The Compromised Life

Dankmar misjudged the distance from the campus mess to the Art Department Lecture Hall, arriving embarrassingly early. He made the most of his misfortune, however, taking a prestige seat at the back of the hall. From this vantage he could see eager students noisily filing into the front rows without being seen in return. "Never lose the advantage of situational awareness," Dankmar said silently to himself as he pulled out his datalink and stylus. Dankmar had no particular interest in the Aesthetics of Violence. He had mostly enrolled in the lecture series to reduce the challenge of his academic workload. Art studies straddled perfectly the space between the physical demands of Applied Disembowelment and the intellectual rigors of Visceral Taxonomies. Professor Kleiber, who would be delivering the lectures, was reportedly a subaltern from the Outer Periphery. Dankmar knew with confidence that such a professor would grade leniently out of deference to his students' far supe...

When I was a child, I developed a crush for one of my classmates. It began when I was still very young, no more than six or seven years old. It first manifested as revulsion - there was something terrifyingly different about her that both titillated and disgusted my infantile sense of judgment. Beneath that surface layer I had an inexhaustible fascination with her. I wanted to watch her and I feared to be seen by her. I would stare furtively at her whenever I thought that I could avoid detection. She was far more precocious than me, and infinitely more intelligent. She joked with our classmates easily, teasing just enough to stir camaraderie but pulling back gently before giving offense. I dreaded being called upon before the class, forced by the instructor to stammer out my ignorance for the snickering amusement of my classmates. Always conscious of my inferior capabilities and my strange appearance, I spoke rarely and without confidence. She, on the other hand, was wholly without...

By the time the old man finally spoke, the fire between us had died down to barely glowing embers. He sat across the circle from me, a featureless silhouette crowned by stars, and began to intone his story in a raspy voice, nearly singing but not quite:     "In the beginning, upon the lands, there was earth and there was forest. There was water and there were beasts.     "Above the lands, there were stars. The stars traveled peacefully across the Heavens. The stars gazed down upon the quiet darkness of the lands and they were made happy by what they saw.     "Now there was one star which grew jealous of the beautiful lands. He wished to descend from the heavens to the lands, that he might take possession of the lands for himself.     "When the other stars learned of their brother's foolish intent, they ordered him to stop. 'Do not do this terrible thing! Do you not realize that if you go down to the lands, that you will bring fire and light from t...