Go outside at night. Look up at the stars. Allow yourself to feel awe. The universe is huge, complex, infinite. It’s this massive life, stars and planets and spacedust and just amazing. Allow yourself to be humbled. You are tiny, the universe is so big.
Then bring yourself to this awareness: you are a valuable, intrinsic part of this thing. And while your body will revert to spacedust itself, right now, you are. You exist. This universe, this amazing, complex life, has chosen to make you. To share Itself with you.
Be humbled, but also accept that you are alive, and the universe chose to make you.
The Androgyne (Short Story)
This short story is set in the world “The Secret World“, based on the Funcom game. It was written for an event called “Purple Raze“, and if you follow the Purple Raze link, you’ll get to see what we did; and can follow a video of how the event looked to our videographer. It was a lot of fun!
One of my characters in the event is the supporting character for this story.
The Androgyne
Krista crouched behind the hedge in front of the Kindergarden and cursed herself. She knew everyone was dead, why keep returning? But like picking at a scab, she kept going back home. As if she would find her kid sister playing Xbox. Her mother at the kitchen table, making fishing flies for her father. Her father cooking up his latest catch.
And now she was trapped. A group of feeders was .. oh ewww … on the other side of the white postal van in front of the Kinder. The sounds made her feel sick, but she didn’t dare react. Throwing up, even gagging, would make her too audible.
There was something .. wrong, something incredibly creepy, about the Slater house on the other side of the seesaws, and she couldn’t make herself go back that way. Trying to go up Angell St was also out of the question – another group of feeders was there.
But if something could distract them – maybe she could make a break for it. Dart across Angell, into the alley beside the blue house, over the rubbish bins and over the fence? Once she was in there, the backyards and the common area would give her several directions she could go. With any luck, there wouldn’t be any zombies in there either.
She gathered her courage, and as quietly as she could, checked her shotgun. Holding it in both hands, she started to run across the road. She didn’t dare to look back. She could hear the feeders – or more precisely, she heard them stop feeding, and then heard their growls as they started to run for her.
Suddenly, it was like her prayers were answered. A bolt of lightning from on high. She found herself looking up – it was hardly a cloudless sky. The horrible, unnatural fog blocked any view of the real sky. But she saw the source of the lightning as it cast another bolt: a figure, standing on the roof of the pink house. A person. And one who didn’t behave like a zombie.
He – or she – didn’t behave like any of the survivors, either. He stood tall, unafraid, confident. He casually zapped the feeders behind her with more of that crazy lightning, and then jumped – jumped! – off the roof of the pink house as if it were just the top of the slippery slide. The only concession he made to the two story house was to flex his knees when he landed.
Krista couldn’t help it. She stared.
One eyebrow quirked above his sunglasses. “Yes?” The voice was surprisingly feminine.
He was androgynous – a hat and the mirrored shades concealing most of his face, a long coat over his body, shirt and tie showing underneath. Dress shoes, pressed slacks. He looked clean, in a way that noone on Solomon Island looked, these days. He – she? – turned his head slightly, and casually shot off lightning at another zombie. Purple-dyed hair, longer than most males would wear it. He/she turned back, and seemed to be waiting patiently for Krista to speak.
Krista realised she was staring – and that she should say something. “Sorry. Uh. Hi. I’m Krista. You saved my life. Thank you.” What an inadequate thing to say. She bit her lip, then held her hand out for a handshake. “I mean it. Really.”
The stranger gave the slightest of smiles, but accepted the handshake. His hand was covered in a glove – soft leather, it seemed, and just as perfectly clean as the rest of him. No sign of singes from the lightning bolts, either. “Krista.” He gestured towards the alley. “Inside there is safe, for the moment.”
Krista led the stranger onto the rubbish bins and over the fence, dropped down into the alley. She nodded towards a pair of benches that noone had yet stripped for salvage. “We can sit here.” She smiled slightly, remembering Mr Atkins trimming his hedge. That bike there belonged to young Joel. He’d earned it himself, mowing lawns one summer. And those pumpkins, carved by the Miller sisters.
The stranger nodded and sat down, but took a pistol out and held it across his lap, ready. “We’re sitting under light. But we have an excellent view of two of the entrances to this area; and adequate views of two others.” He indicated Joel’s bike with his chin. “Emergency transport. Why have you not already salvaged it, taken it to wherever you are staying?”
Krista turned, stared at him. “It’s Joel’s, he ….”
“Is almost certainly dead.” The stranger’s tone was flat. “Your task is survival. Your only concern. The past is gone.” He rose, extended a hand. “Show me around town.”
. . . . .
The Lobster Trap. Last time Krista was here, it was with her family. Now she was here with an unknown, a stranger who had saved her from the feeders, and asked her to show him around Kingsmouth.
But the memories…. Fresh seafood, caught only that day, eaten on the pier. Memories of being surrounded by laughter and family. She’d actually been annoyed about going – her school friends had a party on the mainland that night, and she’d wanted to attend. But now … now the Lobster Trap meant her family, good times, good food. Oh lord, don’t mention good food! So much spam and baked beans.She touched her hand to the table they’d used that one night, and closed her eyes. Sighed softly.A few seconds later, the stranger spoke in his oddly feminine voice. “If I were an enemy, you would be dead.”Krista snapped her eyes open, and then followed the stranger’s gaze. A knife point pressed against her belly. She looked back at the stranger.”You drifted off. Stopped paying attention.” He shook his head. “You’re in my world, now, child. The Secret World.” He smiled a little, took the knife away from her belly and made it vanish somehow. “Look at this place. See it as it is, not as it was. Look strategically.” He stood at the end of the pier. “A vantage point. Suitable for studying the draug, though one must always be aware that they can function on dry land.”
He nodded towards the canvas pavilion. “A better position would be to stand there. Slice a narrow slit to see through, and have someone to watch your back.” He gave Krista a meaningful look. “Never leave your back unguarded.”
He led her back up to the verandah, and smiled. “And lookie here. Someone left a ladder lying around.” He propped it against the roof, and with a gesture, invited her to precede him up the ladder. “Step quietly when you’re on the roof.”
She climbed, and tried to walk softly. He followed her, then seemed to almost pad like a cat on the roof: each foot placed slowly. She tried to mimic him, and earned a smile. Walking to the edge of the roof, he lay down – again, placing his weight carefully. Whispered “From a site like this, I can watch the water – or the road. And few will think to notice me.” He looked at Krista. “What else can you tell me about this place?”
Krista thought, and studied the place from this new vantage point. She whispered too, “I guess .. you can see halfway across the bay on a good day. And .. and on the other side, there’s the road to Jack and Wendy’s and to Journey’s End, the pier. Beyond the road, there’s the airport and the scrapyard.”
“The airport, hmm?” The stranger glanced up at the ever-present black helicopters, then back to Krista. “Anything else?”
They spent several minutes discussing the strategic and tactical possibilities of the Lobster Trap, before the stranger jumped down from the roof and held his arms up to catch Krista. She jumped, and he caught her easily, held her close against himself … or herself? He was strong, but there was a softness to his body. She couldn’t see his eyes, though, and his smile gave little away. He let her go, perhaps a little sooner than she would have liked.
“I want to see the airport. But from a distance. I think I know who’s running things there.”
Krista led the stranger, the pair of them running from cover to cover across the spit, then sprinting over the bridge. When they reached the other side, the stranger simply pulled both pistols out and gestured for Krista to stay put. Krista crouched behind a conveniently placed rock, and watched. There seemed to be a kind of nimbus around every bullet, and the strangers hands burned: a bluish flame right at the hands, spreading to the normal red-orange at the edge of the fire.
Krista looked at the creatures the stranger was fighting. The draug. Only a short time ago – days ago? Weeks? Time had slipped past her. Surely it was only a short time ago that such things would have been fantasy. Fairy stories. Or rather, horror stories.
If she could believe in zombies and draug, she could believe in strangers with fire and lightning in their hands.
She stayed put, quietly, until the draug were cleared away. Then to the airport, the pair of them again moving from cover to cover, fighting only when necessary .
“Used to be a guy here gave scenic flights around the island. You could see everything – the old theme park, the village, the mine, the quarry…”
The stranger nodded, said “Look at the airport with the eyes of now.”
Krista frowned, studying it. Then she said “There’s all those people in black uniforms.”
“Orochi. You see those uniforms, you stay away.” The stranger turned his face towards her, and she almost got the impression that he was looking right at her, though she couldn’t see through the glasses. “If you can’t, nod and smile and act like a good little puppet.”
“But Orochi’s just a big business.”
The stranger simply turned his head to Krista, then gave a tiny little half-smile and shook his head. “Not in my world.” He stood up, offering Krista a hand up. “Back to town. I need some things.”
. . . . .
Some time later, Krista was watching the stranger pick the lock on HP Arts and Crafts, in Main Street. Her mother had bought supplies for the fishing lures from here; but now it was just a place to get things for survival. Krista was carrying her shotgun, and also some sort of microfibre backpack the stranger had retrieved from nowhere – or perhaps a well-tailored pocket in his coat.
A number of items from various shops were in the backpack; but among them were things he told Krista she should have: everything from salt to multivitamins to a first aid kit. “Always have your own,” he’d said, when she protested that there was plenty at the station. “You never know when you’ll be separated.”
Something heavy was blocking the door of HP Arts and Crafts. The stranger had to put his shoulder to the door to get it to open; and directed Krista to keep watch both inside and outside. So Krista was the first to recognise what blocked the door… and who it had been. “MOM!”
The stranger clapped a hand over Krista’s mouth the moment she started to scream. “Shhh. Don’t call zombies.”
Krista’s knees failed her, and the stranger allowed her to drop gently to the floor – but kept his hand firmly over her mouth. “Mourn, but mourn silently. Survival first. Always.” He actually lowered his glasses, so she could see his eyes. Her eyes? It didn’t matter. Mom.
She could barely recognise her. Days – or was it weeks? – of being dead, or undead, had changed her. She’d been spared much of the violation of the corpses in the street, but her body, her face was so shrivelled. But noone had those earrings, that dress. Mom had made them herself.
Krista was immune to the smell of death, inured to it. To the touch. So long spent in Kingsmouth’s hell. She knelt on the floor by her mother’s corpse and keened in silence, while the stranger quietly closed and relocked the door, and rummaged through the shop for whatever it was he needed.
She never knew how long she’d spent on the floor there. But eventually the tears dried, and she found a hand in front of her, offering a clean – CLEAN – square of cloth. “Wipe your eyes. It’s time to go.” The voice was not unkind, but it was uncompromising.
Krista got up, wiped her eyes, and nodded. She tried the doorknob, then prepped her shotgun. She took one side of the doorway, the stranger – her partner for the moment – took the other. And then Krista opened the door to a new world. To their world. To the Secret World.
Naughty Cat!
We left Andy’s dinner out on the kitchen bench. A short time later it wasn’t there – and there was a supremely happy big white cat nearby.
It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.
Quality of Life with Chronic Severe Illness – Communication
One of the most important issues for quality of life – as I see it – is friends and family. Depending on your condition, spoken communication may become difficult, because spoken communication requires the coordinated effort of a great many muscles, some of which are difficult to exercise. I strongly recommend seeing a speech therapist early, they may be able to extend the amount of time you can still speak.
Speech therapists also help with other complicated actions involving the mouth and throat. Mine is helping me to swallow – I have trouble with swallowing, and tend to choke every so often. Every other meal. Maybe more frequently.
If spoken communication becomes difficult, the obvious next step is to write. Unfortunately, writing also requires complex muscle work and fine motor control. Write if you can, but watch your capability.
Now – I have become somewhat familiar with assistive communication technology, and I don’t like it much. For the most part, it limits what you can ‘say’. Many of them will not enable you to have discussions like deciding on the colour scheme for the bedroom. And working out whether to breastfeed or bottlefeed a baby stretches the technology.
So I recommend learning Auslan (or the sign language for your part of the world). Even with muscle weakness, enough of Auslan is done with greater muscle movements and potentially clumsy muscle movements that I think it’s worth a try for free communication. It’s a full, complete language, with a living vocabulary. Discuss it with your physiotherapist, if they think you can do it, give it a try. Ask those closest to you to learn it with you.
If this doesn’t work, seek out the best communication assistance you can manage. Being a part of your circle of family and friends is a major aspect of maintaining quality of life.
About Me.
The basics: I’m Australian, I like to write (fiction and non-fiction), create art, play music, make knotwork and beaded jewelry, solve puzzles and jigsaws, do needlework, speak with and hug my loved ones, sing, and generally live.
I trained as a computer programmer, and worked as a programmer and system administrator until a disability struck me down. After several years, I became well enough to attempt to work again; I tried at three different companies over five years before deciding that it was unrealistic for me to work as a programmer.
So I switched to technical writing. I wrote for several technical websites, until I started sending article applications to O’Reilly. Some of my work there is outdated now, and the articles don’t appear on my author page; however that page shows one of my great achievements.
I wrote a book about CVS – a content versioning system – that they published. Royalties from it bought my family a car and a complete set of whitegoods for the house! And, of course, the book itself adds to the body of human knowledge. Much of what is there is duplicated elsewhere, but I organised the knowledge in a way which is helpful to the absolute novice, to the moderately experienced user, and also to someone who only needs a reference text. Making one book serve all three purposes took a great deal of thought.
As implied earlier, I’m disabled. A large part of my life is managing the disability – using self-awareness and mindfulness to help me pace my activity within the limits the disability places on me. I’ve studied a great deal of the theory, and had a lot of practice (more than twenty years) about handling it. I’m sure some of this website and blog will pass on some of that knowledge.
I live with my husband, our best friend, a dog and a cat. We share ownership of the home with the bank, but are gradually increasing our share. The place isn’t pretty, but it’s sound and handles Australian weather well; and that’s what really counts down here.
My life is filled with love and learning. I am lucky in that, and I hope that others are as well.