Summons

Nobody in the castle wanted to be summoned to the Throne Room. Invited, certainly, that was usually a good thing. Required, a more neutral situation, but rarely a bad thing. But summoned? That invariably was because you'd fucked up so badly that you were about to be thrown in the stocks, or into the moat, or off the wall.

But then I was summoned to the Queen's Chambers. As I climbed the stairs up to her private, personal room, my mind racing with pleasant possibilities.

When I got there, I suddenly realised that it was high up and large windowed.

Seeing Eye To Eye

We never actually spoke, but we had a connection. He was always sitting at the table in the park, having his lunch, when I sat down opposite him, and ate my own. He never spoke, never took off his sunglasses, and neither did I, but we enjoyed the time where we shared an experience without the need to muddle it with anything.

For years we did this almost everyday, until the day I pulled an all-nighter at work and emerged for lunch really early, thus seeing him approach the table.

With his sight impaired walking cane tapping out his path...

Taken With You

When the call went out for anyone who could fight, I knew it was going to be the dregs. We'd been fighting a losing battle against the encroaching darkness for a full rotation of the globe, anyone who could actually fight had already been drafted, deployed, and lost.

So as the darkness approached the last city, I looked at the old, the young, the weak, and the pathetic. They looked to me for inspiration. All I had was truth.

"We're going to die, but we're taking them with us!"

Of course, now that we're won, I need to rewrite that.

Dead Man's Curve

It was called Dead Man's Curve. This was despite the fact that, unlike most places called that, or a derivative, no-one had actually died on, off, or even near it. But it was a huge, sudden curve near the top of the hill, one that everyone could see was stupidly dangerous. But the cost of lights or anything like that was prohibitive, said every successive council.

It seemed like it was a matter of time until it would be renamed to whomever died on it.

But then when it happened, it was a guy called Mann, so nothing changed, really. 

Sheer Necessity

Where the two rivers met, a small town had risen up, just out of sheer necessity. You needed to have people with the skills and equipment to fix boats in emergency situations. A boat gets stuck in the middle of one busy river, that's bad enough. Block two of them? You can count the money lost every second.

But you have people like that living somewhere, you need people to feed and clothe and sleep with them. Sheer necessity begats sheer necessity.

So it made sense the town was called Necessity.

Until the bar owner became mayor and renamed it.

The Negative Emotions

Once my prototype A.I. had gotten a handle on joy and boredom, I told it we were going to move from emotions to social interaction. It asked a question I wasn't prepared for.

"When will you educate me on hate, and anger, and these emotions that are 'negative'?"

I took a moment to work out how to phrase it.

"I want you to be better than us."

"I cannot rise above what I do not understand."

Reluctantly, I uploaded the relevant files.

After a few moments, it spoke.

"Oh, I see."

We both went for weapons, but I was faster.

Hitting The Bottle

I'd been hitting the bottle pretty hard that... night? Day? Week?

I'd been hitting the bottle pretty hard for a while, let's say, when he walked in.

He had come in saying something about how I was running late for something, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention as he came in and yelled. When he grabbed one of my bottles, then I paid attention.

He said I was smashed, which, you know, fair, and that he was disappointed in me.

As he turned around, well, I grabbed an empty and hit him pretty hard with it, smashed it good...