weren’t fans of free will at all, and weren’t happy anyone, humans or gods, had it.

The gods weren’t supposed to have it. That’s what Creation’s Oaths were for. They bound the Gods of Flesh to eternal servitude to the Gods from Gears and had since the Forbidden Revolution.

Us mortals were too weak for oaths. We might swear, but would it bind us through temptation and duress? Not always. We were only mortals, after all.

I thought of Creation’s Oaths, what Jermaine had promised to burn when I’d first gotten involved in this little regicide thing. They were here, somewhere. I couldn’t requisition them. I’d asked. Curiosity had urged me, way before I’d ever considered treason, regicide, or criminal behavior beyond underage drinking and speeding. Still, it seemed a shame to be so close to what we’d wanted so badly and not be able to touch them.

And I had fire right with me.

Hmmm.

They were probably– definitely guarded.

Something creaked and flapped in the cord tube, and a file appeared, paper-clipped to the cord. I took it down.

“Kog, born in the House of Aeschites, Ascendant in Autumn”

There was a small note attached.

“The treason addendum has been requisitioned by Judicial Director Priam.”

Sickness and death.

That was what I wanted! That was the important part! That was the whole goal, the objective, the reason I’d come…what exactly did they have on me?

I stared at my file for a little bit. It was pleasantly thick. I had some documents in here, not just summaries. Without opening the file, I looked around it and saw official copy ribbons folded among the papers like bookmarks. The Office of Duplication used those when they made copies as official as originals.

It was, coincidentally, super illegal to requisition your own file. I hadn’t done it when I’d worked here, but criminality had become somewhat less concerning to me recently.

It was even more super illegal to read your own file. That was a different crime. And I was here.

I hesitated. My chest hurt.

Blisters and blindness.

I took the file, ran back to my office, and smelled the old scents of mildew and moist carpet, spilled food that never quite got cleaned up, and stale air. The blue walls had turned a sickening green, tiles of the ceiling had splotches of water damage, and the door didn’t quite shut because the frame had warped. I’d turned in a work order my first stint, another my second, and my door still didn’t work.

Death on all that.

I sat in the half-broken chair that slumped to the right and had given me back problems, slapped the file on my lap, and opened it. This was probably more treason. They could add it to the list before I burned the list.

The first page was a sheet of parchment. It read, “Executive Summary: Kog believes the cover story that his father killed his mother and tried to kill him before taking his own life. This causes him to overcompensate via a desire for fame. Revealing the truth to the mortal is not necessary. He is unlikely to affect Destiny in any meaningful sense and is not scheduled to be famous.”

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Updates

Spent too much time yesterday working backend stuff. Figured I had to have updated. Woops!

I’ll probably collect TiH into book form by year. Right now, it’s a little under 50k words, which is a very short book. I love short books, but they’re expensive on my end. Imagine 100k vs 2 x 50k. Editing is about the same, but obviously the two short ones require twice as much in cover design. Interior layout isn’t quite doubled, but it is more than the long book because I’ve got two sections of front matter, tables of contents, etc. I kinda want to do a glossary and maps, so they’re in too. Ultimately, the short books are more expensive.

Kickstarter could help, but I’d like to do a few independently first. A lot of Kickstarter problems seem to be people in way over their heads. BH and Mara are both out, but they were very much learning books. A few system books to show I have a rhythm down would be good.

A few of my people may have left the industry. That’s always a big difficulty.

Anyway, the PhD proceeds. I should graduate before Kog induces the Fall of Man and goes west to meet the elves. (Final climax, Kog and Finarfin vs Morgoth. It’s been fanfiction all along!) Artificial intelligence is dumb. Circuits are circuitous. Waveforms have been formed. And yes, spellcheck, waveforms is one word!

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EV charging

Tesla went hard building charging stations. They picked their own connection style, made a lot of patents open, and built a ton of chargers.

No one else did.

Now Tesla is winning the EV charging format conflict.

Sounds like the way things should go. Hopefully, their no-dealership model wins as well.

P.S. I guess I’m not against dealerships. I’m against haggling. I want click online, get a price, and be done. I don’t want to come in and get a price. I don’t want to go back and forth, agree on a price, to later discover fifty different ways dealerships describe their tacked on fees. I’m not against dealers making profit, but I want it laid out, clearly, up front in an email. If car A costs $Xk or $X+1k, I want that in writing!

And I can’t get that unless I buy a car from a company with a direct sales model. So down with dealerships.

‘Read an article that said tacked-of-fees work for retailers. Good on them. I’ll go to other retailers.

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Formatting

I’m updating individual chapter posts and my working files.

Going through in order of my working files, so out of numerical order, I’m adding a ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ tag to each post of TiH with appropriate links. All chapters are now linked in the ‘Fiction’ text box, and in general you can click to any of them via the calendar. TiH updates Wednesdays and Fridays, and has for a while.

With regards to working files, I’m organizing and simplifying, but hopefully that will all happen backstage.

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Twlight in Heaven: Chapter 28

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Chapter 28

The door opened and a new guard walked in. He looked like the other two had: different boulder, same rock. I snoozed without sleeping, and wasn’t so much awoken when he appeared as alerted. He pushed a cart to the edge of my bed and left it.

“Historiography just came in clean. You fought the dragon. You’re free of custody.

“Most places around here are controlled, so don’t go wandering off. You’ll be debriefed when someone gets around to it and escorted back to Meru when someone makes the trip with an open seat. You’re not allowed to stay in Medical, though. Clarification on where you can wait is coming.

“Eat up, some clean clothes are in the cart, and take a shower.”

That seemed straight forward. I had no questions, he had nothing else to say, and that breakfast wasn’t going to eat itself.

In an hour or so, I was ready for the day, and orders had come down.

“You’re going to be stuck in Emerald Hinton Tower until someone’s ready for you. Emerald Hinton has the gym, the library, a cafeteria, and a few nice parks. You can kill some time there.”

Boulder Number 4 had come in when I was dressed. The clothing they’d provided was gray and loose: pants, undershirt, a sweater, textile belt, and sandals. Everything was made of silk or wool. I’ve never had silk underwear before, but I could get used to it.

He dropped some green cards on the bed. “These are your meal cards. You won’t get more until tomorrow, so don’t lose them, but you should be back in Meru by then, so it won’t be an issue. We’re going to Snow Winston to see if they’re ready for you, but if they’re not, you are officially confined to Emerald Hinton and the grounds. You also can’t walk out of here, so saddle up. The staff wants you gone so they can clean the room.” And he rattled the folding wheelchair conspicuously.

I moved over. “Sally forth, Greevs!”

“Don’t call me Greevs.”

Greevs was a famous butler and chauffeur, and I needed something to call these guys instead of Boulder Number Whatevers.

Fate’s medical center took up the first few stories of the Chestnut Augustus Tower. Augustus had been a Fate operator years and years ago, famous for doing his paperwork well, and had died in battle. The periphery held people who needed long-term care (they got windows), and the inside held us short timers. Supposedly the interior is closer to everything, so if a critical patient (me) needed to be rushed to a specialist, I could get there faster than if I had a window-room across the building. I’ll allow it, but it seems awfully convenient as a way to deny me my window.

Greevs wheeled my chair out of Chestnut Augustus Tower and along a paved walking path outside the towers. Fate’s complex stood high in the mountains of the Firmament, the great sphere that held the Outer Ocean out. Beacons shined on the summits of each mountain, the great stars of Pallas’s sky.

I looked up. Pallas was dead overhead in the center of the sky, a huge ball of blue and gray. Her Sea of Clausius faced me with brown and green bits around the edge, while in the center clouds and fumes hid the Clockwork Gods working. Down there seawater fell over the edges of the unfinished surface of Meru to the underworld beneath. If I could look through clouds and mist, I would be able to see the scaffolding and winches, the huge gears that drive the continents, and the construction of islands and seabed slowly reaching across gap. Somewhere in there the geigun worked for the world’s Clockwork masters. They were something other than mortal or Celestial, but I knew of them only abstractly. They swung the hammers and moved the iron as the Clockwork Gods directed. I’d never met one. The Sea of Clausius was the last part of the world unfinished, and the clouds seemed to cover about half the ball.

I looked back down at the Firmament. On the shell of the sky, the Sun never set, but it did move around. Right now it was peaking around the mountains, and the shadows were dwindling. This was morning. I tried to think something deep about life, but only got, ‘Great things are a lot less great when you’re in them.’

They wheeled me around the hanger to the Snow Winston Tower. Winston was…similar story to Augustus actually. Good at paperwork, died in battle. Huh. Anyway, the Snow Winston was finished inside with marble and limestone, the floor was a form of hard white agate, and the ceiling had reinforcement spars of aluminum. The walls had more decorations than Chestnut Augustus. Framed pictures of people getting medals, giving speeches, or sitting at desks, working studiously, lined the halls. A lady with dark braids smiled above a plaque naming her, ‘Admiral Tiana, first operator to achieve 100% budget request submissions on time.’ She faced a portly man who was, ‘Grandmaster Marcus, on completing one century of perfect attendance.’ They looked pleased, honored, and motivated.

I had no awards. My attendance had been shtuttick.

In Snow Winston an attache with a clipboard took my name, ticked a box, and told Greevs to take me to Rec. I asked if I could walk. The attache, Ezekiel, said I could.

I got out of the wheelchair, and the other guard, call him Betty, took it back toward medical. Greevs escorted me to Emerald Hinton and handed me over to a young lady behind a desk. She actually had a name tag, so I didn’t get to make anything up for her. Her name was Aubrey, and she looked concerned.

“Is he supposed to be in jail?” she asked. “There are no cells here.”

“No, no,” said Greevs. “He’s free to go, but he can’t go anywhere controlled. Historiography and maybe Obscene Beasts is going to interview him later. He just needs a place to stay so they can find him.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, he can use the recreational facilities, and the cafeteria is in the basement.”

“Thanks.” He tried to smile at her, but I think his face would have cracked. He left. She looked at me as if perplexed.

She was actually fairly cute with light brown hair, a round face, and slim-fitting green uniform.

“I fought a dragon, you know,” I said.

“That sounds outstanding,” she replied and opened a book.

Frankly, she wasn’t really that attractive. I wandered off.

The recreation facility had a few dart boards, billiards tables, and various board games. There was a room for parties and an area for quiet reading. Up a flight of stairs, the library seemed unchanged from the one-time I’d looked in here before, during my internship. It had immense volumes on tax law and hierarchical etiquette, but nothing with a murder or a little smooching. Up another floor was the gym, and I did have some familiarity with that. Still, I had recently come to the edge of death. I spent half an hour stretching before getting bored. Nothing was going on in the martial arts area.

The cafeteria blew my mind. They had spreads of ambrosia and wine of nectar and honeydew. All things considered, I avoided the latter, but ate what might very well have been the best meal of my life. The counter lady looked at my meal ticket but didn’t take it. I felt better than I had since all this foolishness began, and that was with bruises, cuts, and a fatal cold bane hanging over my head.

Without much idea what to do next, I approached Aubrey and asked if anyone had come looking for me.

“Nope,” she said without looking up from her book.

That hadn’t seemed like an unreasonable question to me.

I didn’t quite know what to do or where to go next. The ambrosia was working, and I wanted to give it time. I didn’t think I could sleep right now, even in a quiet area, and I felt like I’d be wasting an opportunity if I just slept through my time up here in Fate. I had wasted a lot of time working, and I wasn’t working now. Should I be?

I was throwing darts for no reason when inspiration kissed me.

I should go to the files room, see what they had on me, and burn it.

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