Book Series

Planet in Theory: Pluto Takes the Stage (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 55 minutes)

An Excerpt from Masquerade Monthly, Issue #34

Available at Aleatory Books

As our regular readers will know by now, we’re committed to offering everyone on Pluto the most sound and fashionable advice when it comes to selecting and wearing emergency masks, whether likelihood is a concern or you’re just looking to spice up your Friday night look. Admittedly, we tend to get caught up in trends, what with the planet’s wealth of fine craftsmen at our disposal.

Today we reach into the back of the mask drawer, tackling queries sent by many a reader regarding nontraditional and improvised masks. Many of you have also expressed an interest in so called ‘minimal masks’, here meaning items worn upon the face that one would not expect to count as identity forming but have nonetheless been demonstrated to work as such. Continue reading →

Planet in Theory: Pluto Takes the Stage (part four)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 25 minutes)

One in a Simillion

“Popcorn’s here finally. I’m starving. Hey, over here moron!” Toddy Hot raised his hand and snapped his fingers several times to get the crazy8’s attention. The person who’d been set to the task of fetching the refreshments barely knew where they were, and certainly didn’t understand what kind of crowd surrounded them.

Since they were wearing a red striped shirt and a little paper hat they assumed they were an employee of this entertainment venue and it was their responsibility to serve anyone else there. At the moment they were on the carpeted stairs between rows of descending seats, and down at the center there was a boxing ring, though the 2 men inside it were conversing instead of throwing punches. Continue reading →

Planet in Theory: Pluto Takes the Stage (part three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 24 minutes)

The 9th Life of Long Odd Silver

“We are closed!” Minty shouted as she rushed toward the front door in her green silk pajamas. It was so early in the morning that there was only a shred of daylight outside, so she held an illuminated card up like a candle, footage of a yellow flame flickering. Her feet were bare and her glasses resting comfortably on her nightstand a few rooms away.

Whunk whunk whunk! The knock came again, though it was more like somebody swinging a sack of potatoes against the wood. Then there was another knock from a different angle, smaller, harder, more persistent. Then another. It was hammering, she realized. Continue reading →

Planet in Theory: Pluto Takes the Stage (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 10 minutes)

Request in the Public Interest

For all the talk of Pluto having opinions, of it styling its population’s civilization, against their will, after the early half of the 20th century, probably because that was when its own planethood was most aggressively speculated and it was nostalgic, the truth is that it was much more of a natural reaction.

If opinion came into it at all, it was likely influence from human possibilities. Everyone past the dawn of plastic pines for the good old days of wood, paper, metal, and glass. While they want the smell and look of those things, in the end they’ll happily give it all up for the conveniences of the 21st, computing prime among them. Continue reading →

Planet in Theory: Pluto Takes the Stage (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 13 Comments

Past the facts lies a realm where your guess has to be good enough: probable space!  Its places and peoples have their own odds, from 2to1 on down, getting less substantial all the way.  All the planets there are the ones merely theorized here, from tiny Vulcan, to Counter-Earth, to Phaeton, and now beyond to… Pluto?

The poor orbiting body’s downgrade from planet to dwarf shoved it into the realm of theory, so it popped up in probable space, complete with an adult population shocked to find themselves alive!  One such Plutonian is Minty Julip, who is nearly sure she is a librarian, and hopes to stay that way, but many are vying for power in their fresh world, and they think she belongs in the battle.

That battle will suck her into a chaotic maelstrom of criminal organizations, weaponized cardistry, literal storms of cats and dogs, and an unlikely companion calling themselves Long Odd Silver.  There may be no escape for her, but in probable space one can never be so sure.

(reading time: 1 hour, 9 minutes) (reading time for entire novel: 7 hours, 3 minutes)

Planet in Theory

Pluto takes the Stage

by

Blaine Arcade

In Media Res

Cherry-picking is both hope and folly. The brightest and sweetest on the tree exist, sure, spectrums need starting gates and finish lines as much as anything else, but to pretend it represents the whole is to wind up with a pie that looks great but sourly disappoints.

And I know salt and cherries don’t really go together, but you should still take what I’m about to say with a grain of it. I admit that I’ve cherry-picked these, out of 7 seas of reactions, just to give you an idea of how intensely this development struck some people. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Deals (Finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 49 minutes)

The Deal

The entrance to Peako Dagyvr’s workshop, deep in the stony crevasse of Crosstahl, was sealed off in a most unusual manner. The original door was gone, its frame filled by uneven stones that were held together by a bright, almost luminous, blue adhesive. This barrier had a weak spot, an eye drifting in the adhering slime, but it kept on the interior side. That meant it had to watch everything happening within, occasionally dodging a dagger as it was tossed across the chamber.

Even in the relatively short time since Captain Rob had taken the new recruit Alast there to purchase a weapon, Peako’s output had increased significantly. The walls had always had very little empty space, with shields, spears, and war forks hung everywhere, some even modified into braziers to light the place. It was much more cluttered now, the space shrunk by shields overlapping, like the dermal disorder of a scaly beast. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Deals (Part Six)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 21 minutes)

Age of Tragedy

The Captain still expected to thwart more would-be assassins, but his next trip to Platone was peaceful. If only the same could be said for the contents of that trip. He embraced Vyra again, and they walked along a new edge as the ekapads came to crackling life. A new ringing tone played, its shattering volume nothing compared to the godly words that used Vyra’s throat as vessel. The Age of Wonder was lost to time, most of its revelations new to Rob, but the time that followed, the Age of Tragedy, contained some tales that were all too familiar.

These were things that could never be denied: acts of destruction so complete that they could only ever be the end or the foundation of something new. The shattering of both the tiles and the Reflecting Path. The mildew plague. The decimation and retreat of the prosites. These all had a common cause. Porce could not be the paradise it once was, and all because of a single wanderer intrigued by the peace of Youbend. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Deals (Part Five)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 8 minutes)

Age of Wonder

A concert of Platone lit up the night sky in shocking red and swollen purple. Ekapads stampeded across its face in lightning arcs like blazing stars fired from bows. The din and its associated powers were enough to kill a lightfolk in three different ways, but Vyra was protected by the divine powers of Hesprid, and her prosite stowaway by the same from Qorcneas. There was a bubble around them that the lightning broke up against, sizzling across its surface like fuzzy seeds tumbling down a rock face.

For a while she walked the empowered stone with Captain Rob, who had dutifully returned. With no flesh to burn he too was safe, but his gaze was drawn to her far more than the chaotic lights and sounds all around. Somehow when she spoke he heard, with no need to shout over the concert. He heard because the first gods willed it so, from all the way below the world in their graves. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Deals (Part Four)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 21 minutes)

Without Love Waxxon

The Captain deliberately chose to not look back much after leaving Platone with the curator screaming upon his back. He wanted to watch his first concert of dancing ekapads with Vyra, so he kept his sockets aimed forward all the way back to Tonefoot and the Chokechain. He could not shut out the ringing tone itself however.

Never a student of music, the pirate still heard several classical pieces in the simplified melody, realizing for the first time how the borrowed backbone fit into each composition. All of the flourish, all the different instruments, were certainly necessary, for the ringing tone was horrifically grating to him. Worse still, he was no longer capable of effectively covering his ears now that there were no fleshy lobes to squish against the side of his head and no cupping palms to create calmer pockets. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Deals (Part Three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 5 minutes)

He’s Very Depressed Regarding his Death

“It’s no use; he won’t come out,” Bonswario told Teal. He was told to guard the door, but slumped in his duty thanks to Rob only perceiving his family and friends as threats. They were aboard the Chokechain, and while the new recruits kept the ship sailing most of his old crew were bunched up in the rooms and corridors outside the Captain’s quarters. Teal had walked the path from her ship immediately upon hearing the news that he had lost his flesh in battle and been reborn as gravefolk.

He refused to see her or even speak to her, which was fine by her for the first few drops. Attending to him first was mostly an act of loyalty rather than an affectionate one. There was plenty else on his ship to occupy her time until he got over himself, like the briefing with Pearlen that mostly cleared up the surrounding circumstances. Continue reading →