Fanning the Embers

Tweaked yesterday’s writing till I hit the 9 o’clock mark.  Still not finished.

Morning wind kept the smoke from their abandonned campfires low to the ground.  Generations ago we hunters may have worried about upwinding prey or having been detected before arrival, not so now.  Thermals peppered my semlam one signature for each for the small trees, pairs for the larger trunks.

I brushed away the semlam’s meta regarding radial poz-prox and again the mean trunk diameters for both groups.  Those data aid targeting but they don’t assist me…much.  Since position and proximity calculations are easy and relevant to our suits’ general elimination directive they complete and appear first.  Once those two lamina cleared, bio meta faded in.  These I could use.  These better describe the character and readiness of the encountered aboriginals.  Each enco’s heart rate percolated onto the semlam and hovered above their thermals.

“Foster?”

:Where’s our cake?: crawled across the bottom of my semlam.

Moore, Leathers, and Hisey’s me2s chased off Foster’s question.  Heart rates weren’t high enough on average to indicate fear as much as readiness.  We’d caught the encos off guard, no question of that, so it couldn’t be an ambush.  Surprised or not, these enco’s were more or less waiting on us.

“Place your bets.”  Four win-place-show thermal rankings appeared on my semlam.  As ‘gram leader—having first access to our computer’s results—I abstained.  When I released the meta I knew Leathers had a shit-eating grin and Moore was pissed.  Moore contributed most of the logic used to determine the likely ranking of encountered aboriginals—who to shoot first and who to ask questions of afterward.

Day 375

Low-level Smoke

http://www.booooooom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/megan_matthers_05.jpg

Morning wind kept the smoke from their abandoned campfires low to the ground.  Generations ago hunters may have worried about upwinding prey or having been detected before arrival, not so now.  Thermals peppered my semlam one signature for each for the small trees, pairs for the larger trunks.

I brushed away the semlam’s meta regarding radial poz-prox and again with mean trunk diameters for both groups.  Those data aid targeting but they don’t assist me…much.  Since calculating position and proximity are easy and relevant to our suits’ general elimination directive they appear first.  Bio meta faded in.  These I could use.  These meta describe the character of the encountered aboriginals.  This encounter was supposed to be cake but I now knew it wouldn’t be.

Day 374

Working on the Bechdel-Wallace Test

The sites I come for distraction inspiration served up a higher order of ‘man in a machine’ type pictures this past week.  Ironmany and Mech-Wars type battle suits abide in artist’s minds these days.  Or there’s some sort of powered armor confluence.

You don’t know this, but often times when I’m inspired by some subject I latch on to it locally, think about it a lot, worldbuild a bit or a lot, and then serve up a tangent to you.  Recall that Honga thing a few weeks back?

“Wouldn’t they just send a Re-Train For memo?”

“An RTFM was the first thing they tried.”

Corporal Jilla Sanchez was supposed to be trained—supposed to be getting trained.  Gunnery Sergeant Mary Wittenhauer was reluctant to do so.

Wittenhauer’s day started early at 4:53, seven minutes before her alarm normally went off.  With nearly 14 years in she still loathed mornings.

Shit.  Sometimes it’s hard to get something like this packed up and loaded for the road.  Maybe I’ll steal time and wirds at lunch.

I forgot I’d left this abandoned on Friday.  It’s abandonment surprises me as well since Friday played out like I should have written more.
Let’s see if I can pick up where I left off.  Or begin again.

“It’s fucked up is what it is.”  Corporal Jilla Sanchez whispered across the table like she was continuing a conversation and not starting one.

After a moment, Corporal Nicki S. Pastovich pretended to end that same conversation.  “We’re Marines now.  “Fucked up” is our middle name.”

Sanchez flipped several pages of the 3-ring binder hoping to find a clue, but only finding frustration in navigating the rings and the holes and the whole paper thing.  “Fine.  But this,” Sanchez stretches a page to the extent of it’s tether and waves it back and forth like she’s jump starting a hummingbird, “this is for sure some bullshit.”

Nods up and down the table confirm her statement.

“How do they expect us to operate a Pa-PA without any real training?”

“You don’t thing reading the operating doc is real training?”

“No, I don’t.  But this shit ain’t no doc.  It’s a book or a manual or a binder someone called it.  We may as well be training with rocks and sticks.  The only time I’ve seen paper was when I got married.

Day 282/283