Cajole, Amiss, Bulwark

Cajole - to persuade with flattery or gentle urging especially in the face of reluctance
Amiss - If you say that something is amiss, you mean there is something wrong
Bulwark - a solid wall-like structure raised for defense


It was dark. Val was walking fast along the last meters of the North Bulwark. Half-destroyed, no longer in use, this section of the Bulwark was towering over a hundred of so houses leaning to its broad, two-mile side. Fifteen miles to the West, Val could discern two green lights on the edge of the next remaining section of the Bulwark – lights meant another town and green, everything was fine. If Val turned to the East, he probably would make out the shape of yet another section of the Bulwark. There were no lights. This settlement was gulped two years ago and no one dared to go there and see what remained.

It was chilly outside, though the bulk of the Bulwark protected the town from the nasty winds that raged beyond. Partially because of being cold and partially because Val wanted to get it over with as soon as possible he quickened his pace. Despite of a growling stomach and anticipation of a decent dinner tonight, Val began to feel that after all it was a bad idea to go. His brother cajoled him into this by promising to split the food even before feeding children: it meant that in the first time this year Val would eat enough. That was great, but talking to the worms was his brother's job, not Val's, brother's. It didn't matter that he broke a leg and could only wobble a little on the good leg – it was still his responsibility. 

Val reached the end of the wall and he found himself standing in front of the hole. Doing everything quickly before he would panic and ran, Val bent and began to crawl into a dark, narrow tunnel. He kept crawling in darkness – worms didn't like either sunlight or electric light and nobody dared to do anything that might upset a worm. He tried to keep his head as low as possible in fear of smashing it into some sharp edge of the tunnel. 

"Fifty meters," his brother told him, "fifty meters you need to crawl and there will be a cavern and it will be lit." In spite of his alertness, the disappearance of the floor of the tunnel was too sudden and Val fell out of the opening onto the stone floor of the cavern. It was dimly lit by the milky-white light streaming from the walls and ceiling: some sort of fluorescent plants perhaps. There was another way out of the cavern; a much larger opening filled with darkness was cutting through the opposite wall. It was separated from the chamber by a stone barrier that aroused half the height of the opening. The top of the barrier was flat and seemed to be polished by innumerous touches of hands or other limbs. 

Surprised by his own courage, Val took off his rucksack and slowly, trying not to make any extra noise, approached the barrier. When he put the rucksack down onto the flat stone, something clanged inside it; then Val backed away to the farthest wall of the cavern. He sat down, pulled his legs closer, rested his chin on his knees, and prepared to wait. 

They called them worms, but actually no one knew who or what they were. They looked like worms with long white slimy bodies creeping in their tunnels under destroyed cities. However, they had multiple legs or hands that looked more like that of an insect. They might be something else, though nobody could care less. It was impossible to grow food on the surface of the planet after the Blow and the only way to replenish supplies was to trade with worms: the last pieces of technology that men possessed for food. Worms probably managed to grow something under the ground.  No one actually knew what it was, for they saw food only after it was preparedl; the appointed man would go to the worms and bring back food that was to be cooked by chiefs of the community and distributed among its members.  

A low rustle caught Val's attention and he fixed his gaze upon the entrance of the second tunnel. A worm was coming. His brother told him that this kind of sound announces an approaching of a worm. Soon the light fell upon a ghostly-white skin of the worm and its six bulging eyes peered with inhuman intensity into the cavern. The vision of the white pulsing body and thick liquid slowly trickling down from it onto the floor was so revolting that immediately a feeling of nausea sprang up from Val's stomach and he hardly suppressed an urge to vomit. The worm, ignoring human’s presence, produced one articulated limb, picked up the bag and passed it somewhere behind and down the tunnel not even revising its content. 

With horror and an extreme feeling that something was very amiss Val watched as the worm, after dealing with the rucksack, started to squeeze its fat tail through the opening into the cavern. The part of the worm that was in the chamber was about three meters long when it stopped moving and Val was able to tear his gaze off it and look upon the face of the worm. He saw a pair of limbs with long and apparently sharp blades in them. They were gleaming in the semidarkness. A swift movement – the tail separated from the body and with a wet flop fell over the barrier. When startled Val stopped staring at the convulsing tail and looked into the tunnel, he saw nothing. The worm was gone; it left the food.

Morbid, Wasp, Scapegoat

Morbid - characterized by an abnormal and unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects
Wasp - an insect with wings and yellow and black stripes across its body. Wasps have a painful sting like a bee but do not produce honey
Scapegoat - to blame them publicly for something bad that has happened

Nestor, the old man, he had lived on the very edge of the village, his lopsided house seemed leaning to the ground seeking rest after a long working life. Even the owner, old Nestor, with years passing bore some resemblance to his dwelling. He was harmless – could not hurt a fly, was slouching all the time about his pitiful house. Though some villagers looked strange at him and scared their children with old man. He was a man of few words, true, but it didn't make him vicious or anything. I always greeted him passing by and though he never greeted me back, he always gave me some honey of his. Yes, he was a committed bee-keeper, had several hundreds of comb hives on his land. That was how he managed to live – by selling honey. And I would be lying if I say it wasn't superb quality. He treated me even though we weren't acquainted, and I guess he would benignly treat anyone who dared come closer. By and large, people were frightened by him; don't know why, but they really looked at his obsession about bees as if it was some morbid interest. No wonder they scapegoated him after several men and women in the village died from wasp stings. Those who died probably had an allergy on wasp poison or something, but anyhow villagers soon put the blame on the old chap. Poor bastards! They couldn't even distinguish a bee from a wasp, and old Nestor wouldn't speak for himself. Eight of them came at night with torches and lynched the old man, they hanged him right in front of his own house, and, as I heard, he didn't say a word. The next day when I saw a cheerful crowd and asked what was going on, I was told that the old dwarf was killed tonight and wouldn't make any trouble anymore. Immediately I went to sheriff and arranged buying the old man's apiary: Nestor was kind to me and I wanted to save his life's work from being demolished. I was too late though, the same night those blind earth worms burned the apiary as well as the house. I was out of luck. What has happened during the next months you can call bloody irony or, perhaps, justice, but these eight ignorant farmers, who wouldn't say which of their arms are left, all died from bee stings.

Pear-shaped

Pear-shaped - If a situation goes pear-shaped, bad things start happening

This is captain Wrang *radio noise* leaving, we are taking off this planet right now. Everything has gone pear-shaped here: buggers broke the perimeter *radio noise* now airborne. We don't have any anti-aircraft artillery stationed here and the buggers just flew over and attacked the research center. *radio noise* knew where to attack. Some of the survived eggheads are talking about some deliberate mutations *radio noise* all dead now. Estimated losses – 75% of the base personnel, 55% of the troops. *radio noise* evacuating men, leaving equipment behind *sound of a blast* Bastards!!! *sounds of shots, screams, radio noise, then silence*

Flinch, Nausea, Tormentor

Flinch - a small sudden movement, especially when something surprises you or hurts you
Nausea - a condition of feeling sick and the feeling that you are going to vomit
Tormentor - a person who deliberately causes them physical or mental pain

From the surrounding blur, fog, and rain a rough stone wall jumped out. Gurin flinched away avoiding crashing into a suddenly appeared obstacle: the sudden movement made live coals of pain in his head exploded into a firework of blinding lights. The feeling of nausea was unbearable and Gurin bent double supporting himself on the wall that so startled him. He threw up. Damp air drenched with the poignant smell of half-digested food and gastric juice made the man throw up again. He stood there heavily leaning onto the cold, wet stones; his body convulsively shaking, erupting fountains of stenchful greenish liquid; his eyes watering.

Nasty sounds ceased. Not having more strength to cling to the wall, Gurin slipped down into the pool of vomit and rainwater. 

He must go now, whatever the price, he must go. Or it will never end, the endless chase locked up in this forgotten city, a city so forgotten that even sunlight can't find its way there. 

Gurin lifted his head and looked down the alley, or what he thought was the alley. His vision restored now, the man saw with an icy touch of doom to his heart as an unmistakable figure come into sight out of darkness, blurred by streams of rain though with each step becoming clearer and clearer, his eternal tormentor – a man with a pyramid head.

Eeraden - a golden god

Eeraden, a golden god, was born and fell on the ground. The earth split and cracks started to wider. Crying and bleeding, Eeraden clumsily began to gather his legs and feet and stood for the first time in his life. He made his first step and fell flat on his face. Eeraden started to crawl. Then he raised himself on his hands and knees, and finally the god pushed the ground away and stood upright. He walked; and with each step his strength grew, a flow of energy entered his gleaming body, and desire to create blazed in his eyes. He ran. And each step was bigger than previous and each breath was deeper than previous. His bare feet met the ground with more and more force, and the earth shattered behind the running god. And the wind was screaming in his ears.

He ran fast, very fast, but not fast enough in comparison with everything around him. And Eeraden ran faster. 

Many years passed and Eeraden ran so fast that he outran light itself and vanished from the sight. But he still ran, and with every moment he ran even faster. Suddenly, the world around convulsed, shook, jerked and breaking its unimaginable stillness started to move, trying to balance as well an unimaginable speed of the golden god. Many more years have passed since then until the world acquired its present speed and Eeraden cease quickening his pace. But he still runs even now, invisible for all. He never stumbles and he had never felt, save for the first time when born. When Eeraden, the golden god, does it again – everything will end.

Robust, Palpitate, Mentor

Robust - Someone or something that is robust is very strong or healthy
Palpitate - If someone's heart palpitates, it beats very fast in an irregular way
Mentor - someone who gives them help and advice over a period of time

"You have great potential, but you cannot control your anger well enough, you cannot subjugate it," the mentor's voice was icy calm and almost reluctant. 

"I. Can." said a boy through clenched teeth slowly getting up from the dusty ground; tried to wipe out blood dripping from the corner of his mouth but managed only spreading red across his face; lifted eyes and looked his robust mentor in the eyes and repeated firmly – "I can."

"You can control your actions and won't let your anger take over you, but it is still inside you, burning like hell. I see it through your eyes. Your heart palpitates not because of anxiety of the fight, but because you are angry you aren't as strong and fast as you want to be; your hands are shaking because you want to tear my eyes off, for I'm stronger than you. Today and now you can control it, but it is part of you and someday it will kill you." and with final words the mentor hit the boy sending him yet to the ground again.

Genie

Genie - a spirit which appears and disappears by magic and obeys the person who controls it

The countdown reached a "zero" mark and everyone's breath froze in their lungs. Like a genie from a bottle a slender tongue of flame appeared from the stern nozzle of Conqueror. In a matter of seconds and with a roar of pure energy it grew into a full-sized fiery fury. Kept in place only be supporting towers in its launching bed, Conqueror started to tremble showing anxiety to escape. Supporting structures released their grip on the rocket; Conqueror, now supported only by its tail of flame, start creeping upward; faster and faster it went dragging a second, dirty-gray tail of smoke; with a fanatical howl of a freed from millennial imprisonment genie, Conqueror began its journey to the stars.

Swing

Swing - a seat hanging by two ropes or chains from a metal frame or from the branch of a tree

Since the tree in the farthest corner of the back yard appears to be growing higher and wider, partly no doubt because of the fertile soils of Irish lands, I have played for some time with a thought that it might be worth while to hang a swing down from one of the three boughs, the most robust, I believe, of the tree branches, in a simplest way: by throwing robes over the bough and tying them up to an old tire.

(I stumbled upon a great sentence in The Unsettled Dust by Robers Aickman and wrote a similiar one with the same structure)

A dialog about humans that happened between two philosophers of the Deran race

A dialog about humans that happened between two philosophers of the Deran race

*transcribed and translated*

- Evening, my good friend Ellay. I was expecting to see you. Haven't you returned recently from the long voyage to the mysterious Milky Way?
- Yes, indeed I have. Evening to you too, my dear friend. Your mind is still too old to travel?

*sounds that are equivalent to human laugher*

- And you are yet too young to be serious and settle down, but let's drop further formalities and sit down to breath, and then you will tell me all about different races you've encountered during your journey.

*time equal to three terrestrial hours elapsed in silence*

*first part of the dialog is omitted because it carries no importance and concerns mostly living creatures of different races*

- ... everything that I told you is not entirely new for you, maybe only some details and stories. The most delicious tale I saved for the last.
- Oh, tell me, tell me! I knew you would bring some extraordinary observations. Is it a new race of intelligence? You know that the most significant question in the Universe concerns the origin of intelligence.
- Well, it is not something new. It is rather about a race known to our scientists for a long time. They call themselves humans. No one actually visited their solar system – this race was catalogued when someone caught their brainwaves. They were so uninterested and primitive and shallow, if you wish, so nobody had any desire to spend as much as a third of a quing to go and look at them.

*a quing is approximately an hour*

- They turned out to be more interested then we suspected?
- No and yes. Knowing your love to all kinds of strangeness of the ways minds work and how they see the Universe, I thought of you first when I met the humans. I even considered that you would like to go and see for yourself, if you weren't still so old. I have all my experiences recorder and are available to you, but why neglect pleasures of communication and just acquire information directly from another mind?
- Absolutely. Pray continue. Recount how they look like. What is the way their minds shape their body? What different ways they chose to live?
- Yes, that is a very peculiar fact, their appearance. Humans have external sensors on their bodies to sense the world around them. Those, however, are quite few in number: only six or seven of them.
- Peculiar and rare, but not unheard of. What else?
- And their senses are somewhat limited.
- How limited?
- Say, humans can detect only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- It should not be a problem – they always can change their abilities to see the Universe.
- Wait, my friend, not so fast. I didn't tell you yet that humans' form are permanent. I encountered two different kinds of appearance the use. Male and ... female, yes, that is how they call themselves. They are able, during their lifetimes, change their sizes, but not the internal structures of their bodies.
- By Creator, are these humans suffer? are their minds disabled? We must save them. It is the duty of every intelligence in the Universe to help anyone who endures such a struggle. Hurry.
- Patience, my dear friend, your old mind makes you act irrationally. Wait until I tell you the whole story, don't jump to a conclusion too soon.
- Of course, please, forgive me my impatience. Continue, I breath.
- Humans have limbs. Four of them, though sometimes I met individuals who possesses less, but never more. And they use their limbs to interact with the material world around them.
- Ellay, you mentioned they are unable to change their forms. How do they express their moods and feelings?
- Oh, a very good question indeed. Humans' bodies are supple and they make all kind of different movements with their limbs, and other humans observe and guess moods and feelings. Humans also apply colors to the different parts of the bodies to show who they are.
- I know races that have arts of decorating their forms, but only for aesthetic reasons.
- Humans do that all the time. But it is not what astounded me. The human race is in love with chemical reactions.
- Chemical reactions you say...
- Yes, and you will never guess how they get energy to support their lives.
- Should be some an extraordinary method? From the stars?
- No, their bodies are designed it the way that organic matter put into them can be broken down into smaller components by numerous processes. Inside their bodies. And the products of the digestion process, as they call it, are absorbed straight into their bodies, and that is what powers them.
- The most inconvenient way of getting energy one can ever imagine. Why do they do this? And where do they get organic materials?
- I'll answer your second question now, but the first one you can answer yourself when I finish. Humans designed their homeplanet so that it is inhabited by manifold of creatures and none of them has intelligence. Some of them are absorbing energy from the nearest star and from the planet itself and cannot move; some of them are able to move and add others shaped to their own. Humans use these creatures, they call them animals, as a source of organic material.
- Ridiculous. Do they live in space or they prefer to stay on the planets?
- Yes, they do live in space and on the satellite of their own planet, but you will laugh when I tell how they get off their home.
- So, tell me.
- Remember I told you they are fond of chemical reactions, so they use the power of expanding gases after explosion of some chemical compounds to overcome gravitation forces. They call it a propulsion engine.
- Are they insane? How they dare to play with such unpredictable powers, to unleash such forces. I understand from your words that these humans‘ shapes are very vulnerable, why they use such strange methods that can be dangerous?
- Exactly what I was puzzled about, but everything will be crystal-clear before I finish. There are more strange things about humans: they developed a language.
- Developed a what?
- A language. The mean of communication.
- Why anyone wants to have means of communication?
- I don't know, but humans decided they should have some. With some of their external organs they produce special sound waves and other humans with other external organs receive these sound waves and interpret them. They also make some signs on different kinds of material and encode meaning in these signs and other humans see these signs and decode them.
- Don't they sometimes misinterpret the meaning of signs and sound waves?
- Yes, they do. Humans are used to encode their messages in different forms and quite often other humans don't understand, they become very angry and start moving their limbs and produce some more sound waves. Usually it leads to even more confusion.
- What a crazy race. It looks like they took all the troubles to make their lives as complicated and dangerous as possible.
- It certainly seems this way.
- But I think you have another idea about these incomprehensible creatures. Tell me.
- Oh, yes I do. I spent many quings contemplating their strange behavior and I cracked the mystery. Humans are ingenious, and you will agree with me in a minute. The human race was once similar to ours, or maybe even superior. One quing they got bored, so bored they had no means to entertain themselves. Finally, some of the humans had an idea. Everyone else just loved it. They went to the remote galaxy and to the remote solar system and created the most unlikable world one can ever imagine; and they created all this creatures and designed the whole system of living organisms that is based on chemical reactions; they created bodies with eyes and four limbs and, after temporally limiting they mind powers, became humans I saw. Humans are the race that is trying to escape from boredom.
- Brilliant observation and analysis, Ellay. I see that my intentions to help humans were untimely, for I didn't know everything. Now I believe that we should not distract them from their game. I would see myself that the word is spread not to interact with humans until they are satisfied with their game.
- Certainly, my friend. Let's breath now for a while and I'm looking forward to my next voyage into the depth of this strange and unpredictable, yet beautiful Universe.

*end of dialog*

An unintended haiku

Entangled light
Bark and a little boat
Someone forgot a paddle

Grist for the mill, artefact

Grist for the mill

All agents had reported and, finally, Gregory had "grist for the mill" as he put it himslef. It was not his fault that some pieces of information turned out to be iron grains of nonsense and the threshing stone of logic wrecked trying to process them.

Artefact

The Artefact, as it was named, was found buried in the depth of a moon crater. Innumerous hours were spent trying to crack the mystery of this peculiar object and penetrate its shell revealing so advanced a technology that stood behind its invulnerability. The thing was stubbornly transmitting a short and endlessly repeating series of impulses on all possible radio frequencies. One fact was plain now – humanity is not alone in the universe. 

A thousand years after, when humanity left its cradle and spread across the Milky Way, many more siblings of The Artefact were found on different planets. Some of them were even found on small planets, comets, and asteroids. All of them, however, were transmitting this unchangeable and incomprehensible message.

Maybe it is best for mankind to be in ignorance of its real meaning. "We were here!" shouted all The Artefacts in the blackness of the space.

Siblings

Laura and her younger siblings have been preparing for shooting a film about war. They rushed and run around among legs of adults and tables, laughing and twittering. If a single man lent an ear to their chirp, he could prevent death of people and hopes. Born in these places, children earlier than anybody noticed signs of coming battle between hungry locusts and full, for the present, settlers.

Slide, skid, slip

Contrary to promises, made by Shin, Kaduns didn’t leave Sara in the megalopolis. Against any expectations, a young priestess found herself attracting even more attention of divine spirits after moving from an island. Trials, which she called “days of bad luck”, started to happen.

Not an hour ago she skidded on a motorcycle, managing to shatter it and to hurt – as the girl believed – several of her own bones at sites where pain was almost unbearable. This accident didn’t give a jumping of point for her weeping. Too insignificant! Several minutes later Sara has slipped on the damp grass and fallen and dirtied herself but again not a tear slid down her face. She simply needed not wet and not shaded eyes to be able to catch sight of a true disaster and to save Shin’s life and a life of her own.

NoName

 Enveloped in roaring flames the metal seed descended through the clear, blue skies drawing a dark line towards the broken line of the horizon. Every inch of the metal hull trembled, desperately trying to protect so fragile a life inside it – all the strength of the matter, twisted and shaped into the unnatural form by creators, all ingenuity of the engineers entangled in the joints of the shuttle, and all insanity of the ideas implemented by the designers stood up against the wild atmosphere that now was liquid fire streaming from the nose to the stern. 

 If it would survive a severe crush, how long, how many centuries or millennia would it have to wait before the conditions trigger the seeding sequence?

Flop

Flop - fall, hang, or collapse in a heavy, loose, and ungainly way.

Jeremy was walking down the street when the rain started – it was the most unusual rain of the whole decade. First, Jeremy heard something wet and flat flopped onto the concrete of the pavement behind him. At the very moment when he began to turn around to give a thing that makes such a strange sound a curious look, something similarly flat and round caught him in the face blinding him and wrapping his head with a sticky, warm, and fragrant substance. Furiously scraping at his face, Jeremy managed to peel off this uncanny flying object. Later, although the man claimed that with his first glance he identified his attacker as an ordinary pancake, we are convinced that Jeremy – as well as everyone else who happened to be on the street at that moment – stood with his jaw hanging down and staring at pancakes falling from the skies. That is how The Rain of Pancakes had started. 

After a long battle with another annoying dragon, a haggard heroine reached a threshold of her house. With the last spark of strength she opened the door with a kick (in her right hand she held an old sword and with her left hand the warrior was dragging a severed head of the dragon); spinning, two halves of the broken, torn off door disappeared into the darkness of her dwelling. Recklessly, the heroine flung the blooded sword into the kitchen door (it sunk half the way down its length into wooden boards), hurled the dragon’s head into the farthest corner when she kept her trophies, and with a heavy sigh flopped onto an armchair. 

Morose, adept

Morose - someone who is morose is miserable, bad-tempered, and not willing to talk very much to other people

I generally don’t like morose persons: not only do they feel miserable themselves, but impose their bad attitude and emotions on anyone who dares to talk to them.

Adept - very proficient in something requiring skill or manual dexterity

The Adept of the Swords stood in the center of the training ground with his left leg firmly standing on the ground, his right leg bent and bare foot pressed against the inner left thigh. Man’s eyes were closed, body leaned slightly forward, hands stretched down, right one holding a sword its point outward. The adept was still, motionless, unmoving, only the point of his sword was making tiny up and down movements agreeing with his heartbeat. 

Contrive

Contrive - to manage (something or to do something), esp by means of a trick;

So far everything went smooth, too smooth: helicopters were patrolling perimeter, troopers were dropped inside and had already reported making visual contact with the object, satellites were re-programed and now are giving a crisp clear image of what is going on down there. Everything was under control, yet everything had happened too fast – only two hours ago the thing hit the ground. Nebulous understanding that all this may turned out to be carefully contrived on the higher level knocked on the mental door of Cloriv's consciousness.

Sometimes people contrive situations that will bring them benefits; however, they don't contemplate any ramifications that may follow.

During the recent blackout, the prisoner contrived to cut through the metal door with an army knife, which was carelessly left in the cell by the guard, and then he stuck his head out through the hole and started to yell. The two appeared guards didn't notice the head of the prisoner protruding from the door of the cell and opened the door without hesitations. Accordingly, the sharp edge of the opening separated the head of the prisoner from his body.

Paraphrase, ostensible, digress, uncanny, candor

“I want to live forever!” a man cried out. “So, you don’t want to die,” a devil skillfully paraphrased his words.

“I see that you brought me flowers – that is very nice of you, ‘Arry. However, your reasons for this (very pleasant, I shall say) surprise seem ostensible to me.”

He digressed so much that he turned around and ended up talking about things he started with.

It’s most uncanny a scene – a man barking at his dog; usually it’s the other way around.

Rim was a great scientist, brilliant analyst, and out-of-the-box thinker; nevertheless, his lack of candor made him known as a reticent person, as if Rim was afraid that his results would be stolen.