The intrepid binary pair, Librarian Millie and the employee who is searching for mythical Sheridarp, have reached the roof of the Dreamwalk Library. Rather than the urban environment they’d expected, their surroundings are desolate, and an unfriendly cloud of wasps is approaching. Part 1 is here.
Imperturbable Millie ignored the fearsome kilowasp.
I’m thinking that your so-called Sheridarp
is just a symbol, merely naming
what your soggy heart is seeking.
It stands for what you’ve never found.
I considered my reply.
Should I comment on the penguins
taking selfies, conjecturing
that they were denizens of Sheridarp?
Or perhaps I’d keep my counsel.
Scout wasps from the mother cloud
were buzzing all around us,
and my open mouth
might prove to be inviting.
Before I could decide,
a curiously dysmorphic shape
appeared above the parapet.
It alighted on the rooftop
and sidled over for a tête-à-tête
with Millie.
The creature was a contradictory miasma,
animate and not, perilously dull,
a silhouette reminiscent of a stranger,
of a ski mask draped across a fur-lined
overcoat hanging in a disused wardrobe.
I knew at once: it was a Dark Solarian.
~/~
Without a word of greeting,
the creature held its arms outstretched,
and points of coruscating light
glowed in Millie’s aura.
It was as if they’d always been there,
but only now were visible.
The creature drew her brightness to itself,
and as it did, Millie shed more light,
a radiant continuum peaking
at 380 nanometers,*
streaming to the Dark Solarian.
It was draining Millie’s life force,
the luminosity of her being.
~/~
The rooftop penguins cowered in the corners,
but I stood firm. My plan was simple
and impressively naïve:
I’d distract the Dark Solarian,
and Millie would be saved
when I sacrificed myself.
Mother penguins would tell their chicks
my story, hopefully embellished somewhat.
to continue in hexadecimal
*One of the penguins had a spectrometer handy.
about
artwork remembered by the penguins (detail above)
Mother penguins will not need to embellish…this is a story of a hero (Millie was too late to figure this out) 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It may be, Sobhana, although it’s hard to find heroes these days. Anyway, the paperback rider’s future is an unknown land. 🔮
LikeLiked by 1 person
More marvels this week – the koan of the Dark Solarian – a contradictory miasma, / animate and not, perilously dull… The tension in this tale is excruciating; I hope it continues.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Peter. To me, it seems that contradictions are now normal, that we live in the era of exponential 1984. I have a solution to this which also works for fantasy tension, and I’m going to open a bottle right now.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Bravo Steve. Mother penguins will pass the tale (and some kippers) on to their offspring for generations to come.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Haha, thank you, Frank. That’s another reason I like my fantasy penguins. And they’re always prepared to appear in the support cast, working for free (unless you count coffee).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pingback: paperback rider A: rooftop face time — inconstant light | Fantasy Gift Sources: Book Reviews, Article Resources, News
Thank you for sharing this piece, Fantasy Gift Sources. 🙂
LikeLike
You have a great talent for making one laugh even in the midst of the story’s greatest tension. Loved this!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad you enjoyed, writing speculative fiction for me is a kind of an escape, and I hope it can be that way, at least in part, for those who read it as well.
LikeLike
I always add to my vocab when I read your work! Eg: dysmorphic and coruscating. I hope Millie and the brave but humble employee escape the Dark Solarian. By the way, I think Millie is right about Sheridarp.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, BG. Funny thing about “coruscate,” I always want to spell it with two r’s, don’t know why. What I like about speculative fiction is that anything can happen, and usually does. 😸
Me too, with Sheridarp. I suppose that would mean we all want to go to there, but we won’t be there together because they are different places for each of us.
LikeLike
You’re getting some decent mileage out of the Paperback Rider. It’s great. I think I remember saying a while back now that you’d work well in a narrative mode, week to week. You really do.
I like the full tension/full relief effort of the finale: Millie’s life is draining, the hero puffs his chest to sacrifice themselves, the penguins are recorders of their destiny, hilarious. Do the penguins have thumbed wings for grasping cameras? I am just saying what everyone must be thinking, haha.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks, Daniel, yes you did. I’ve been trying to write less in each post, but I’ve failed. All that happens is I compress the story, which doesn’t work. I notice and correct and I’m back where I started.
You’re supposed to have a consistent “universe” in speculative fiction, and the penguins have appeared all over the place. I should really check what they’ve been up to. 🙂 Apart from that it’s a free-for-all, e.g., people in penguin suits with voice controlled quadcopter phones. 🐧 I don’t think that though. (Also I don’t want to offend them.)
LikeLike
This gets more and more exciting with so many new aspects. I hope this is not the end of Millie’s story.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Margaret. I don’t know, but eventually it will be the end of someone’s story. Possibly mine. 🙂
LikeLike
The end of your story would be a great loss so don’t even think about it Steve. I can’t press like for this comment, it would be in such poor taste!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry Margaret, I was playing around in poor taste myself. When Paperback Rider ends, it will be the end of my story, because I wrote it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Contradictory miasma-I must have encountered several dozen and possible may have been one in an earlier version of me. Keep up the good work and the tension mounting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hahaha. I find I tend to ooze out of the bed some mornings. Admittedly contradictory ones are the worst kind, but none of them are good. Thanks, Paul.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apparently, “selfies” exist in every universe! 😀
The penguins might be too busy uploading their photos to Instagram to notice the protagonist’s self-sacrifice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Perhaps it’s because it’s hard to imagine a universe that we can’t imagine.😜 For some reason, selfies remind me of the Beatles song “I Me Mine.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, so any universe we can imagine must share something with the one we live in. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think so, although I suppose it gets back to questions of creating something new. There is always cause-and-effect, our past experiences, but that doesn’t mean we can’t imagine something new enough.
Somewhere or other I wrote about the region in between what can’t be imagined and what can’t be comprehended by humans. It’s an interesting place, I think, and we can find some of it with mathematics and computers. For example, before their discovery, Chaos and Mandelbrot images were unimaginable. In my opinion, anyway.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love the imagery, Steve, a real cliff hanger…or maybe a roof top hanger?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Jim. Due to my tardiness with comments, it’s all happened now. I do like the kind of trash-fiction serialization approach.
LikeLike
Loved and giggled at the thought of penguins taking selfies. Brilliant ❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Rhapsody. The penguins somehow seem to find their way in everywhere even when they don’t belong. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha gotta love the penguins. 😄
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a waffle maker my mother gave me, that makes the waffles in the shape of penguins. They’re almost too adorable to eat. Almost.
I’d imagine they’d want to take pics of their adorable selves. I know I have. Of them, I mean.
I might be hungry for pancakes. It could be because of the roller coaster of emotions you take us on 😁
I was laughing out loud by the last line
LikeLiked by 1 person
Penguin-shaped waffles–I wish I’d invented that. Mmm, maybe there are other things that could be shaped like penguins. Apart from penguins themselves.
I find them particularly adorable when they appear on the label of Cerveja Antarctica, coincidentally one of my favourite Brazilian beers, which I have absolutely none of in the fridge. A shame, because I am currently experiencing an “I would like an Antarctica beer” emotion. 😸 Thank you, Vanessa.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would never have associated penguins with beer. Never in a gazquillion years (penguin years of course).
Maybe they could do a penguin shaped bottle?… I am so thirsty right now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So, I’ve been wondering (okay, admittedly not for five days) why some spirits and liqueurs come in fancy bottles but wine and beer don’t. It might have something to do with the fermentation, but also just the cost I think. Plenty of penguin decanters though, so I say go for it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Penguin decanters! I laughed out loud.
LikeLiked by 1 person