Anthology - From the Street

The boat plows on through the conflicted sea. The wind is changing, and the haze is lifting. Gulls shriek and squabble over my wake. My eyes keep getting drawn to Elf Girl, draped wretchedly over the railing, staring at the distant fingers of wreckage.

Only once in my life did I ever take on a business partner: a shrewd young ork woman who loved the sea as much as I did and called herself Sounder. It didn't work out. She was too talkative for my tastes, and I wasn't ambitious enough for hers. We agreed to part ways without any ill feeling, and it was on our last trip together, as she lounged against the side of my boat- just where Elf Girl is slumped at this very moment-that Sounder asked me, out of the blue:

"What do you want out of life, Monty?"

I told her: "I'm saving up for a little bar on a hot beach a long way from here."

Quick as a flash she came back: "How much is something like that worth?"

Sounder loved to lace her questions with double meanings like that. And somehow that one question keeps coming back to me.

I drop the throttle and leave the boat lurching to a halt on the tide.

"Hey, what's going on?" hisses the hacker. "You going to try some funny business, old man?" He pulls out a heavy pistol.

I come out of my cabin, waving my shaking hands to try and calm everyone down. "I think there's something you need to know about Arty Skunk."

"And what's that?" says Elf Girl, perking up.

"Arty Skunk is a shit. And he's got to where he is today by getting folks like you to kill his enemies for a few measly files. He could have fixed all this by now. But he hasn't. And he never will."

Elf Girl looks at her comrades with piercing eyes, but stops short of saying, "See?"

"Start up the boat again, old man," says the ork menacingly.

"Just listen to me. Do what you have to do. Get your blueprints. But when we're leaving the Skunkworks, I want you to do a job for me."

They laugh and look around the battered old fishing boat.

I know what they're thinking. "I've saved up a fair bit of money over the years. Twenty thousand nuyen, more or less."

"Small-time smuggler, eh?" the Amerind punk sneers. "Hide your treasure in a cave through the Crash?"

"It's yours if you take out Arty Skunk when you're leaving."

There. It's out. The deal is on the table. My heart feels that much lighter already. Just for having made it.

"Naughty naughty, old man," the hacker sniggers. "What will Mister Skunk think of you, eh?"

I feel a chill in my spine. Damned fool. They're going to take your money anyway. Kill you, or threaten to tell Skunk what you've said.

"Hey, hang on a minute!" pipes Elf Girl. Beautiful Elf Girl. Make me believe in people again.

"That's a lot of money, old man. More than we're being paid for our current job, in fact," she says looking around the others. They nod slightly, conceding the point. "Are you serious? His death is worth that much to you?"

She has the most bewitching eyes. I start to feel like she's playing with my mind, plucking my emotions and listening to what notes they produce. It makes me squirm inside, but the truth is that I want someone to know what I've been feeling, what I've been hiding under this beard.

"It's worth that much to them." I nod toward the coast.

"We don't care about them," says the ork. But I've been watching him on and off through this whole trip and I don't buy it. Maybe he's playing it tough for the hacker and the Amerind punk? I hang my hopes on that, and try to make it easy for him:

"So care about the money. Let me care about them."

It seems I'm not so invisible now. The runners exchange glances for a long time without saying anything. At first I think they're arguing their cases by facial expression alone, but then I remember the newfangled Linked Area Network that all the runner teams have these days. Zeroes and ones are deciding my fate.

Eventually, all eyes turn to the ork. I guess he really is in charge after all.

"Deal," he says.

HUMANS THE CYCLE OF MAGIC

by Tom Dowd

Speech given by Keynote speaker, Ehran "The Scribe" at the YET (Young Elven Technologists) fund-raising dinner.

The Humans are confused.

This is their normal state of being. Their lives are so short, they never have time to think things through. I know this is a gross over-simplification, that there have been many brilliant Human scholars throughout the ages. Even the Da Vincis and the Einsteins, while brilliant enough to see a glimpse of the larger pattern, and imaginative enough to visualize a complex and interconnected world, still did not have the time to analyze their own thoughts. It takes years, sometimes hundreds of years, to get the correct perspective on ideas, even your own ideas. Humans just do not have the luxury of that time. They are also limited by their devout belief in not believing. Since the earliest recorded Human history they have had stories of magic, great unexplained ancient civilizations, and other mysteries. The Humans chose not to believe these and thus, when the mother returned the magic to us, they became disoriented and confused, their normal state of being.

In all fairness, I must admit that most of humanity was not very advanced when the great mother took the magic away the last time, so it must be hard for them to deal with its return. What I am about to tell you must remain an elven secret. I know that the Humans will eventually discover it, but it should be delayed as long as possible.

All things that the great mother gives us, she also takes away. Nature, as the Humans call it, moves in cycles: the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons of the year, the flowing of the tide, it is always a cycle. Magic also runs in a cycle, it comes and goes from the earth, as does the warmth of the summer sun. Its cycle is measured not in hours, as the sun's is, but in thousands of years.

From a scientific viewpoint, magic, when charted, is a semi-regular wave form moving through the history of the earth. There are slight fluctuations throughout the wave, and the wave itself is not completely uniform.

The point in the cycle at which the world becomes magically alive or magic falls dormant is called the Threshold Level. Every magical race and, in some cases, each individual within a race, has its own specific magical trigger point for metamorphosis to occur, thus the transformation of the world takes place over a period of time. Traditionally, the Threshold Level has been set as the date of the awakening of the first Great Dragon on the upswing and the hibernation of the last Great Dragon on the down swing. The average time between Threshold Levels is approximately 5,200 years.

As the last age of magic came to a close, Atlantis was readying itself for disaster. The isle of Atlantis was protected from the forces of nature by the magic of its inhabitants, and thus it could not exist after the magic dropped below the Threshold Level. The Atlantian culture was a racial hybrid that had achieved both scientific and magical wonders, but in its later years, it turned against itself by fighting nature to maintain the island. As the end came near, a migration of technology and culture spread from the isle to the rest of the world. This is the reason mankind's ancient calendars all start within 100 years of each other. The Hebrew, Egyptian, Chinese, and most importantly, Mayan calendars all show the direct influence of Atlantian culture.

The Mayan calendar is the most amazing, as it contains a complete description of the magic cycles, including this current crossing of the Threshold. The Mayan calendar was created in the year 3372 BC (using the Christian calendar), just at the end of the last cycle. The Mayans described the cycles as "worlds", and stated that only certain life forms made the transition from one world to the next. The calendar, written over 5,000 years ago, predicted the exact day the Threshold Level would be passed. If we convert the Mayan dates to the current Christian calendar, it correctly states that the Threshold would be passed on December 24, 2011. On that day, the first Great Dragon was seen in Japan. The precision is amazing.