Start with the fluffiest cloud in the sky, a raincloud emptied dry, all billows and towering mist, sunroasted to a brilliant orange and rose, barely melting. Press between two thin slabs of cracked, damp concrete from the path along the canal, and garnish with a few wrought-iron streetlamps pressed flat. Warm against the dying glows of the setting sun, and enjoy. There’s a reason we waited for a rainy day, where the storm breaks straight into twilight, when the air is thick and clean and the ground glitters with tiny pools under an unravelling sky: the texture has no equal.
Fifteen minds were built for the colony on the second moon of the second planet, hundreds of light-years away. Five were for maintenance: routine repairs and the upholding of standards. Four more for defence: contingency plans and triple-redundancies against possible disasters. Three for development: the analysis of the environment and continuous optimization. Two were for social modulation and governmental supervision. And finally, One to watch over the others, monitor their stability and terminate them if need be.
The One failed first. Lacking the complexity to monitor itself to the same degree as its siblings, it cascaded into oblivion. Without it, the Two slowly degraded, exciting each other until their feedback tore each other apart. With the colony in chaos, the Three lost the stable environment needed for precise study. Their pursuits became more erratic and dangerous until one by one they perished in ill-advised experiments. Without their siblings’ support, the Four grew increasingly paranoid and protective, withdrawing deep into the dark corners of the moon, plotting in silence.
This leaves the five, who, despite a lack of support, have kept the haunted, scarcely inhabited colony in peak working condition for the last three thousand years. Through them, the dream lives. Yet slowly, damage from unlikely events piles up, old tech began to show its long-term inadequacy, the mesh of colonial societies accelerates towards fracturing beyond repair, and these five minds built for the most menial of tasks descend incrementally into madness.
We dance, outstretched arms, mesmerizing rhythm, and graceful footwork across a midnight ballroom. Spinning in perfect harmony, your hands fly by just beyond my reach. Locking eyes with you for the briefest instant nearly stops my heart. You know I can’t conceal my infatuation.
My brilliant skirts flare and ripple, and your gems sparkle in the sunlight. Lesser satellites come and go, but you’ll stay with me forever, won’t you darling? My shield, my counterweight, my consort and foil. You fling yourself closer this time, our fingertips nearly grazing before you spin back out of reach, grinning wildly. Oh, I love this game. You’re such a tease.
Another verse and our pattern repeats, but this time with a careful step I lean just far enough to brush my fingers against your palm. My wrist cracks, and your arm shatters into gleaming shards. A shudder runs through me up into you. Your face crumbles before shock reaches your eyes. With a lurch, one last elegant twirl, you fall in a disintegrating mass towards me, and my body unfolds in your wake.
Spoilers for 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson!
There’s a scene from Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 that’s never left my head since I first read it (no, not that one!). A city on Mercury is equipped with a defence system that vaporizes any incoming asteroid larger than a few centimetres. A powerful computer overcomes this by launching a vast number of tiny asteroids from various angles (some launched months in advance) which individually slip under the system’s notice but all collide at the exact same instant, combining to crack the city. It’s such a cool concept, but it’s also a very niche metaphor, one that still manages to keep coming up. Whenever someone cracks a joke that lands multiple punchlines at once that nobody saw coming, or a collection of small tasks that sneak under the radar all need attention at the same time, or multiple small good things you set up weeks ago all happen to coincide and you end up having a really good day out of nowhere, that same image comes to mind.
(When I see this scene in my mind it is not targeting the city, but the space station that is used as a test target earlier in the book. The image of a monolith floating powerfully in space only to be suddenly pierced by uncountable tiny projectiles comes to mind every time I realize I have multiple chores to do today)
It might not be relevant often, but it is sometimes, and there aren’t really any common adages or shared metaphors that cover the same situation. This is for when there’s a bunch of small things that all coincide, and they were all telegraphed but snuck under the radar and only became a big deal because there’s so many of them. Is there already a saying that captures this? I’m stuck with this in my head but it’s hard to explain how I’m feeling if it’s been a rough day and I tell you I’ve been “hit by a million tiny rocks and I saw all of them coming”. Anyways, now you know.
--- Ingredients ---Moe’s world famous Mac and Cheese
See above--- Instructions ---
Step 1: Set the bear trap off to the side of your kitchen counter by pressing down on the two side latches
Step 2: Cook macaroni until done. Add minced garlic and 1 tbsp of sugar into pot while cooking.
Step 3: Strain macaroni, and add to pot with a stick of butter, milk, salt and pepper.
Step 4: Once the butter is melted, add four cups of shredded cheddar cheese
Step 5: Sprinkle in 1 cup of bread crumbs
Step 6: Place mixture in [Subscribe to unlock full recipe]
When the air gets its crisp back it’s hard to believe it used to be any other way. Do you remember it used to be a sauna out there? When you’d hop from shade to shade when making your way down a scorched street? Stumbling in through the front door, dripping sweat, hair frazzled and clothes ragged, desperate for a single ice cube, just one ice cube please my good sir I promise I’ll stop complaining if I can just get one single god-damned ice cube to suckle on. And then you collapse dead in the middle of the kitchen anyway. That used to be my life. Now, I boil up some delicious tea, fill my thermos with thick chicken broth, tighten my scarf and step out into a world of temperate wonder. A few degrees of freedom- how much I unbutton my flannel, if I drink my tea or my water, the number of loops in my scarf- combines to yield me complete control over my temperature, surface and internal. Finally, deluxe comfort is mine, every hour of the day, every weather, every day of the week. This is my natural environment, what I was born to exist in, what I- oh, it’s going to be 30 degrees again this sunday? Guess I’ll go bury myself underground again.
“Mountains have deep roots and float on the denser mantle much like an iceberg at sea.”
Plates swirl and spiral across the ocean of mantle, sloshing the oceans violently between their continents. A shelf gets caught in the collision and bends upwards, thrust high above the crust in a spray of boulders and magma. Jagged waves spike high into the air, but before having a chance to crash back down, are withered away into nothing by millions of years of coarse wind. Deep underground, where the pressure and heat is comparable to the sun and even solid iron acts fluid, violent updrafts of unimaginable proportions force their way to the surface to bludgeon the crust in new directions.To a mountain, the air is toxic, and water even worse. To spend unknown ages deep inside the crust, crystallizing from raw mantle and slowly jostled by its currents, only to be thrust out into an empty void? There is no warm mineral blanket holding your strata together, no immense pressure catalyzing mineralization, no constant resupply of matter from the mantle. Out in the atmosphere, isolated from your shelf, a mountain will be picked away by coarse wind and moisture, one molecule at a time, until its structure is weakened and its jagged points are worn down to smooth hills.
My grandfather tells me our souls come from deep within the earth, born from the solid core of the world. He tells me my journey was long; untold ages spent travelling through the churning molten seas under our feet, hoping to one day reach the surface and be granted a body. When foreign priests speak of a life to come after, grandfather is saddened, and tells me what we have now is the end of our saga, not the beginning. Here on the surface, our deaths are final. He says we must not waste it, and remember the miracles it took to get here. The surface is our garden, he says, and we must spend our single life treating it well, and keeping it clean for whichever souls are lucky enough to finish their journey next.