A New Mass Effect Fic: Sound of Silence

Sound of Silence is another Saren/Nihlus story from the time just before The Candidate. It tells about Saren’s days of loneliness aboard the Virial after driving Nihlus away in an outburst of anger.

I wrote this a long time ago, but the feeling that it’s unfinished kept plaguing me, making me go back and question each scene, each word, a thousand times. I wanted it to be perfect, to speak perfectly in Saren’s voice, the voice I hear so clearly in your writing, dear MA, but know I can never reproduce. This one is entirely for you: both inspired by and dedicated to.

Image: Anjian @ DeviantArt

Spring Forward, Fall Back

In November, the hours are slower;
winding down weather, the fresh lather
of a first snow. The winter,
with its months of hospital afternoons

waits huddled just over the border.
And ice will make all the distances
that much further. Speak now, kiss now
before the river freezes altogether.

Troy Jollimore

Mother

Today I found something strange and disturbing scribbled in the back of a notebook. Strictly speaking, it’s TES fanfiction, but writing TES fanfiction was the last thing on my mind when I penned it down.

The Guide

When I look up at the night sky–
Well, there are trees, of course. Mountains and clouds
And city lights
It’s not ideal.
But I can pretend I see, say, Vega, from the sidewalk just across the street–
And dozens of other nameless stars–
Nameless to me, I mean.
I have no doubt you could call them to you
If you wanted, you could call them to you like cats
Each name a warm and furry picture in your mind
(False color, if you were feeling frivolous.)
And they would answer, meekly, a purr or plaintive meow
As they twined their silken tails around your feet.

Continue reading The Guide

Impressed by Space Art

Sniper115a3.deviantart.com

Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

We’re all so used to working in a purely abstract realm that it seems almost bizarre to go out into the real world and physically do something.

Root just felt like talking about words. The SAS blokes refer to this kind of activity as wanking.

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be – or to be indistinguishable from – self-righteous sixteen-years-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.

But this is a degenerate case, where “degenerate”, to a mathematician, means “annoyingly boring”.