Well, it's been over a year. How about some fiction?

The interstice rippled open, a blackened wound on reality that gushed exotic particles that wavered in the air as smoke and just as ephemeral before dissipating in sulphur fumes. From it stepped something, a something that didn't walk so much as jump and wavered there on the precipice of being here and being elsewhere. The mind was still trapped beyond, but here, the body seems to shrink while growing into itself, trailing wisps of the exotic that channel off it in an oily aura while slitted neon-green eyes began to adjust to the here, the now and no longer the there, the gone. But even as it landed, it's arms flapped to regain balance while the newly adjusted eyes looked downward, startled. That was when it felt the heat of the air and was nearly blown away.

High above the drifting magma sea of Hulyait IV, the cargo train flew from the mining operations to the main spaceport more than thirteen hundred kilometers away for refinement, processing and shipping. And atop it stood Stent, a Baajin of Daluquen III. Rivers of fire ran in relief down the sides of the blackened husks of mountains in the distance while smoke clung to the sky like an infested, pulsating wound.

Alien, xeno, unknown -- Stent dropped down to hands and knees, clawed fingers and toes gripping the metal roof as the machine clocked in at speeds over four-hundred kilometers an hour. The attempt was futile and the creature began its backward slide into the void and the waiting fire sea below. The Baajin's HUD came to life, a strange mashup of iconography and menus and command lines, all tied into and activating portions of the technology embedded within the body and jumpsuit of the creature. The kinetic accelerator came online creating a shield to divert the slipstream ravaging it. The press of hurricane winds diminished to nothing, but a bar representing the power draw flared to life within Stent's HUD -- time was limited.

Standing, Stent's profile was silhouetted against the red and black. Too, the Baajin was black scaled with some being orange and yellow along arms and legs that could alternate colors and patterns (green and red respectively), a unique method of communication for the Baajin race. Tall, standing bipedal atop hock-jointed feet with a long, curved dewclaw at the ankle, it turned its bald head to look about. Lipless with a mouth, noseless but for two slits, and earless but for two holes representing them, the creature was strange, dressed in a black and orange jumpsuit with sleeves rolled up and the legs cut off below the knees. Tactical gear was strapped onto it, along thighs, waist, back. A strange handgun, diskettes along the right thigh, magazines along the left, a knife on the back of the waist. Utility pouches holding more gear for easy access, and cradled on the back, something akin to a sub-machinegun.

A forked tongue tasted the air as the trim and vaguely feminine form began unfurl the cutting torch from a pouch and began to apply the beam directly to the surface of the train, intent on creating an opening...

WPCA - Just Business

The door flung back on its hinges crying out in a deranged squeal. A man came through, bobbing as he held onto a pair of zap-strapped legs that jerked back and forth. A second man appeared, hanging on precariously to the shoulders as the bound figure spasmed and jerked. Muffled screams from behind a gag mimed the doors previous cry while tears ran in rivulets beneath the awning of a blindfold.

Unceremoniously, the bound figure is lumped into a corner like trash and kicked several times for emphasis as to who is in charge while the second grabs a chair, noting their captive assuming the foetal position. The chair is set up while the gag and blindfold are removed, revealing a sobbing, weeping man in his mid-thirties. "Up," one says, partially hefting the figure onto the chair who keeps repeating "please, pleas no" in hypnotic mantra.

"You know why you're here?"

"Please, I didn't mean it. It wasn't my fault!"

A fist connects with the side of the bound mans face, rocking him in the chair, but not falling him.

"Look, you dumb shit, answer the fucking questions, or I get the bolt cutters and pretend I do fuck-damned manicures. Got me? Now shit-for-brains, why are you here?"

"I do- I don't know."

Another hit. "You know why! Tell me why, tard-face!"

"I-," he gulps, blood drooling from the side of his head while tears pool in the crook of his eyes. "I told the cops about Blacklight."

"You told the cops about Blacklight. And you know what we do about that, don't you, Randal, right?"

Another gulp, a nod as eyes turn to downcast, trembling orbs half hidden in tears, lashes and lids.

---

He thumbed the device up against the mans forehead. It unfurled, twined wings wrapping around the front of his skull.

"It's a Gurdak," he said nonchalantly, conversationally. The other man, strapped to the chair, was sweating.

"I know Gurdak. Doctor Gurdak."

"Yes, and now you'll begin feeling the pain, as the nanites drill through your skull, begin to envelop your brain. Neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse, you are being copied. In the end, your brain is gone. All that's left is a flesh-like spongy mass of nanites pretending to be you. And you know what, I hear that Gurdakites still believe themselves to be, well, themselves."

He began to scream, beg, plead.

"It's okay. Hush, hush. The pain will go away. You didn't want to talk, we don't need you to talk. Instead, your copy will."

A heart-rate monitor was spiking, crying out in sync to the man strapped to the chair. After minutes that seemed like hours, he drew into silence. Compelled by his rewritten mind.

Reaching a hand forward, he thumbed the button on the front of the skull, the wings retracting. He yanked and what looked like gore-dusted nets slipped out from the newly drilled holes.

A flick caused the last flecks of a mind to sputter off onto the floor while he thumbed the bead again. The nets expanded, forming the mind that had been devoured. He turned it over, this way and that, looking at it, inspecting it. A human mind, digitized in complete.

The Problems With Being Nice

I got to how I don't like the word "nice." In the past few years I've really, really started to hate that word. I hate the connotations for it, how it's lumped in with the politically correct crowd. I'm told to be "nice," to act "nice." "Nice" is supposed to personify me, wholly take me over. But what really is nice? Looking up the definition gives you this:

1. pleasing; agreeable; delightful
2. amiably pleasant; kind
3. characterized by, showing, or requiring great accuracy, precision, skill, tact, care, or delicacy: nice workmanship; a nice shot; a nice handling of a crisis.
4. showing or indicating very small differences; minutely accurate, as instruments: a job that requires nice measurements.
5. minute, fine, or subtle: a nice distinction.

Not good enough. Words are constantly redefined, changed. Decades ago fag used to mean rotting wood. Now it's used as a derogatory term for homosexuals. So, off to do some etymology -- that is, the history of words and their meanings. Turns out being nice doesn't mean what people think it originally means, and is a whole lot worse than that.

late 13c., "foolish, stupid, senseless," from O.Fr. nice (12c.) "careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish," from L. nescius "ignorant, unaware," lit. "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (see un-) + stem of scire "to know" (see science). "The sense development has been extraordinary, even for an adj." [Weekley] -- from "timid" (pre-1300); to "fussy, fastidious" (late 14c.); to "dainty, delicate" (c.1400); to "precise, careful" (1500s, preserved in such terms as a nice distinction and nice and early); to "agreeable, delightful" (1769); to "kind, thoughtful" (1830).

So, to be nice is to be foolish, stupid, senseless or agreeable. Sounds appropriate. Instead, perhaps we should substitute niceness for the more appropriate kindness, although in the latter sometimes being kind means doing what a person needs done, not necessarily what they want done. Although the synonyms for "nice" include such things as "kind," in reality, the word is also used for "ingratiating" or "conciliatory." In both these cases you can see the "politically correct" ideal portrayed in the word itself.

So, being nice is to suck up to the ego of someone else, not to ruffle feathers. This is not being kind. It is ego-stroking, brazenly so.