THE RUNNER-UP: Daniel Ausema, who calls on the world to move past blindly using “-punk” as a suffix and, instead, more thoughtfully appropriate the full range of musical genres for SF description. As he put it: “I want a fantasy with the intricate acapella harmonies of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.” His prize: Next week’s blog for a beer will be an open call for readers to address Daniel’s suggestion!

THE WINNER: Tigereye, whose first-person narration about living in the peripheral digital glow is just WAITING for some smart TV producer to trim it slightly for use in an opening credits sequence and build a whole show around it. Tigereye, until that moment comes when your sketch is the voice of the next Quantum Leap or Knight Rider… have a beer on us!

…the last holophoto taken of Extatia Hilton. It is fashioned to resemble an old woodpulp photograph, black and white with tinting. In it, Extatia is seen coyly looking over her shoulder – her signature pose. Her bangs are cut raggedly and sealed into a transparent custom sheath; her razorhair falls gently down her back in impeccable mockery of the movement of human hair. Tinted: the slight latticework of scarring around her implanted steel shoulderplates, almost like a border of fine lace. Tinted: beads of blood in the wake of her falling hair.

The shoulderplates and razorhair are untinted.

Tinted: the tattoo over her hips, a design that one of her forebears might have called a “tramp stamp”. If you wave your hand over this portion of the holophoto, you’ll see the colors iridesce blue, green, and purple. This tattoo, as well as the tattoos on her wrists and ankles, used the new bioreactive “ink” derived from the DNA of various insects and deep-sea denizens.

If you wave your hand over her back, you will see her wings unfold with a clatter of metal on metal, feathers jangling softly.

The tinting of her various scars is subtle. One often does not notice it at first glance. The rope of scarring around her left hip where her new vatgrown leg was attached. the stitchery around her neck, the raised welts where the skin of her back reacts poorly with the wings. It is theorized that the infection began around the base of her right wing.

This holophoto was taken by Amylin Kell just one week before the fatal surgery on Extatia’s throat. Her cousin Azreen, long in Extatia’s shadow, has now signed on to alpha-test that procedure.

Per Extatia’s last requests, you may purchase vials of her blood in the gift shop on your way out.

THE GREAT WESTERN PILE

From the galleries of Westminster the Thames, that sick river, slides along at pace with history. Parliament’s stones, made filthy by the smog of industrial revolution, bear the weight of Empire. The hands of Big Ben touch the hour, clockwork tips the bells and through the City of London, pigeons and other vermin take flight.

Cavannagh straightens the seams of the pinstripe suit before entering the cell. The manifest of missteps that brought a promising career of public service crashing into the dankest depths of the Basement plays in his thoughts. In another life he chaired the Private Committee that approved expansion of this most classified facility. Had he known he would be condemned to languish so far beneath the foundations of Westminster he would have insisted on a higher standard of decor.

Placing a stack of manilla folders on the interrogation table, Cavannagh takes his seat. Opening one folder and laying it flat, he pulls his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose and rereads the contents perfunctorily before finally looking bitterly at the man sitting across the desk, who smiles back at him smugly. So it truly is him, Cavannaghs thinks.

http://damiengwalter.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/the-great-western-pile/

Actually…
you can haz buttons or t-shirts!

He’s about two feet tall, with shiny, jade green skin and blue eyes. His eyes look pretty much like ours, except the irises and pupils are bigger (less white space). Overall, he’s a basic humanoid shape. He doesn’ t have pointy ears. He wears one-piece clothing, and even changes his clothes every day.

He does want some of my lunch now. That’s OK. I have plenty. Mostly he just listens and watches. I guess he wants to know what we are teaching these children. Maybe their educational system needs revamping? Who knows. Like I said, he doesn’t talk much.

REPORT: Sol, third planet, February 15, 2007
Most of the adults are hopeless, but their children’s brains should be ready for our communications within a few years. Recommend continued observation and preparation.

Or …

I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK, and You’re OK?

Or …

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Singing Transgendered Lumberjacks?

All I Really Need to Know I Learned Chopping Down Trees While Wearing High Heels?

(Wasn’t there some work of sci-fi involving giant space trees with a strong enough gravitational field to accumulate its own atmosphere? Can’t remember what that was.)

Certainly this is a dream.

I have that odd dream sensation where nothing is quite right, where past and present meld into a quicksilver slipstream of wavering timetables, never quite reconciled, but nonetheless concrete in impression. I can see myself as I once was; statue of virtue, epitome of grace, definition of the kind of beauty that sneaks behind awareness until prey is hopelessly lost in myriad fantasies of what might have been. I know that I am torn between what might be and what can never be.

“This path is fame, fortune, oblivion, lust…”
“This path is obscure, dark, foreboding…”
“This path is full of love, yet not without sacrifice…”

All paths are shrouded in hazy possibilities. I guess I will never know what might’ve been, for I have chosen my path. I have created for myself a life that I know can only lead one way. But the price! OH GOD! The PRICE!

Sliding on a wave table that only Providence could endure, I drift back into that long ago time when I hadn’t made the Decisions. Yes, I know you don’t believe it, but there was a time, more years ago than you have been alive, when I had not set my feet scurrying along this twisted path, changing by choice, the future of humanity.

Long ago, there was still a chance to save my soul.