Troy was supposed to be rebound guy, mainly because his name was “Troy.”

Karen found herself, however, thinking about him in that school girl way she knew was a one way ticket to Head Over Heals, Population Crazy Woman.

Troy fought dirty. Her daughter adored him, absolutely and completely. This played right into her insecurities of not having a man around the house. When she booted her worthless husband out, she didn’t expect him to abandon his own child, but he did. Troy however, though her daughter was more fun than all of his hobbies combined. Troy did not watch TV, instead, he played Barbie sparkle pony.

Troy’s negatives was his intensity. He was either all in or all out. His idea of relaxation consisted of biking down trails better left to mountain goats and climbing rocks with some “safety” line that didn’t look safe for an anorexic ballerina, much less his man-frame. Troy was an alpha but he had long hair, which for some reason bugged her to no end. Troy thought her friends’ politics were stupid and said so right to their faces. Troy could not cook. Troy’s tolerance for pretentious crap was zero.

In bed, Troy thought nothing of releasing his inner caveman. Grabbing a fist full of her hair was natural to him as kissing. He wasn’t content to be inside of her, her always pulled her as close to him as possible, as if he wanted to fuse their bodies by pressure and strokes.

Her brain usually shut off and she had trouble turning it back on afterwards. She loved every minute of it.

What really got her going, Karen realized one day, was that he never called her a pet name. Never once did he call her Baby, Honey, Sweetheart, or any other endearment. She asked him about it.

“I love to hear my name roll off your lips in a moment of passion,” he said, “so I assumed you like the same.”

Troy loved to kiss her neck. He was simultaneously teasing and demanding when he did so.

One day, after a five-hour marathon of sex and napping, she told him to stop screwing around and move in.

He told her to get dressed. When they did so, and went outside, his truck was already there, packed with his stuff.

For anyone new to Rehabilitated Hack Writer Recommends, I target my book reviews towards novelists (you can find my prior reviews here). I also need to point out that this is a review of the first book of a series, not the series itself.

Before we dive headfirst into the fantasy pool of epic goodness that is Tara Mara’s The Unfinished Song: Initiate, we need to take a step back and formally define what epic fantasy is in the novel landscape of 2012. The classic definition of epic or high fantasy is it’s a sub-genre of fantasy set in invented worlds.

I hate that definition.

To me, epic fantasy needs to be, well, epic. Epic. This is fun, but not epic, fantasy:

A mysterious, sexy pale-skinned sword dancer hires an infamous mercenary to find her kidnapped brother. The mercenary learns there is more to women than bedding them, while the sister learns that if she lets her quest define her life, she becomes defeated before the rescue of her brother ever begins.

Bonus points if you can guess that book, by the way.

Now this, this is epic:

The good peoples, it seemed, never defeated the evil that threatened to consume them all, only delayed the final battle. The dark and vile lord who threaten freedom everywhere wrapped his essence into a ring, and now a band of unlikely heroes must cast the ring into the fiery pit of its creation or see it reunited with its maker. Setting out on their quest with the best intentions, the task soon falls to the smallest and unlikeliest hero while the armies of evil marshal to crush everything in its path. If the hero doesn’t destroy the ring and thus the dark lord in time, there won’t be anything left to save.

Epic fantasy is ambitious. Epic fantasy is grandiose. Epic fantasy is bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s heroic, it’s classic, it’s is all-encompassing and all-consuming fantasy. There are stakes. The stakes are high. You could say that the stakes are (wait for it!) epic.

And Mara’s Unfinished Song: Initiate is an introduction into 21st century epic fantasy. Here’s the teaser:

Dindi can’t do anything right, maybe because she spends more time dancing with pixies than doing her chores. Her clan hopes to marry her off and settle her down, but she dreams of becoming a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers whose secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Test during the Initiation ceremony. The problem? No-one in Dindi’s clan has ever passed the Test. Her grandmother died trying. But Dindi has a plan.

Kavio is the most powerful warrior-dancer in Faearth, but when he is exiled from the tribehold for a crime he didn’t commit, he decides to shed his old life. If roving cannibals and hexers don’t kill him first, this is his chance to escape the shadow of his father’s wars and his mother’s curse. But when he rescues a young Initiate girl, he finds himself drawn into as deadly a plot as any he left behind. He must decide whether to walk away or fight for her… assuming she would even accept the help of an exile.

Now I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, wow, that sounds cool, but um, that doesn’t sound too epic to me.

Oh, my friends, pour a cup of hot tea and wait for it. Don’t let the girly frou-frou cover and character-driven teaser fool you. Behind the rich, detailed world-building lies the heartbeat of an epic fantasy tale that rises above the bounds of mythology and into a coming-of-age novel that will leave the reader yearning for more. Maya clearly dips her plot and characters in several different mythologies, yet the book has a distinctive voice that tugs at your heartstrings.

Let’s deconstruct the goodness going on here.

World-Building

Maya’s world building kicks ass. It’s unique, it’s ambitious, and it has an undercurrent of femininity that, without the advent of the interweb tubes, the story Maya is trying to tell never would have seen the light of day. It’s so different it is, and I say this with no exaggeration, a high fantasy literary bomb of mass destruction. It is not so much a filled with troupes and familiar themes as it becomes a classic example of the very idea of world-building.

How does she accomplish this? Maya’s neolithic setting latches on the magical undercurrents of the world she envisioned and never lets them go.

For example, stone-aged peoples in the real world were concerned primarily with survival. Gender roles and relations follow a path necessary for the continuation of the individual and the group.  There is a reason when an attractive woman smiles at a man she unconscionably puts her hair behind an ear, why rejection impacts men and women differently and why we are creatures of instinct despite our technological advancements.

Yet, toss magic into the fray. Magic, like technology, lends itself to the removal of the disparity of force. Maya takes this one step where few tread: it’s not necessarily what you can wield, but more what you know. Dindi’s quest isn’t so much a classic grab-onto-the-power but an unlocking of a mystery.

That moves us back to the impact of the type of magic Maya puts forth. Women, in her tribal society, have distinct roles but they are far from simple property. Women need to bear children so the society she has shaped takes that into account, but it’s not as if the magic is something that sits around in a feudal or even Victorian society as if it’s a character by itself rather than infused into the setting. It has a distinct feminine vibe without the politically correct bullshit.

This is evident from the ground up. It’s in the way characters talk. You might think ancient peoples would also have a primitive language and culture. But neolithic-era people with magic? Maya nails this. It’s in the way they dress, how they pick their mates, how they relate to other tribes, how they view politics, honor and duty. In a world where magic comes forth from a dance, where pixies, talking bears, and fae abound–Maya uses this magic as the glue to everything: setting, plot and characterization. It is the basis of her world-building and because of the creative and talented way she does it, Initiate comes off as highly original, unique and engrossing.

I’m not exaggerating here. World-building. How To. Tara Maya. Initiate. Read it.

Characterization

My number one surprise with this book is that this book has guy stuffs in it. I could talk at length how fascinating Dindi is, how she comes across as both vulnerable yet puts aside her fears to do what must be done. How she seems like she is fourteen going on eighteen one moment, and fourteen going on twelve the next. Maya pens her as tenacious and doesn’t shy away from giving her a sexuality. Dindi’s great.

My little fantasy heart, however, belongs to Kavio.

Because Kavio kicks ass.

Kavio, actually, is a tragic figure. Maya gives him nobility and youthful idealism as his moral fiber, and tosses him into situations of conflict where it becomes apparent that Kavio greatest enemy is himself. Kavio is a good guy, but he’s also a weapon of mass destruction. He follows the rules when obviously he could, quite simply, make up the rules himself with his magic. He’s like a Jedi Knight being given a ticket by a traffic cop. Press hard, Kavio, you’re making five copies. The cop has a gun and feels superior, but Kavio could turn him inside out, burn his cruiser, go to the station, and have it swallowed whole by a rent in the earth while blood pixies rip out everyone’s eyeballs through their noses making the police station scene in The Terminator look like a scene from a Jane Austin novel.

Instead, he signs.

Did I mention he’s a bad-ass?

As a writer, Kavio fascinates me mightily. I’m beginning to wonder if someone handed Maya an honorary penis because she hones in on the masculine feel of Kavio with laser-like focus. She nails what I call the Tragic Masculine Paradox: when confronted with an attractive young woman coming-of-age, the man of honor is torn with feelings of protectiveness as a father figure yet desires as a lover. You see this in fiction all the time. Rarely do you see it done with such empathy and understatement. Many writers go overboard with this, giving this a tragic (and pervy) element. Maya, however, simply presents it as-is. Kavio has bigger problems than his youthful naïveté.

Dindi’s feminine, innocent beauty, simply highlights Kavio’s main attraction: Dindi is magically powerful. Without going into the rest of the series, he’s slowly falling in love, and love, my friends, is messy. Dindi is more than a girl and then more than a young woman. She’s the catalyst to…

But I digress. Dindi isn’t the only character in a come-of-age journey in Initiate.

Plot

Which leads us to the clever, delicious plotting, and how we come full circle back to our discussion about epic fantasy.

A prevalent, and welcomed trend in speculative fiction is the come-of-age journey set in a fantastic (be it wonderful or dystopian) setting. I am a huge sucker for these types of stories, and in Initiate, Maya plots a literal come-of-age journey as Dindi goes out to become a woman, ready or not (and no, she wasn’t ready).

But epic fantasy has stakes. Big stakes. End-of-the-world (or worse!) type stakes, but unlike much of what is out there today, this book is surprisingly not a coming-of-age novel with an epic plot line to give the character’s punch and excuses to reveal their literary humanity. No, this is a book that provides the foundation for the true story: the battle with the malevolent forces out to crush humanity. It’s not exactly Clan of the Cave Bear meets The Lord of the Rings, but you get the idea.

Dindi is on a personal journey and she yearns to become a magical dancer in the society she was born in. However, if, as a reader, you’re paying attention, you can spot the epic plot that Maya is serving up like drops of water to the thirsty.

And this is where we depart the shackles of traditional publishing. Maya fearlessly has plotted out a twelve book series and each book is building  on that plot in a relentless, epic fashion. Let me be very clear, I am not a big fan of many-book fantasy series. Many of them have problems with continuity, editing, and, quite frankly, sometimes as a reader, I feel I’ve been ripped off around book four because I’m being milked rather than being cleverly entertained.

eBooks, and today’s book market, however, has expanded the types of books we can find and buy, and Maya’s greatest accomplishment as a writer is taking  full advantage of medium. The twelve book format, based on her world-building, is not only daring but also a little slice of epic fantasy goodness, and her skill at characterization draws the reader right into her world.

It’s epic fantasy by our very definition, and it’s yummy. Give me those twelve books. I’ll gladly ready every one of them. If you love a good fantasy series fix, Maya’s your drug dealer, Baby.

More Please

You can tell I’m a fan. Initiate is a wonderful, rich and diverse book and the series thus far is a fantasy reader’s fantasy series. I do have quibbles with it, but they are nits in the larger picture. I’m not a fan of the cover art. I disagree with some of the editorial decisions made and feel Maya’s talent could easily support books of larger word counts, smoothing some of the abruptness of the plot presentation.

Yet these are mere nits because from a storytelling standpoint, it just doesn’t work, it’s a slice of Awesome Toast with Bacon. I tell my non-writer, but reader friends, the Era of the Reader is upon us. Novels like Initiate proves that assertion. If you are a writer, take a step back from all the meta that goes on with writing, look at the bigger picture, and read Initiate. You’ll realize the sum of the book is bigger than its parts, and, at its heart, epic fantasy many readers want to buy, but haven’t really been able to do so.

I give Initiate four bacon strips out of five. And while this is a singular book recommendation, I’ll just drop a teaser that as good as it is, the other books in the series get better.

From my world-building notebook for Stuff Blowing Up in Space.

We read in science fiction stories all the time about the “adaptability of humans” or some other superior concept such as individualism, the triumph of the individual over the collective might of the pesky aliens (or even groups of humans).

What makes the Predator movies so fascinating is humans consider themselves predators, and the movies flip that on its end. Especially the first movie.

Humans are not predators of predators from a pure evolutionary standpoint. Humans need other humans to survive. They are socially adaptive.

The sish, the dominate species in the galaxy for Stuff Blowing Up in Space, form complex social groups to assert dominance to avoid food competition, not because they need to get together and fertilize eggs. They are loners and individuals much more so than humans are. They come with a slew of natural weaponry. What they cannot overpower they seduce with biological seduction weapons. What they cannot biologically seduce they can out think. Evolution can take many paths, the path for fight leads to brains that process information quickly. It’s not just a basic response, either. To a sish, exploration and advancement ties directly to food, and food is sex. Stepping foot on a new planet isn’t just fun, it’s foreplay.

Thus the adaptive, individual race is not humans. It’s sish. On the same evolutionary scale, they achieved FTL faster than others, they found more habitual planets and they are very effective diplomats, seeing war and conflict as the elimination of the food supply.

The human advantage over sish is a cultural one, one that leads to greater technological progress.

That’s a different entry, however.

Below are two sish, talking amongst themselves.  They are also vying for dominance and possible sex-play. Not to toot my horn too obnoxiously, but while this banter moves the plot forward, setting the stage for some juicy conflict, it’s also jam-packed with world-building without obnoxiously beating the reader over the head with it, as I have done with the text above.

If anybody who knew anything about military space vessels were paying attention, they would have immediately known something was odd about Task Group Inaeo’s two cruisers and their orbital positions.

Nobody was paying attention, because the last of Task Group Aoe’s space assets had crossed the FTL safety line and disappeared. If someone had been looking, they would have noticed the two cruisers covered a wide swath of the planet, rather than a wide swath of the space before the planet.

The two captains were in their respective private cabins, they had just finished watching what video there was of the human in train car.

Such video was ironic. They only had it because one of the sish in the car had an expensive recorder from the Terran sector, and it was EMP shielded. Who would have thought of such a thing?

“Quite an extraordinary play of events, don’t you think?” said the first captain.

“Indeed. A violent fellow, and the glimpse of the huntress was remarkable,” said the second. “A powerful, powerful telekinetic.”

“The Princess gets kidnapped, now this. Fleet has stepped in it for sure.”

“I am not so sure, Sister. He did say he was a contractor. Witnesses said he was an ‘Ambassador.’ Such people could be contractors, hired by Fleet at whim. Fleet is the only governance for the United Planets of Terra; they tend to hire civilians to deal with other civilians.”

The other sish captain nodded. “In any event, how convenient, do you think, that all of Aoe’s space assets are currently absent from the system.”

“A shame, really.”

“Scandalous, even.”

“Too bad we are forbidden from initiating any contact of the more, ah, free-enterprise elements that grace the pretty planet below us.”

Both cruiser captains were knee-deep  in the last system conversion to the human’s hyper-capitalism, becoming quite wealthy in the process.

Both hated, to their core, the matriarchal system of governance, an anachronism they could appreciate but recognized as one of the biggest disadvantages of dealing with the over-productive humans.

They had seen the endless human fleets. The Navy knew what was going on, even if the system governments did not.

“Yes, our orders were quite clear. Here we sit, unable to open communications.”

“Yes, orders are orders; one could even say they or superiors designed them for the maximum amount of ass-coverage. In case something goes wrong.”

“Funny how we two are the types to always think of what the right thing is to do despite the consequences.”

“Indeed. Very Fleet-like of us, don’t you think?”

“Indeed. What is that Terran saying? Keep your friends close, your enemies closer?”

“I always liked, speak softly and carry a big gun.”

Each suppressed a giggle and sighed.

“La la la, la la la,” said the first captain.

“Dee dee dee, dee dee dee,” said the second captain.

The first captain took out a hairbrush and started in on her ever-hated helmet hair.

The second captain started painting her nails a nice shade of green.

Bleep bleep, went the comm chime in one cabin.

Bleep bleep, went the comm in the second.

Both sish smiled, fangs already extended.

I did a bit of exposition into Dex and the people around him, continuing to world-build in the YOUR LITTLE SISTER universe.

If you have been follwoing along, this is pure world-building Anthony: Hack Writer style. It’s not a short, but it is connected to the previous Dex world-building post. If I was going to stuff this into a book, it would be half as long. Or even shorter. Right now, I have no real plot concerning Dex, although I am thinking Major Hackett will make an important appearance, not here, but later.

I love typing away without structure when world-building, seeing where the setting will take me. Here, I am expanding on the history of the YOUR LITTLE SISTER universe. The novel(s) are set eighteen years from these world-building “notes”.

***

Dex wanted boring back.

Hackett led him to a waiting room at the apex of the space station. She patted his hand, winked at him, and left without a word.

The door slid open and a young woman walked into the room. She was extraordinarily attractive, but her face was a story of fear and worry. She was wearing a brand-new uniform, with Lieutenant Stripes and a S&W G17  strapped to her thigh. Dex guessed she was just out of pre-vocational. She paused when she saw him.

Then she burst into tears and ran from the room.

“The Space Marshal will see you in about five minutes, Leftenant,” said a serene, feminine, voice in his left ear.

Hoo-boy.

Never had five minutes crawled so slowly. Finally, the door opened and a friendly voice called from inside. “Come in, Leftenant, come it.”

Dex strode across a hardwood floor of all things, his new boots clicking. The Space Marshal was standing before his high-tech desk, and Dex stopped and saluted.

Charles Olson held the command General of the Orbital and Space Force, and was primarily responsible for many of the decisions leading to the winning the war and the vanquishing of the enemy.

The new Constitution specified he was beholden to no one. Literally, he was the last in line, both rank wise and from a literal standpoint floating in space above Earth. But a single lowly Constitutional Enforcement Officer could replace him after one of their Jury Trials. Dex thought this was insane, but he had to admit, for a check-and-balance, it was a brilliant insanity.

He knew it was wrong, but he always assumed the man was older and taller. Instead, he was middle-aged, and reminded Dex of his father.

The Marshal returned his salute, briskly shook his hand (and thankfully did not kiss him) and motioned towards a couch with a loveseat in a corner. Dex took the overstuffed chair while the Marshal took the couch.

“This is an orientation, Dex, in which I impress upon my newly minted unrestricted line officers the state of O&E and where they fit into the service.”

“Yes, Sir.” So far, this wasn’t so bad. Dex was still trying to come to grips that he was an unrestricted officer, slatted for command. His two years of vocational training focused on logistics, not command. He would have to go to command school.

He hoped command school was in his future. He really did not know what he was doing. Having people salute him was unnerving.

“First off, and you’ll get all of this in training: O&E is simply a branch in the Military. And that is with a capital “M”. The Constitution does not classify sub-groups, and we probably shouldn’t either. With that said, let me display a the command structure of our entire Military force.”

The coffee table beeped and Dex realized it was a holo projector. Up popped a bunch of boxes with names, connected by lines, and as more boxes came into view, they shrank to display more data. Dex realized he was looking at a three-dimensional org chart.

The chart rotated slowly and the Marshal kept talking. “This is our current officer personnel structure, created after the Military split in three: Office of Constitutional Enforcement, Investigator, Military. Efficiency experts, command analysis and computer modeling designed this model. It flows and adjusts dynamically to standards for our society’s maximum military capabilities.  It’s a brilliant model. Except, of course, it just highlights the singular fact we’re all fucked.”

The Marshal paused and looked at Dex. Suddenly Dex had a bad feeling, one of those nebulous feelings that clawed at the bottom of the gut like an itch.

“Sir?”

“The model doesn’t lie. This is what the design is. Now let me show you the model from Year 1 to today in Year 3. Red is unfulfilled slots.”

Red boxes started appearing. And then more. And more. Suddenly half the chart was in red.

“This model is broken. We can’t use it, so we’re using something we all know sucks. Is sucking a bad thing, Dex, since we won the war? Do you think this is a consequence we should just live with?”

“I…” Dex shut his mouth. This was no easy question. Dex decided to do the ‘think aloud approach’. It could sink him, but at least he wouldn’t be sitting on the couch with his dork hanging out.

“Sir, if that is the model, based on an analysis of our global society as it exists, although new, then that is the model and to ignore it is inviting disaster. On one hand, you could argue the model is moot because there is no enemy. We waged genocide and killed them all.” Dex leaned back as he was thinking. He was getting into the rhythm of his answer.

“On the other hand, the purpose of the Military is to wage war on behalf of society to protect it from threats. Well, we already encounter a threat, and it nearly whipped us out as a species. Therefore, we need to plan for an enemy just as nasty and evil as the Unionists. Denial of logic is responsible for killing three-fifths of the planet’s population, if you add the enemy’s casualty count. We cannot deny the possibility of this happening again.”

The Marshal also leaned back and smiled warily. “Very good, Leftenant.”

Dex wasn’t finished. “In a sense, this model is a blueprint for our future society. We learned, with horrific cost, that Total War was necessary or we would cease to exist. ‘Military’ doesn’t mean much today because for several decades every free person was engaged in a war for our very existence. There was nothing political about the war. It was resist or die. So, in a sense, the model is broken.”

The Marshal cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh, how so?”

“Can we, as a society, do anything else but wage Total War?”

Silence filled the room. Finally, the Marshal spoke. “A good question, Dex, a really good question. One I don’t have the answer, and neither does anybody else. We’ll just have to see and pray the Constitution can build a society where we can prevent something like that from ever happening again.”

Dex gave the Marshal a thin smile. “We’ll it helps there is only one Government. We’re finally united as a people.”

At horrific cost, was the qualifier that Dex did not need to add.

“Now we come to the part about you. I read your closing thesis, Current Military Expenditures and the Post-War Economy Incomes. In it, you assert corporate user fees cannot sustain the Military past the war infused Nuevo Credit reserves.”

He paused.

“Yes, Sir.”

“An accurate portrayal of finances, and you even took account post-war economy efficiency gains. Without a tax base, you assert, the Military is sustainable but would regress in capability.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Which is all true. To your credit, you did not give an opinion, one-way or the other, if this would be a good thing or not. So I am now here to ask you that very question.”

Dex did not even hesitate. “No Sir, that is bad. Really really bad,” he added, sounding just like his little sister.

“And why is that bad?”

“We belong in Space. Space won this war; our space assets will win the next war. The answer, I believe, is to somehow encourage private expansion into space beyond the Moon. We’ll just follow.”

The Marshal leaned back, looking thoughtful.

“You’re a credit to your generation, Dex. Your parents and your teachers have taught you well. But I am not here to blow nano up your ass. In a way you are right, but your model, just like the one you see floating here,” the Marshal waved a hand at the floating chart, “is broken. No fault of your own, you’re missing a key data point: Japan.”

Dex was puzzled and he was sure he looked puzzled. Japan went untouched by the ravages of war; they were a very industrial people steeped in tradition. Indeed, Dex held an enormous amount of respect for their culture; they adjusted their entire war economy without ripping their society apart like everyone else. If there was any old-style country with borders, it was Japan. They were not an anachronism; they were simply a lifeline into something normal from the past. Dex was sure without Japan, the war would be lost and the human race would have ceased to exist.

Tradition or no, the Japanese were just as enthusiastic about the new Constitution as everyone else was, so Dex didn’t get it.

“I don’t follow, Sir.”

“That’s because nobody talks about it, Dex, because it’s nobody’s business. Except ours. Because of your commission, I will give you the poop: the Japanese are funding the military through taxes. They have a 10% flat tax rate. And the entire amount, literally, goes into Military coffers.”

“But that is emphatically illegal, Sir. There is no tax authority. It is impossible to compose a government that actually collects taxes.”

“Of course. You’re going to find Constitution Enforcement Officers in Tokyo, but they aren’t going to be arresting anybody. You see, this tax is completely voluntary. The Empress of Japan, through word-of-mouth, simply asked people to make the payments. And that’s it. Everyone does. 10% of any Nuevo Credit earned in Japan simply is donated to us on a monthly basis.”

Dex mind whirled. The implications were staggering.

The Marshal grinned. “Amazing, isn’t it? Don’t think this is a pure altruistic dynamic, Leftenant. For one, what the Japanese giveth, the Japanese can taketh away. If the Empress wanted me to hop on down to the Palace and kiss her lily-white butt, I would do it without hesitation and ask her if she wanted me to wipe her ass with my tongue while I was there. There is also a bit of self-defense in their donations: they are very enamored of their wartime economy. They do not want to go through the upheaval everyone else did by going cold turkey. So they didn’t. And it’s a good thing too, because convincing a private company to make us spaceships when they economy is still adjusting to post-war reality would be an exercise in futility. We’re talking decades to get to the same point, if ever.“

Dex was thoughtful. What the Marshal just described was a centralization of power, something the newly designed government was supposed to prevent. Yet it wasn’t illegal, so, in the end, wasn’t this just part of the design of letting people do the right thing?

“Wow,” was all Dex could say, feeling stupid for saying it. He couldn’t think of anything else though. He felt punch-drunk.

“Wow indeed. But back to you, Leftenant. Your paper was widely read by everyone interested in recruiting, which, as you can see here by our handy floating model, is everybody. Let’s stuff you in this model, shall we?”

Suddenly there were blue rectangles replacing the red ones. Dozens and dozens.

“The blue represents places where we can stuff you. See all those white squares above the blue ones, connected by the wispy lines? Every single one of those wankers, and I say that with affection, made a play for you. But I cashed in two silver bullets and burnt a bridge to snag you for my greedy bastard self.”

“Why, Sir?”

“Take off your boots and come with me,” the Marshal replied, taking his off with practiced ease.

Dex did so and felt a little foolish, but the Marshal was also in stocking feet, so he mentally shrugged. They walked out of his office, and then through a door from his reception area to a small room devoid of any furnishings or fixtures. The hardwood turned to bare metal, and in the center of the floor was a simple metal disk, a big dot.

“Step on the dot, Mr. Landau, and keep your hands to your sides.”

Dex did so. He heard a whisper and looked up, and a circular hole opened above him.

And then he was floating, quickly, up. He passed through three rooms and suddenly he was in space.

His caught his breath. Literally, it looked like he was “above” the station, floating in space. There was nothing above him. Nothing to the sides. Below him, there was the station, with a small hole at the top of a tower. Between his bare feet and the hole was nothing.

The Earth loomed impossibly large. It seemed to be tugging at him, and the feeling of vertigo was almost sexual.

Dex realized he was still alive, so he decided to start breathing again. He also realized he was stationary, part of the station’s artificial gravity. There was a “down” and an “up”.

Why did I take off my boots?

Dex took a small hesitant step. His foot found a floor. It felt padded, squishy. He was standing on an invisible floor! He could not help it; he put his hands out to his sides, as if to balance. It felt as if he was walking on pillows, and he moved out twenty feet until he bumped into a wall.

He heard another whisper behind him. The Marshal was standing there, grinning.

“You’re doing a lot better than I was when I first came here.”

“What is this place?” asked Dex, almost in a whisper.

“Don’t know. This is an old US, Japanese and Russian built station. Did you know that before the war, the Japanese and Russians hated each other?”

“No Sir, I didn’t. I find that hard to swallow.”

“Heuh, well threats of annihilation of your very soul is a great catalyst to put petty national interests aside. Anyway, this room is not on the original blueprints. The people who built it are not talking. Hell, we don’t even know who the orbital workers were. All the records were lost in the Cyber War. Anyway, we think this room has some early war religious meaning concerning the alliance of Japan and Russia and their contribution to the Federation. You can line yourself up with the three towers of the station and look down to the Sea of Japan. Or something like that. “

Dex looked out at the Earth. “Well, it certainly is having an impact on me Sir. I have never in my life felt this way before.” Dex felt euphoric. The view was so intense it was like a drug.

“Good. To answer your question, this is half the reason why O&S snagged you from the recruit channels: we believe you’re a pilot. You have no qualms like the prior generation about getting implants, nor Uplinking with an AI. The fact that you are standing here, right now, without pissing your pants, and yes, that does happen, means you can adapt to what we call ‘the macro of space’. All of this is similar to what you will feel and experience when you Uplink. Your senses will expand, and you just have to be the right kind of person to do that. It’s why your placement tests and deep scan seemed like they went on forever. Uplinked pilots are both born and made, and thus hard to find.”

Dex absorbed that.

“And the other reason, Sir?”

The Marshal actually frowned, and Dex felt his heart quicken.

“That’s personal. There’s a certain kind of officer, specifically, vets, that I want on my team. It’s a thin red line. One side lays madness and despair over the horrors of war. On the other side, denial. You, my Brother, are on the razors edge.”

Suddenly Dex did not want the Marshal to continue, but the man held his gaze and Dex was helpless.

“I need the kind of young man who made the decision to kill his little sister in the heat of battle. The same young man who saw beyond the utter awfulness of that act to the long-term ramifications on what would happen if he didn’t kill her. That giving her to the enemy would be a crime beyond her murder. You made a choice where other men could not.”

Dex wanted to float away. “But I didn’t, I didn’t kill my little sister,” he whispered.

The Marshal walked right up to Dex. “Of course you didn’t. But you tried.”

How does he know how does he know how does he know?

Dex fainted.

Had an itch to write sci-fi separate from the YOUR LITTLE SISTER manuscript. So I decided to do some more world-building and see where it took me. Since I have been accused (by more than one person, I should add) of having a fascination with kissing, here’s a sci-fi kiss. We have the return of Major Hackett, and a new character, Dex. After writing this, Dex seems really fascinating. I don’t know why.

I’m digging the expanded Major Hackett though. Big time.

***

“Leftenant Landau, the Space Marshal wants to talk to you,” said the Major in a neutral, flat voice. The short, sharp-featured woman looked him up and down, as if was a fresh piece of meat. Considering he was just off an orbiter, he was. He could almost see her mentally smirking through the thin veneer of her professional blankness.

Dex froze in place. He had not been on Space Station Mitachi more than five minutes. It was his first time in space. It was his first time in uniform. Hell, he did not even know where the head is, and he had to pee.

But he wasn’t stupid. He saluted the woman, remembering his training.

Training he received only yesterday.

She saluted back, and then stuck out her hand. “Jill Hackett,” she said, her voice warming up. “I am the Marshal’s attaché and all-around gopher girl.”

Dex took her hand and instead of shaking it, she clasped his wrist and pulled him close. She actually stood on her toes and kissed him on each cheek. He hoped his surprise did not wash across his face.

His cheeks felt warm as if he was blushing, and he realized the warmth was not from embarrassment. She was a wælcyrie! He had heard of them, but never had met one until now. His brain raced with the cultural meaning of having one kiss him. It was a social greeting, but also more. They were marking you with nano riders carried on their lips. No one knew why, or if anyone did, they were not telling. Eventually, his internal nano regulator would neutralize the benign foreign nano tech.

Theoretically, at least. It was some small comfort that if the nano was malignant, his regulator would go into full neutralization mode.

He pushed this from his brain as he realized she was now smiling at him. “This way, Leftenant.”

He followed dutifully. He tried to memorize the route but gave up after five minutes. She was probably following a trail displayed in her contact lens HUD, avoiding crowds and construction in real-time, both of which seemed abundant.

Dex decided being shy was stupid. He may be still wet behind the ears, but he was a commissioned officer, newb status notwithstanding. He was being silly.

“Could we take a detour to the head, Major?”

“Of course. This way.”

Soon they were in a unisex bathroom. He made a beeline for a urinal while she disappeared into a stall.

As they were both peeing, she got chatty.

“I saw you have a combat record, Leftenant. Did you see a lot of action?”

“No ma’am. In the war, my family operated a Whisper Net Repeater in the Northern Territories. We got hit with a drop. That was the extent of my contact with the enemy.”

“I glanced at your file, personal details are sparse. You have sisters, yes?”

“Yes. Four. Three older ones and one younger one.”

She came out from the stall and they washed up next to each other.

“Four! Goodness, Landau, how did you survive? And I guess that’s why you’re not shy with having a conversation with a female while peeing.”

“I learned to hide really well,” he said grinning.

“I bet the younger one has you wrapped around her pinky.”

Dex felt the grin freeze on his face. His mother used to say to him “You be careful, Dex, that sister of yours has you wrapped around her pinky!”

Concern played across Hackett’s face. She reached across and moved his hands away from the faucet, and the water turned off. He had spaced out to the point he did not realize his hands were still under the running water.

Now Dex was embarrassed. He didn’t know much about space stations, but he knew wasting water was rude. It had to be re-filtered.

“I’m sorry, Dex. I did not mean to bring up bad memories.”

Dex sighed. “Not so much bad as—bittersweet. Is it that obvious?” Sometimes he felt he was wearing his grief from losing his parents in the war like a cloak. He dried his hands quickly, still embarrassed.

“No, no. The war has been over for only three years, you’ll spot it yourself here soon enough. We all have the odd thing that reminds us of those who are no longer with us.” Suddenly her eyes grew large and luminous. “Sometimes, the hurt just sneaks up on you and wham; it’s like a punch in the gut.”

A single tear slid down her face.

Dex felt a pang of sympathy so strong, it nearly made him shudder. Almost against his will, he reached down to her pixie-like face and brushed the tear away. Suddenly, arms were around his neck and she kissed him, a desperate kiss of mouth and tongue, and he kissed her back, just as desperately.

The door to the head opened and they suddenly looked at the entering man and woman, Corporals. The two stopped in their tracks and stared, the Major still had her arms around his neck and he realized he had a hand on her shapely butt.

The enlisted quickly recovered and snapped smart salutes. Dex just as quickly separated from Hackett and they returned the salutes.

“Major,” said the man.

“Corporal, at ease.” The Major smoothed out her uniform.

“Leftenant,” said the woman. She bit her lip and her eyes were dancing.

“Corporal,” Dex said. Suddenly he felt very foolish. He gave her a nod and left, quickly followed by the Major. As the door closed behind them, Dex did not hear laughter but he was positive that is what was going on.

“This way, Leftenant.” He could swear she was blushing.

As he followed the mysterious woman, no, the wælcyrie, Dex had to remind himself­­­—he wondered what the Space Marshal wanted of him. In the span of three days, he advertised his availability for work, received a commission, took a 12-hour orientation corpse, was deep scanned and re-assigned to Orbital and Space because of his genetic predisposition to neural implant acclimation coupled with high scores in AI interfacing. In moments, he will be meeting with the Commander of Orbital and Space. Tomorrow he will undergo surgery and then tanked for regen therapy for a month to finish growing the cyber tech and then acclimate his body to the implants.

Somehow, in the midst of all of this, he kissed the Space Marshall’s intelligence officer—a genetically engineered soldier from the war times who, technically, was not human.

Dex had to admit to himself that his future, if the present was any indication, was a big unknown to him, very different from his carefully sister-arranged life. This both terrified and elated him. Whatever tomorrow holds, it would not be boring!

From my world-building notebook for Your Little Sister. I’ve gotten in a habit of creating back-story for people who don’t make an appearance, but live, in the world.

When world-building, I start with a general idea and just start expounding. As I progress, I shift from exposition to direct storytelling. This type of world building works well for me. In no way is this a short story. More of a definition of a theme than anything else.

***

The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room sits surrounded by boys vying for her attention, at a table by the window. She wears a gun. She has been contemplating getting rid of it all day.

High school in Year 3. Only, no one calls it high school anymore. It’s finishing school. Let’s get it done, school. You need to become an adult school. Pre-vocational training school. It would be a decade before a new cultural name would emerge: prevoc. Very swanky sounding, prevoc. Prevoc is what you did before moving up to advanced training, or research. General education, well, they just called it “General”.

Half the seats in the lunchroom are empty. The prior government built the school in an earlier age, where every child could get a public education. Now school cost money, no taxes are collected to fund education,a child’s family had to fund it 100%. Some parents could not afford it, but the gist of it all was, smaller schools were more attractive. Schools like this one were going out of style in a slow, gradual death spiral of market corrections.

This one catered to military families, so it was still seeped with macro sized learning techniques. It was, after all, only three years since the war ended. Both the mother and father of the most beautiful girl in the room both served. By all accounts, they were outstanding soldiers.

They were, by the same accounts, lousy parents.

The next table over, going clockwise, is the Math Squad. This group keeps their numbers even, three boys, three girls, not in some mathematical formula of balance, but simply because they were all in relationships. Only couples obtain admittance to the Math Squad.

Two of the couples are actually doing it. The first, the founders of the club, engage in desperate sex, as if each night could be their last. As far as they know, it could. Both are war orphans. They are happy they had relatives to take them in and pay for school. These two, well, these two are broken. Perhaps being together will make one productive adult out of them.

The other two, the youngest of the group, actually, are simply fucking like mad weasels because it feels good. In twenty minutes, they will sneak to an unused classroom, and have sex right on the old teacher’s desk. Their hedonistic streak does not end there. After the last period, they go to the girls home for dinner, bringing home stacks of impressive books, pilfered from the empty class room. After dinner, they go to the girl’s room and close the door.

Her parents think she is studying. In actuality, she is engaged in more enthusiastic sex. They do it for hours.

The Math Squad only has a mild social interest in the most beautiful girl in the room. Most of it is either a small attraction, or envy. Sometimes, she has the highest senior math score.

Continuing our clockwise stroll around the immediate tables surrounding the most beautiful girl in the room, we come to another couple, sitting alone. She is very pregnant, this young woman. In three weeks, she will give birth to a baby boy, at a whopping nine pounds, three ounces. The young man sitting at the table is both her husband and the baby’s father. Legally adults, they have pre-paid for all four years of finishing school with the money they inherited from their parents’ estates.

They are the last of their line. Their parents, of course, are dead from the war. This baby matters more than most. He is a new beginning to a bad end. They will have six children in total, and eventually adopt three more.

The pregnant woman thinks the most beautiful girl in the room is quite beautiful, and she is also envious. The most beautiful girl in the room thinks the same of her. The husband carries no thoughts of the most beautiful girl in the room, other than a base attraction when they were swimming together one year.

The next table over is a teacher and three of her students. She teaches pre-war history, and these three students are very fascinated by both her age (old), and her willingness to speak frankly about many subjects, subjects now taboo to their parents. She is a good orator, and likes to talk. It is a good combination, these four. She only eats half her lunch, but by the end of the break, one student will volunteer to mow her lawn, the other to fetch groceries and the third to have the accumulator serviced on her small e-car.

None of these four have any interest in the most beautiful girl in the room. She is, quite simply, a person of no historical interest, nor one interested in history. She might as well be invisible.

Our circle of tables is almost complete. At the last table surrounding the most beautiful girl in the room, sit two boys. Rumor has it they are gay. They are not gay, they are collaborating on a software project, and it is all consuming. This project will turn into one of the very first civilian released overlays for a quantum computer, and finds classification as an AI Level 3. In only three years, they will have accumulated nearly a million Nuevo Credits. They refuse all VC money tossed in their direction, and start a computing empire stretching for hundreds of years.

These two are watching the most beautiful girl in the room. When they go home, they share fantasies about her. Sometimes silly, sometimes nasty. Right now, they are contemplating how they can get her to go to the Spring Formal with one of them.

They are too late, unfortunately. It is a lesson each will remember well. All they had to do was ask, they found out later. The most beautiful girl in the room always said yes, because hardly anyone ever asked her to dance. You could even kiss the most beautiful girl in the room, all one had to do was make a play for her rosy lips. Each would remember this lesson, and socially, they sprouted wings and flew. They never were shy again.

Back to the most beautiful girl in the room’s table. The boys at it are of no consequence. Each is flirtatious, in his own way; most are charming and even mature. But they are competing with her thoughts. She can’t help but think of her gun, and what it would mean to give it up.

Lunch is over. The most beautiful girl in the room leaves, but does not go to class. Today she has been excused post lunch. She sighs, knowing she is the faculty’s disappointment, and heads to the Principal’s Office.

Principal Vernon is expecting her. Inside the small office with him is a short woman dressed in a distinctive, but unrecognizable, uniform. The most beautiful girl in the room sighs again, and sits without asking.

“Sandra, I want you to meet Major Hackett of O&S.”

Sandy raises an eyebrow, and shakes the woman’s hand to be polite. Whatever Vernon is doing, however, she does not want to be a part of, no sir. She frowns, unfastens her holster, and slides it across the desk.

“No,” she says simply.

His eyes flash with anger, actual anger. He pushes the holster back.

“Don’t give me this bullshit, Sandra. It’s your pistol now. You’ve worn it for a month now, it’s yours.”

“Mr. Vernon! Don’t you cuss at me!”

“Ha! See Sandra, you’re an adult. You have been for an entire year. You haven’t Declared because you’re saddled with the apathy from your fucking parents and you’ve been wearing it like some kind of mantle.  Hell, I’ve been more of a parent to you for the last four years then either one of those two sloths, and I am here to tell you to knock this shit off. We’re all tired of it.”

Sandy could not believe what she had heard. Vernon never cussed. Until now, she had never even heard him say “darn”. She slumped in her chair. She contemplated crying, but couldn’t muster the tears. Maybe he was right; maybe she wasn’t a girl anymore if being cussed at by the Principal did not make her cry.

“But what would I do?” The words are out of her mouth before she realizes perhaps this is why Major Hackett is here. She looks at the woman.

“If you Declare, I have a job for you. Briefly: you fit a profile for our advanced piloting program; you’ll start right after a month of space acclamation, followed by on the job training and formal instruction, which will last two years. It will be a very intense two years, but Day One you will be an officer with a commission. “

“Piloting?” Sandra was confused. She did not even have a car. She narrowed her eyes. “Profile? Who gave you a profile of me?” She put her jumbled thoughts together and turned to face Vernon. “You had no right to violate my privacy!”

“Right? Right? Adults have rights. You, Sandra, are merely a child.”

Oh well played, sir, well played. She felt as if the Principal had just slapped her across the face. She slumped further in her chair. By rights, she should call her father and have him give the Principal what for.

If he wasn’t drunk.

And fucking the neighbor girl.

Her mother of course, was more useless. Sandy should have been the daughter. Instead, to her mother, she was simply sister to the brother who died when she was merely one month old. Slain by the enemy. In a bad way.

“And what does my profile say?” she asked the Major. It came out bitter.

“It says many things. But the gist is: institutions to you are familiar, you have above average marks, you test well under stress, you are attractive and your nervous system is well suited to implants for the neural interfaces.”

Sandra’s mind whirled. She wanted to ask what being attractive had to do with anything, but this is not what came to the front of her mind. “Would I be anywhere near my parents’ chain of command?”

“Absolutely not. If you say yes, in twenty minutes you will actually outrank your parents.”

A chill went down Sandra’s spine. Oh they had her. They had her now.

She looked at Vernon. He started smiling. She contemplated punching him in the nose. She stood up, and put her pistol back on.

“Do I get a starting bonus?”

The Major actually paused. “Yes. Yes, you do.”

She looked at Vernon again. “I want it to be the same as his finding fee.”

Now the Major flinched. It was small, but noticeable.

“Ah, yes. Yes, I can authorize that.”

The grin threatened to split Vernon’s face.

It took ten minutes to walk to County Safety. They were expecting her (damn them all), and in three more minutes, she was an Adult. Her very first contract was accepting an Officer’s Commission for Orbital and Space. It took eight minutes to receive verification and for the major to swear her in.

The Major was driving her to her parents’ house, no longer her house, in a rental e-car.

“Major, what does being attractive have to do with anything?”

“Good question, Leftenant. You’ve been matched to an AI. Level 1. She was very specific. She said, and I quote, ‘If I’m going to Uplink with a stinky human, make it a woman with some brains and nice, perky boobs’.”

Sandra burst out laughing. The Major gave her a side-glance.

“You are not offended?”

“Are you kidding? That’s funny as hell.” Sandy was still getting used her ‘Uplink to an AI’ future, but it was funny. Everything seemed almost like a dream, and she would wake up only to find her same apathetic life with her same apathetic family.

Major Hackett grinned. “Damn it all if the profile matchup actually worked.”

They pulled up to Sandra’s house. Suddenly she was nervous. But something again was nagging at her brain.

“Ma’am, is this a ship left over from the war?”

“Negative, Leftenant. This is not an orbiter. It is an armed corvette, with a landing shuttle and everything. It can go planet side, but it is built for space duties.”

“Space? Why do we need armed space ships?”

“Well now, you’re smarter than you look, Leftenant,” said Hackett as she got out of the car.

Whoa. All thoughts about a stressful meeting with her parents were now gone.

What’s going on, and what did I get myself into? thought the most beautiful girl in the room.

Dawson vs. Fernando came to the Portland office as a Whole of Body case.

Mr. Dawson of Hazel Dell, Washington, owns a Boston terrier named “Skootie” (see Attachment A). Mr. Fernando, also of Hazel Dell, claimed that Skootie was “driving him absolutely mad with her incessant barking” (see Attachment B).

The Portland Office of Constitutional Enforcement received this complain earlier, and we referred Mr. Fernando to several local mediators operating in the Portland-Vancouver area. Mr. Dawson agreed to mediation. Mr. Fernando, however, claimed the mediators he talked to were too expensive to employ (see Attachment B). Mr. Fernando then repeatedly called the Portland Office for assistance.

In the Portland Office, a robust and unnecessary game of rock-paper-scissors ensued, in which I lost. Thus, the next morning I drove to Hazel Dell and waited in the neighborhood for the sun to come up, after a call to County Safety so they would not harass me in my morning barking stakeout.

I observed several interesting things on this fine spring morning (see Attachment C):

• Mr. Fernando lives in a well-kept house in a nice suburban neighborhood, driving a modern Toyota
• His wife, Ms. Lashmir, wore expensive clothing and drove away in a year-old Ford Mustang convertible (top down, hair in a scrunchy)
• Her car had a Starport of Portland parking barcode on it. Doing a quick goog search, Ms. Lashmir is the Second in Command of Accounting at SoP

At 07:15, the front door to Mr. Dawson’s residence opened and Skootie immediately ran out. The door closed, and I observed (see Attachment D):

• Skooite barks at many things. Birds, a jogger, a squirrel, the lamppost, a cat and an evil chew toy which refused to play with her
• Skootie ran, unhindered, to a neighbor’s yard (not Mr. Fernando), and took an enthusiastic morning poop in a flowerbed
• She then, with her back legs, tossed flowers and dirt willy-nilly, doing nothing to cover said poop but looking enormously pleased with herself
• After running around the neighborhood for fifteen minutes, Skootie then sat by the front door of the Dawson residence
• She whined repeatedly, looking forlorn and finally barked for five minutes until the door opened

Simialar activity occurred both in the afternoon and at night.

I repeated the Great Skootie Stakeout of Year 2 for an additional three days. I observed familiar behavior from Skootie on all the days, and did not observe at any time Mr. Dawson or Ms. Lashmir walking the Boston on a leash.

It is my judgment that Mr. Dawson is indeed in violation of the Whole of Body clause. His neglect of Skootie the dog causes inappropriate behavior that is disruptive to the neighborhood. On day three the barking was actually getting on my nerves.

I have seized Skootie to have her put down as menace animal. I handed my autopistol to Mr. Fernando, and told him he was in the right to do so and that was my Judgment. He refused.

Skootie is now orphaned through no fault of her own. For his failure to render Judgment as directed, I seized 10,000 credits from Mr. Fernando to pay for the upkeep of Skootie throughout her Boston life.

This is my Judgment, rendered with one Question. The Question is as follows:

Officer Gina: Oh my God, is that the dog? She is soooo cute! Look at that little face. I could just kiss that little face! What are you going to do with her?

Officer Scott: She’s my dog now. I’ve signed us both up for doggie training.

G: Give me the dog.

S: What? No. This is my dog.

G: You live in a high-rise apartment.

S: There is a very nice park by my building.

G: I live on five acres.

S: Gina, she’s not a big dog. Are you, Skootie? Who’s the little dog? Who is?

Skootie: Bark!

G: Scott, you are not a dog person.

S: I am too! Well, I could become one.

Skootie: Bark!

G: I Question your ability to properly give Skootie the squirrel chasing she deserves. Look at her. She is sad.

S: She’s a Boston! She looks sad even when she is happy! And are you Questioning my Judgment in this case?

G: Yes, I am.

S: Well, I will call a jury.

G: You wouldn’t dare.

S: Look, I have my PDA, I’m calling it right now.

G: I’ll give you visiting privileges.

S: Not good… um, like what?

G: Occasional weekends, no less than 1, no more than 3, a month. I will also let you walk Skootie when I have her here in the Office.

S: I want it in writing. And I want dinner when I come over. I also want the Judgment monetary seizure to go into a separate account, not your personal account.

G: Fine.

S: Fine.

Skootie: Bark!

S: How about the occasional breakfast?

G: Do I need to put that in the agreement too?

S: Only if you say yes.

Skootie: Bark!

Mr. Scott
Office of Constitution Enforcement
Portland, Oregon
May 17, 2

(from Landmark OCE Judgements of Mr. Scott, Tokyo University Press, 29)

From my world building notebook for Your Little Sister:

***

Her lover is punctual, showing up at her doorstep the very minute she requested his presence.

If she told him, “Come over for dinner at 7:00,” sure enough, at 7:00 PM the bell would ring, and there he would be, all smiles and handsome and holding a bottle of wine.

Other than his spooky knack at punctuality, her lover was a free spirit. He was malleable in many areas. Where they went, when they went out, was her purview. One time she tested him and scheduled a chick flick, then the next date the opera, and finally, a book reading and signing for some sappy book. He enjoyed each and was charming and gracious to everyone he met.

She would have considered him one of those ‘yes’ men that would say ‘yes’ to anything as long as the end of the date he was between her legs. He had absolutes that seemed to absolve him from a limp-noodle nice guy label. For instance, he disliked driving, and he would grump like a spoiled brat when she made him. He did not eat sweet things—he avoided sugar. He had the habit of rubbing his head when he was nervous, which was rare, but he did do it, it was somewhat cute.

One time, he called her to see if she could pick up soup for him. He was sick. She lived in his small apartment for three days, nursing him back to health. He was not infallible, but he seemed strange in a way, as if his life was perfect with not an unhappy thought in his head. For a living, he was a hotel manager, which seemed to suit him well. He loved people.

She envied his life outlook—a simple man, with simple needs. When they made love, he was simultaneously generous and needy. He had a keen sense of pushing her buttons until she was mindlessly moaning and panting. The man was definitely addictive in that regard, his timing was near perfect.

Which is why, when she overslept from her nap, she was very surprised that he did not wake her up by ringing the bell, or calling her if she did not hear it.

This worried her, but she was not prone to panic, merely a frown aimed at herself in the mirror as she quickly took a shower and got dressed. The moment she turned off the hairdryer and decided to call him, the doorbell rang, and she jumped. Goosebumps appeared on her arm, she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand out, and then she actually shuddered.

She peeked out the peephole and there he was. She opened the door and smiled as he raised an eyebrow.

“Are you psychic?” It was a silly question, but she had to ask.

He actually laughed at her, a warm laugh, both inviting and infuriating.

“Ah, no.”

“Well, how did you know I overslept from my nap?”

He came in and closed the door. “That would be because you are the one that is psychic.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You. You broadcasted your desire to meet later, so I simply showed up later.”

Now she giggled. “You’re being silly.”

“Hey, when you think things, I am powerless to resist your superior mind powers.”

“Bah! Isn’t that something like love?”

“Of course it is, and I do love you. I have for quite some time, but have been too afraid to say it. But your obvious powers of psychic manipulation propel me to confess my true feelings for you.”

She opened her mouth and subsequently was speechless, so she closed it rather than stand there looking like a dork. She threw her arms around his neck.

“Oh, I love you too, you silly man!”

Later, after the sweaty love making they skipped dinner for, in her dark bedroom filled with the earthy smell of sex, she suddenly realized he was serious. She rolled over and smacked him.

“Ow!” he said, coming awake. “What was that for?”

“I am not psychic!”

“Whatever,” he said, rolling over and putting his head under his pillow. He did that when she wore him out and he wanted to sleep.

She lay there contemplating his snarkitude.

Why don’t you roll back over and make love to me again, she thought at him, feeling stupid, but putting every ounce of desire she had for him into her thought.

When he rolled over and cupped her breast, it was then she knew she was in trouble.

(from my world-building notebook)

In the matter of Sylvia, formally Sylvia Drummond of Lake Oswego, Oregon vs. Gary Drummond and Kari Drummond—also of Lake Oswego—I find for Ms. Sylvia’s claims as petitioned in totality.

Ms. Silvia, at age of thirteen, successfully made her Declaration and moved out of her childhood home. Her first action as an Adult was to claim her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Drummond, violated her Constitutional rights, specifically Whole of Body clauses. She petitioned the Portland Office of Constitutional Enforcement (OCE) and was successful in making her case.

Ms. Silvia requires extensive gene therapy to correct several abnormalities caused by in-vitro chromosome manipulation (see Attachment A) to bring about heightened intelligence and a physical appearance that can classified as “beautiful” by current societal norms.

While Ms. Silvia is indeed beautiful, and is smart, she suffers from potentially fatal grand mal seizures because of a defective nervous system that is a side effect of this particular type of DNA recoding (see Attachment B).

That her parents were paying for her medical bills as her primary caregiver, and were no longer required to when she Declared, is immaterial. The time the damage occurred to Ms. Silvia’s body is also irrelevant. The relevant facts for finding are:

• Ms. Silvia is an Adult
• Her biological parents caused her body on going, and potentially fatal, harm

Gary Drummond and Kari Drummond violated their daughter’s Constitutional Rights as outlined in Section 2 (Whole of Body), Clauses 1 through 4. Their actions were both short-sided and malicious; as Mr. Drummond is on record (see Attachment C) admitting, “We wanted the perfect child to run the family business.”

The mitigating circumstances of this case are, essentially, Ms. Silvia was less of a daughter and more of a tool grown in a vat and then implanted in her mother. They declined to give her gene therapy, as this could change her heightened mental capacity, and were only treating the symptoms of Ms. Sylvia’s artificial condition. Gene manipulation to create what is essentially a family slave, dependent on medical care necessitated by that very manipulation, is extremely repugnant and arguably violates the Constitution’s Whole of Body Slavery Clause, for which the penalty is Death.

Ms. Silvia, however, does not support a Death Warrant. While OCE does not require her support in a Slavery violation case, the totality of the situation requires me to set aside this potential Charge.

I have seized all of the Drummond’s assists, rendered their instruments on the trade market, and allocated them to Ms. Silvia. Because of the violation to Article 1 of Section 2 by both Mr. and Mrs. Drummond, the People at Large have suffered harm. Both parents are henceforth declared personae non gratae for the duration of thirteen years, the time Ms. Sylvia spent as their daughter and ward.

This is my Judgment rendered fully with no Question.

Mr. Scott
Office of Constitution Enforcement
Portland, Oregon
February 05, 14

(from Landmark OCE Judgements of Mr. Scott, Tokyo University Press, 29)

Other then the relentless line editing of Bunny Trouble (almost done!) my thoughts turn to the setting of The Baby Dancers.

This is where my years and years of Dungeon and Dragons geek outs paid off. I have a treasure trove, nay a mountain of world-building material. Indeed, from a gaming perspective I am a world-building expert. Who knew all those years of nerding out would show benefits (other then the loads of fun at the time of the game)?

My goal for The Baby Dancers is to keep my momentum going at a serious pace. Actually, even if it were not YA Fantasy, that is a worthy goal. This is where setting, world-building in particular, collides with momentum. Can I take my setting expertise from other mediums and apply it to a fantasy novel?

Yes. I believe I can. I have a marvelous setting all ready to go. It only needs strong characters and the proper stakes. One could say I adore my setting.

How exciting this all is!