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Sing the Blue – Chapter 41: Things change

4 months 1 week ago
demihumanchronicles
Hoove sat much of this time near the door through which they had entered.  The pulsing in his head that had begun the moment he’d heard Bremen address him by his nom de guerre seemed to echo and be magnified by this space.  Nor the pain high in his chest, nor the terrible slowness of…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 40: They meet someone else too

4 months 2 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
The story of HOWW’s ancient CEO was inescapable.  Samson Wilford of the Commons sang his epic wherever serfs couldn’t avoid their titular president’s image.  He personally owned more than one percent of the world’s wealth, not counting the value of his subsidiary companies.  A grand yet humble man, approaching a hundred and ten years old,…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 37: That’s kind of gross

4 months 3 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
Calling a car didn’t end up working out.  Apparently a lot of things were still staggered by the outage, little things like the navigation and positioning systems in individual vehicles and people, and there were dead zones for sidecar service.  So, instead, they walked.  The walk was very different with the window mounted over their…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 36: (Get it?)

4 months 4 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
Amber and black. Those colors were Bremen’s world for a moment outside of time.  Rich and bold.  Malign, but also comforting. Whether it was the concussion or high emotions overwhelming their meds, Bremen’s mind was a thick, soupy fog.  Their brain had thrown errors, and was struggling to reboot, as if it were also a…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 35: It comes to blows

5 months ago
demihumanchronicles
Bremen’s last pill snapped with just a few pounds of pressure at the tips of their thumbnails, scattering what felt like incalculably valuable crumbs of faint pink chemical particulate away from their cot.  They couldn’t help but think of each of those flying particles as if they contained the entirety of the night’s necessary dose,…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 32: Bremen sees the whale and also some other things

5 months 1 week ago
demihumanchronicles
“Are you ready?” Nice Try clutched the window in her eagle-thumbed hand, proffering it cautiously. “You first,” Bremen said. “I’ll take the second shift,” Nice Try said.  “Look at the whale.” “You first.” “Look at the whale,” Beetroot groaned. He was.  He hadn’t been able to look away since they had come in, for their…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 31: Opening

5 months 2 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
The young woman was talkative.  That happened sometimes, when people came to Horis. “I haven’t been to the city since…” she was saying.  “It’s been so long.  Everything’s branded.” They were already in the city, of course.  She lived in it.  But only in the low-rising areas at its edges, where the eternally crashing wave…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 29: Have you noticed that the rich people have last names that are like first names

5 months 3 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
Williams Kempston, apparently a big-name executive in the upper ranks of the Howard Industrial Dynamics corporation, personally owned a number of complexes across the west city, and plenty more across the globe.  This particular one, two miles and change from the shelter out of which the artists were now based, was his seat of operations. …

Sing the Blue – Part 3: The West City – Chapter 28: The Cities et al. let their elbows get greasy

5 months 3 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
Dresden was awake the next time Bremen had a break from their Bauerdel job, but not in the mood to talk.  They were dehydrated and sore, and apparently the entire Divot was a serotonin stimulant zone, presumably to keep its weary conscripted workers from revolting – which meant Dresden could never be fully operational here. …

Sing the Blue – Chapter 26: Beetroot can see his arms

6 months ago
demihumanchronicles
Middle Strut Infirmary, Inc., a recent corporation within the Bauerdel DivServ family, permitted Bremen six hours’ rest after each ten on the job.  They weren’t required to return to the strut for it, but they wanted to. They spent the car ride back searching through Liriope’s data.  None of the limited employment information they could…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 24: Trash Avatar

6 months 1 week ago
demihumanchronicles
Bremen didn’t want a blotch on their employment record – if all went to plan, any meager accolades or meaty penalties Liriope accrued would be folded into their real record once they arrived – but they didn’t have an iron gut.  And, until more systems came back up, there was nothing keeping them from stepping…

Sing the Blue – Chapter 22: Torupo

6 months 2 weeks ago
demihumanchronicles
Horis was on the floor.  Cool concrete competing with the endless heat.  He was naked. He had been there for a long time.  He hadn’t gotten up, because he was remembering things.  He didn’t know when he could have known them before.  When he could have forgotten them.  It wasn’t possible.  But he knew them.…