internet

Snakewaist: Species Invader (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Chaxium and her formerly human partner Ladyspiller are modern fairies, fighting the good fight against human encroachment, and this time fighting the fairy who goes too far, Chaxium’s ex Clove!  In fey warfare there is only one reliable tool, the living magical machines they can pilot, called ferriers.  Clove’s latest scheme seeks to harness a new breed of them, turn their noble nature to instinctive violence aimed squarely at mankind in this, the fifth Snakewaist novella.  You can find the beginning of the series here.

Snakewaist

Species Invader

by

Blaine Arcade

Underground Networking

Teaching the rules of a board game to a new player is always a taxing process, rewriting their entire world view on a smaller scale, and it becomes infinitely more difficult when new people keep wandering in, staring curiously until they ask to participate, and the unfinished teach must start all over again… and again… and again!?

“So everybody gets two pieces on the board and an understudy in their wings. What, you too? No, sure. We can modify it to accommodate- one, two, three, seven… seventeen players. So, you get two pieces on the board-” Blizzardime the diminutive, the genderless, struggled to explain.

“Is that a-“

“Incredibly fun board game?” they finished. “Yes it is.” Continue reading →

Bookworm

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

Grandma’s basement is full of jarred and preserved magical creatures!  That’s how her cooking was always so scrumptious.  When she passed away she probably should have put a warning label on one jar in particular, the one with the smart-looking little caterpillar that loves to eat words…

(reading time: 1 hour, 10 minutes)

Bookworm

There came a time when knowledge turned invisible and raced across the globe.  It ran to those who searched for it and was displayed almost offensively.  It was called the internet.

Deep under a house, blankets of dust, like permanent foggy twilight, obscured a glass jar.  The shadow inside wanted out so badly that it tackled the side and cracked the glass.  It wanted out because it sensed, no, smelled, the knowledge flying in the air.  The internet called to it like a cartoon pie’s scent trail that tickled everyone’s noses.  That one crack… was its last bit of energy.  It was too dry now.  It shrank, it shriveled, it cracked, and, finally, it fell into a death-like sleep.  Not death though, for the jar had no expiration date. Continue reading →

Pron

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Mankind has gone digital and set the worst corners of the internet adrift to fend for themselves.  A lone woman descends on one of these cesspools, eyes censored by a black bar, armed with a deadly cursor.  There are other women trapped there, and they need her help…

(reading time: 1 hour, 6 minutes)

Pron

A thousand links rested silently in the gray air.  This world was past dust, so the only sign of the field’s age was its stillness.  A thousand benches in a thousand styles: Victorian, art deco, 1990’s mail order catalogue, ferris wheel car, smooth bubbles meant to evoke the physical future that never happened…  Each one draped in heavy cables with frayed ends, like serpents with heads blasted to smithereens by lightning.  Without the cables the links could go nowhere.  Without the links the nearby town, the nearby pit as the civilized net would call it, was completely isolated.  The town became a pitiful little world that curled in on itself; culture became masturbation and love became a dream with no minds big enough to dream it. Continue reading →