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

The Famous Rocking Cock Ranch

Jessup set his boots on the asphalt outside the driver’s door.  Because he never drove in boots he shucked off his tennis shoes with the opposite foot and left them in the floorboard.  Instead of immediately slipping his boots on he straddled the boots—heels on the roadway—and let the cool pre-dawn air dry his sweaty socks.

His red hovertible sloshed a little on soft shocks as he finally tugged on the custom made Bluchers and stood to his full height.  Jessup ducked through doorways to avoid injury.  He tossed his Eskimo Joe’s ball cap into the backseat and went around to the front to get his cowboy hat from the trunk: a no-name 3X black felt.

The road he stood on, the fence that trailed it, and the gate that hung across the road from him were the only evidence that anyone but Jessup had ever been to this exact spot on the Earth.  Of course he wasn’t alone in having been here, but this morning it felt that way.  Initially he hoped that as the new owner of the 517 square miles of Colorado ranchland he’d be able to rename the place but it quickly became clear looking through the four different deeds dating back to an 18-something land grant no one had bothered to try and it would be a waste of effort for him to do otherwise.

This former Space Station III Chaplain and co-founder of the Orbital Commission for Morals and Decency was the chagrinned owner of the famous Rocking Cock Ranch.

Day 361