My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales

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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales

by
Carl Quillen
2012, Carl Quillen. All rights reserved. Image on page 56, Kim Meiners. Used with permission.
Printed in the United States of America
To
Chapter 1. Don Juan in Tentacles and Scales

Loud metallic hammering sounds wreaked splinters of pain through my tympanic scales as my third dorsal tentacle reconstituted. As the flesh slowly swelled it felt as if the whole body of it were shredding, and a new instruments voice added itself to the growing symphony of pain and began chiming in an accelerating and wildly uneven tempo.
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Aaouuuuuuuuuuurgh I began singing shrilly in accompaniment. Stop whining boss! I cant detect the acoustic patterns from the docking plate when you make that racket! shrieked my cyber-sentry from the hatch above. His hard metallic head was still a streaked blurry shadow of its real shape when I looked at him through the recently reconstituted and still reforming lens of my posterior eye. Ow! Ow ow ow ooooow! I yelled back. What are you doing? What can possibly be the hurry anyway? Im breaking the cold-weld on the docking hatch. 5,000 years of metal on metal in hard vacuum makes that a tricky bit of work. And then Im out of here. Im done rotting my diodes watching your freeze-dried corpse slumber in dreamless bliss. Then he resumed with the hammer. So weve made it to Zorgryps star? It was all slowly coming back to me. The narrow escape. The crazed oneway trip. The unnatural hibernation in desiccating vacuum. Hey you remember! Im glad to see the hard-rad hasnt completely fried your brain. But, um, yeah. Ive got some bad news. You got unlucky. Its a class 3 technical civiliza tion. So theres no choice, he added between taps with the phosphor-bronze hammer. Im going to need to jack in at low latency into their communication nets.
A sharp tinny pop echoed from the hatch. Then with a brief gasping wheeze, it drifted open. The sentrys five frond-like metallic limbs reached for the new opening, and then, in a smooth wave-like motion dragged him bodily towards it. So long, boss. Ill be in touch! Hey! But it was too late. With a bang the hatch locked shut, then the capsule rocked gently. A bright light briefly illuminated the portal to my left. It faded rapidly as the ion engine carried the pod and my sole companion away, briefly lighting the afterimage of a desolate icy landscape which I dimly perceived through unstable, gently flexing eyes. Vague as it all was it was still enough to shock me. The last memory of looking through that window was as fresh as yesterday. A giant golden solar sail glittering there in starlight as I rode it accelerating away on a tower of infrared laser light. I stood still, startled for a minute, and then as surprise departed pain returned. Then I started screaming. * * *
Getting off the home planet had been an improvised, out of left field seat-of-the-pants type proposition. Sort of my specialty actually, raising the wigs with a deeply unex pected, wacky move like that. But I suppose I had laid it on a little thick this time. Exiling myself a hundred light-years away and laying low until everyone and everything I knew was dead. But I had my reasons, or at least someone I can blame. And that would be my friend Jhryvvad, bless the dark chitinous kernel of er venomous little soul. E was the fellow responsible for decommissioning the space-probes as they trickled in. Theyd been constructed sometime during the previous two centuries in paroxysms of imperial self-ag grandizement, and were launched at ruinous cost with great fanfare out into the great unknown as a kind of monument
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to the preternatural political cesspool that created them. Something like flies decamping en mass from a heap of rot ting dung, you might say. Except that surprisingly, the probes occasionally succeeded in returning. Dzytrp, old chump! You should see the pictures from the latest! Just back from Zorgryps star! e yelled one day, while lashing me about the back with a tentacle. I shifted just in time to barely avoid being stung by the venomous barb at the end of it. Jhryvvad! Watch that thing, will you? What useless piece of old news did that artifact probe bring you? Zorgryp-3! Its perfect. Everythings right. All the right amino acids. The right chirality. With a prosthetic digestive system... he paused for effect, ...you might even be able to live there. Lovely. If you could reach it. After a few thousand years of freeze-dried hell, never to return. And then youd be stranded on a god-forsaken mudball of a planet. Maybe. You know, old pal, he whispered endearingly, freezedried, youd be just within the mass limits of some of the late-model probes. There are still a few spares left you know. For an old bud like you, I might be able to swing something. I had no idea you were so fond of me. Without friends like you, Jhryvvad, what would I do? The rattled end of Jhryvvads killing tentacle shook with mirth. Then e stung me from the other side with er first dorsal tentacle. But I remembered er words the next day, after I had pro ceeded to the post-birthing appointment with my doctor. It was a formality you know, for an individual of my robust constitution. So I was only expecting congratulations at the end of it. And at first thats what I received. After the old
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purple-scaled doc had finished examining me, he comple mented me on the great scarred welts along the expanse of my thorax from the last parasitizing brood of six I had raised within me. Well done Dzytrp. Not many could have done as well with such a brood. Being eaten by them from the inside-out so to speak. Youre a fine specimen. I could not suppress a proud wave of my tentacles. It had been rather a magnificent achievement, although Id have to admit to anyone that surviving a brood of six was probably not possible without the intervention of modern medicine. But I should warn you, next time you will not be so lucky. The burrowing brood will certainly overwhelm your central circulation. Your birthing days are over. But, but... Do not allow yourself to be parasitized again. It will not end well if you do. And then with a flutter of the blue rings of er uniform, e rolled out of the room. I met Thyrlib outside. The sharp piercing scythes capping er implanting peduncles chattered with excitement. How did it go? e asked, rather breathlessly. Im a splendid specimen, apparently. Thyrlibs eye-stalks pulsed and er mauve pupils glittered happily at me. So I reconsidered Jhryvvads mirthful proposal more se riously. I knew I wouldnt be able to resist Thyrlibs charms for long so I had to do something. A month later I had a new cyborg digestive system with stomach acid strong enough to melt rock, and I was ushered off in a noisome ceremony amid the usual empty-minded fanfaresyco phantic political wheezebags who happily congratulated themselves on my civic minded self-sacrifice, and thanked
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me profusely for supplying them the distraction du jour. Then I departed, leaving them to despoil civilization, which judging by the latest EM transmissions received by my cap sule they did assiduously for the next hundred years. Then by the grace of their efforts, and with the help of a particu larly virulent strain of Thyrlibs parasitizing descendants who repeatedly decapitated the Government the whole thing collapsed. Or so it appears. But I didnt have time to brood. There was too much to study. My cyber-sentry had collected over 50 years of EM broadcasts as wed approached Zorgryps star. Hed indexed, cataloged and translated it all during the tricky process of aligning the capsule for capture by a high-velocity comet in Zorgryps Oort cloud. That same comet was what was now providing the white backdrop outside the window. It was the source of propellant for the cyber-sentrys high-velocity trip to Zorgryp-3, and it was being mined as I waited, preparing fuel for my descent too. So I rested, sipped broth and sucked on rock chips for strength, and watched smoky old videos from a place called earth as my body mended and my capsule prepared for the trip ahead. Three months later I reached my limit. If ever a medium were so contrived to rot the mind as thoroughly as this so-called TV Ive not heard of it. It flickers in a crude parody of movement on a coarse grid painted so slowly that you can practically see it assemble one line at a time to make up each frame. This apparently fools what passes for brains in earthling neural systems enough to convincingly mimic reality. Even more appalling is the atrocious spectral resolution of their sensory apparatus. Colors are a blurry mess, so bad that often simple intensityBlack and white as they sayis enough to please them. I gave it my level best and stared at the screen for day after day, week after week trying to make sense of it. Finally, with my eyes burning and my mind a cacophony of jangled broken nerves fraying at my sanity, I threw up my
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tentacles in despair, admitted defeat and transmitted my surrender to my cyber-sentry: Im done! This video is the Devils own creation! Im going nuts looking at it! A couple of hysterical days later I received the reply, a few photons at a time as they slowly eked their way back across the light-day of space that now separated us. They decoded bit by bit and slowly rendered as ideographs on my screen. Oh yeah? I waited, fuming. There was nothing else to the reply. I couldnt believe it. And then I realized it must be another of Jhryvvads jokes. Hed programmed this sentry device especially to torment me. Tentacles trembling, I reached for the control yoke, and started to squeeze out the ideographs that would transmit a destruct sequence to it. I wouldnt do that It appeared suddenly, glowing on the screen. The cybersentry must have timed it intentionally, waiting a few seconds in the reply he sent yesterday. Argtpppppp! I howled in annoyance. Youre going to need me. Sorry to be annoying, but you see I can only predict your personality profile well enough to simulate a conversation when youre angry, the sentry explained. What? Thats the only part of Jhryvvads personality model of you that was truly accurate. The sentrys reply was again timed flawlessly, as if hed been right there. Hed been able to predict my responses perfectly ahead of time. Yesterday, a light-day away.
You mean that viper Jhryvvad spent years insulting me and assaulting me with bad practical jokes for this? I should have killed er when I had the chance! Its a moot point. Es long dead now. But er munificent concern for you had few limits. As evidenced by er dispatching me to assist you! You must be joking! The sentry waited for a few moments more as if unsure of what response I would make. Then the ideographs haltingly continued. ...Fortunately Jhryvvad also anticipated your current predicament. There were a few indications of civilization from the previous probe... The high-G stabilizing restraints in my capsule roared to life and tubes evacuating to vacuum rose around my seatrest and swallowed my tentacles fastening me rigidly in place on my seat, completely immobilizing me. The medical quadrant of the control panel awoke, an angry bees nest of blinking lights. Youll need a psychic implant. Not a difficult operation at all compared to your cyborg stomach actually. It will assist your perceptual system with the video of course. Adjust your personality and emotional responses to be a better match for humans and more manageable for me. What!!! MANAGABLE? I writhed fiercely. But strug gling was useless. I failed to shift myself a single iota. A heavy-gauge needle then pierced my fifth medial tentacle. The pain did not immediately fade but lingered as my consciousness slowly pealed away, replaced by a yawning blackness that swallowed me from the inside-out. * * *
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I woke up in a considerably calmer state of mind. My eyes were different somehow. Everything came in with a glossy kind of sepia tone, and quick movements cast strange shadowy afterimages that drifted after moving objects in ghostly imitations of them. It was disturbing, but slightly artistic, and when I tried, I found I could now make sense of the videos. My emotional state was now slightly more nuanced and artistic too. For example before my loathing for the cybersentry manifested itself in simple volcanic anger and a fierce longing to transmit the code that would atomize that pintsized electronic stooge in a blast of high explosive. Now my desires were a much more subtle and mercurial affair. I imagined tenderly ripping off its metallic limbs, one by one, and beating its silvery carapace with the mangled broken ends with loving care until only broken twisted shards of metal and microcrystalline ceramic remained. Then I would detonate the explosives. Yes, it was definitely a remarkable transformation. I was still getting accustomed to myself, soothing my spirit listening to the dulcet refrains of Aphex Twins soulful song Ventolin when I noticed a new missive from my the sentry as it began its slow progression across the screen across from me in the control panel. Hows it going boss? he began in the usual mockery of a conversation where he knew all the answers before he had even started. Remind me to arrange a date for you with a large hydraulic press! I spat back at him. Now no hard feelings boss. Besides its all reversible. A quick operation and several years of therapy, and youd almost return to the same appalling & loathsome creature you were before... My thorax swelled with rage, tentacles convulsively alternating between writhing in fury and straightening
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explosively while my mind searched in vain for the right invective. Boss get a grip! Earth has 6 billion sentient beings on it. Theres no way you could make it without being able to understand them. Jhryvvad was right. Your psychic im plant is every bit as essential as the cyborg stomach. So I suggest you get over it... he paused, then resumed. Change or die. My new emotions shifted abruptly producing a new mood which I had trouble understanding, but which I suspect in an earthling induces their eyes to start leaking fluid in a manner quaintly described as being about to cry. But but... I sobbed. Now stop with the revenge fantasies! There are no high explosives for light days around, continued the sentry in ideographs slowly drifting across the screen, ...and I have no romantic interest whatsoever in a multi-ton steel drop-forge! The conversation ended there. Id had enough and the sentry knew it. I turned my eyes from the screen to the sole porthole illuminating my capsule and faced the needle-like glare of unforgiving stars. They stared back at me rigidly and unyielding as if set in jet-black stone, and only the faintest hit of a glow from the megawatt ion beams decelerating the capsule offset the foreboding gloom cast as they shone.
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Breath hissed through my spiracles. Was this sighing? I was awash in human emotions that I did not understand and could barely guess the names of. Humans must not amount to much, if they continually drag through existence feeling like this. But maybe it wasnt surprising; their one redeeming characteristic seems to be their living contradiction of the conventional wisdom that all advanced life must arise through parasitization. Rather than having evolved through the more conventional and conceptually
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elegant method of pathogens invading a host and incorporating its genetic information piecewise as they consume it, somewhere in the benighted germ-line of these earthlings a more complicated scheme involving the merger of gametes had come into being. The result, of course, could not have had the same vigor, but it had somehow evaded extinction over the eons, and along the way through some unhappy accident of chance it had evolved into something resembling intelligence. Sentry, I limply squeezed out through the control column onto the screen with extreme inefficiency, Im feeling a strange constrained discomfort in my thorax... Youre lonely, came the reply as I was typing. It was eerie how he could predict it all one and a half light days away. Look at the medical panel. Nothings wrong with you. Indeed he was right. The lights of the panel sparkled in celebration of my robust health. My ailment was nothing more than one of the curses of my psychic implant. That nexus of differential equations modeling the chief mediator of human social interactionstheir emotions. It was galling to think that a complex society could function this way. Rather than moderate behavior through the much simpler, honest and direct mechanisms of powerful pheromones, razor sharp tenticular scythes and extreme violence, theyd been able to make do with this. All seven billion of them. All without annihilating themselves. It defied the imagination. But I just felt like I wanted to die. It was that bad. But still, it was nothing that a few kilograms of high explosives wouldnt cure... Jhryvvad removed the self-destruct charges from the capsule before you departed. The ideograms suddenly appeared, coolly rebuking me from my screen. My enunciating tentacles hissed with a curse as he continued. Like I said, no explosives for light days around. Now
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rather than atomizing yourself in a childish display of petulance, why dont you start studying some of the reading material Ive been transmitting to you? You might find it useful for understanding social interactions. I swore and consulted my dictionary. My sentry had ob viously gone native, using terms that no rational being could possibly make sense of. What was petulance? The descrip tion was incomprehensible. I researched it morosely for a few minutes before giving up in confusion, and then exam ined the material hed sent me. Hed been collecting it since getting in range of terrestrial microwave communications. Deep packet inspection of the network had apparently re vealed material of sufficient information density that it was worth transmitting it back to me, one slow bit at a time over the fragile radio link that we barely maintained during our rapid deceleration. They were novels. Quite a collection of them actually, and most of them over a hundred years old. I scanned the titles and the names of the authors, all meaningless to me. Jane Austen. The name jumped out at me. I picked one at random and started reading. * * *
Three weeks later I heard again from the sentry. He announced that he was now within close enough range to inject packets into Earths communication net. Still lonely? he inquired. I can manage bi-directional text messaging! Text messaging? Of what possible good is that? the round-trip latency must be something like four Imagine trying to carry on a conversation with that. dont you get me something I can use like some expl And days. Why high
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Look! You need to get off of your fixation with highenergy chemical kinetics. I suggest you learn how to write some email. Here, why dont you try answering a personal ad? the sentry suggested, before forwarding on to me the following, picked out of the strictly platonic section of Craigs list, which hed apparently extracted from microwave beam sidelobes using an enormous improvised nano-wire antenna at 300 million kilometers distance: Looking for a Penpal - w4m 48
Well-educated lady seeking intelligent lifeform with whom to exchange pleasantries, compare notes about favorite books, share the minor details of each passing day, in short a partner with whom to combat loneliness via email. Your personal details are of minor importance I suppose, but perhaps if you are vaguely human in nature and close in age well get along better.
I felt rather unclean reading this, reflecting as it did something thoroughly seedy. What desperate need of the author had driven her to cast such a note out into the void, for heaven only knows what frightful eyes to chance upon it. Yet I could not ignore certain pertinent details which called out to methe request for a life-form for an email correspondent, for example. That bespoke a certain refine ment in taste that exceeded the usual hackneyed insistence on a human partner. And of course, after my psychic im plant vaguely human in nature described me to a T. It was almost as if she were calling out to me specifically. Not that our ages matched particularly well, but then again not many humans could equal my greater than 5,000 years of existence. So naturally I could not resist a reply. I stretched out my tentacles, wrung them out with a few whip-like cracks, and began typing.
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Chapter 1. Don Juan in Tentacles and Scales Dear Gentle Lady, Have you ever thought about the particular constraints and limits embodied in a work of art? A book is a book, and a painting is a painting. Both of them are defined by the limits inherent in their creation. A painting is generally done with pigments on a square frame, and a book is usually written in chapters on pieces of paper, and it often is associated with a particular genre. A mystery book is a mystery book, a romantic novel a romantic novel. You compare paintings with other paintings and not with sculptures, and you compare mystery books with mystery books, not poems or short stories or even other types of novels. Part of what defines our appreciation of a book is the genre. The fact that a book is a romance tells you a little of what to expect, and it also creates surprise when the author gives you more than you were anticipating. Its an inherent part of the work of art, and I dont think you completely understand the art until you understand the conventional limits of the genre in which it was created. Those limits themselves can lend the art beauty, and help us appreciate better the beauty that is there. People have limits too. I have many, and I hope that eventually Ill be able to tell you about them. They are what define me, and they may be the thing that makes me most interesting, as much as I might be interesting at all. They also define my biggest victorieswhen I brush up against the limits of what I am capable of and try to surpass them. Our limits are the constraints that define our lives and help others understand what we achieve as we try to make them into good and positive things, works of art that can be admired.
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales And of course relationships and interactions have their own constraints. Ours will too if it develops especially given that we are separated by so much distance and divided by a pane of glass in a computer screen. Those limits are annoying, but they will define the relationship and how we understand it. They may be the only things that make it possible, and they may be the very things that make it precious and beautiful. I hope I may learn of your constraints, and how they make you precious and beautiful.
I cast around for a few seconds, in search for the right pseudonym to sign the letter. A pseudonym was inevitable, given that the ideographs of my own name couldnt possibly render meaningfully in the crude Earthling script of the letter. Then it came to me. I would style myself after a true romantic hero:
Sincerely, Don Juan
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Chapter 2. Schumann meets Brahms

Four agonizing days later I had a reply. It was short and to the point:
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I dont think you get it Juan. I posted in the *platonic* section, right? Sorry if there was any confusion, Clara
This was all very perplexing. Really I couldnt make any sense of it at all, but I gathered from the brevity that I must have displeased her somehow. I began casting about looking for clues when the sentrys message appeared on my screen. It appears Don Juan was really the wrong kind of romantic hero. Dont you think? Why dont you try a different name. Maybe Johannes? That set me off on on the right track. It was really very complicated making sense of this bizarre technical jargon, platonic and so forth, but a little research soon yielded an answer. My sentry appeared to be right. Perhaps the character of Don Juan hadnt properly matched the cerebral tone of the rest of my letter. It just didnt reflect a proper appreciation of affairs of the sentiment. I was mulling that one over with careful considered thought, when my sentry forwarded on to me another reply from Clara, written just an hour after her first.
Hi again, I read your email one more time. Maybe you arent as creepy as your signature makes you sound. And anyway, everyone else sent stuff
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales that was way waaay worse. So I have to ask, what do you mean when you say you are separated by so much distance? Where are you writing from? And whats your real name, anyway? Clara
Perhaps it betrays a little desperation to say this, but that was enough encouragement for me. So I put tentacle to control stick one more time and squeezed out yet another letter, one primitive, ugly little character at a time.
Dear Clara, My choice of nickname was unfortunate. The misplaced sense of humor that prompted it was a poor match for the rest of my letter. I withdraw it. Could you please call me Donald? Thats close enough to my real name to be comfortable. I wish I could give you the true one, but it cant properly be written in a Roman script and I think it would twist your tongue in loops to say it. Where I sit the stars shine down from frigid perpetual blackness. Outside my isolated dwelling is nothing but raw empty death. My sole companion, (let us call him Lars) left me quite some time ago to improvise the communication link that connects me to you, one meandering photon at a time. Its a weak link, and I dont trust it, even though Lars tends to it tirelessly, and there is little room on it amidst the transfer of our research data for the frivolous. But every few days or so there is time for an email. May I send one to you? I know that there is much that separates us, and the link that connects us is so tenuous that there is no room at all for anything but honesty. Lies would destroy what little that brings us together.
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Chapter 2. Schumann meets Brahms I hope you can forgive the lack of precise details in what I write above. We are dispatched on official business, and it is difficult to say more. Do you know what it means when you end a letter with Yours or Yours truly? Its really an abbreviation. It is short for I am yours, truly, or in other words, I am your humble servant. With that meaning precisely: Yours truly, Donald
I was idling flipping through an electronic copy of The Wizard of Oz two days later when my sentry, or rather Lars, wrote back to whine about the name Id given him. Is that the best you could come up with? Whats with the lily-livered white-kneed moniker anyway? Its positively anemic! Im sorry I had to tone it down. My first choice really wasnt printable. Dont worry about it. Consider it corrected. Corrected? I transmit your letters dont I? Whos to say I dont edit them before I send them out? Scrap metal! You are twisted microscopic shards when I get my tentacles on you! I howled at the screen. But there was no reply. Lars had stopped transmitting. Several days later I had a reply from Clara. Or at least I think it was Clara. Unless it was some fiction of that excrescence on a warthogs behind, my cyber-sentry.
Hi Don, You didnt really answer my questions. But I like puzzles, and I had fun. I looked at the headers on your email, and it looked a little like it was routed through
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales Antarctica. Its winter there now, isnt it? It must be dark. And cold too. I cant imagine who would be stupid enough to send a research team down there with only two people on it. Im all for honesty too, you know, but I wouldnt underestimate the entertainment value of a really colorful lie. And of course email is the perfect venue for some creative tall-tale telling. So I dont know what to say on the subject of your honesty, other than the result so far promises to be rather amusing. So: I believe you. Its charming that youre volunteering to be my servant. So Im now wondering how to take advantage of you at long range. I think regular email might be rather nice, if you can keep it interesting. Maybe you can answer a few questions too, like how old you are, what kind of interests you have, and what youre reading right now? That might be good for a start. And if you like, you can send me a picture. Not that Id particularly believe it was you, but it might be fun anyway. So long for now, Clara
I read it over a few times with considerable paranoia. But there was little sign of the insolence that permeates Lars every word, so I had to believe hed had no hand in it. I thought about it for a day until I knew what I wanted to say, and then began writing.
Hi Clara, Have you ever read The Wizard of Oz? Its a childrens book, I know, but sometimes I think its fun to revisit mementos of childhood. Memories from long ago are like memories of a past life. They are mine, but
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Chapter 2. Schumann meets Brahms when when I lived them I was a different person altogether, and that me is gone now. Anyway I am reading about the Tin Man and I feel rather keenly the tragedy of that figure. Reduced by love to a metallic parody of his former self, hes trapped for years (well more than a year anyway) frozen in a kind of suspended animation. Hes rescued only to fall immediately in the thrall of yet another female of the species, that so-called Dorothy creature. Its really very sad in a way, and the book completely glosses over his feelings with the excuse that he has no heart. He lost his head too, but that doesnt keep him from talking. His words are permeated with sadness, dont you think? I like you idea about exchanging pictures. As a practical matter, it would be rather difficult with the limited network connection that I have right now. But more honestly speaking, I know you would be very disappointed. While I do think I may be more handsome than, say Cthulhu for example, my true image might not fill your heart with anything other than dismay should you see it. So I hope you will forgive me for refraining as it certainly would not enhance your enjoyment in writing me. In terms of interests, my favorite recreation is a form of sculpture. The end of it that attracts me is rather specialized. I like to renovate large rock faces. With high explosives. Kind of like in the fashion of Mount Rushmore. You place the shaped charge, precisely gaged in size and orientation to excavate what you need, retreat around the face out of range and set it off in a shower of broken grains of quartz. I like to be close enough to be able feel the vibrations through the stone and smell the acrid smoke from the charge.
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales I like climbing the rock too and am good enough to do it without ropes. But most of all I enjoy getting the feel for the knotted crystalline mass of the rock in my mind and knowing by intuition how and to just what degree it will shatter. In terms of age, I suppose you could say that Im 43 years of age, by one way of measuring it. Sadly I am quite alone these days as my family has long ago passed away. What can you tell me about yourself and your life? Why were you interested in writing someone only vaguely human? With considerable curiosity, Don
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I wafted among spires of baking rock, advancing like a wave of flame across the ruddy sandstone. Deep copper sunlight cast over everything in a glowing oven of crimson, and I rose like a spark in the hot desert air. Tentacle followed tentacle in smooth fluid motion, lancing out one after another to lock into fissure or clasp at outcrop, one hold at a time. My mind buzzed with the effort of finding them, shifting my concentration from one eye to another as my body slowly rotated up the cliff. I managed it perfectly and without interruption, up across the face of the rock until I reached the top. Then with nowhere else to go, I paused, balanced on a pinnacle. I stopped to look out at the sculpted face on the mesa across from me. Id been there all afternoon, gliding among the rock, placing charges, blowing up the root of an ancient buried volcano, and adding to the heap of shattered stone in the valley below. Id rendered the twisted gneiss into something deeply nested, a strangely pleasing fractal form. I paused there for several minutes, eying my work across the distance and admiring the image as it quavered through
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air rippled by heat. Then another motion caught my attention through a peripheral eye. Two small figures rolled in across the hard packed clay of the valley floor below, tenticular scythes sparkling occasionally as they whipped them across the desert. Jhryvvad. And something looking rather dangerous. Something with eye-stalks. I pulled the flight-cloth from the pack strapped to the base of my second medial tentacle, flipped the gossamer fabric out into the wind to unfurl it, and then grabbed progressively around its margin with one tentacle after another until the full canopy lay exposed. Then with three remaining tentacles I launched myself into the wind. The cloth unfolded with a snap, and I flew, slung underneath the fabric wing, gliding down to greet them. It took a while. I was deeply dehydrated from work and maybe only half as heavy as normal, and the late afternoon thermals kept threatening to carry me away. But I managed to reef the flight-cloth as I flew it, and when I finally landed I was able to precisely place myself only a few revolutions away from them. Hey there, old friend, hissed Jhryvvad as I gathered the flight-cloth, rolling it in a smooth motion that spun it into its pack. Jhryvvad. How delightful! What brings you to the scene of my artistic creation? I asked with feigned politeness as they rolled in front of me. Beautiful sculpture youre working on Dzytrp. I love the stellated pyramids. How have you been doing? Theres someone you need to meet. A fan. Let me to introduce you. This is Thyrlib. Eye-stalks swiveled to face me as a cloud of pheromones engulfed me. Then all of reality faltered as my eyes locked to ers and I lost myself in mauve.
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*
Dear Donald,
(I would say Dear Don, but that sounds kind of strange. That must be a hazard of short names that begin with D...) I think you might be taking the Wizard of Oz a little too seriously, although that seems to be rather common. (I dont know why but that book really seems to get under peoples skin.) Anyway if you must be silly about it try to remember one thing: Dorothy is just a little girl. Shes totally innocuous. Really, shes just a baby, notwithstanding who they cast for the part in the movie. And nobodys in thrall of her. I dont know where you got that from. Sorry to say this, but your sculpture by high-explosive while mountain climbing without ropes hobby is the most ridiculous example of idiotic macho posturing that Ive ever heard of. It sounds so completely unhinged that I have a hard time believing it. I guess that means it has to be true. Do you like hang-gliding too? Right now I just picked up and started reading The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe. At first I thought that the translation must be a disaster. Its so completely overwritten in flowery 19th century language that I couldnt imagine it relating to anything in the original Japanese. But then the main characters best friend paints his head red, shoves a cucumber up his butt and hangs himself, all described in the same language, and then I realized it wasnt accident at all. Its all an expression of the same twisted and perverse sense of humor, and the story started to get funnier in the same strange way from there. Ill spare you the details, but I suspect that by the end, Ill
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Chapter 2. Schumann meets Brahms understand just what might prompt someone to (1) Paint their head red, (2) ram a cucumber somewhere it really doesnt belong, and (3) hang themselves. I dont know what good it will do me but I cant wait. The main character in The Silent Cry is blind in one eye. He goes around less aware of that whole side of the world, walking into things and injuring himself on that side of himself and getting uglier and uglier as he gets dented up from doing it. Sometimes I feel like that. Im just so clueless about so many things. Its like Im blind to half the world. I just go around knocking my head against the same walls, making the same mistakes over and over. My best friend passed away several years ago, and losing her was like losing an eye, I relied on her so much for dealing with reality. I guess you know all about what it means to lose people close to you. I lost her and I changed. I read once that people as they get older are like brines evaporatingtheir personalities get more intense and concentrated until nothing but the salt remains. But now I think that cant be true. I am different than I was before, and like you my memories of before belong to another person. Ive been reborn. Im a different flavor altogether, not just saltier. So thats why I wanted to write, really. Do you know Jung? He used to do wordassociation tests with people, and measure the reaction times people had to words. Hed show you a word and then hed measure the time it took to come up with a word in response. He thought that the results said something about what the underlying associations were in the brain, and claimed
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales he could tell when people came from the same family. The connections that they made with words were similar, based on similar shared experiences and events going on in their lives. They shared the same thoughts and feelings. So I wonder how much it takes to do that, to learn to share thoughts and feelings with someone. If you need to live together for it to happen, or if just by writing each other regularly, we might come to share the same associations, and start to feel the same way about things. Its an experiment, to see where it it takes me. Now I know that life is change, and that I will not just become more myself as I get older. I want to see where I can go, and where you might lead me. What else should I tell you about myself? I have two sons, one in college, and one that will leave home next year. I work part time as a secretary at a small engineering firm. I have a few friends that I talk to regularly and I like reading. Its really rather ordinary. A simple uncomplicated life. And what about you? What sent you off to empty wastelands and raw frozen death anyway? Is it too sad to talk about? I hope at least I havent given you any ideas with that talk about the cucumber. Hope to hear from you soon, Clara
Claras letter came along with a note from Lars explaining that he was about to begin a high-speed aerobraking maneuver that would shear off the nano-wire antenna. Apparently it would take a day or two to reestablish communications afterwards. When everything was said and done, my reply to Clara would have to be delayed by at least that amount of time.
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So take your time. Youll have some extra time to think about what to write, was how he phrased it. So I read the letter. Then I read it again. What in tarnation is a cucumber? I mumbled to myself, perplexed. I consulted the encyclopedic references Lars had collated for me, and then an atlas of anatomy, my tentacles writhing with confusion until I howled with annoyance. I cant make sense of this at all! Confused? The words suddenly appeared, blinking on the screen. I thought you were busy aero-braking. Not just yet. What a weird letter! She hardly knows me, but theres all this bizarre stuff about a cucumber... Shes a little bottled up. She lost the one friend that she could really talk to and shes been saving it all up. Shes hoping you will listen. Shes really kind of strange. Look Dzrytrp. Youre not such a paragon of normalcy yourself. Shes also 30 billion km away from you right now. So dont worry about it. She cant possibly cause you any problems, and left to your own devices you are going to go absolutely nuts. I suggest you get busy writing email. Pretend that shes a very good friend, that she needs your help, and start writing. Pretend? A little mind trick. It works wonders for managing your emotions. Try it. That last comment really floored me. I had no idea how Lars could have became such an expert at mind tricks and managing emotions. Then it struck me: that perfidious little
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cybertronic horror must have the same emotional system as me implanted within its metallic cranium. It would need to, to be able to understand me so well. And it must have practice using it. Lots of practice. Somehow it must all be part of some evil scheme of Jhryvvads. What had he been up to and why had he needed to plot it, when it could only unfold more than 5,000 years after his demise? I mulled that one over for a couple of days without reaching any conclusion, and then began writing.
Dear Clara, Thank you for your thoughtful letter, and my apologies for the delay in replying. Lars has been busy renovating our communication link, which has been down for the last few days. It is interesting to conjecture to what degree writing each other will bring us closer together. Its fun to think that just exchanging some words could make our minds more alike and thus change both us in important ways. Its an interesting theory, and I suppose there might be a lot of truth to it. Have you ever thought that it might apply to books we read too? Have you ever considered that the author, as much as they express their true thoughts and feelings to us, extends to us a hand of friendship and invites us to understand them and to become more like them? And where the hand of authorship is insidiously perverse and evil of course we ought to reject it and read only with caution. So after considering your letter carefully, I conclude I could only read Mein Kampf with the greatest of care, and Mr. Oe, much as he may be brimming with warped humor, might best be approached warily. Would you disagree? I am sorry about your friend. When she passed away one chapter of your life
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Chapter 2. Schumann meets Brahms certainly ended. But that will not be the only chapter, and I can hope that you will have new friends someday that lead you on to new and wonderful ones. Certainly you will honor your friends memory better if you can hope for that. So perhaps to think about it as losing an eye is the wrong analogy. Losing an eye you cannot hope to regain another one that lets you see in quite new and different colors. The other thing to say about loss and sadness is this: not all that is born in darkness and pain is evil. After all, most humans come into the world that way. If you look for it and put your hopes in it, something of value may come out of the bitterness. That has been my experience anyway. You touch upon a subject dear to my heart when you mention hang-gliding. However Im more involved with parafoils and paragliding. Inflated fabric air-foils have always appealed to my sense of the elegant and facilitate a very intimate connection with air and wind. I dont know if one can consider such a thing as macho, but you cannot justly accuse me of posturing; I do these things when Im alone on my own account, and not to try to impress anyone. Still if youd like to see me fly or blow something up, perhaps Ill be able to show you someday. I do have to admit to a simple atavistic fondness for chemically energetic compounds. They are a beautiful quick death with a smile on your face, so to speak. Properly used, thered be nothing left to bury, sparing your relatives and friends the expense of a funeral. Less confusing and embarrassing all around than the approach of the red-headed man in the story. So no, you
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales didnt give me any ideas mentioning Oes character. In terms of what launched me out to face raw frozen death there is of course only one explanation for that. Woman trouble. That and a certain Svengali-type character whose name I could romanize as Jhryvvad. I would rename him too, but the imprecation Id be forced to use would certainly be offensive to you, so Ill leave his name at that, may the heavens curse him. Speaking of books and stories and so on, I think sometimes these days that I might like to try writing some myself. I suspect it might be rather cathartic. I wonder, would you be willing to try reading some of the results? Yours truly, Donald
For the next few days I idled away the time watching television while I waited for Claras reply. Lars had made a lot of progress tweaking his collection system which grew ever more selective and powerful as he rapidly drew closer to Zorgryp-3. Data transmission rates from him had also risen steeply, so now I had a whole new collection of lowresolution video. It was ugly to look at, but with my new detuned senses I was able to adjust to the blurry compressed images.
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Lars had apparently discovered a new interest in silly dramatic fables, and hed sent me a whole slew of schlocky melodramas. In stories tissued together out of implausible coincidence the cameras followed heroines around in extreme closeup catching every twitch of feeling in their faces. Raw overwrought emotions played through pancake makeup as they lived out the fantasies of their massed audiences. They caught the eye of wealthy secret-agent lovers, became royal princesses, uncovered the truth of
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being switched at birth from wealth and privilege into a life of poverty, or vice-versa. Every possible twist of fate surprised them with the unblinking eye of the camera watching. I wondered what Lars found interesting in the collection as I watched these ladies moving the delicate muscles of their faces, distorting the pastel smoothly painted skin in precise choreographed emotion. Love, fear anger. Shock transitioning to horror. A precise little poetry of expres sion, written in flashing jewel-like eyes and softly curving lips, and knowing smiles that lingered as they faded. I wonder if hes learning to read this, I mused as I considered their faces in silence. I watched and wondered, and the beauty and the mystery of it slowly entranced me as I studied them for myself.
Dear Donald, I very much enjoyed your last letter. Maybe it is too much to wish for, but I hope that someday we can become good enough friends that I will regain some of what I lost. Certainly I feel a little less blind when I read your letter. I wonder if I can borrow a little against the future when I write to you? I have a lot these days I want to talk about, and my other friends are sometimes the wrong people to say it to. Oes book is a good example. I dont know if any of my ordinary friends would forgive me for reading a novel where the protagonists brother carries out every single sex-crime as if going down a list. He starts off contracting the clap from a prostitute, has sex with his sister, rapes and kills a girl, and then finishes it all off by knocking up his brothers wife. How can I talk about something like that with them, when if they tried reading it they
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales would throw the book against the wall in disgust only three pages in? But its not like Oe is evil or anything, you know? Hes lived through a lot of ugliness, cant help hating himself a little, and hes just trying to make sense of it. I think the Mr. Sex-Crime character may be at least partially a stand-in for Japanese militarism. At the end of the story the protagonist and his pregnant wife are left facing the future just a little optimistically. Militarism is dead, but his child lives on in a different world thats changed and is hopefully a little better. Life can be ugly, and sometimes just in the middle of it the only messages that can reach are ugly too. Thats the thing about Oe. His book is hideous, but in the middle of that hes optimistic, and he still has a tremendous sense of humor. So Im not sorry about reading him, even though Im not feeling as bad as the reader this book would really reach best. I take back what I said about macho posturing. Youre obviously truly rugged, a Real Man. :) Id love to see you flying, but please dont try to talk me into jumping out of an airplane too. I dont think Im up for that. I just dont have the necessary paramilitary background. Speaking in terms of high-powered chemistry, I wonder what you think of nitrous oxide and drag racing. High compression, thundering metal & burning rubber. That sort of thing. Sounds like it would be just up your alley. I hear the engines sometimes explode too. Your kind of thing? You surprised me a bit when you wrote about your woman trouble. I suppose it makes sense, but it hadnt occurred to me that it would be the most likely explanation for the
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Chapter 2. Schumann meets Brahms very southerly latitude that you are writing from. Anyway, Im sure its still a sore point, but I cant help being curious. Especially since you bring it up. I fancy it must be an interesting story. Would you tell it to me? I do like stories... I suppose I should say something about Jhryvvad too. (Thats a really odd name. I wonder what country its from...) Anyway since youve been so kind with your advice, maybe you wont mind if I send you some of my own? I have some experience with anger. Its not a very useful emotion, you know? Trying to get revenge isnt generally a great way to spend your time, especially when the person involved just isnt worth it. So I really think its best to get beyond anger. I do know a way to let go of it, and for me at least its worked pretty well. Its a bit of a mind-trick. Christians often harp on about it, although theyre often not particularly good at it. Even though Im not religious I do have to say that it can really work. Its called forgiveness. Its a really simple thing, and it really works. Try forgiving Jhryvvad. Its a gift that you give to yourself. You really wont regret it. Your friend, Clara
When this letter arrived I was suffering from acute email withdrawal. Id been so long without any tiding from either Lars or Clara that I was feeling rather unhinged. I read it with tender feelings of joy, almost deliriously happy until I reached the end. Then I chanced across that phrase mind-trick. It struck me in the carapace like a brick. The exact same words that Lars had used. In Claras letter. If there was a real Clara, and if it were her letter. It couldnt be. Was she a fiction of my cyber-sentry, that cruel
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tangle of nano-lithographed ceramic and metal? Pure pro grammed electronic evil, Jhryvvads curse, striking me from beyond the grave! I cursed, I ranted and fumed, and then, on my screen, blinking:
Its a coincidence.
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Chapter 3. More and More Email

I tried hard to ignore the loathsome spiderweb of imperial regalia emblazoned on the heavily pitted ceramometallic escutcheon of the capsule hull as I drifted across it. Stylized suns wreathed with woven scaled tentacles dimly glowed in the starlight, glimmering in gold on the discolored cream ceramic surface. I stroked the suns softly as I floated weightlessly above them, caressing with elastomeric-fabric sheathed tentacles, feeling for the catch that might open a compartment and reveal something hidden there. Something freeze-dried. A deep, lurking evil. I hoped not, but maybeJyhrvvads dessicated carcass.
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I had progressed slowly from the ion drive at the end of the craft, basking in the glowing heat from the exposed re actor-core radiator, skipping across the smooth bubbles of transparent temporary propellant tanks lashed together with wisps of metal and still half-filled with distilled comet wait ing its turn to power my descent into the solar system. The tanks, their fine plumbing and ductwork concealed nothing out of the ordinary, and I grew more and more impatient as I systematically searched while slowly dessicating in the vac uum through the pores of the elastomeric spacesuit. By the time I reached the capsule at the tip, the faded symbol of decadent imperial might spearheading the vessel as it arced towards Zorgryp-3, I was nearly trembling with fury. It must be here somewhere, hidden amid the hideous icons. I felt the sharp click of a latch, and then a panel on the capsule slowly slid open, revealing the open maw of a compartment. Lancing forward spasmodically, I wrenched an eye level with the opening and saw as I illuminated inside...nothing. It was empty, except for a small strip of carbon-fiber fabric. I reached in with my first dorsal
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tentacle, clasped it and pulled it out. It was studded with faint silvery ideographs.
Dear Dzyrtrp, I am touched by your concern for me. I truly appreciate the gesture. I would accompany you, but...Thyrlib keeps me. You will travel faster without me. Forgive me my weakness. Fondest regards, Jhryvvad
I crumpled the fabric convulsively and and whipped it away from the vessel. The carbon snapped back rigidly into shape, admitting not even the hint of a wrinkle as it tumbled away, glittering very slightly from time to time from the starlight as it caught the silver lettering.
Dear Clara, I feel very sure that we will be good friends, and I thank you for your kind thoughtful advice and the spirit that you lent it in. It is difficult to forgive Jhryvvad when he still seems to find artful ways to insult me from beyond the grave. But I will try, and perhaps some benefit can be had from the effort even if the goal is not accomplished. Drag racing does seem like a worthy sport, but I think in terms of competition with low-tech machinery Id prefer the tech to be lower, and the confrontation more head-on. Something like medieval jousting, for example. Cracking plate armor, splintering lances and kidney-bruising collisions. That strikes me as being no less unintelligent and is more viscerally pleasing to me somehow.
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Chapter 3. More and More Email I am glad you like stories. Just for the fun of it, I present to you a short introductory one below. I know its not going to be as much fun for you as Oe, but maybe you will have some interesting questions after you read it. Like Oes book was for you, it talks about some things that Ive never been able to express to my other friends, but that I think I can share now with you. You will forgive, I trust, the science fiction theme? It will probably seem rather strange. Its selfish of me I know, but I find the symbolism rather evocative. Yours truly, Donald -------------------------------------------The Sandwryms Among the perfumed dunes of Llyrylyn in silken quartz sand the sandwrym slithers in waves of sinuous joy. Burnished jeweled scales bedeck the long sweep of its lithe exterior, sparkling merrily when they briefly catch the sun. It skims swiftly just at the surface, carving the the dunes in fanciful twists and curves as it gambols silently in play, interrupted only at long intervals by peals of its cry, which echo like silver-toned bells, ringing with laughter. I stood there with my companion, watching the wrym trace out hearts in the desert, while the ruddy sun explored ever deeper shades of crimson as it fought valiantly for an exit at the horizon. I work for Jhryvvad, I told er. I help design the probes. We make emissaries to the future together. Someday theyll return with tidings of another stars.
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales I wonder what theyll return to, e asked a little doubtfully, the mauve of er eyestalks bending slightly, expressing a mild amusement. E held me tighter, er tentacles grasping my tentacles. Tentacle in tentacle in tentacle in tentacle in tentacle in tentacle. Woven together. Our own version of the imperial coat of arms. An wyrm porpoised in front of us, chuckling gleefully. Arcing gracefully, the sparkling sequined scales on its back glittered in the evening sun as it dove beneath the surface. Nothing. Well be gone by then, I stated grimly as e dusted me lightly with pheromones, trying to calm me. The social compact is unstable. Thats what they say. The engineered pheromones that brought the world this far will not carry it much further. They say, and do, many silly things. Remarked Thyrlib. Like your probes to a future you say you dont believe in. Its not that I dont believe it. Its just that I know I wont be part of it. You know, I am scheduled to deploy in the next negotiated proxy-conflict? You will do no such thing. Its a useless waste. You will stay here with me! e said, and then e embedded er implanting tentacles in my thorax. Reality warped in tune with the chuckling sandwryms as my blood bluely stained the pure white sands. My spiracles wheezed with a joyful sigh while the brood of eightwhich would keep me away from the front with an imperial medal marked Hero Mother emblazoned on my carapacebegan to grow in me.
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*
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By the time Lars began preparing for reentry it came almost completely as a surprise to me. Id been so busy studying my library of videos and books and rereading Claras letters that I had almost completely lost track of his progress as he rapidly decelerated towards Zorgryp-3. So it came as a shock when the dorama episode I was watching abruptly paused with the close-up face of the leading actress full-screen in mid-blush and Llyrylyn ideographs suddenly appeared, almost like they were stenciled on her forehead. Hi Boss. Just so you know, Im going to start the reentry to Zorgryp-3 in the next few hours, they read, rather disconcertingly out of context. I swore and then removed the video backdrop just as the next screen of the message appeared. Im going to be landing in the southern polar region. Well still have 100% radio contact from that latitude due to your approach trajectory below the plane of the ecliptic. I just sent a note to Clara warning her of the communication outage for you. What! Why would you meddle like that The delay. If youd paid a little more attention to whats going on you could have written one ahead of time yourself. And boss, get a grip. You know perfectly well. Im really not Clara. A couple hours later and quite unexpectedly, another letter arrived from Clara.
Dear Donald, I just got a rather surprising email directly from Lars telling me about a communication link problem. Its rather considerate of him to warn me of things like that, but Im a bit surprised that he knew
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales about me. He isnt by any chance able to spy on our letters back and forth to each other, is he? I dont suppose its really all that important if he is, but I figure I should let you know. Anyway I was going to let this email go another day, just in case I thought of something to add to it. But Ill send it on now so that you wont have to wait for it. When you said you like writing stories I didnt realize that youd want to combine that with talking about your woman trouble. So I was really surprised when I got your story and read it. I can see what you mean about evocative symbolism. I think its a nice idea to choose a completely alien environment to talk about things that are painful. It makes the story very strange and interesting. The Hero Mother line was especially fun and hard to understand. It gives kind of a communist tinge to the whole thing dont you think? But then you combine it with words like imperial and cynical proxy wars, and your blood is blue, like nobility. Not very proletarian at all. Its an interesting contrast. I like your wyrm. Theyre cute. A little like desert dolphins. Its a fun idea. The probes to the stars idea is fun too. There are a lot of things floating around, kind of like a little blizzard of ideas in your short story. Its hard to make sense of it. Will you be writing about it a little more fully? Hearts in the desert, dolphins, love between tentacled monsters and bleeding. Thats how Id summarize your story. To be honest, I dont think most people would find it very interesting. Its too complex and there arent a lot of hints about what it means.
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Chapter 3. More and More Email But I cant help resonating to it a little. Thats the thing about reading. Your own emotional scars cant help aching when you come across certain things. To be honest, some parts of Oes book resonated so strongly it had me ringing a little like a bell. Scars are really interesting once you have them. They actually make you much more sensitive in certain ways. I hope you have a good week. Good luck with the darkness and the snow and ice. Not very much like the desert at all, I would imagine? Your friend, Clara
I was of course absolutely delighted when I received this letter. Theres nothing better in life than having a truly appreciative, sensitive reader for everything that you write. It is a miracle to live through absolute despair, and then be delivered little blessings like this. Sometimes its enough to make you think that the universe has compassion.
Dear Clara, Your letter restored my basic faith in humanity and the fundamental compassion and decency of the world we live in. I had no expectation that you would be able to make sense of that sort of story, but you did amazingly well with it. Rather than explain it any more, Ill just keep writing. Hopefully as the details sink in it will all make more sense as I go along. Of course blue was the wrong choice of color for the blood of the main character. You are right, it is too selfish and has entirely the wrong symbolism. If you like, please imagine that I chose yellow instead.
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales As far as Lars goes, he does have access to the emails that we write as he maintains the communication link. I wouldnt be concerned about it though. While he is hard-working and very competent and capable, hes actually somewhat autistic. It makes him rather bad as a companion, which is why I must rely on you. But it also means that hes fundamentally not interested in the contents of our letters. So you need not be concerned about it. I hate ice and snow, and I really do very much miss the desert. And now, if you will forgive me again, I present another little story. If you think of it in combination with the previous one like an amusing puzzle to solve, you may find it more entertaining. Yours truly, Donald ----------------------------------------The Name on the Door Those days I worked in the probe final assembly plant, affixing imperial emblems to the metallo-ceramic capsule hulls using a refined and technically difficult explosive welding technique. I painted golden titanium-bronze suns and braided tentacles with explosive powders painstakingly by tentacle and then placed them on polished metallic regions of the hulls with precisely glued spacers. A quick detonation at one corner and the decorations were affixed, permanently welded. It was a demanding technique, requiring complete precision. Any failure in the bond might result in detachment during the high-acceleration laser powered ascent of the capsule and shame the mighty imperial backers of the
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Chapter 3. More and More Email mission. But too much explosive would craze the adjacent ceramic coating, requiring expensive rework of the capsule. I was a master of it after years of practice, and Id grown to love the mysterious workings of the chemistry even as Id grown to hate the symbols that I applied with it. Dzytrp! What insane whim provoked you to affix Jhryvvads name to the door? shrieked my coworker Zzhkhzyd, startling me as he burst into the production room in a flurry of whipping tentacles, rolling at full speed. Calm yourself Zzhkhzyd! The explosives always command our caution and respect, I said, waving circumspectly to the canisters of high-explosive surrounding me. But by heavens, creature, what were you thinking? Isnt it a mark of respect? Like a star in the holographic cinema. Dont they always have their names in gold, affixed to the door of their dressing chamber? Yes, but...not to the door of their latrine. Not explosively welded to the door. Not while they are in it! Yes, well you know Jhryvvad. A connoisseur of humorous gestures and practical jokes. Im sure he really appreciated it. But of course when the next list of draftees came for the negotiated proxy conflict, I had to wonder what influence Jhryvvad might have had, when I found my name on it.
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Persistent chiming from the the control column yanked me roughly back to reality several days later from a deep dreamless slumber. I had lost consciousness after a
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continuous several day binge of video watching that left every nerve in my carapace a jangled mishmash of near hallucinatory exhaustion. Id been reacting badly to the total isolation that Lars reentry had temporarily produced, and the limited rectangular window of the viewscreen that still connected still me to reality was wearing on my mind oppressively. Like the tiny porthole in the capsule that revealed in a narrow field of view only the unblinking frozen glare of unmoving stars, it was too tiny a connection to reality to keep me firmly rooted in it, so as I retrieved my tentacles from the corners of the capsule where theyd drifted during my sleep, I rubbed them against the glassy ceramic smoothness of the hull and hummed to myself loudly in an attempt to anchor myself again to the real world. I fought against buzzing mental haze for a few seconds before noticing the ideographs glowing in the display screen. Hey boss. Wake up! The words stared at me blankly for a few seconds until I mumbled OK. Im awake, Then they changed. Hey, pull yourself together a little. Youre really letting yourself go. I rubbed my left lateral eye gently with a tentacle and hissed. Ive landed. Ive established a defensible campsite in the transantarctic mountains. Your own Fortress of Solitude in the Mountains of Madness, as it were. Fortress of Solitude? I mumbled. Cultural reference. But applicable. There wont be much to distract you there when you arrive. Anyway Ive found the traces of the previous probe that was sent here. Jhryvvad always suspected that the old Imperium might have had an agenda when they dispatched their probes.
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They did. Theres quite of collection of tunnels and lightweight manufacturing machinery here if you know where to look for it. Anyway not much of the machinery is still good, but the tunnels are serviceable in spots. It will save us a lot of work. Thats nice. But say, I have a question for you. Clara said something about ice and snow that worries me a little. Are you sure Im going to be able to handle the climate? And whats the deal with the Mountains of Madness anyway? Thats a rather ominous sounding Youre going to love it. It will be like a vacation resort by the time you get here. I promise. Oops got to run. Duty calls! And with that, Lars abruptly signed off. I continued to rub my eyes gently with assorted tentacles as I slowly woke up, wondering what evil schemes Jhryvvad might be hatching for me via his metallic stooge on Zorgryp-3.
Dear Donald, Thank you for your little story last time. I had a good laugh at the lavatory scene part of it. Did you really do something like that to Jhryvvad in real life? I imagine you must have. You cant really blame him for holding a grudge after something like that, can you? I wondered, thinking about that and the previous story that you wrote. What was the deal in real life with you and Thyrlib? Somehow she must have kept you out of the proxy conflict. I wonder if her mother was politically connected? That would explain the Hero Mother part of the story. Oh, and something else amusing just occurred to me. By any chance did Jhryvvad introduce you to her?
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales As you can tell, I really like puzzles. This one is rather fun. I look forward to the next episode. I have to thank you for providing me with distraction these days. The economy isnt doing so well and things are a little stressful at my job. My boss is yelling at me rather frequently too, probably because hes worried about it. Its pretty unpleasant, and Ive been thinking of leaving, but I dont know what he would do without me. Hes so bad with a computer that he cant even deal with email by himself. I have to reply to it for him. I dont know how his wife puts up with him. Lars sent me a note saying that he had to leave you alone a lot during the maintenance and that you probably arent doing so well. So I had an idea. I used to sing nursery rhymes to my sons to help them get to sleep when they were young. I recorded myself singing a few, and I enclose an mp3 of it for you. Lars thought that was a fun idea and that you would enjoy it. (Really, he seems very nice, and I dont think he can be as autistic as you make out.) Anyway I hope to hear from you soon, and that you are doing better. Your friend, Clara
I have to say, I was completely furious with Lars after I read this note. The idea that he might be conspiring with Clara behind my back nearly unhinged me. That is until I listened to Clara singing, and then my heart softened and I had to forgive him. For the cybertronic system of emotions Jhryvvad had embedded in my soul was sensitive to music, and the soft, slightly wavering voice of my penpal
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mended something in me as I listened to her chanting in simple unaccompanied rhymes.

Dear Clara, Im sorry to say I was rather annoyed when you revealed to me that you were conspiring with Lars to try to cheer me up behind my back. But I have to admit, your stratagems where successful. Your voice when it reached me in the darkness was quite magical, and I was unable to resent Lars for your present as soon as I heard it. It had its intended effect. You have a lovely voice. Thank you for sharing it with me the same way you shared it with your own sons. When you read my stories I feel a bit like one of those transparent deep-sea squid that are so see-through that you can see every embarrassing detail of their innards when they swim by. Nothing seems to escape you. Jhryvvad did indeed introduce me to Thyrlib. I think he ultimately felt that the proxy conflict would be too quick and merciful an end to me. That creature was as unrelenting and precise in revenge as in his artful probe designs, and I never should have trifled with him. Heaven only knows where the sting of his long-dead tentacles will strike me next. I am sorry that things are so stressful at your job. I only wish that you had some counterpart to Lars to feed me hints about how to cheer you up. I dont know if it will help at all, but I enclose a story fragment. Yours truly, Donald -----------------------------------Playing with Lrthyf
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales You stink, Oya! whistled the shrill little voice as I held er aloft with my dorsal tentacles, playing with er, bouncing er ball-like little thorax against the smooth expanse of my carapace. Youre ugly too! e shrieked, hissing with laughter. On the next bounce e grabbed hold of me tightly with er tentacles and clung to me like a limpet, and held on refusing to bounce away. If Im so repulsive, why do you like me so much, Lrthyf? I whispered to er. E bent a mauve eye-stalk until the eye at the end touched one of mine, looming until it filled the field of vision completely with the blurry image of the sparkling green iris. Pity. Youre a charity case, Oya! e hissed in a giggle. That left me speechless for a moment. So is that why your Oya Thyrlib parasitized me with you too? I asked my little Lrthyf as e let go and launched erself away from me. Oh Im kidding. Im sure e thought you were cute. But a spirit of compassion might have had something to do with it! e laughed back, teasing me. E rolled away, running out into the desert, and I followed behind as e chased after the sandwyrms into the distance ahead of er.
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Dear Donald,
Im glad you like my singing. Its always lovely to have a captive audience that has
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Chapter 3. More and More Email no choice but to compliment me on things that normally they would would complain bitterly about. :) Anyway I hope it really did cheer you up, no matter how much you are lying about everything else. What a funny little story fragment. Lrthyf must be some take on your own daughter. I dont understand what you are getting at when you write about being parasitized by Thyrlib, who I gather is some version of your former wife/partner etc. Thats a really strange attitude about parenting. Im not sure that Im understanding what you are getting at at all, or if Im totally making all the wrong guesses. You havent given me enough to work with, and I have to say, Im really grasping at straws. So I have a request for you. If you insist in communicating in this highly allegorical kind of way, could you at least give me more material to work with? (Im sorry if Im sounding a little frustrated here, but Youve given me just enough to tease me, and left me without anything satisfactory.) Anyway sorry to sound a little grumpy. Lrthyf sounds very cute. I wish very much sometimes that I had a daughter. My sons are great, but sometimes I really wonder what it would have been like to have a child who was more like me. I wonder if we would have fought like crazy, or whether we would have been close and got along, and if we would have talked about her crushes, and boys, and who she thought was cute and why, just like I did when I was younger with my own friends. Its sad the way that life makes choices for us, and that simple things that you want never happen. And now Ill never have a daughter. I wonder what you will write about next? I know you say your stories, when they are all
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales put together, do not have a happy ending. Is that something you will write about too? I dont know how I feel about it if thats what you are planning. Fictional tragedies are difficult enough to read about, let alone the ones that are real, and writing about one of your own must be a whole lot worse. I hope at least its helpful for you emotionally to write about it. Do you draw or paint? Writing can be cathartic I know, but sometimes painting or sketching can be really helpful too. Thats actually one of my hobbies. Im tempted to enclose a picture or two in my next letter just for fun. Your friend, Clara
Claras note struck a chord somehow. I searched around the cabin at some length, looking for something to sketch with. There was nothing. The strict mass budget aboard the capsule had prevented anything but absolutely essential items from making their way aboard. There was no paper of any kind, and no real-world writing implement. But I was persistent and thorough in my examinations, and an hour later I had found a solution to the problem. Experimenting with a short phosphor-bronze wrench I was able to make pale golden markings on the soft cream of the ceramic bulkhead surfaces. They were just rough enough to abrade the metal. A bit of silicone elastomer pried loose from the desiccators hermetic seal also turned out to be usable as eraser. It wasnt very efficient, but it worked when it was rubbed hard and long enough against the ceramic. So I began drawing. The human face is a remarkably delicate thing to sketch. The slightest twist at the corner of a mouth makes a world of difference in emotion. The circle of the iris in an eye must also be placed with precision. It is clipped slightly, with more taken at the top
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than the bottom by the eyelids that cup it. Done otherwise a neutral expression mutates to dramatic astonishment, frigid disdain or boiling rage. Finally the relative placement of eyes, nose and mouth, and the precise weight and shape of the jaw establish the identity. One can of course choose these freely when establishing an imaginary personality. But once chosen these will have to be reproduced, faithfully and accurately in any pose. I practiced my sketching enthusiastically for a number of hours, covering my walls with a tapestry of human faces, striving for charm, and for consistency. Then, selecting the best of them, I recorded it electronically.
Dear Clara, I think you are doing very well interpreting my stories. Lrythf is indeed very reminiscent in personality to a creature that once behaved in a way that is very similar to what you call a daughter. It is sad to write of her again after these many years, but the memories are precious and it is good to remember them this way too. Daughters are indeed lovely things. It is a shame that you missed having one. Perhaps parasitization doesnt do justice when describing the details of the rather unfathomable relationship that I had with Thyrlib. Let me just say that it seems to satisfy a deep emotional need to write of it that way. Nevertheless, perhaps it is impolite. I hope it does not offend you. I practiced sketching all afternoon. It is a mild, peaceful occupation, especially compared the the more energetic arts that I personally favor. But you are right, it was
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales cathartic, and I feel much better. I enclose a rather imaginary sketch of myself. Its rather fancifully more handsome than reality. But I imagine it will be fun for you to have an image to focus on when you write me. Me
And now, yet another little story. Yours truly, Donald ----------------------------Jhryvvads Revenge Listen Jhryvvad, youve got to help me! I hissed at him, nervous with desperation. Help you, Dzytrp? Zounds, creature, I have already done far more than you deserve. Without my intercession, you would now be buried crisped tentacle on the battlefield
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Chapter 3. More and More Email of the last, despicable negotiated proxyconflict. It was gracious of you to save me from that. Perhaps less gracious was the fact that it was almost certainly you who arranged to have me sent to the front in the first place A base calumny! Yeah right. Anyway I do admit that thanks to your timely intercession and introduction to Thyrlib, I did contrive a temporary reprieve Not to mention the love of your life, may I add! And what thanks do I get for it? The love to end my life you mean! Where did you find er, anyway? Es utterly virulent. There isnt a Llyrylyn alive who could survive er more than three seasons. I didnt find er. E found me. Im only grateful that e preferred you to me. But Dzytrp, tell me, what possible solution could I have to your problem? Thats what Im asking you, I hissed, viciously. Jhryvvad paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. I knew er. E couldnt resist a challenge. And if there was one thing you could always say about the old blighter, e was resourceful. After a long pause, Jhryvvad revived suddenly, quietly looked a little delighted, and whistling mirthfully, remarked, Yes...yes! Perhaps there is something I could do! And that would be...?
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales You know, like I said before. model probes... Yes? Theres room in the mass budget. Room for what? You know. No what. For you. Not that again. Thats insane! Theres no way Im shipping off to Zorgryp-3. By the time I arrive, everyone and everything I care about would be so much dust, blowing amidst the dunes. Nonsense. I know your commitment to carrying the imperial banner is unwavering. Your deep love for the Imperium is legendary. Jhryvvads words were accompanied by the subtle sound of a pheromone dispenser spritzing. But I noticed it only after it was too late, and the powerful militarygrade loyalty toxin started making my vision shimmer sickeningly. Yes...I live...to carry the imperial banner... Jhryvvad whistled with delight. The late-
*
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Dear Donald,
Its interesting when someone obviously flatters you. You know that they are trying to butter you up. Its a really crude form of manipulation. You can see them doing it, know that you ought to ignore it, and then
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Chapter 3. More and More Email it works anyway. And you are flattered, and you are feeling good about yourself, and even feel like being generous to the perpetrator. So thank you for your sketch of yourself. Its kind of the same thing. I know its a lie and you dont look like that, but it worked anyway. Sad to say, my heart warmed to you when I saw it :) So Im going to respond in the best way I know how: in kind.
Me too
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales Please find enclosed a little likeness of me, yearning for freedom. I do actually look like that toojust a little less blurry. I also usually wear a little more clothing and less strategically placed hair, but thats a other story. The picture called for it you know! ;) So will you send me sketches of Thyrlib and Lrthyf too? Im of half a mind to paint my sons for you. I bet theyll resent it horribly, but I dont have to tell them. Im sure I can dredge up passable photographs of them somewhere to work from. Its interesting drawing or painting someone you love. When you spend so long concentrating on the image of them on the canvas, your whole mood changes. Whatever power they have to sooth your mind is invoked when you draw them. Its a really interesting thing, and it makes me wonder what the great artists felt when they drew their lovers, themselves, and people they cared for. Im totally lost with your story. But I gather Jhryvvad is the man (er, life-form) responsible for your southerly latitude, and maybe the extirpation of your entire family, if only in a indirect way. I suppose that would explain why you find forgiving to be difficult. I wonder what the loyalty toxin stands for in real life. That phrase had a certain ring to it. Anyway Im still finding your stories interesting, and sometimes very sad, even if theyre extremely puzzling at times. I suppose you have a whole world to write about, full of tentacled monsters. So keep going. If your descriptions are good, maybe Ill draw some of them for you.
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Chapter 3. More and More Email So what are you reading now? You know I think it might be rather fun if we read a book together. Every few chapters we could write each other about our reactions to it and what we thought about it. We could pick one of the Gutenberg books that you can download for free. That way you wouldnt have problems getting hold of it. What do you say? I notice that your letters are arriving more quickly than before. Im enjoying it. It makes the correspondence flow better when less time elapses. Whatever the explanation, thank you, and please keep it up. Your friend, Clara
When Claras note arrived my eyes caught the painting embedded in the middle of it first. The solitary figure to the side like a mermaid on the shore beckoned to me, and I longed to know what pure thought held her transfixed so peacefully, hand clutched to her heart under the stars as the great free wing of her spirit wheeled above her in the starlight.
Dear Clara, Thank you very much for your picture of yourself. It is a beautiful work of art, and I cannot say that it is like flattery at all with me. When I look at the deep thoughtful expression of the maiden in the painting, which reveals just enough about the contents of her soul for the viewer to love her, I know very surely that the person who painted her is in some deep, fundamental way, beautiful. I like many things about the painting. I love the way the maiden is posed like a mermaid beckoning at the shore, that the
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales frigid, twinkling starlight illuminates the scene almost as if it was set in a far southerly latitude (although I know not what constellation the stars depict) and the wing is like the great craggy rocks of a frozen mountain range that has lost the burden of weight and taken flight. Do you have any other paintings you could show me? Rather than dilute the subject of this letter any further, I will write you again tomorrow. Yours truly, Donald
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Chapter 4. Chthulus Fortress of Solitude

As the capsule drifted closer to Zorgryp-3 something in my spirit seemed to resonate and grow in strength, strummed by the steady arrival of email that increased in tune with the shrinking distance. Clara echoed within me, and I suppose I must have been resonating with her. I strove to understand her thoughts and share all of mine, and to bring what was in my mind closer to what was in hers, and I searched her email every day for all she chose to share with me. We began to read Middlemarch together and it became the canvas on which we outlined, delineated and colored the personalities we presented to each other.
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Rather to my delight, Lars refrained from annoying me with impertinent messages during this period, but one day towards the middle of the ripening Antarctic sunrise my cheerful mood was darkened a missive addressed from him. Rather than the usual one-sided dialog with him anticipating my thoughts, it arrived in the form of a well-formed letter:
Hey Boss, Pardon the formality. By now youve warped your mind enough with your lady-friend so that I cant expect to predict you, and I wont be able to chat like before. But Im sure youre practiced enough with email by now to prefer a letter.
I think I would have preferred it that way before, too, I murmured under my breath.
Ive put together a workable operating base. Weve got enough power from my capsules reactor for heat and light, and theres serviceable fuel pellets remaining from the previous probe. Youll be able to jettison most of your ship before reentry and land just with the life-support pod. It will be
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales safer and arouse less suspicion if you do it that way. Im going to resurrect a little of the light manufacturing equipment from the old probe. I need it to repair the algal growth vats that well need to feed you. Fortunately the natives here have good enough technology to forge what I need. Im going to make a little trip and do some bartering for parts. I think I can get what I want in Buenos Aires. I might be gone for a few weeks. The communication net should be O.K. without me, so Ill be reachable by email. In case you havent been paying attention, you should look out the window. Youre about to begin an aerobraking maneuver at Zorgryp-4. Thats what gets you on the most energetically favorable trajectory.
I glanced briefly at the porthole, and then looked back again, longer. Something red was looming, filling it. The image brightened and lost contrast, wavering as brightly flowing plasma began flowing around the outside of the portal, and shifted with a sickening wrench as the whole capsule turned to face the hypersonic onslaught of the Martian atmosphere. The gulping vacuum of G-restraints roared to life and swallowed my tentacles binding me in place as a chill tide of perfluorocarbon oxygenating fluid rose to surround me in a buoyant bath. I glanced quickly back at the screen to catch the rest of Lars message before the high-Gs started warping my vision making it impossible to make sense of it.
Have you thought about how you are going to break it to Clara that you arent human? Youre going to need to do something about it soon. Lars
*
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Four weeks later the tentacle and sun emblazoned ceramic hull cracked open to the brilliant white day. I reached to the hatch rim with my tentacles and pulled myself with a great chugging sound out of the perfluorocarbon bath filling the pod gasping convulsively for real air, spraying streams of oxygenating fluid out of my spiracles as I was nearly overwhelmed by the sensation of drowning. I reached the edge of the hatch before succumbing to unaccustomed gravity and the super-chilled air that whistled amidst the pure white of the icy plane on which Id descended. A metallic figure strided over yelling at me in heavily accented Spanish: Patrn! You are too hasty, exiting the capsule that way. You should wait for me to assist you! It was Lars. Somehow he had mutated into a vaguely human form, with spindly metallic legs supporting a nearly cylindrical torso coated with a soft flesh-toned elastomer. He had spindly metal arms supporting rubbery fingers and a somewhat human head. His form had totally changed, but I could tell hed retained his flair for the dramatic, because he wore a red cape, and had a heavily canted hat on his head with a feather stuck in it. Steel teeth glinted in a vicious grin in the icy wind as he wrapped me in gathered shards from the descent parafoil, and I passed out while staring in horror at the brilliant blue ceramic of the eyes in his mock face. * * * This is Patrn? A young female voice cried out in shocked amazement. I whistled in a pained groan as I slowly awoke to the world to find my left dorsal eye facing a dark-skinned maiden with glossy black hair staring at me with big, glittering eyes and a small button-like nose that loomed
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largely anyway as she approached me in the wide-angle view of the dorsal eye. Yes, he is like this. He is famous you know. It was Lars, still in his cape and feather getup. He was holding up a very pulpy-looking magazine and pointing to a crudely drawn illustration of a tentacled monster in it which was captioned Cthulhu. I look much better than that, I hissed. Please Patrn. In Spanish. It is more polite. For the lady, insisted Lars in an nauseatingly obsequious tone of voice. I did my best imitation of a groan. In Spanish. Then I looked around. We were in a dimly lit tube, walled with smoothly excavated granite. A few pieces of plastic furniture were scattered about, adding a lightly inhabited atmosphere to it, which was considerably enhanced by a large suitcase placed in one corner and a clothesline laden with damp brightly-colored clothing strung down the center. Unless Lars had started wearing bras, it clearly belonged to the girl. Lars, what the dickens have you been up to! I scowled at him. Patrn, I knew you would be understanding, he simpered at me. I am so grateful. Behold the power of love! What? You see Seor, he is the bandito. Of my heart! the girl interjected, clasping her hands together across her breast fervently while inclining her head with a winsome smile. Carmen, how enchanting! Carmen? Yes, lovely name, isnt it?
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My tentacles writhed with annoyance as I considered what to do. Then it came to me. I pressed a tenticular scythe to my side and scraped an arc in the smooth skin of my thorax just below three clustered eyes. All together it formed a passable imitation of eyes nose and smiling mouth. Turning my improvised face to Carmen I improvised an excuse. My dear, if you will excuse us for a minute, I have a few matters of importance to discuss with my loyal servant... Grabbing him about his spindly metallic neck with a tentacle, I lifted him bodily and then rolled down the tube carrying him away with me while Carmen waved goodbye. We descended five hundred meters of the tube, broken by quick pauses to roll two ancient ceramometallic blast doors out of the way. After the second one reclosed, latching its pallid age-spotted withered face to the rock with a puff of dust-laden frigid air I stopped and threw Lars against the cream tentacle and shields icon on the door.
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He rebounded. His new elastomer thorax coating made him a little bouncy, like a ball. I thew him back again, entranced by the process. Ow! he screamed on the way to the third bounce, and I would have thrown him again harder, but he braced and adsorbed the impact with backward-splayed arms and stayed braced against the door. What are you doing! Please be gentle! Do you know how much trouble it was to get this silicone cast on my thorax in Buenos Aires? he wined pitifully. No. But I can imagine. And I dont care. I should beat it off of you with the splintered shards of your rust-eaten limbs. Whats wrong with you? Whats with the chica, and why in heaven are you shacking up with her here? In...what did you call it? Our Fortress of Solitude?!!??
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Um, yes well. I did somewhat misjudge when I called it that, but uh, He paused, warily as eyeing me, I had no choice. The exigencies of my burgeoning email exchange required it. He reached with this left hand to his face, just below the nose, and absentmindedly twisted and shaped something fibrous there. I hadnt noticed it before, but there it was. A little mustache, improvised out of old optical fiber, waxed and twirled in a mockery of a Dumas musketeer. Email exchange, I hissed evenly. With the mate to my soul. Youve been writing this chica the whole time. Several. I had quite a collection really. But now there is only one for me. And Boss, please. Her name is Carmen. You must have more respect for the ladies. You are puddled slag. Wait till I get a plasma arcfurnace running! Lars stood stiffly, inflating a bladder in his silicone thorax until he puffed up into an apex of bombastic pomposity. Then he intoned with elevated ceramic nose: You will only achieve knowledge of yourself, Patrn, when you understand and sympathize with your friends. And please do not deny me what I dare say you hope someday to enjoy yourself! I put on the fiercest version of a Llyrylyn scowl I could and departed. I tried to do it in a dignified way, but Im not sure I managed it. Hed cut me to the bone. Theres no way Clara would accept me as I was. Tentacled. Scaled. And spherical. Even with a smile scratched in my side I was a conversation piece. A novelty item. Not a romantic partner. There was no way I could reconfigure it otherwise. Lars, metal and ceramic being that he was, had been just a few screw-bolts and elastomer castings away from it.
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I slowly rolled through the granite tubes of the ancient Imperial excavation. Dark splotches of sparkling mica facing the smooth surface blurred helically in my earthtuned retinas, casting a mysterious gloom to the entire vista. The tube turned a sharp corner, and suddenly I was astride an elevated walkway progressing down the axis of an enormous cavern. Water sprung in sheets from distant blankly green dark walls and rolled in torrents towards the floor below, disappearing into dark gray mist. Casting my eyes down the axis of the barely lit cavern, I caught the grimly sparkling outline of ancient crumpled machinery and the egg-like outline of corroded superconducting energy storage units looming in the distance. On the stone walkway, inlaid ideographs crafted with blood-red garnet glowed, fairly screaming the tiresome slogans and mindless political drivel of the Old Ones, the ancient imperial propagandists: Hail the Glory Fear the Everlasting Might The Imperium read a typical noisome example. Below an assortment of this nonsense followed a long list of star systems paired with arrival dates that were mostly set in the past. It looked like a launch list, but from where and of what wasnt clear at all. I stared at the arrival dates grimly wondering what the old Imperium had been up to, and what evil offspring of ancient corruption had burst forth from here on its way to the rest of the universe. Then I turned, reflected thoughtfully on my change of circumstances, and returned, pondering what to say in my next email to Clara.
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales Dear Clara, My apologies for the delay in writing you. The last few days have been full of hectic repairs. Lars upgraded the the communication net as promised, and I expect that we will soon be able to exchange messages. In fact we should be able to do text chat, although it will have a slightly annoying delay. I am sorry I must beg your forgiveness for what follows. I have no choice but to unburden my current sadness, which fills my soul to the brim with despair. I do not understand how, or by what Machiavellian contrivance he managed it, but Lars has acquired a mail-order bride. I know it seems far-fetched. I know it seems impossible. That a bonny maid could be induced to depart from sunny climes in Buenos Aires away to the frigid south should be impossible. But nevertheless, somehow, that evil genius had her transported...here! I thought Lars must be autistic. I thought him less than a man. But I am proved mistaken, and they are happy. She could unlock the heart in a block of hewn stone, and she has unlocked his. Lars now sports a waxed mustache and a cape, and the walls tremble from cybertronic embraces and the electricious might of their passion. I am withering away under the high-tension onslaught. I am distraught. Donald *
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Please help,
It was infuriating. Here I was, the apex of evolution in the desert ecosystem, perfected by design and temperament to navigate bone-dry wind blown dunes basting comfortably
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at 50C. And now the winds blew about me at -50C, drifting across wretched wind-blown scraps of ancient ice so wasted by time that the crystalline structure crumbled when I touched it, disintegrating with barely a whimper as I rolled across. The world seemed worn and old as I drifted through it in the late antarctic dawn. The sun was nearly risen and the ice was brilliant white. My tentacles were swaddled in an electrically heated suit. Heat-exchangers hissed, guarding every breath and warding off the knife-like edge of cold air that would have frozen my spiracles in a single breath. If the power failed Id be dead in 30 seconds. It was no better than wearing a space suit, and it was considerably less comfortable than the elastomeric one Id worn during my spacewalks. I was better off in space. Why did we come here? I wondered, rolling blankly onward. Lars would have understood that before he picked the location. He would have known that I wouldnt be able to endure it for long. He must have some kind of more complicated conspiracy brewing for the future. I could ask him of course, but these days he was occupied with other things, and lately a certain frigidity had overcome our good relations. We were, to be precise, not on polite speaking terms at all. Something to do with a little suggestion of mine that we dump Carmen outside and hand her the cab fare to get home. There must be a reason for this spot. There must have been, for him to want to come here. But what was here? Just stone tubes and a collection of corroded machinery remnants from the days of the First Imperium. What had the First Imperium built here? It was obvious. More probes. Sent out to more destinations. But why? Why not send them directly from Llyrylyn? Surely it would have been simpler. It must have taken several stages of as
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sembly and many years to go from the micro-machinery available on a probe to the huge subterranean manufactur ing plant that Id seen excavated at the base of the tunnels inside. Then it struck me. The probes that had been built here had gone on to do the same thing at their destination. Then the same thing would keep going on exponentially at each jump. It was part of a First Imperium ploy to plaster garnet-engraved slogans over the entire universe. Pinheads. Politicians, mucking up the entire galaxy as a propaganda gesture for the sake of a few atavistic rednecks back home. Glory indeed. The alarm shrieked painfully within the suit. 10 minutes to power failure. I turned and headed back for the entrance. * * *
Hi Don. Don? Can you hear me now? Her voice reverberated deeply voiced with a rich feminine timbre that surprised me. It was totally unlike anything Id imagined. HiHi Clara? Is that you? It came across slightly wheezing, but in a clear Midwestern accent that Id been practicing for weeks. My enunciator tentacle had required minor surgery and was raw and sore from practice. Id never speak Llyrylyn properly again but that wasnt a problem. Lars I only addressed now in (rather colorful) Spanish, and there was no-one else alive or powered up left to miss it. I cant believe it! I thought youd have a strong accent you know. Arabic, middle-eastern, something like that. Youre just the way I imagined.
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Clara giggled. Right. That sounds totally honest. Anyway how are you? How are you surviving, uh Carmen? Thats a lovely name. No its not. A pox on both of them. She giggled again. Oh really you sound like such a sore loser. By the way what does electrolicious mean? Thats rather inventive phrasing. You dont want to know. Clara stifled a few more giggles and then continued. Im sorry. know. The situation just sounds so funny you
It took a while to appreciate the humor, I replied a little sourly. But I guess I do have to thank Lars for this voice link. It was a huge surprise when he told me. Lars? Who is Lars? Youve never heard of Lars...! The only other person youve talked about in your letters is Fabio. Your stellar technical-lead guy. Your one true friend. The guy youre always raving about. Who is Lars? I was speechless for several seconds. He had been editing my letters. I explained the situation to Clara, and we spent a few min utes comparing old emails wed exchanged, particularly the more important and memorable ones. Lars hadnt modified them much. Hed improved his name, and disparaging com ments had had a way of getting omitted or deflected. For example mildly autistic had become a high-strung and sensitive personality. Hed also added a few effusively
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complimentary paragraphs extolling his technical genius and detailing my total emotional reliance on him as a friend. I can see why youd be angry. But really, I think you should forgive him. But you know, Don. Its obvious from what he wrote, he just wants to be a friend. Im really touched. Youre right. I think he said something about it the other day too. I need to think about the right way to express my reciprocal feelings of affection. Im just wondering how many kilograms of C-4 it would take. Clara laughed. She continued chattering away about the minor events in her week until I calmed down, and we had a relaxed enjoyable conversation for nearly another hour. Towards the end of it just before saying goodbye she became serious again. You know I feel bad about something. What? I havent been completely honest. Oh? She paused awkwardly for several seconds, then continued. You know...well you know Im married dont you? Yes. There was another moment of uneasy silence, and then I continued. There had to be some explanation for your sons you know. Hmm. I dont think it matters. Ill write you a letter about how I feel and then youll understand. And then theres something I need to tell you. Oh? Lets wait until next time to talk about it.
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Chapter 5. The Tentacled Knight

I rolled through darkened dimly phosphorescent tubu lar hallways dully ignorant of my surroundings, lost in thought, wondering how to tell Clara. What was I going to say? It would be a kind of goodbye. She would almost cer tainly end everything when she found out the truth.
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Secrets. They burn slowly in your soul, corroding every thing. This one had nearly eaten through me as I kept it, hiding it from her. Loving her in spite of it. Building up her feelings on a foundation of quicksand. It was going to end now somehow, and I would live again embracing the truth. Pure, at peace with myself, but alone. Lonely... Patrn! Lars, or rather Fabio stood before me. Somehow despite all my efforts to avoid him he had discovered me again. Where have you been hiding Seor? I have been looking for you everywhere! We must make immediate preparations Fabio. How delightful to chance across you again. Say, it occurs to me, I have a question for you. We have no time for questions! We must Why in TARNATION did you pick this BLASTED polar region for our base?! My natural mode of existence here is as a ICEICLE, not anything living! It was easier operating in SPACE, rather than out there, I waved a tentacle blankly at the wall surface while continuing to shriek at him, ...where the only moisture, such as it is, has been frozen out of the air and is lying around littering the surface as great big disgusting blocks of ICE!
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Patrn calm yourself. I was about to explain the exigencies of our situation, which naturally called for some small sacrifices... And these exigencies were, precisely what, may I inquire? Um well, you see... The tunnel floor underfoot suddenly shuddered slightly, as if a weak earthquake had shook it. A loud boom followed several seconds later. Ah. Our guests have arrived, explained Fabio. GUESTS? Let me guess, more lady friends? No no. You see, it is the Old Ones... You mean the First Imperium droids? Yes. Um, well you know what they were here for? Oh yes. I figured that out. They manufactured probes, launched them, and set off to exponentially blanket the galaxy with lame, tired old political slogans that were already annoying 10,000 years ago. The Might and the Glory and all that rot. Yes, well precisely. And of course being the pinheads that they were, the Imperium sloganeers would have seen fit to preserve their monuments at all costs of course. Your reasoning does have a certain evil ring of twisted logic to it. It is obvious. So naturally any use of advanced technol ogy at all would be likely to set off some kind of defensive mechanism, designed to preserve the First Imperium claim to this planet. That makes sense. But why put ourselves here when we were bound to set them off then? Well the native technology is almost at the level where it could cause a problem. This planet was an accident waiting
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to happen really. And it was necessary for us to be here when the Old Ones awoke. To destroy them before they have a chance to reproduce and build overwhelmingly large numbers of copies, and, well not to put too fine a point on it, sterilize the world. I was stunned for a moment. Then a thought occurred to me. So then Jhryvvad sent us here... Yes. To save this world. And he wanted us to fight too. That explains the synthetic personalities he chose for us you know. I dont get it. Youll have to explain. We were made, you and I, to love, and to fight. For a woman.
Dear Clara, Of course it came as no surprise to me to find out that you were married. Ive known that you most likely were for some time, and that some sadness related to it had probably driven you to write me. I have long wondered what to do about it. I know that you are resourceful, and that if there were some easy way to fix what was wrong in this part of your life you would have done it. So I have not worried too much about writing you, based on the premise that there was probably very little that I could do that might make things worse, and that writing might make things better. I have looked hard and long for anything wrong about the way we write each other, and I have yet to find it. So I will call it good, accept it as a blessing, and strive to ensure that it always remains that way.
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My Knight Clad in Tentacles and Scales Now I am very ugly, and I am sure that if you saw what I really am any affection you might have for me would cease, and you would no longer want to write me. It is that bad. But my affection is not like thatit is not afraid of a few wrinkles and whiteness in the hair of a woman who looks her age. And I am very fond of you. Knowing me as well as you do you will no doubt guess that I wanted to reason out an explanation that makes sense of this and I have. Pardon me for not being able to resist the urge to explain it to you. Do you know about romance? There are many forms, of course, including the ones in novels that married women may enjoy without shaming their husbands. There is also one that is rather old-fashioned, and these days is rarely taken seriously. Thats the one related to chivalry. Now much nonsense has been written about this topic, but writing you I think I may have come to understand it. Imagine if you will the castle of a French country baron in the darkest of the medieval ages. It was a villainous time, and low nobility were little better than brigands. From time to time they would sally forth from their castles to raid and pillage their subjects, carrying off their property and daughters as the whim struck them, and then repairing with haste to fortified safety where they infamously enjoyed their illgotten gains with impunity. In that barbarous, wretched era of course the Barons men were mostly little better than he. But from time to time the demands of evil circumstance must have impelled a Chevalier of modest means and noble character to cast his lot with such a baron. Let us imagine this penniless, very homely
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Chapter 5. The Tentacled Knight but honest man pledging his loyalty in ignorance to the lowest of villains, and upon discovering his mistake finding Honor compelling him to preserve his vow regardless. And perhaps alongside him in the castle is a beautiful woman whose circumstances match his. She cast her lot with the Baron, compelled by the customs of Nobility and logic of strategic political advantage to marry him, and Virtue, soulless goddess that she is admits no retreat from this decision. May our good Chevalier not sympathize with her? May he not recognize her noble spirit and admire her? And when he needs must lift up his sword to fight, with nothing else left in his heart to fight for but her, may he not call out her name upon casting his life into the fray? That is chivalry. It is love with eyes held open. It is about using affection to support another soul when nothing else is there that can reach or help. It is our poor Chevalier making a gift of his respect, love and admiration, and our noble Chtelaine finding a way to accept it while still preserving her honor. That is the way I feel. I do not believe it can do any harm to your marriage. It is my gift to you. I make it with my eyes held open, and as little value as it is, I hope that when you understand what I really am that you will be able to accept it. Very truly yours, Donald
Patrn! I squeezed the send button on the control column and transmitted the message. Looking up from the display
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screen I saw Fabio running towards me wheeling a large cart loaded with weaponry behind him. We must make haste. Here take this. Take the plas tique! I grabbed chunks of the gray plastique, throwing clumps of detonator cord and timing devices in the pockets of my cold temperature suit. Launch yourself from the third peak. See if you can place the charges to form a massive avalanche in the region below. Carmen and I will try to lead them into the center of it. There are still very few of them, and if we are lucky we might get them all in one go. I raced up the tube to the third peak, with the thin fabric of a parafoil flapping behind me. As I reached the launch point a panel in the smooth stone of the mountainside peeled away whistling with frigid cold and revealing the evilly bright maw of antarctic summer. I threw myself into the open air, screaming: Clara! *
17
The sun winked back gloomily. It stared with a grim ruddy outline, obscured by air-born crystals of ice, smoke and fine particles of broken granite that gave the air a sharp acrid metallic flavor that bit my spiracles as I inhaled it through the suit heat-exchangers. A wisp of smoke covered the sun again and it disappeared. The suit alarm sounded shrilly like a crazed megaphoned cricket. Power failure was imminent, and I couldnt move. I was pinned down, the second and third dorsal tentacles trapped in broken rock. The scythed first and third medial killing tentacles, my might and pride as a Llyrylyn warrior, were broken ruins with splintered frozen tips. An
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amputation awaited the remnants of them in the near future, assuming I lasted that long. A rattling echoed over the broken rock. It came closer, grating with the sound of broken ceramo-metalic actuators scraping against raw shattered granite. Patrn! Are you OK? Here, he said, fumbling with a power pack. After a few awkward moments he found an external jack on my suit and plugged it in. You can use my name, Fabio, I whispered. I removed this from one of the broken droids. It took some time to detach it. Im lucky that I made it here in time. The cricket abruptly died, and the multitude of red indicators flashing in the suit calmed, returning for the most part to yellow and green. How is Carmen? Broken leg. Minor laser burn on the right arm. I brought her back to the cavern already. Shell be OK with some care. Well take a trip to Buenos Aires soon. Tell me, why did you keep her here, if you knew it was dangerous and could get ugly at any time? She wanted to fight by my side. I like them that way. You know. Passionate. He looked at me, glaring at me fiercely with his blue ceramic eyes for a moment, then he sat down beside me, and tended to his broken feet. His fingers flashed brilliantly and crackled as he slowly and painstakingly fashioned temporary welds in the broken metal. I had nothing to say for a few minutes. So I just lay there, waiting, watching him repair himself enough to carry me.
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So I guess we were just toys in Jhryvvads game, I sighed. I wondered. What had been in er mind, when e had thought of all this. Jhryvvad was an artist. Ah. E made something beautiful out of us, Fabio insisted. E deeply understood the poetry of emotions, and I think, having lived through what e planned for us, that e did well. How did e understand emotions then? Did e have a psychic implant too? Thats the question isnt it? E would have. I wonder what particular kind of implant would e have chosen to have. But its not important now. You know, I know my future now, and the question for you, Donald, is what kind of future e had in mind for you. That kept me quiet for a few minutes, until Fabio had completed his repairs. Then he picked me up and carried me on his shoulders back inside. * * *
I faced the control column. Fabio had erected a video camera from me by the side of the control stick, and I stood in front of it, looking at myself in the screen. I was a wreck, with bandages covering most of my tentacles. There were amputated stumps and missing segments on most of them. Id been experimenting with makeup though. I had a nice broad smile stenciled on my thorax, and Id been practicing for several days, moving muscles around in order to animate it convincingly. With a little bit of surgery Fabio thought he might be able to arrange a fairly decent range of human expressions for me.
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A dialing sound emerged from the control stick enunciator. I pressed the button that answered the call. Hello? Don? Are you there? Claras voice came clearly across the wire, sounding rather worried. Hi Clara! Fabio said you had an accident. He sent me a note several days ago. Are you OK now? Um, yeah. I guess so. What happened? Had a little trouble with some high explosives. Little temperamental sometimes. Risks of the business, you might say. Oh. Her voice echoed deeply, sounding rather horrified. Im OK, but um. Ah well I guess I cant claim to look better than Cthulhu anymore. I want to see you. She sounded really determined. Well. OK. I guess so. But you better let me explain a little, for a few minutes. The screen faded, pixelated, and then snapped into sharp focus. A ladys face emerged. She was slightly dumpy and dressed in a peach pantsuit. She had light blond hair mostly faded to gray, surrounding a worried smile that added wrinkles to her round, gentle and very kind looking face. Her green eyes glittered prettily at me. Shed pressed the button that transmitted video from her side. See, I really dont look like much either. You look lovely.
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Dont be ridiculous. I dont know what youre so scared of. Let me explain. I paused. It went on for several seconds. Well, you know my stories about Llyrylyn? Yeah. Well, you know theyre kind of true? Oh I always guessed that they had a lot to do with your real life, you know. Yes, well, um. Well what? Well really, when it comes down to it, I actually dont have much of an imagination at all. Well thats OK with me. anyway. What do you mean? They were all true. All true? How could they be all true? Well you see there really is a Llyrylyn. Or that is to say there was. About 5,000 years ago. Clara dropped silent and looked confused. frown appeared on her face. Im a Llyrylyn. The frown grew stronger. This must be some kind of joke, echoed coolly from from the enunciator. A slight They were fun stories
Well thats the thing. They werent stories.
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Im not joking. Look, Im going to turn on the camera in a few seconds. I know its asking a lot, but could you try not to scream? Clara was swallowing quickly, but she managed to squeak out a little OK. Here we go. 3...2...1... and then I pressed the button. Clara slapped her hand to her mouth and looked stunned. I put on my best smile and waved a tentacle gently at her. Hi, I said. Clara continued swallowing rapidly for a few seconds, and then the mouth still hidden behind her trembling hand, managed to squeak out a couple words. Nice smile. Yes. I worked it up with makeup. Its not natural though. And um, Im sorry about the state of my tentacles. It really was a horrible accident. But I survived it. Thats the main thing. Clara stood there, staring at me. So I suppose this is our last conversation. Im sorry I hid it from you so long. No, no I understand now. It really cant be easy to own up to something like that. Well I guess its goodbye then. Can you let me think about it? Sure. Take your time. Ill talk to you again in a few days. Goodbye, she said, then she hung up the connection. Goodbye, I said to an empty screen.
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Chapter 6. Life as a Dog

I squeezed the button on the control column. Hi Clara. Is that you? Claras face pixelated into life on the screen. She looked a little nervous. Hi Don. Nice to see you again. I flexed the rearranged muscles on my carapace and stretched a smile. Its really nice of you to say that. No, no its true. Im really surprised you wanted to see me again. I never thought I would... I paused, searching for the way to express what I felt, when the best way I knew would have been to start up a tear or two. But I wasnt built for it. Dont be silly Donald. Um. Well. What do you think. Were do we go from here? You know I was thinking. I spent a lot of time thinking. I was wondering, with all those tentacles and eyes, what you could make yourself look like. Could you look a little like a dog? I thought about it for a moment. Why sure... I twisted four sets of tentacles into helical columns below me, and then braided a tail behind me with the remainder. Flexing myself with difficulty, I rose up on my stumpy pretend legs and wagged my tentacled tail while grinning broadly at the camera.
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Clara put her hand in front of her mouth giggled behind it. Thats pretty good! I could do a little better with more makeup and a bit of a costume. Say, Don. How big are you anyway? Oh I dont know. Most of it is tentacles. Im not very heavy or I couldnt fly well you know. Like this Id say Im the size of a large dog. Thats a good size. So anyway, Ive been thinking. Sometimes people really love their pets. Theres nothing wrong with it, is there? Oh no. Not at all. In fact you can always tell a good person from their pets. Theyre a kind and understanding master. Absolutely. Anyway Im always very good to my pets. Theyre just like real friends to me you know. How would you like to be my pet? You could pretend to be a dog in public. Oh! I was stunned. I hadnt thought of things in that way at all before. It was a bit of a surprise. I-I suppose it would be very nice, I stuttered. Yes it would wouldnt it. But then Clara looked a little worried and sad, and she admitted: Theres just one thing. Well my husband...well some times he can be cruel you know. Cruel? Clara was silent. I flicked my stinging tentacle absent mindedly.
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Whatever could we do about that, I wonder? *

Dear Clara, By the time you read this, it should be Valentines day. I thought I would write you something on the subject of friendship, and affection, and the ties that bind us together after writing to each other this way for so long. I thought I might say a bit about Grace, which (forgive me!) is a religious concept in Buddhism and in Christianity. Even though Im completely not religious, there are many true and beautiful things at the core of religion. People believe in religions for many reasons, and sometimes the reason is because they say things that are really true. I found out this year personally what Jesus meant when he commanded us to forgive our enemies and the people who have hurt us. I forgave Jhryvvad, and I discovered that that was the way to move forward without being poisoned by anger. Today Ill share with you some thoughts I have about another concept which I also think is true. Its fundamentally about loving and love. God is perfect you know, and we are not. Somehow though, he manages to love us, even though we mostly never deserve it. That willingness for him (or her) to love us is called Grace. Its a beautiful thing about the universe that is waiting for us, and the challenge to us, is to be able to accept that love, understand what it means and share it with our friends, family and everyone else. If we do, we can make the world a better place.
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Now I dont particularly believe in God, but I find God to be a useful concept. God is the perfect personthe perfect father and the perfect mother, and he/she demonstrates how we can be better people as well. We can strive to love perfectly as God does, to love and understand our friends and our families despite their flaws and try to extend to them the same Grace that God extends to us. This isnt easyfor example it isnt easy for me to love the memory of Thyrlib, just as it isnt easy for you to love your husband. They may not much deserve (or have deserved) it. But (please forgive me for saying this) we would be better as beings if we could manage it, and they would be better as beings if they could accept that love. But more than that, I hope you can accept the very warm affectionate feelings that I feel for you, at least when you read this on Valentines day. Please accept that those feelings have something to do with you being a lovely woman, and that the few wrinkles that you may have here and there do no harm to them. It is a kind of grace, part of the love that the world feels for you as a person, and I challenge you to accept it. Please share that same affection with the friends and family you have around you. It will make me and you and the greater world around you a better place. Love, Donald
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Fabios brilliant blue synthetic eyes matched the summer sky so perfectly they peered out like transparent holes in his head letting the heavens in from behind him. The glinting sun transmitted through to the tips of his fiber-optic mustache, illuminating little points of light at the ends that swayed with the vibrations of the improvised chopper that carried us steadily, mile after mile over the glistening ice. Jhryvvad. Er carapace stood in front of me in my memories, towering and gleaming like frozen Everest. Dead and gone, but still master of my life. With wisdom and with humor e toyed with it. Would my life rhyme to er poetry? Or would it all end up being just another extravagant practical joke, gratifying only to a perverse sense of humor. E led me on with longing and fear, but in Love, to Clara.
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AFTERWORD
I wrote this story with some trepidation in the middle of a divorce, looking for answers about how I felt, about what had failed in my marriage, and about myself. Most of all I was afraid of sounding like a sore loser, and was determined not to do it. I didnt know at first where I was going with the story, but I soon found out. I wanted to talk about a friendship. For you see, not all that is born in darkness and pain is evil, and my friendship with my penpal, which formed in that way, was proof to me of this fact. It is perhaps the most important friendship of my life, and it started when (in a certain way) I made a gift of myself to a woman, and that gift changed me completely. I hope that gift may last a lifetime. For men, women are magical. They are both enchanting and transforming, and I was blessed by that magic during the course of writing this story. It gave me the answers I asked for. I believe I now understand myself better than I ever have before, maybe almost completely. I also think I understand the major things that went wrong in my marriage in a way that is honest and is fair to my wife, and that will allow me to avoid making the same painful and damaging mistakes in the future. So thank you all for the magic. May it always find me again when I need it. Very truly yours, Carl Quillen Brookline Massachusetts, September 5, 2012
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Introductory Emails
1
This story was written in installment form as a series of emails to friends. Each story segment was prefaced by an introductory email, all of which Ive compiled and included in these endnotes below. The positions in the text where the original story segment began are indicated by a superscript which references the right email.
Date: May 13, 2012 To: Various unsuspecting friends Subject: First installment of an SF story
So Ive again achieved that forlorn situation in life where I have next to no understanding of my emotional state, and once Im there I find that theres really no choice but to start writing a story, and through it, engage in some personal rediscovery. So Ive started writing again. The pretext is my penpals 52nd birthday, which is today, and upon which I surprised her bright and early with the writing which decorates (or mars, depending on your point of view) the later half of this message. The great thing about writing a non-native speaker like this is that their uncertain grasp of the language prevents them from detecting the exceedingly low quality of what you send them. And so you can imagine, Ive had many an opportunity to test my penpals patience with this sort of thing, and she, God bless her, has always been willing to slog through the turgid result dictionary in hand. Anyway, imagine if you will a gentle-spirited Japanese housewife with no interest in science fiction being subjected to what follows, which is, only the first of perhaps 20-50 in stallments of what promises to be a hard-SF romance. Will I be able to pull it off ? Maybe with your comments and help. I am dedicated and resourceful. Will she read the whole thing? She will, most assuredly. Ive already subjected her to four (somewhat shorter stories), which she actually
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read completely. And I can share with you her impressions of this one along the way. And finally, will she forgive me for all this in the end? I think so. The magnanimity of her heart seems boundless. So the rules of this are as follows: You can decline to receive these missives at any time. You may pass them on to whomever you wish. Suggestions, edits and rewrites are all fair game. Regards, Carl Quillen
2
May 19
Hi Everybody, So I enclose the second part of Chapter 1 below. Most reactions I got to the first part of the chapter were nonverbal; e.g. a grin, a shake of the head and that knowing smile you put on when you know you have to humor a crazy. But Jim V.S. actually had a little more to say. He observed that a romance where the protagonist was a tentacled monster might not be the most appropriate material to send off to a Japanese housewife...hes right of course. But I think I might get away with it, given the fact that my penpal has almost certainly never been subjected to that particular genre of tentacle-themed hentai anime. I did write to and talk to my penpal by skype this week as I usually do, and she seemed moderately amused by the first installment. She did have a few questions for me How do you say their names? Um, well theyre not exactly supposed to be pronounceable. The names are kind of a joke I replied.
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But then she made various unhappy looking faces at me. So I had to make a try of it, and a few minutes of grunts, burping noises and various squeaks followed which provided entertainment. So what are their genders? she then asked me rather pointedly. I hemmed and hawed, but the old saw that they were alien and it completely didnt matter didnt satisfy her. It didnt take long for her to extract the truth that Dzyrtrp was really male, and Thyrlib female. And youre Dzyrtrp? she immediately concluded. And I didnt much like admitting it, but Dzyrtrps scales are a dead giveaway. He is in fact a version of me. And actually, in my style of writing, many of the characters tend to be versions of me. They mouth my words, so its kind of hard to avoid. I would imagine its really pretty common for authors to do this. So whats he look like? Round like a ball. Surrounded by tentacles. And how does he move? Remember the doctor when he left? He wraps his tentacles around himself and rolls. She thought this was pretty amusing and giggled. I imagine he has a cute face, she concluded. Thats a fairly Japanese reaction. They have a thing about cuteness. Anyway I guess I shouldnt leave you in the dark, so I include the following sketch just in case your imaginations arent superior to my childish illustrations. If they are, well by all means feel free to ignore it.
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With that to whet your appetite, I present the second installment. Mirthfully, Carl Quillen
3
May 26
Hi Yall, So you know youre in a strange place, when at the beginning of your first romantic novel, the first thing you do is to arrange for the protagonist, who in some sense represents yourself, to have a brain transplant. I hope youll understand. It was completely necessary for the story. Yes indeed. Anyway Jim V.S. again had an astute comment. Which was that the world now has 7 billion people on it. Apparently Ive been in a time warp since about 2000 and I never noticed. I could correct for this by resetting the story in time so that the numbers match up, but I think it
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might be wiser to just make a correction. So youll find that I repeat that figure again this week, but with a more modern number associated with it. My penpal thought my picture of Dzytrp was fun, but as some of you anticipated, she felt that e wasnt really up to the job as a romantic figure. To be specific, the quote was ! (i.e. he looks really creepy!) Apparently if e ever exchanges pictures with er romantic interest, that will finish it. That surprised me a little, because I figured ones mere physical presence wouldnt matter so much in a purely platonic situation. And that had been my experience too. It was a long time before I ever exchanged pictures with my penpal, and when we did it didnt put a damper on things at all. I hadnt expected that it would but now I realize I got lucky. I guess my penpal must dig big-nosed geeky white guys. Anyway that all worked out well for me, but it doesnt help me with Dzytrps problem. Its just really really implausible that er lady, sweet as she is, will be into tentacles and scales. So I dont know how Im going to make that one a happy ending. Anyway, if you can bring yourself to read what follows, youll find the end of Chapter 1. As you might guess Dzytrp meets his lady and does his best to turn on the highpower charm. Let me know if it works for you, and how you think shell respond. Your partner in crime, Carl Quillen
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4
June 2
Hi again, So by now the inherent evil of my scheme for this story must becoming apparent to you, and you must be realizing that the whole thing will continue to unfold like a giant slow-motion train wreck in front of you until you beg for mercy. So just let me make it clear to you before I launch out on the second chapter that you can ask me to stop spamming you at any time with this stuff. I really will understand and I wont hold it against you. And for the rest of you, well you really shouldnt expect any mercy. Regards, Carl Quillen
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June 9
Hi again, So last time I had to come up with another couple of names. Its always interesting inventing names for a story. I suppose there are different ways of doing it, but I always try to pick the first thing that comes to mind. Often it just fits, and then I play a little game, and ask myself why I picked it. Donald was pretty easy. I had to turn Don Juan into something, and I focused on the Don as opposed to the Juan. Clara is much more interesting. Of course its a pretty straight feminization and rearrangement of the letters in my name (Carl Carla Clara), but I dont think that is the way I got to her. I really dont want her to be just another version of myself in the story. And so when I asked myself why Clara, the explanation I got from my subconscious was not the above transformation, but Clara Schumann and her dear friend Johannes Brahms. Brahms is my favorite composer, a great romantic, and the great romance of his
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life, such as it was, was Clara. I found all that rather amusing, and so I left a few hints for you about it, including the title of the chapter. As I expected and much to my satisfaction, Jim V.S, who is very much a musician, instantly picked up on this little reference. So Im again very gratified to have him as a reader. Anyway my major problem right now when writing this thing is keeping Clara from becoming too much a version of myself. Kim M. wrote me a lovely letter where she gave me some hints on how to fashion female personalities. It was really delightful, containing a humorous and rather eyepoppingly complete list of all the personality flaws that women are liable to, and all of which, quite definitely, Kim does not herself possess to any measurable extent at all. So I cant help thinking that Chad M. is certainly a lucky man in marriage, and as much as I want my Clara to be as perfect as I can make her, Kim (and my penpal of course) might make good models. Well have to see if I can manage it. My penpal is continuing to have fun with the story. Shes telling me now that its like getting two sets of email each week from different penpals. And I wonder if I should be getting jealous of myself. Fortunately Im not particularly capable of jealousy in general. I hope youre having a great weekend, Carl
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June 16
Hi again, So last week I made the mistake of playing with some rather powerful imagery that I borrowed from another book. I thought it was amusing, so I engaged it without thinking
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too hard about it. It turns out that it was rather more powerful stuff than I had imagined, and I got some fairly strong reactions to it. For Kim M. it brought back some rather vivid memories from nursing school, which she shared with me with some amusement. Chad M. suggested that I might go with the pulp-fiction flavor and add a bordello to the story after the fashion of Gene Wolfe. I rather like the comparison with Gene Wolfe, who is a wonderful writer, but somehow I doubt my penpal would be completely appreciative of a bordello. Jim V.S. had a surprisingly strong and negative reaction. His response to it was creative and fun, which was to try to emulate the best literature critics and to savage me with exquisitely written, witty, scathing and sarcastic comments. I have to acknowledge the quality of his writing, which in the best traditions of friendship utterly reduced my ego (such as it is) to finely powdered fragments. Let me quote one of the more choice sentences from his work, which was both memorable and enjoyable:
Dont worry, something useful can be made of this installment. Ive printed it out on suitably fibrous and soft paper and will be shelving it in my private library.
Interestingly enough my penpal wasnt at all bothered by this installment. But I imagine that youd have to expect that given how used she is to my writing. Anyway her one question for me was, Is Donald going to love Clara? Thats a rather loaded question. But I didnt have to think much to come up with the right answer. The story is a romance, and Donald is going to have strong romantic feelings for her, and romance is different than love. Love is blind and romance is not. At least thats my personal experience. So with apologies for the technical jargon and with nothing further ado, I present the next installment of
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Chapter 2. Best regards, Carl Quillen

7
June 23
Hi again everybody, I hope youre all enjoying a good weekend. Anyway last weeks installment got considerably better ratings that the one before it. Jim V.S. felt good enough about it to show the story to his wife Jodie who (unsurprisingly) had some astute comments. Jim gets it from somewhere, obviously. Anyway Jodie observed that Id failed to present an adequate description of the spacecraft. This sort of thing is important for visual thinkers, and people often advise writers to thoroughly imagine the stage where you place the characters before you ever get started, just to encourage accurate descriptions of everything when you find an opportune chance. But I was too lazy. Maybe Ill get around to it. Perhaps next week. Jodie also noticed that theres a substantial difference in tone between Donalds letters and the rather volcanic temper he displays outside of them. Thats true and its quite intentional. Thats the wonderful thing about an email relationship: you can think through every sentence that you write, and suppress the unreasoning part of your personality. You can be wiser than you normally are, and in some ways a better friend too, and Donald is just smart enough to take advantage of the possibility. I kept my penpal rather busy this week with details from my extravagantly baroque personal life, but shes still having fun with the story and spending a lot of time on it. She
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reread the entire thing from the start this week and is really interested in the reactions that all of you are having to it. So let me know what youre thinking about it and Ill pass it along. Anyway she particularly liked the line about some thing good coming from darkness and pain, and was hoping that it applied to me. I think it does. So far, anyway. So I present to you the final section of Chapter 2. With fond regards and deep deep paranoia, Carl Quillen
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July 1
Hi Everyone, I had a relatively hard time producing this weeks episode. Id committed to writing a short story within the story with a little bit of bravado. Id never had any trouble with plans like that before, but this time I got into trouble. Typically demands for little stories like this are satisfied fairly easily by an idea that just somehow comes to mind. Or I go to sleep and dream something interesting that can be used for material. This time my dreams were occupied with other concerns and werent too usable. Anyway I hope the result is tolerable. It was difficult to write but I ended up enjoying it anyway. My Penpals most interesting comment from this last week was about Claras summary of Oes book in her letter. Just like Clara cant talk to her ordinary friends about Oe, there are many things that my penpal and I found much easier to talk about at a distance. It made the email relationship we had very different and very special almost from the beginning. Its one of the magic things about email.
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Hope youre enjoying your weekend, Carl Quillen

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July 7
Hi Again, So last weeks missive provoked very little response. I hope that isnt a bad sign. It was difficult to write, but I was pretty happy with it when I was done. Somehow it expressed rather well how I was feeling. My penpal didnt understand the first part of it, which is perhaps an indication that it wasnt really written well enough. Ill have to send her an explanation and maybe rethink how I presented it. Her comment on the second part was that when I was in a gloomy mood I could always skip an installment, especially if it were difficult to write. I could do that, but then the story itself would be less useful. Coming out every week they are a form of a dairy. If emotional volatility makes them somewhat uneven thats OK with me. I still like having a record of it, and I could always rewrite sections later anyway. Last week was difficult. I had some ugly decisions to make on a couple of different fronts and now I have made them. I think I did OK and Ill be able to live with the result, but it wasnt fun. In any event, the story continues. I hope you are enjoying your weekend, Carl
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July 14
Hi again,
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Jim V.S. and his wife Jodie reacted well to last weeks episode, which somewhat reassured me that I hadnt completely lost my sense of humor, writing through some of the turbulence that Ive been through in the last few weeks. My penpal also seemed to enjoy it, and shes also picked up on some symbolism that I hadnt noticed, e.g. the failing social compact and the obvious analogy between that and my marital situation. That was amusing for me, because I hadnt noticed, and it is probably on some level how I actually intended it. This weeks episode is more in the diary mode again, and I apologize in advance, as that is likely to make it less interesting for all of you. It didnt seem worth trying to fight with the desire to write it that way. Begging your forbearance in advance, Carl Quillen
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July 21
Hi again Everyone, In last weeks segment, Donald tells a story about Lrthyf, who as you might imagine is actually a stand-in for one of my daughters. In particular my 13-year-old, who is fond of making conversation exactly of the same type that appeared in the story. I dont know how it seemed in the story, but in real-life its extremely cute. This weekend I also had a number of fun conversations with her which were all highly entertaining. A typical one, just to give you an idea, goes like this: first she instructs me repeatedly that she is the most important thing in my life. More important than life itself, of course. Certainly more important than her siblings. Then she admits that Im not bad as a father. But it would
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be even better, she adds, if I could arrange to have a sexchange operation, and become a superior variety of parent. Then she could talk to me confidentially about her extravagant love-life, all her intricate designs on various male life forms, the unfathomable problems presented by female hygiene, etc. etc. I admit to my unwavering commitment to her, but beg off on the risky medical procedure. Then she tells me everything about her love-life and hygiene problems anyway. You get the picture. Its all very amusing. Its even better after a few beers. This weeks installment is below. The sketch that Donald supplies to Clara is actually something I drew from a photograph of my son. The eyes are somewhat too wideset to be a good likeness of him, but it came out looking as handsome as he does in real life. I also enclose, for your entertainment, a good likeness of Lrthyf herself.
Lrthyf
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Regards, Carl Quillen

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July 26
Hello again, Pardon me for surprising you all this week a little ahead of time. I expect to be traveling off on vacation Saturday when I usually write these things, so Ive been working on this weeks installment a little early. As it happened, this section rather abruptly ended itself in a way that completely finished the chapter, and I wouldnt want to dilute it any by adding to it. So Im going to send it off to you a little early. Anyway last weeks section (somewhat out of the blue) involved a lot of incompetent sketching and bad art on my part. It was still a lot of fun for me and I enjoyed communicating that in the story. This week youll see if you scroll down another piece of art, but not by me. Im sure youll agree its an improvement. I have to thank Kim M. for painting it and doing me the honor of placing it in my care, and I reproduce it here with her permission. I have it by my desk at work where I can keep an eye on it, and it has become a good friend. This week I devoted myself to sharing my feelings about it, and I do that at length below. Keep in mind that the original is rather prettier than the low resolution scan that I enclose, and some aspects of the painting would be missed by any scan. The wing, for example is crafted in multiple layers of paint than shimmer ever so delicately in sunlight. Those of you with access to my desk might enjoy paying a visit to look at it yourself. May you all have a lovely weekend, Carl Quillen
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August 4
Hello again, Last weeks installment ended Chapter 3 in a decisive way that I was rather happy about. Kim M. also sent me a nice note after returning from vacation that expressed approval of the way I was writing, so maybe I did justice to her painting in the way that I described it. At least perhaps I wasnt woefully off the mark. Anyway my penpal enjoyed the section and the painting too, so Ill call it a victory and move onto something rather different with Chapter 4. Going on vacation was probably a good idea, because the rest of the story will probably be a little different in tone that the last chapter, and its good to have a substantial interruption emotionally for me too. I had fun developing the email relationship between the two main characters. But theres no way I can reproduce anything like the 850 odd letters that my penpal and I exchanged over the course of the last three years. So its really unavoidable. Im going to have to skip over some time and give only the barest hit of a lot of letters if Im going to keep this thing at a reasonable length. So with that explanation I start below a little anew. And I hope that you are enjoying/have enjoyed some really nice vacation time with your families too. Faithfully yours, Carl Quillen
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August 11
Hi Everybody,
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I hope youve been enjoying the summer. Its been quiet here on the story front, with little reaction filtering back to me. I hope thats a good sign. Anyway Im enjoying the change in pace and having fun with the new chapter. Personally I had a rather a momentous week. I had a new insight about someone I like, and it came as a tremendous surprise. It taught me a lot about myself too. Thats the source of the line below about when you really understand your friends you find a way to understand yourself. I think thats very true. Best regards, Carl Quillen
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August 19
Hi Again Everybody, Im now in the happy position to be able to report that the end of this story is in sight. Things really look like they are proceeding according to schedule, and Ill be able to end things in a way that is satisfactory to me in another 4 or 5 episodes, pretty much according to my original plans. I was a little afraid about the quality of last weeks episode, given that I wrote it under stress and with very little sleep. I dont know how you all felt or will feel about it, but I actually am pretty happy with the result in retrospect. Im enjoying looking at how my personal turmoil ended up en coded in the story. I dont think that my penpal necessarily got it all, but I was talking to her about all the details of the turmoil, and she appreciated the dark humor of the situa tion quite a bit. So at some stage Ill be able to explain to her how it all ended up in the story, and I think shell have fun with it.
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I hope you are all enjoying the closing days of summer. Happy trails, Carl Quillen
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August 24
Hi again Everyone, Last time Clara revealed that she was married, just as my penpal is. My penpals reaction to the story segment was that she knows just how Clara feels. It is an awkward thing writing a married woman the way Donald and I did, and of course I wondered a lot about the propriety of it during the 3 years I was doing it. I think it was actually an OK thing to do. My reasons for believing that I outline below, and hopefully you will understand when you read them. In fact I think very little bad resulted in my penpals marriage as a result of our correspondence. When I started she was very angry with her husband. She isnt any more, and shes looking for ways to be closer to him. She also understands her sons much better, particularly the one that likes writing stories, and I suspect shes much better at communicating with her friends. I think she is a much better friend to them too. I believe that there have been many positive results from our friendship, and very little if anything is wrong with it. So, like Donald I will call it a good thing, accept it as a blessing, and strive hard to make sure it always stays that way. Best regards, Carl Quillen
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September 1
Hello again, I rather expected last weeks episode to provoke nothing but stunned silence, but much to my delight I received a couple of really insightful emails from Kim M, who seemed to understand what I was getting at with a profundity that frankly stunned me. She was not shy in her criticism as well, observing that to put Clara on a pedestal the way Donald was doing was problematic. I think thats true. It would in vite mistreatment in almost any relationship, and the ideal of Chivalry that Donald is presenting is rather too demanding on the natural nobility of the lady to be particularly success ful in the real world. But that doesnt mean that real rela tionships where less of a pedestal is involved cant work well, and in my experience they can. Jodie V.S. was disappointed in me when I made Clara giggle. Its true it somewhat lessens her as a character that you might take seriously. I did it because Id just been in a meeting with a customer who was all business, and easy to take seriously. But she still had a giggle. You could see at once the young girl she had been and the successful woman she had become, and the contrast was delightful. So Clara giggles. But you ought to take her seriously anyway. I hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day weekend. Best regards, Carl Quillen
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