aaaaaaaand the responses are in!
The Great Mod Smack-Down
Slight change of plans, folks. This is penchaft, and voting will be conducted using my secondary LJ, since I don't wish to contaminate my precious with ads.
So! Here are five excellent responses to the first challenge. Your impeccable mods had to write some words on any sort of mod, if you remember. Please read them, and then vote for your favourite!
Response A
"I don't think it's working," I said, smacking the bars of my cage in frustration. "Please, you have to listen to me - it's not working!" I paced the confines of my cell, tears of frustration and hopelessness pricking my eyes.
"Shut up," he growled.
"No, listen to me. It's not right, I can tell, and if you send me out there-"
"You can tell, eh? You've done this before?" He sneered at me and went back to polishing the spiked collar.
"You'll lose you money, don't you even care about that? I'm telling you, something went wrong. I don't feel like they do." I gestured through the bars to the other caged slaves, many who were entering the final stages of their transformation.
"I've been fighting modified humans for twenty years, ain't nothin' wrong. Now, shut up." He emphasized the last two words by slamming down the collar, then turned to pick up the armor plating and began to clean and oil it.
I sat down in the corner of my cage with a sigh, watching the other people begin to grow, distort, and take on the lupine features of the werewolf. They were howling and gnashing their teeth, ripping at the iron bars of their cages. They were ready for the caged fight ahead. They were ready to kill. All I felt was a sinking feeling of fear and dread. Something was definitely wrong, I wasn't like the others. The person - or, what used to be a person - in the cell next to me heaved themselves against the bars, bending them slightly. The men guarding the holding room tightened their grip on their silver pikes.
Then, finally, I began to feel it. At first it was a faint tickle, which grew into a dizzying falling sensation. My last conscious thought was, "I guess it did work, after all."
The man turned with the armor in his hands, but it fell unnoticed to the ground as he stared into the cage.
"Blimey, I guess it didn't work." He peered into the cage at the little Labrador puppy, who was busily trying to catch the tail firmly attached to its butt.
Response B
Modulus after Division
The following are true by convention:
i.
Any form given nil mod remains itself,
a construct of apoptosis and meiosis.
A human being achieves zero buoyancy
with open lungs in fresh water, fitted weight belt in salt.
In contrast a giant squid grows ammonium flesh.
ii.
Any form signs the sign of its mod.
So speaks a body
artist of large ensemble congruency.
Tarantula foot magnets lead his pet, clattering studs
up spine, neck, and crown.
In the civic aquarium, phosphorescent squid schools
school in always-desired patterns
only their tattoos enable.
iii.
Any form identical to its mod leaves no remainder
undivided, a political wife fucking
her publicist lawyer yoga instructor summer intern
wardrobe touch-up elocutionist blogger
two donor spider fund managers good and drunk pre
pre-keynote anecdote so intimate so real
to her she almost remembers it now.
Response C
Maude
She wears her hair loose and straight with a white Alice ribbon laced behind her ears. You can't see it because it's cold out and she's wearing a hat and her breath makes little clouds in the air. She's in front of the chapel, the center of campus, and you can't miss her unless you take the long way around, but by then you're ten minutes late for class instead of three. She's a blonde Charybdis, stalking the chapel steps every Monday, and I hate her.
It's like she's stuck in the sixties. It's like someone reached down and plucked her out of the war protests and hard music and space-shuttle launches and set her down in 2007. But she doesn't know, so she walks around campus in a doe-eyed daze, handing out flyers for a women's rights consortium, tomorrow night at seven in the student union.
Even her name is retro. Maude. Who names their daughter Maude? Maudes are minister's wives and little old ladies, not red-cheeked women with black, high-heeled boots under narrow-cut jeans. Maudes don't tote free condoms in a blue-green bag-and if you run out, they sell them for 10 cents at student services-and they don't smile a little when you hide a bright, yellow flyer in your purse so your girlfriends won't see.
Maudes are forgettable. They don't overwhelm your thoughts like a tumultuous flood, and they certainly don't call after you and say they look forward to seeing you soon. They just don't do that.
But she does, and I hide under an Eskimo hood and let the wind push me toward the science building where I'll be warned for arriving late and the Indian boy will wink at me and I'll hide in the back so I won't get called on for the answer.
She's still behind me. I hear her laughing, marooned on that island-stoop, passing out neon flyers to students caught in the swirling maelstrom.
I want to turn around. I want to shout at her. I want to tell her she doesn't belong here. She's wrong and the world is wrong and I'm wrong and she has no right to stand above our heads with pink-and-yellow posters branded in black printer ink. I want to take them and throw them so they'll scatter like schools of fish in the January wind, and then she'll hate me.
But she won't hate me. She'll cry a little and pick up the flyers and step back in front of the chapel and start again, because she's like that.
I lie to my roommates the next night. It's easy because I never wear makeup, and when I do it's for a boy, so I don't need to say anything. And when I get home later and I'm smiling, they'll think it's because he asked me on another date, and that's okay, because she did, and I said yes, and maybe I don't hate her so much.
Response D
I had been working 36 hours straight that morning, and looked like shit. And with everything going to hell on that damned project I was just in the middle of bawling out one of the idiots on my team when I felt someone waiting just behind me. Ed, my section leader, dark suited and stony faced was standing with his muscular sidekick, whose name I didn't know and who everyone called the mute, as he'd had never been heard to say anything, which was as good a way of getting ahead in the company as any I could think of.
“Do you have a moment?” Ed said in a low voice.
“Of course.”
As if I could have refused.
"Good. You need to come with us," he said. Then he and the mute started walking down the central corridor that ran through the open plan office, and I straightened my tie and hurried to catch up. We walked toward the end of that floor, navigating rows of identical desks bristling with screens and trays and keyboards, with rows of people, arrayed like a terracotta soldiers, who seemed to stiffen and stare that much more intently at their work as they noticed Ed go by. It was quiet save for office hum and the clacking of fingers on keys. As we approached the meeting room, we walked past a group of smartly dressed Business Analysts in hushed conversation and there was Carey who looked up and smiled warmly as I passed. "Call me," she mouthed and mimed dialling a phone with her hand.
We walked into the small meeting room, we me bringing up the rear. The mute took up a position against the wall, closing the door behind me and flipping the blind down.
"Sit down," said Ed, indicating a chair. I sat opposite him. “Working hard, I see." He was looking down at my sweat soaked shirt.
"You know how it is," I said, picking my words carefully, "there's a lot of work and..." I wasn't sure how to end the sentence.
"And not enough time to do it?"
"No, not at all. I didn't mean that. The timescales are fine, I meant -"
"Relax. I don't want to talk about that. I have something new for you. A new... opportunity." He made a slight gesture with his hand and before I could react the mute had stepped forward and grabbed my arm, pinning it down onto the desk.
"Hey!" I began to struggle as he then grabbed me around the shoulders with his left arm and held me down into the chair. "What's the matter?"
"Don't worry," said Ed calmly. "This wont hurt, but it's time you got this. A little something I like to have some of my people carry, call it a mod if you will."
As my arm was held down, Ed twisted my palm open and pulled something out of his top pocked which glinted for a second and then resolved into the shape of a razor blade.
"NO!" I began to shout but something was stuffed into my mouth as Ed grabbed my hand and suddenly pulled two of the fingers apart. He slid the razor blade toward the gap and I flinched in horror. But instead of pain I felt cold metal, as Ed gently placed the blade between the two fingers and then, using some surgical tape, began taping it into place. He then closed the fingers around it and taped them together too, winding more and more tape on until it looked as though I had a splint around a couple of broken fingers, but on the inside - the palm side - a lethal looking sliver of blade just protruded from between the two fingers.
The mute let go of me and I stared at the hand, turning it over and over, letting the whisper of blade catch the light.
"You know what I'm asking, don't you?" Ed said.
"Yes, I think so," I said, feeling suddenly sick.
"You're one of mine now. This is a promotion. And now you have to prove that I made the right decision."
The mute, it seemed, was leading me to the photocopying room. I was wearing my dark suit jacket now, with the tie knot firm and tight. I kept carefully clenching my right hand, seeing how far I could tighten without cutting my own skin. I experimented by opening the palm up - how far would I have to open it to fully expose the blade? Not too far. You could use it without letting it be seen, but at the same time the taped-up fingers were obvious enough to all. An insignia, a warning.
Inside the photocopier room we found the guy we were looking for, a thin, wiry geek standing by the copier talking to a blonde girl. The mute strode up to him and the conversation stopped dead. The girl melted away and hurried out the door. I stepped up to the guy and he made a move to push past us, but the mute grabbed him by the arm and slammed him against the wall.
"You're not going anywhere, not now and not later," I said.
"What? Why are you doing this? I told you, I'm leaving the company; I can't do any more for you people."
"That's exactly where you're wrong," I said. "We have deadlines to meet, and you are going to meet them. You're not going anywhere until this project is finished."
"Fuck you, I'm sick of this, I'm not going to be -"
The mute suddenly grabbed him around the throat and lifted him up. For a moment I thought he was just going to strangle him when he looked at me coldly and made a sharp movement toward the guy with his head. "Do it." he hissed.
I whipped open the palm of my hand and swept it across the kid's chest. The shirt he was wearing opened like flower, his tie severed and dropped to the floor leaving a stubby remnant, and in the path of the opening a thin glaring red line began to glisten. The mute dropped him and he collapsed in a heap among some boxes of paper.
"This was just a motivational visit," I said as we turned to leave. "I'm shredding your resignation and if I see another one you can expect to really lose something next time."
The kid lay on the floor and let out a low moan as I walked toward the door. Outside the room there was silence, only the warm hum of PCs and the rumble of traffic in the distance.
Two days later we were all called into a meeting. All the section heads, all the team leaders, all the captains and capos. At the side of the room sat Stirling Jerome, Vice President for Delivery. The Capo di Tutti Capi, the boss of bosses in our sector. He waited until everyone was seated and then stood up and walked to the front as a respectful hush descended. For a moment he simply stood and looked out over the small gathering.
"I'm here to tell you," he said finally, "that I know what is going on down here."
The room felt several degrees warmer suddenly.
"I know that there has been some very... extreme behaviour, some very dangerous behaviour. Some of you people out there have been acting in ways that are totally outside the bounds of normal, acceptable business practice. I think you all know what I'm referring to. Assault, blackmail, brutality. These things are unacceptable in civilised society."
He paused for a moment and scanned the room, the faces, no one wanting to catch his eye, people shifting in their seats.
"But the thing is," he said, sitting down on the table "this isn't a civilised society. This is a business. And a business has to fight to survive. You people give me hope. Hope that there are still people in this company with the will to win. Officially I cannot in any way condone what is going on around here, and if this becomes public I will hang you out to dry. But unofficially, I think you are doing some of the most innovative management I've ever seen. And it won't be forgotten, I guarantee it."
As we filed out the room, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face Ed who was smiling broadly.
"I think that went very well, don't you?" I nodded.
"We knew he'd been under pressure to say something, to clean up. But it looks like it's business as usual. And who knows - a little extra recognition in the bank maybe? By the way, good work with that thing the other day. I sensed you had it in you."
We walked through Carey's office and I could see her hunched over a spreadsheet. She looked up as I got closer, and I started toward her, but as soon as she caught my eye, she looked down again hurriedly. I stopped a few feet away from her desk.
“Carey?” I said quietly. But she stared a hole into her keyboard and never looked up.
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my hand and looked to see a red line in my palm where I had squeezed the blade without thinking. A drop of blood ran down and hit the carpet.
“Hey, are you coming or what?” Ed's voiced called from up ahead. For a moment I hesitated. I pulled the white handkerchief from my top pocket and dabbed the blood from my hand, and then I turned to catch up with the others as they walked toward the stairs.
Response E
She didn't want to talk about the thin white scar under the right side of her rib cage. "Surgery," she'd said when he asked. Wrinkled her nose. "Don't like to think about it much." But something had been put inside her, something with an energy source. He would have pushed the issue harder if he didn't want to admit to a wild night years back in a modshop implanting rice-sized magnets into his fourth fingers. They tingled his nerves with vibrations in the presence of electromagnetic fields--like the one above her scar.
His answer came when he stumbled across an online article about terrorists, psychotics, and the standby deadman's switches they used to demolish themselves and others. Pictures of flesh pulp misted onto walls accompanied the words "often installed under the ribcage, so as to be less noticeable in cursory body inspections." A shockwave of nausea had him retching in the bathroom for half an hour, after which he mechanically cleared his browser cache. What would she do if she realized he knew? That night, he ran his hand up and down her side, the comforting touch of her warm skin broken by the buzz of the bomb underneath. He couldn't decide which sensation to believe.
Her quirks morphed into malignancies. Her fear of flying? Avoidance of weapons scanners in airports. Her refusal to marry him? Avoidance of scanners in courthouses. But would he marry her now? He didn't even know the trigger for her switch. On days he came home after her, she still cooked dinner, as if life was the same. He'd bury his nose into her hair and wrap his arms around her, his finger prickling over her secret heart of explosives, the silence between them filled with the sizzling of meat in the pan.
Poll Mod Smack-Down Challenge One Voting
Voting will close at approximately Friday 3pm GMT. Timezones make my head hurt!
As a secondary competition, How Well Do You Know Your Mods? - comment to this entry with who you think wrote each of the five responses if you want to go into the running for fantastic prizes*! (Mods can e-mail me their guesses.)
*.jpgs
Slight change of plans, folks. This is penchaft, and voting will be conducted using my secondary LJ, since I don't wish to contaminate my precious with ads.
So! Here are five excellent responses to the first challenge. Your impeccable mods had to write some words on any sort of mod, if you remember. Please read them, and then vote for your favourite!
Response A
"I don't think it's working," I said, smacking the bars of my cage in frustration. "Please, you have to listen to me - it's not working!" I paced the confines of my cell, tears of frustration and hopelessness pricking my eyes.
"Shut up," he growled.
"No, listen to me. It's not right, I can tell, and if you send me out there-"
"You can tell, eh? You've done this before?" He sneered at me and went back to polishing the spiked collar.
"You'll lose you money, don't you even care about that? I'm telling you, something went wrong. I don't feel like they do." I gestured through the bars to the other caged slaves, many who were entering the final stages of their transformation.
"I've been fighting modified humans for twenty years, ain't nothin' wrong. Now, shut up." He emphasized the last two words by slamming down the collar, then turned to pick up the armor plating and began to clean and oil it.
I sat down in the corner of my cage with a sigh, watching the other people begin to grow, distort, and take on the lupine features of the werewolf. They were howling and gnashing their teeth, ripping at the iron bars of their cages. They were ready for the caged fight ahead. They were ready to kill. All I felt was a sinking feeling of fear and dread. Something was definitely wrong, I wasn't like the others. The person - or, what used to be a person - in the cell next to me heaved themselves against the bars, bending them slightly. The men guarding the holding room tightened their grip on their silver pikes.
Then, finally, I began to feel it. At first it was a faint tickle, which grew into a dizzying falling sensation. My last conscious thought was, "I guess it did work, after all."
The man turned with the armor in his hands, but it fell unnoticed to the ground as he stared into the cage.
"Blimey, I guess it didn't work." He peered into the cage at the little Labrador puppy, who was busily trying to catch the tail firmly attached to its butt.
Response B
Modulus after Division
The following are true by convention:
i.
Any form given nil mod remains itself,
a construct of apoptosis and meiosis.
A human being achieves zero buoyancy
with open lungs in fresh water, fitted weight belt in salt.
In contrast a giant squid grows ammonium flesh.
ii.
Any form signs the sign of its mod.
So speaks a body
artist of large ensemble congruency.
Tarantula foot magnets lead his pet, clattering studs
up spine, neck, and crown.
In the civic aquarium, phosphorescent squid schools
school in always-desired patterns
only their tattoos enable.
iii.
Any form identical to its mod leaves no remainder
undivided, a political wife fucking
her publicist lawyer yoga instructor summer intern
wardrobe touch-up elocutionist blogger
two donor spider fund managers good and drunk pre
pre-keynote anecdote so intimate so real
to her she almost remembers it now.
Response C
Maude
She wears her hair loose and straight with a white Alice ribbon laced behind her ears. You can't see it because it's cold out and she's wearing a hat and her breath makes little clouds in the air. She's in front of the chapel, the center of campus, and you can't miss her unless you take the long way around, but by then you're ten minutes late for class instead of three. She's a blonde Charybdis, stalking the chapel steps every Monday, and I hate her.
It's like she's stuck in the sixties. It's like someone reached down and plucked her out of the war protests and hard music and space-shuttle launches and set her down in 2007. But she doesn't know, so she walks around campus in a doe-eyed daze, handing out flyers for a women's rights consortium, tomorrow night at seven in the student union.
Even her name is retro. Maude. Who names their daughter Maude? Maudes are minister's wives and little old ladies, not red-cheeked women with black, high-heeled boots under narrow-cut jeans. Maudes don't tote free condoms in a blue-green bag-and if you run out, they sell them for 10 cents at student services-and they don't smile a little when you hide a bright, yellow flyer in your purse so your girlfriends won't see.
Maudes are forgettable. They don't overwhelm your thoughts like a tumultuous flood, and they certainly don't call after you and say they look forward to seeing you soon. They just don't do that.
But she does, and I hide under an Eskimo hood and let the wind push me toward the science building where I'll be warned for arriving late and the Indian boy will wink at me and I'll hide in the back so I won't get called on for the answer.
She's still behind me. I hear her laughing, marooned on that island-stoop, passing out neon flyers to students caught in the swirling maelstrom.
I want to turn around. I want to shout at her. I want to tell her she doesn't belong here. She's wrong and the world is wrong and I'm wrong and she has no right to stand above our heads with pink-and-yellow posters branded in black printer ink. I want to take them and throw them so they'll scatter like schools of fish in the January wind, and then she'll hate me.
But she won't hate me. She'll cry a little and pick up the flyers and step back in front of the chapel and start again, because she's like that.
I lie to my roommates the next night. It's easy because I never wear makeup, and when I do it's for a boy, so I don't need to say anything. And when I get home later and I'm smiling, they'll think it's because he asked me on another date, and that's okay, because she did, and I said yes, and maybe I don't hate her so much.
Response D
I had been working 36 hours straight that morning, and looked like shit. And with everything going to hell on that damned project I was just in the middle of bawling out one of the idiots on my team when I felt someone waiting just behind me. Ed, my section leader, dark suited and stony faced was standing with his muscular sidekick, whose name I didn't know and who everyone called the mute, as he'd had never been heard to say anything, which was as good a way of getting ahead in the company as any I could think of.
“Do you have a moment?” Ed said in a low voice.
“Of course.”
As if I could have refused.
"Good. You need to come with us," he said. Then he and the mute started walking down the central corridor that ran through the open plan office, and I straightened my tie and hurried to catch up. We walked toward the end of that floor, navigating rows of identical desks bristling with screens and trays and keyboards, with rows of people, arrayed like a terracotta soldiers, who seemed to stiffen and stare that much more intently at their work as they noticed Ed go by. It was quiet save for office hum and the clacking of fingers on keys. As we approached the meeting room, we walked past a group of smartly dressed Business Analysts in hushed conversation and there was Carey who looked up and smiled warmly as I passed. "Call me," she mouthed and mimed dialling a phone with her hand.
We walked into the small meeting room, we me bringing up the rear. The mute took up a position against the wall, closing the door behind me and flipping the blind down.
"Sit down," said Ed, indicating a chair. I sat opposite him. “Working hard, I see." He was looking down at my sweat soaked shirt.
"You know how it is," I said, picking my words carefully, "there's a lot of work and..." I wasn't sure how to end the sentence.
"And not enough time to do it?"
"No, not at all. I didn't mean that. The timescales are fine, I meant -"
"Relax. I don't want to talk about that. I have something new for you. A new... opportunity." He made a slight gesture with his hand and before I could react the mute had stepped forward and grabbed my arm, pinning it down onto the desk.
"Hey!" I began to struggle as he then grabbed me around the shoulders with his left arm and held me down into the chair. "What's the matter?"
"Don't worry," said Ed calmly. "This wont hurt, but it's time you got this. A little something I like to have some of my people carry, call it a mod if you will."
As my arm was held down, Ed twisted my palm open and pulled something out of his top pocked which glinted for a second and then resolved into the shape of a razor blade.
"NO!" I began to shout but something was stuffed into my mouth as Ed grabbed my hand and suddenly pulled two of the fingers apart. He slid the razor blade toward the gap and I flinched in horror. But instead of pain I felt cold metal, as Ed gently placed the blade between the two fingers and then, using some surgical tape, began taping it into place. He then closed the fingers around it and taped them together too, winding more and more tape on until it looked as though I had a splint around a couple of broken fingers, but on the inside - the palm side - a lethal looking sliver of blade just protruded from between the two fingers.
The mute let go of me and I stared at the hand, turning it over and over, letting the whisper of blade catch the light.
"You know what I'm asking, don't you?" Ed said.
"Yes, I think so," I said, feeling suddenly sick.
"You're one of mine now. This is a promotion. And now you have to prove that I made the right decision."
The mute, it seemed, was leading me to the photocopying room. I was wearing my dark suit jacket now, with the tie knot firm and tight. I kept carefully clenching my right hand, seeing how far I could tighten without cutting my own skin. I experimented by opening the palm up - how far would I have to open it to fully expose the blade? Not too far. You could use it without letting it be seen, but at the same time the taped-up fingers were obvious enough to all. An insignia, a warning.
Inside the photocopier room we found the guy we were looking for, a thin, wiry geek standing by the copier talking to a blonde girl. The mute strode up to him and the conversation stopped dead. The girl melted away and hurried out the door. I stepped up to the guy and he made a move to push past us, but the mute grabbed him by the arm and slammed him against the wall.
"You're not going anywhere, not now and not later," I said.
"What? Why are you doing this? I told you, I'm leaving the company; I can't do any more for you people."
"That's exactly where you're wrong," I said. "We have deadlines to meet, and you are going to meet them. You're not going anywhere until this project is finished."
"Fuck you, I'm sick of this, I'm not going to be -"
The mute suddenly grabbed him around the throat and lifted him up. For a moment I thought he was just going to strangle him when he looked at me coldly and made a sharp movement toward the guy with his head. "Do it." he hissed.
I whipped open the palm of my hand and swept it across the kid's chest. The shirt he was wearing opened like flower, his tie severed and dropped to the floor leaving a stubby remnant, and in the path of the opening a thin glaring red line began to glisten. The mute dropped him and he collapsed in a heap among some boxes of paper.
"This was just a motivational visit," I said as we turned to leave. "I'm shredding your resignation and if I see another one you can expect to really lose something next time."
The kid lay on the floor and let out a low moan as I walked toward the door. Outside the room there was silence, only the warm hum of PCs and the rumble of traffic in the distance.
Two days later we were all called into a meeting. All the section heads, all the team leaders, all the captains and capos. At the side of the room sat Stirling Jerome, Vice President for Delivery. The Capo di Tutti Capi, the boss of bosses in our sector. He waited until everyone was seated and then stood up and walked to the front as a respectful hush descended. For a moment he simply stood and looked out over the small gathering.
"I'm here to tell you," he said finally, "that I know what is going on down here."
The room felt several degrees warmer suddenly.
"I know that there has been some very... extreme behaviour, some very dangerous behaviour. Some of you people out there have been acting in ways that are totally outside the bounds of normal, acceptable business practice. I think you all know what I'm referring to. Assault, blackmail, brutality. These things are unacceptable in civilised society."
He paused for a moment and scanned the room, the faces, no one wanting to catch his eye, people shifting in their seats.
"But the thing is," he said, sitting down on the table "this isn't a civilised society. This is a business. And a business has to fight to survive. You people give me hope. Hope that there are still people in this company with the will to win. Officially I cannot in any way condone what is going on around here, and if this becomes public I will hang you out to dry. But unofficially, I think you are doing some of the most innovative management I've ever seen. And it won't be forgotten, I guarantee it."
As we filed out the room, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face Ed who was smiling broadly.
"I think that went very well, don't you?" I nodded.
"We knew he'd been under pressure to say something, to clean up. But it looks like it's business as usual. And who knows - a little extra recognition in the bank maybe? By the way, good work with that thing the other day. I sensed you had it in you."
We walked through Carey's office and I could see her hunched over a spreadsheet. She looked up as I got closer, and I started toward her, but as soon as she caught my eye, she looked down again hurriedly. I stopped a few feet away from her desk.
“Carey?” I said quietly. But she stared a hole into her keyboard and never looked up.
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my hand and looked to see a red line in my palm where I had squeezed the blade without thinking. A drop of blood ran down and hit the carpet.
“Hey, are you coming or what?” Ed's voiced called from up ahead. For a moment I hesitated. I pulled the white handkerchief from my top pocket and dabbed the blood from my hand, and then I turned to catch up with the others as they walked toward the stairs.
Response E
She didn't want to talk about the thin white scar under the right side of her rib cage. "Surgery," she'd said when he asked. Wrinkled her nose. "Don't like to think about it much." But something had been put inside her, something with an energy source. He would have pushed the issue harder if he didn't want to admit to a wild night years back in a modshop implanting rice-sized magnets into his fourth fingers. They tingled his nerves with vibrations in the presence of electromagnetic fields--like the one above her scar.
His answer came when he stumbled across an online article about terrorists, psychotics, and the standby deadman's switches they used to demolish themselves and others. Pictures of flesh pulp misted onto walls accompanied the words "often installed under the ribcage, so as to be less noticeable in cursory body inspections." A shockwave of nausea had him retching in the bathroom for half an hour, after which he mechanically cleared his browser cache. What would she do if she realized he knew? That night, he ran his hand up and down her side, the comforting touch of her warm skin broken by the buzz of the bomb underneath. He couldn't decide which sensation to believe.
Her quirks morphed into malignancies. Her fear of flying? Avoidance of weapons scanners in airports. Her refusal to marry him? Avoidance of scanners in courthouses. But would he marry her now? He didn't even know the trigger for her switch. On days he came home after her, she still cooked dinner, as if life was the same. He'd bury his nose into her hair and wrap his arms around her, his finger prickling over her secret heart of explosives, the silence between them filled with the sizzling of meat in the pan.
Poll Mod Smack-Down Challenge One Voting
Voting will close at approximately Friday 3pm GMT. Timezones make my head hurt!
As a secondary competition, How Well Do You Know Your Mods? - comment to this entry with who you think wrote each of the five responses if you want to go into the running for fantastic prizes*! (Mods can e-mail me their guesses.)
*.jpgs