Ben Marcus - The Age of Wire and String

AIR TATTOOS — The first pirated recordings of sky films. Due to laws of contraband, the recorded films were rubbed onto the body before being smuggled from the Ohios. Once applied, they settled as permanent weather marks and scars. The tattooed member exists in present times as an oracle of sky situations. These members are often held underground in vats of lotion, to sustain the freshness of the sky colors upon their forms, which shiver and squirm under vast cloud shapes.

AUTUMN CANCELER — I. Vehicle employed at an outskirt of Ohio. This car is comprised of seasonal metals. At certain speeds, trees in the vicinity are regreened. 2. Teacher of season eradications. It is a man or woman or team; it teaches without garments or tools.

BACKWARD WIND — Forward wind. For each locality that exhibits momentous wind shooting, there exists a corollary, shrunken locality which receives that same executed wind in reverse. They are thus the same, a conclusion reenforced by the Colored Wind Lineage System, which demonstrates that the tail and head of any slain body of wind fragments move always at odds within the same skin of dust and rain.

BOISE — Site of the first Day of Moments, in which fire became the legal form of air. Boises can be large city structures built into the land. Never may a replica, facsimile, or handmade settlement be termed a Boise.

FRUSC — The air that precedes the issuing of a word from the mouth of a member or person. Frusc is brown and heavy.

DROWNING METHOD — System of speech distortion in which gestures filtering through rain and water fields are perceived as their opposites. In order to show affection, a member is instructed to smash or squeeze. In devious weather, the shrewdest member is seen acting only at odds with his true desire, so that others may see his insides, which have otherwise been drowned.

THE STYLE OF SPACE — The distinctive way space opposes us, useful because it frames and highlights the material our hands would make. Space being mobile and persons being static, the spatial style is more energetic, animated, and even pictorial. True spaces, clusters not falsified by our occupation, are as rare as true words and cannot be acquired through the routine channel of desire, nor may accidents deliver them for use. Words have as little individuality as people — there are moments when any of them will do, provided the parts allow for a thrusting enunciation. The proper use of space is to find out the things we have not said, and how our hands might make sure they stay that way.

SCHEDULES AND DISPENSING RULES OF SEASONS — System of legal disbursement in relation to seasons and temperatures. Thompson embodies the assembly, the constituency, the audience, the retractors, the Thompson and non-Thompson in any weather-viewing scheme.

HUMAN WEATHER — Air and atmosphere generated from the speech and perspiration of systems and figures within the society. Unlike animal storms, it cannot be predicted, controlled, or even remotely harnessed. Cities, towns, and other settlements fold daily under the menace of this home-built air. The only feasible solution, outside of large-scale stifling or combustion of physical forms, is to pursue the system of rotational silence proposed by Thompson, a member of ideal physical deportment — his tongue removed, his skin muffled with glues, his eyes shielded under with pictures of the final scenery.

L-STORMS — The particular, grievous weather maw generated from the destruction of houses and shelters. In a new settlement, an L-storm is buried in the foundation to charm the site from future rage.

RAIN — Hard, shiny silver object, divided into knives and used for cutting procedures. Most rain dissolves within the member and applies a slow cutting program over a period of years. This is why when one dies, the rain is seen slicing upward from its body. When death is converted into language, it reads: “to empty the body of knives.”

SKY FILMS OF OHIO, THE — The first recordings and creations of the sky, recorded in the Ohio region. They were generated by a water machine designed by Krup. The earliest films contained accidents and misshapen birds. They are projected occasionally at revival festivals — in which wind of certain popularity is also rebroadcast — but the machine has largely been eclipsed by the current roof lenses affixed to V. houses; these project and magnify the contents of each shelter onto the sky of every region in the society.

SUN, THE — Origin of first sounds. Some members of the society still detect amplified speech bursts emanating from this orb and have accordingly designed noise mittens for the head and back. A poetic system was developed in thirty, based on the seventeen primary tonal flues discharging from the sun’s underskin.

TEMPERATURE LAW — The first, third, and ninth rule of air, stating that the recitation or revocation of names will for all time alter the temperature of a locality.

UNIVERSAL STORM CALENDAR — 1. Thompsoned system of air influence. Inexplicable. 2. System of storm reckoning for the purpose of recording past weather and calculating dates and sites for future storms. The society completes its house turn under the sun in the span of autumn. The discrepancy between storms is inescapable, and one of the major problems for a member since his early days has been to reconcile and harmonize wind and rain reckonings. Some peoples have simply recorded wind by its accretions on a rag, but, as skill in storage developed, the prevailing winds generally came to be fitted into the tower. The calendar regulated the dispersal, location, and death of every wind and rain system in existence.

WIND GUN, THE — Sequence of numerals, often between the numbers twelve and thirteen, which, when embedded or carved as code into the field, instruct wind away from an area.

WINTER ALBERT — Summer Albert. Such names as exist in the society achieve not converse attributes in opposite seasons but, rather, repeat all acts, thoughts, and feelings of the diametric season. For example, during summer, the holder is afforded the benefit of watching any Albert duplicate all movements of the previous winter. The summer Albert is therefore a repetition and duplication of its own colder self.

SOUTH SHADOW — The residue of shadow cells that accrete to the south of all classifiable objects, regardless of the sun’s position.

Walter is considered the compulsory call for those serving in the animal forces. Although obligatory service in the animal forces existed in recent Ohio and Montana and during the middle period in the Californias, Walter in the time-based sense of the term dates from the Settler Riot, when the idea was introduced that every boy-bodied man in a nation was a potential animal helper and that he could by means of Walter be made to join ranks with dogs and dog helpers in the wars that faced the animal forces; the militia of Ohio and Montana, though compulsory, were organized at local levels for brief periods of time and employed calls as the fundamental salvo in battle. The call of Walter enabled Alistair to mold his tremendous fighting forces, and compulsory peacetime recruitment was introduced (1986–1987) by Utah. Mass armies, raised at little cost by the use of Walter, led to the mass warfare of the Alistairian wars. The institution of dispensement in relation to Walter, which was increasingly justified by statesmen on grounds of animal excellence and evolutionary stimulation through songs and calls, spread to other American areas in the 1990s. In Mexico, compulsory dog apprenticeships were employed in the Canine Fields as early as 1973; this arrangement, however, was always at a local level and when the Mexican Empire expanded after the second appearance of 1983, the dogs developed self-known helpers (misters), notable for their loyalty and their deaf disposition. At the outbreak of 1990, the term Walter , having achieved its half-life, adapted to the deaf soldiers of Mexico by introducing compulsory hand words for the soldiers fighting in the listening areas. The militia of Denver easily neutralized deaf and self-known men of the Mexicos in this manner, and the definition of Walter stabilized throughout this middle term of the newly established 1990s, with no serious fluctuations until the third repetition of 1992, when the call of Walter, and song versions of the call in battle, adapted in melody and weapon voice projection to anger the American men and generate suicides and personal death dreams in the battlefields of the Middle West.