NaNo part ten
>Note: My NaNo trailed off and got to 16,000 words. Not a win, but at 4000 more words than last year, IS A WIN!<
Sabine smirked to herself, and sighed. Maybe she should not have had walked tonight. She pulled her shawl even closer to her neck and head.
Maybe too much thinking isn’t good. It was horrible. Horrible what they were doing, what they had to do. What they were driven to do, when everything else they could have done has failed, they had to take this desperate, unethical action.
And even in this last chance, there were failures. Nearly the entire community was invested in deceiving the Tower and especially the Wizard. That in itself was dangerous.
Danger, especially from the Wizard. More Warlocks than Wizards, and little of the scientists they once were. They fell from their lofty goals, whatever they were in the first place. Time forgot the details. Time forgot in the ravages of the Earth that the scientists committed.
At first, it was mild, insidious, yes, but fairly minor. It started slowly. A civil liberty denied here, a unexpected arrest there, a ban on something seemingly innocuous later. In the glory and the promise of the Towers, of seeking inexhaustible power sources and miraculous medical advances, the people were too hopeful, too excited to worry about the little details, the little indiscretions, and the contradictions.
It just grew from there. The people were dazzled by the advances visited upon them and overlooked their tomato and bell pepper plants in their backyards. The nanites were slowly introduced into the populous and their health belied what was happening to the Earth.
Only one family noticed. At least, only the one family that they knew of. There could have been others that saw what was going on, but they either failed in any attempt to cease the Tower’s slow destruction of the world, or tried to ignore it, or simply died. It was not healthy to question the Tower, at least too much. That family would find its member’s dying a little too suddenly or their health not the greatest. Just enough ill to not be able to move around much, to not have the energy to question anymore.
But the family that noticed was able to do something about it. Their uncanny connections to the Tower and a healthy sense of self preservation made it possible to work against it.
The death of one of their own early in the fight made them cautious. They couldn’t do too much overtly to stem the tide of the Towers actions. The family members that were employed by the Tower quietly made suggestions and pointed out facts in the departmental meetings; they developed more ecologically sound methods of power conversion and advocated the use of plants in their research in medicines.
They were able to delay some actions and redirect some research and testing, but it was not going to be enough. They influenced years of delay, but they knew it was only delay.
So, they quietly gathered the books, gathered all the spare technology they could and put it deep underground. They gathered the food, invented new ways of food preservation under the guise of Tower research, and buried their efforts with the books. Clothing, too, they buried, and toys. Music and art, they made a place for. They buried their hope.
Even with their efforts to stem the tide, though, they failed, as they knew they would. At least for now, they hoped, the community hoped.
Finally, when the communities were at their lowest economic point, when creativity was actively being scorned and oppressed by the Towers, the Towers struck.
The Towers struck out at each other. The Indiana Tower, the two California Towers, the New York Tower, the Towers across the ocean, the English and Russian Towers, all the Towers all over the struck out at each other. The competitions and malice and the race to win over all the others became too much. They devolved into contempt and hate of the other scientist/alchemists/Wizards. One Tower struck first.
No one knows for sure which Tower struck first. But, using the limited technology that was left to the communities and the limited communications between them, it was highly suspected it was the Illinois Tower that hit first.
Their Tower.
So they had to do something about it.
And the Calledon/Turner family stepped up. Again.
-----------------
Sabine shook herself out of the history lessons in her mind. She had reached the Gate to the Tower and needed to get back in. She hated this part.
A rusted speaker demanded, “PASSWORD.” First of all, that was stupid. The Tower had been using retinal and blood scans for decades but never bothered to change the message. Sabine sighed, pulled her left sleeve up and shoved her arm in the old tube for the needle prick. Ow, she thought, when it was over. She hoped that someone bothered to sterilize the blood needle and equipment but she doubted it had been done once this year.
She pulled her arm out of the tube and reached into her pocket for a bit of the precious gelatin based rubbing alcohol that Amaranth distilled. She rubbed it on the prick on her arm and leaned forward for the retinal scan. A puff of air dried her right eye and a bright light was shone into what felt like the back of her skull.
She blinked, willing her tear ducts to get into action.
The Gate creaked open slowly.
“No, that’s not ominous at all, really. Need some cobwebs too complete the look, though, if you’re going for that true Gothic aesthetic. Too bad all the spiders are dead!”
She said the last words louder than she intended. But the little bit of sarcasm and rebellion made her feel a little better, anyway. Everything was quiet, underground, secret, and furtive. Even a generally quiet soul needed some expression of righteous anger. But now was not the time. It seemed like it would never be the time.
But, soon, soon, she hoped. Soon. And she drew herself up to face the next few days of it.
After Beren’s outburst, he just stood there. He didn’t have anything else he could say. Genetics or no, depot or no, familial ties or no, the Wizard was his father and had raised him for ten years until the Calledon’s smuggled him out. That was their first out-of-womb calcification attempt, they were that desperate to get him out to safety and more importantly, out from under the Wizard’s influence.
Beren knew, he knew what needed to be done. What had been done, he shivered with the memory. Locked in his own minerals, the calcium flowed over his whole body, and the crystals locked together, so that he appeared as stone. It was then that the process started to be referred to as Lot’s Curse. It may have been that exact bio-chemical event that doomed the wife of Lot in the ancient days. Now Amaranth Calledon was causing the process artificially, in the womb. Stone babies, they were called. Based on a rare unknown defect in childbearing which would produce a fully formed, completely covered child of stone.
Except, now, the child would be alive through the process and the birth. The mother survived, usually, but with the damage done in the process, she would never be able to have another child.
Then they could smuggle the child out. Presented with a child of stone, the Wizard would blame the mother and the midwife and all attendants and banish them away from the Tower and the Tower communities. He did not want to see the effects on nature that he and his kind caused; the effects that stuck in their own progeny.
It was ironic that in this one case, the horrific calcification was not their doing, but the midwives. One midwife.
And when the mother, midwife and the others were sent away, they would take the child with the Wizard’s genetics and nanites with them.
No Calledon or Turner attempted this process with an older child. But it was done. The Wizard summoned the mother of this monstrosity and cast the stone child at her. Given the extra weight of a ten year old boy, It was a miracle that the calcium did not shatter on the marble floor of the Wizard’s receiving room.
And Beren was carried away.
------------
Beren was standing mute while the memories of his kidnapping flowed over him. Rhys softly called, “Beren? Beren?”
Beren startled and blinked his eyes. “What?” he asked.
“You were gone there, for a bit.” Rhys’ tone was actually kind and not sarcastic. Despite is hatred for their father and all that he and his kind have done, despite his not understanding how Beren could let that tenuous familial relationship effect him, he knew Beren’s struggles were real, if incomprehensible. When Rhys could keep his mouth shut, in those rare times, he could be kind to his older brother.
Amaranth left Beren questioning and Rhys resolute as she knew she would. There was not much more to say right now. She and Leda already set up a nursery for the little mite when they came home, and after weaning, would start his education and physical training. Once the excitement of the birth and the homecoming, it was waiting time again.
Amaranth decided to visit another person while she was this far out from her lab. She wrapped her scarf more securely around her head. She covered her mouth briefly to take a deep breath. She missed the super fibers of her youth, but the ability to manufacture that artificial material had been lost, both in technique and materials. So, cold she was, but not unbearably so.
She approached a small building with steam floating out of a couple cracked open windows. Amaranth smirked at herself. It was always very warm there. She supposed her unconscious wanted her body to visit even more than her conscious mind did. In the summers, it was unpleasant. In the winters, it was heaven. As it was, the summers were shorter now, and less warm than they had been years and years past. Amaranth let out a sarcastic laugh. With all the concern about pollution and global warming, it was the covering the earth in dry sands and filling the atmosphere with dust that prevented nearly all the rays of the sun onto the planet in the first place. It was only for the green house effect that warmth was able to be kept on the planet at all and not radiated back into space.
She heard the pounding well before approaching the door. Sounds like Riam was pounding out Damascus steel wire again.
She got to the incongruently purple painted door and knocked on the off beats of Riam’s percussion. She heard the blacksmith’s hammer she knew that Riam was using hit the wall. The simple structure shook.
Amaranth yelled into the door. “Throw it harder next time…” The door opened “.. the thing’s still standing, “ Amaranth finished.
Riam stood there in all her petite blue canvas overalls and dirty brown work boots. Under the overalls, she wore a simple grubby purple tank with a sliver butterfly above her small chest. Like the door, the pretty bling didn’t fit the surroundings. Her dark and thick wavy hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her face was equal parts sweat and soot from the fire. There was a nasty gash on her left forearm a couple of inches long, above the thick beige work gloves she wore. The blood had clotted into a scab but the wound was fresh.
“That’s gonna get infected, ya know.” Amaranth said the smaller woman, nodding toward her arm. She reached into her bag for some alcohol astringent.
Riam looked down her arm as if for the first time. “Huh? Oh.” She sniffed. “Who cares?”
Amaranth briefly looked around the room for a cloth that appeared cleaner than Riam’s face. She knew she would find nothing she could use. She fished around in her bag some more and produced a small rag.
“Sit, little one. Amuse me and let me take care of that.”
Riam blinked at her, not comprehending for a moment. Her face then cleared and she sighed. “Fine” and pulled up a stool. She dramatically presented her arm. “You shouldn’t waste that stuff on me. I know what a pain it is to distill and it’s not like we can run to the store to pick up more.”
“Humor me, I said. Let me take care of you for once.” Amaranth replied, daubing some of the astringent on the small rag and started working on the scab. Seeing it was thicker than at first glance, she said, “Damn. Well, a bit of a soak first it is, then.”
Riam took her arm back. “Forget it.”
Amaranth sighed. “Fine, fine, you stubborn twat.”
Riam snorted. “I’ll let you know if the little buggers can’t deal with this little scratch” she said sarcastically.
“You’ll scar,” Amaranth warned. She didn’t know why she said that. Riam never bothered with the gashes and scar tissue accumulating on her body. It could be corrected easily and the skin smoothed out by the same system that healed the wounds in the first place. It just bothered Amaranth.
“I’m a fucking blacksmith, Aman” Riam shrugged.
Amaranth snorted. “I don’t know why it still amuses me when you say that. I guess it’s the cute factor.”
“Fuck off,” replied Riam and grinned at her friend.
It was the first smile that Amaranth had seen in a while. The anticipation of the birth was getting to everyone. Everyone in different ways. For Riam, converting her nervous energy into physically bashing something with a big ass hammer helped. And taking a child’s delight in naughty swearing helped as well.
There wasn’t anything for Riam to do right now. So, she worked on her hobby. Making chain mail. It occupied her mind and body. Metallurgy, to figure out the kind of alloys she could forge together from the bits and scraps she could scavenge; sheer physical labor heating and beating the alloy she just invented; and the more delicate hand work with titanium pliers.
She liked to pretend that their soon to be warriors would wear her chain mail on their way to triumph and glory. If they do end up wearing any of her chain mail, it would be because she developed the right chemical composition in the metal to deflect and disperse the electric plasma issued from the Tower’s automated self defenses. Perhaps it would be enough to have the boys, the men, to wear the mail for a psychological lift when the time comes. Or perhaps the psychological lift that is needed for the war ahead was for herself.
In any case, making the chain mail kept Riam from throwing hammers at the walls in frustration with her impotence. Throwing more hammers at the walls than normal, anyway.
“You’re a little more than just a blacksmith, dearheart.” replied Amaranth. “Although there is nothing for you to do right now.”
Riam blew her overgrown bangs from over her eyes. “Ya think?” She pushed herself off her chair and went to the small refrigeration unit in the far corner of the furnace room. She pulled out a flask of water and offered another to Amaranth. Amaranth nodded.
Amaranth took the flask and a sip. “How bohemian of you. You know, you could pour your distilled water into a real pitcher and add some minerals for health and taste.”
Riam just looked at her and slammed her flask full of water. “What do you want, Aman?” she sighed.
Amaranth tried the same gambit with her childhood friend as she did with the boys. “Can’t I visit my blood sister without a reason?”
Riam just looked at her again, tossing the empty flask from one hand to another.
“Yeah,” continued Amaranth. “No real reason, anyway. I just wanted to see my family tonight. I’m cold. This whole stupid process is taking too long. We should have done this years ago. Why can’t we just…” Her voice rose slightly with every sentence. She was cracking under the strain. The only person she could show that to was her Riam.
Riam looked down at her grubby arms. She shrugged and opened them to her Amaranth.
Amaranth stepped into Riam’s embrace. She’ll clean her clothes later. Right now it didn’t matter.
Sabine smirked to herself, and sighed. Maybe she should not have had walked tonight. She pulled her shawl even closer to her neck and head.
Maybe too much thinking isn’t good. It was horrible. Horrible what they were doing, what they had to do. What they were driven to do, when everything else they could have done has failed, they had to take this desperate, unethical action.
And even in this last chance, there were failures. Nearly the entire community was invested in deceiving the Tower and especially the Wizard. That in itself was dangerous.
Danger, especially from the Wizard. More Warlocks than Wizards, and little of the scientists they once were. They fell from their lofty goals, whatever they were in the first place. Time forgot the details. Time forgot in the ravages of the Earth that the scientists committed.
At first, it was mild, insidious, yes, but fairly minor. It started slowly. A civil liberty denied here, a unexpected arrest there, a ban on something seemingly innocuous later. In the glory and the promise of the Towers, of seeking inexhaustible power sources and miraculous medical advances, the people were too hopeful, too excited to worry about the little details, the little indiscretions, and the contradictions.
It just grew from there. The people were dazzled by the advances visited upon them and overlooked their tomato and bell pepper plants in their backyards. The nanites were slowly introduced into the populous and their health belied what was happening to the Earth.
Only one family noticed. At least, only the one family that they knew of. There could have been others that saw what was going on, but they either failed in any attempt to cease the Tower’s slow destruction of the world, or tried to ignore it, or simply died. It was not healthy to question the Tower, at least too much. That family would find its member’s dying a little too suddenly or their health not the greatest. Just enough ill to not be able to move around much, to not have the energy to question anymore.
But the family that noticed was able to do something about it. Their uncanny connections to the Tower and a healthy sense of self preservation made it possible to work against it.
The death of one of their own early in the fight made them cautious. They couldn’t do too much overtly to stem the tide of the Towers actions. The family members that were employed by the Tower quietly made suggestions and pointed out facts in the departmental meetings; they developed more ecologically sound methods of power conversion and advocated the use of plants in their research in medicines.
They were able to delay some actions and redirect some research and testing, but it was not going to be enough. They influenced years of delay, but they knew it was only delay.
So, they quietly gathered the books, gathered all the spare technology they could and put it deep underground. They gathered the food, invented new ways of food preservation under the guise of Tower research, and buried their efforts with the books. Clothing, too, they buried, and toys. Music and art, they made a place for. They buried their hope.
Even with their efforts to stem the tide, though, they failed, as they knew they would. At least for now, they hoped, the community hoped.
Finally, when the communities were at their lowest economic point, when creativity was actively being scorned and oppressed by the Towers, the Towers struck.
The Towers struck out at each other. The Indiana Tower, the two California Towers, the New York Tower, the Towers across the ocean, the English and Russian Towers, all the Towers all over the struck out at each other. The competitions and malice and the race to win over all the others became too much. They devolved into contempt and hate of the other scientist/alchemists/Wizards. One Tower struck first.
No one knows for sure which Tower struck first. But, using the limited technology that was left to the communities and the limited communications between them, it was highly suspected it was the Illinois Tower that hit first.
Their Tower.
So they had to do something about it.
And the Calledon/Turner family stepped up. Again.
-----------------
Sabine shook herself out of the history lessons in her mind. She had reached the Gate to the Tower and needed to get back in. She hated this part.
A rusted speaker demanded, “PASSWORD.” First of all, that was stupid. The Tower had been using retinal and blood scans for decades but never bothered to change the message. Sabine sighed, pulled her left sleeve up and shoved her arm in the old tube for the needle prick. Ow, she thought, when it was over. She hoped that someone bothered to sterilize the blood needle and equipment but she doubted it had been done once this year.
She pulled her arm out of the tube and reached into her pocket for a bit of the precious gelatin based rubbing alcohol that Amaranth distilled. She rubbed it on the prick on her arm and leaned forward for the retinal scan. A puff of air dried her right eye and a bright light was shone into what felt like the back of her skull.
She blinked, willing her tear ducts to get into action.
The Gate creaked open slowly.
“No, that’s not ominous at all, really. Need some cobwebs too complete the look, though, if you’re going for that true Gothic aesthetic. Too bad all the spiders are dead!”
She said the last words louder than she intended. But the little bit of sarcasm and rebellion made her feel a little better, anyway. Everything was quiet, underground, secret, and furtive. Even a generally quiet soul needed some expression of righteous anger. But now was not the time. It seemed like it would never be the time.
But, soon, soon, she hoped. Soon. And she drew herself up to face the next few days of it.
After Beren’s outburst, he just stood there. He didn’t have anything else he could say. Genetics or no, depot or no, familial ties or no, the Wizard was his father and had raised him for ten years until the Calledon’s smuggled him out. That was their first out-of-womb calcification attempt, they were that desperate to get him out to safety and more importantly, out from under the Wizard’s influence.
Beren knew, he knew what needed to be done. What had been done, he shivered with the memory. Locked in his own minerals, the calcium flowed over his whole body, and the crystals locked together, so that he appeared as stone. It was then that the process started to be referred to as Lot’s Curse. It may have been that exact bio-chemical event that doomed the wife of Lot in the ancient days. Now Amaranth Calledon was causing the process artificially, in the womb. Stone babies, they were called. Based on a rare unknown defect in childbearing which would produce a fully formed, completely covered child of stone.
Except, now, the child would be alive through the process and the birth. The mother survived, usually, but with the damage done in the process, she would never be able to have another child.
Then they could smuggle the child out. Presented with a child of stone, the Wizard would blame the mother and the midwife and all attendants and banish them away from the Tower and the Tower communities. He did not want to see the effects on nature that he and his kind caused; the effects that stuck in their own progeny.
It was ironic that in this one case, the horrific calcification was not their doing, but the midwives. One midwife.
And when the mother, midwife and the others were sent away, they would take the child with the Wizard’s genetics and nanites with them.
No Calledon or Turner attempted this process with an older child. But it was done. The Wizard summoned the mother of this monstrosity and cast the stone child at her. Given the extra weight of a ten year old boy, It was a miracle that the calcium did not shatter on the marble floor of the Wizard’s receiving room.
And Beren was carried away.
------------
Beren was standing mute while the memories of his kidnapping flowed over him. Rhys softly called, “Beren? Beren?”
Beren startled and blinked his eyes. “What?” he asked.
“You were gone there, for a bit.” Rhys’ tone was actually kind and not sarcastic. Despite is hatred for their father and all that he and his kind have done, despite his not understanding how Beren could let that tenuous familial relationship effect him, he knew Beren’s struggles were real, if incomprehensible. When Rhys could keep his mouth shut, in those rare times, he could be kind to his older brother.
Amaranth left Beren questioning and Rhys resolute as she knew she would. There was not much more to say right now. She and Leda already set up a nursery for the little mite when they came home, and after weaning, would start his education and physical training. Once the excitement of the birth and the homecoming, it was waiting time again.
Amaranth decided to visit another person while she was this far out from her lab. She wrapped her scarf more securely around her head. She covered her mouth briefly to take a deep breath. She missed the super fibers of her youth, but the ability to manufacture that artificial material had been lost, both in technique and materials. So, cold she was, but not unbearably so.
She approached a small building with steam floating out of a couple cracked open windows. Amaranth smirked at herself. It was always very warm there. She supposed her unconscious wanted her body to visit even more than her conscious mind did. In the summers, it was unpleasant. In the winters, it was heaven. As it was, the summers were shorter now, and less warm than they had been years and years past. Amaranth let out a sarcastic laugh. With all the concern about pollution and global warming, it was the covering the earth in dry sands and filling the atmosphere with dust that prevented nearly all the rays of the sun onto the planet in the first place. It was only for the green house effect that warmth was able to be kept on the planet at all and not radiated back into space.
She heard the pounding well before approaching the door. Sounds like Riam was pounding out Damascus steel wire again.
She got to the incongruently purple painted door and knocked on the off beats of Riam’s percussion. She heard the blacksmith’s hammer she knew that Riam was using hit the wall. The simple structure shook.
Amaranth yelled into the door. “Throw it harder next time…” The door opened “.. the thing’s still standing, “ Amaranth finished.
Riam stood there in all her petite blue canvas overalls and dirty brown work boots. Under the overalls, she wore a simple grubby purple tank with a sliver butterfly above her small chest. Like the door, the pretty bling didn’t fit the surroundings. Her dark and thick wavy hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her face was equal parts sweat and soot from the fire. There was a nasty gash on her left forearm a couple of inches long, above the thick beige work gloves she wore. The blood had clotted into a scab but the wound was fresh.
“That’s gonna get infected, ya know.” Amaranth said the smaller woman, nodding toward her arm. She reached into her bag for some alcohol astringent.
Riam looked down her arm as if for the first time. “Huh? Oh.” She sniffed. “Who cares?”
Amaranth briefly looked around the room for a cloth that appeared cleaner than Riam’s face. She knew she would find nothing she could use. She fished around in her bag some more and produced a small rag.
“Sit, little one. Amuse me and let me take care of that.”
Riam blinked at her, not comprehending for a moment. Her face then cleared and she sighed. “Fine” and pulled up a stool. She dramatically presented her arm. “You shouldn’t waste that stuff on me. I know what a pain it is to distill and it’s not like we can run to the store to pick up more.”
“Humor me, I said. Let me take care of you for once.” Amaranth replied, daubing some of the astringent on the small rag and started working on the scab. Seeing it was thicker than at first glance, she said, “Damn. Well, a bit of a soak first it is, then.”
Riam took her arm back. “Forget it.”
Amaranth sighed. “Fine, fine, you stubborn twat.”
Riam snorted. “I’ll let you know if the little buggers can’t deal with this little scratch” she said sarcastically.
“You’ll scar,” Amaranth warned. She didn’t know why she said that. Riam never bothered with the gashes and scar tissue accumulating on her body. It could be corrected easily and the skin smoothed out by the same system that healed the wounds in the first place. It just bothered Amaranth.
“I’m a fucking blacksmith, Aman” Riam shrugged.
Amaranth snorted. “I don’t know why it still amuses me when you say that. I guess it’s the cute factor.”
“Fuck off,” replied Riam and grinned at her friend.
It was the first smile that Amaranth had seen in a while. The anticipation of the birth was getting to everyone. Everyone in different ways. For Riam, converting her nervous energy into physically bashing something with a big ass hammer helped. And taking a child’s delight in naughty swearing helped as well.
There wasn’t anything for Riam to do right now. So, she worked on her hobby. Making chain mail. It occupied her mind and body. Metallurgy, to figure out the kind of alloys she could forge together from the bits and scraps she could scavenge; sheer physical labor heating and beating the alloy she just invented; and the more delicate hand work with titanium pliers.
She liked to pretend that their soon to be warriors would wear her chain mail on their way to triumph and glory. If they do end up wearing any of her chain mail, it would be because she developed the right chemical composition in the metal to deflect and disperse the electric plasma issued from the Tower’s automated self defenses. Perhaps it would be enough to have the boys, the men, to wear the mail for a psychological lift when the time comes. Or perhaps the psychological lift that is needed for the war ahead was for herself.
In any case, making the chain mail kept Riam from throwing hammers at the walls in frustration with her impotence. Throwing more hammers at the walls than normal, anyway.
“You’re a little more than just a blacksmith, dearheart.” replied Amaranth. “Although there is nothing for you to do right now.”
Riam blew her overgrown bangs from over her eyes. “Ya think?” She pushed herself off her chair and went to the small refrigeration unit in the far corner of the furnace room. She pulled out a flask of water and offered another to Amaranth. Amaranth nodded.
Amaranth took the flask and a sip. “How bohemian of you. You know, you could pour your distilled water into a real pitcher and add some minerals for health and taste.”
Riam just looked at her and slammed her flask full of water. “What do you want, Aman?” she sighed.
Amaranth tried the same gambit with her childhood friend as she did with the boys. “Can’t I visit my blood sister without a reason?”
Riam just looked at her again, tossing the empty flask from one hand to another.
“Yeah,” continued Amaranth. “No real reason, anyway. I just wanted to see my family tonight. I’m cold. This whole stupid process is taking too long. We should have done this years ago. Why can’t we just…” Her voice rose slightly with every sentence. She was cracking under the strain. The only person she could show that to was her Riam.
Riam looked down at her grubby arms. She shrugged and opened them to her Amaranth.
Amaranth stepped into Riam’s embrace. She’ll clean her clothes later. Right now it didn’t matter.