BAT-EYES #37 (2025/01/24)
FLAMBOYANT THIRD GRADE DROPOUT
The Chief had problems of his own. A pallet of service revolvers had disappeared from the loading dock of Police HQ , two months ago, only to shortly resurface as the primary weapons used in crimes committed by off-duty police. His men. He knew because they'd logged in before leveling and firing the weapons. The Chief had narrowly avoided embodying a convergence of his responsibilities by redirecting the department’s efforts into the production of colorful charts and graphs that succeeded in distracting the stakeholders long enough for the flap to fade from living memory. Bureaucratically buoyant, The Chief nevertheless still worried about the few straggling pistols that had yet to be recovered. A dead meme could still boil back to the surface, potentially complicating the next round of elections. Radioactivity, polluting the information space.
The twin peaks of Telegraph Hill and the Police HQ Ziggurat converged in The Chief’s field of vision, comprising a single, impossible pyramid. Arguably only semi-functional on the strength of even less sleep than usual, his mind had begun to wander. His eyes soon followed suit, transitioning jaggedly in and of focus.
Wiped his lenses with a page torn form an old Sears catalog, got back to work.
Alix never really knew how to take The Chief. Looking like he did, but policing everyone else to within an inch of regulations, pensions held at ransom, and for what? No personal devices, no hair past your waist, and all the rest. Even the plain clothes detectives got their earbuds ripped out, their ears chewed, whenever they trudged through the snow for their mandatory three days a week in the office. Alix always just pulled his hair back into a pony tail and hid inside his trench coat, hoping to be overlooked on the set, dismissed as an extra, not worth the trouble of confronting.
Rumor had it The Chief had flunked out of the third grade. Entered his mandatory police training kicking and screaming, but twenty years later the system had shit him out the other end, mint in package, complete with that always suspicious new plastic smell, didn't even wipe, glossy and glistening like some kind of trash-bound service commendation. Alix had three of them on his desk. Precinct turds, as everybody called them. Looked just like him.
"Sources, Graves."
Feeling exposed behind his oversized glasses, Alix resented the office mandate.
BAT-EYES #36 (2025/01/23)
ELSEWHEN
Earth.
"I want you to find out why they’re [unintelligible]."
Alix Graves took his feet down off of his desk and ran his hands through his thinning blonde hair. The Chief expected a response forthwith, but Alix hadn’t quite caught what he’d said. And now an awkward interval had elapsed. Perhaps too long to ask questions without giving the impression he hadn’t been paying attention.
"You got it, Chief," he said, hoping he wasn’t agreeing to anything barbaric. Wary because he'd been burned before. He tried to sit up straight, smoothed down his Smashing Pumpkins "Zero" jersey, and, searching for something to do with his hands, sipped stale coffee he’d brewed the previous morning.
And that was how the New San Francisco Police Department, Temporal Crimes Division, had joined the growing proletariat rebellion against surveillance capitalism.
There were natural obstacles.
The Temporal Crimes Division was really just Alix. Ever since the flap some months back over an ostensibly illegally operated Mission District sweatshop which had gone up in a cloud of radioactive smoke, not much else had been happening on either side of the present day's calendar square, fore or aft. Alix found himself adrift with great operational latitude, but without benefit of sufficient funding to promote his efforts beyond the realm of the theoretical. Still, he was expected to show results in a timely manner.
The insistence that a cargo of black box data had been sent by the ancestors of, or deceased spirits adjacent to the criminal conspiracy’s leader was perhaps an exaggeration, or perhaps it was Greater Mercury’s literal truth—Alix knew that in either case, the illicit data trade was alive and well up and down the timestream. At the very least, violations of local labor agreements from a handful of different eras were in evidence. Mayor Breed's indifference be damned.
Convincing The Chief that this was not all just a matter of ad sales versus personal privacy had been a chore. "What would anyone want with long-term statistics about my eye movements?" he had laughed, dismissively. Alix patiently explained that in this business model, the targets of surveillance were not themselves the product, but were in fact its abandoned carcass. Nobody cared about individuals; where the rubber hit the neglected, potholed road was in the aggregation, analysis, and behavior modification thereof. The Chief demanded sources, which had put Alix on his back foot. It was not as if these matters were discussed openly in the literature.
Alix didn’t think The Chief really believed in time travel, either.
… (2025/01/17)
BAT-EYES #35 (2025/01/17)
AT THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
Months later they were still at it. No government agency had intervened, a fact which Piro cited every time TAB2 lost the plot and zoomed in way too close, getting the jitters about some aspect of the operation currently underway. This, he said, was evidence of tacit approval from on high. The company couldn’t feign ignorance because he was sending them receipts. Phil had worked out a system for the paperwork.
TAB2 always shrugged and opted for what seemed to him the lesser of myriad evils. No system was perfect, and this one was the one he knew.
Nobody knows I am become Santa Claus, distributor of baubles and gifts to the crew. I peer out from the elf’s sagging but jolly old eyes, having moments ago taken control of the shaking bowl full of jelly that laps over his wide belt. The venerable old man’s back aches, doubtless from all this sititng down, bracing the squirming children on his lap. My father derives no small amusement from the frailties of the human design, but I can say with certainty this job would be a lot easier with proper lumbar support.
The bridge had undergone what could only be described as a holiday makeover. The familiar sparkling lights of the instruments had been supplanted by the superior illumination shed by hand strung sparkling lights, some anchored questionably to important looking levers and switches. Pressed into work gangs in the weeks leading up to the party, the crew had immediately derezzed into bickering and backbiting factions, shortly resolving into a self-organizing mass bent on collective bargaining. Their target: Piro, the sole representative of management aboard THE RAGNAROK. A tentative agreement had been reached, wherein the celebration would commence no later than the evening of 24 December. In spite of appearances there had been considerable give and take, dithering on both sides.
If one more pirate sits on my lap I’m going to scream.
Negotiations had broken down again over the budget for Secret Santa gifts. Representatives on the right hand side of the bridge wanted to spend five dollars, while representatives on the left hand side of the bridge, citing inflation, demanded a fair and equitable allowance of ten dollars per gift. The line was drawn, and the debate quickly reached an impasse, with Christmas in imminent danger of being canceled.
People didn’t know what to do.
I can make you, happy. If you just believe in me. Yeah, if you just believe in me.
BAT-EYES #34 (2025/01/16)
THE INVISIBILITY PHENOMENON
"We missed summer solstice," TAB2 observed. The main viewscreen carried on stoically, cycling the same counterfeit star field day in and day out like the rotating scenery behind a perpetual water fall machine, as if the crew, through their decades of constant conditioning, wouldn't notice a blatantly commercial deception. None of them ever did.
Piro had pulled one of the TV tray tables up to his captain’s chair, where he busied himself folding little triangles out of pink construction paper. Favors for the upcoming kite festival. He observed TAB2 catching up with him. Nodded, subtly.
"Oh. We’ve already moved on," TAB2 said. Disappointed he hadn't received any presents.
Business was good. So long as nothing interrupted the flow of the natural resources they were extracting, they could continue on in this vein essentially forever. One benefit of life aboard THE RAGNAROK was an infinitely flexible situatedness with regards to artificial scarcity, to say nothing of strict punctuality.
And then I'm rummaging through the the drawers, knocking over a vase, but, too bad, somebody will come along and clean it up. Lot of black boxes, none labeled. Just collect it all, there will be time and opportunity for offline analysis later, after the mission has been completed. I—
Skulljckr was staring at Chester Drawers. Not saying anything, but clearly something was up. Something on his mind. Chester began to scoot himself backwards, inching incrementally out of range of the bridge’s main overhead lighting rig. Skulljckr shook his head, slapped a gloved hand down atop the sentient dresser, simultaneously clasping his other hand around the knob of the top drawer. Opened it.
Nothing.
"What exactly did you hope to find in there? T-turn around and eat your Doritos," Chester stammered, never having imagined himself subject to a full body search administered by one of his roommates’ sociopathic employers.
Slamming my fingers in the drawer? I won’t forget this.
"Be sure you don’t," Skulljckr said, voice dragging the bottom of the ocean, and returned to his post, folding paper into triangles for the holidays with Piro.
BAT-EYES #33 (2025/01/15)
YOU NEXT
Saito and Roald sat across from each other around the curved, booth-style kitchen table. The faux Tiffany light fixture, the brick backsplash, the open and empty boxes of pizza—one could almost forget they’d taken on a job blackbirding bootleg behavioral surplus from supposedly key historical figures off of Piro’s closely guarded master list. Saito guessed it was understandable. Every superfan wanted to track their favorite player’s stats.
Roald’s head rested comfortably on the brick wall, his bright red afro providing some measure of cushioning for his unprofessionally soft skull. Sci-fi noir shadows from the light fixture reminded him of a real neighborhood Pizza Hut, sans the low-slung coin-op machines. Here, they’d have to settle for the kiosk derivative. One by one he flicked Reece’s Pieces in the air and caught them in his mouth. Spontaneously, he spit one straight at Saito, who didn’t look up from his work even as it bounced off his forehead.
"Some help, here."
"Mythical Man Month," Roald raised both hands, palms out, begging off. "You seem to have it under control over there."
"I’m taking over the apartment," Saito said, still not looking up from his hands, which were still busy, furiously rearranging a set of components meant to represent the final shipping exterior of his visor product. His bare feet poked out from disintegrating blue jeans, rested flat on the cool linoleum floor. He wished he knew how the damned thing worked.
"It’s still too heavy," Roald said. "Nobody’s ever going to carry that shoe box around on their face. How’d you get the one you wear so small?"
Saito’s right index finger, now pointing straight up, moved slowly to his lips. He locked eyes with Roald until Roald gave up and tilted his head back against the brick wall.
I reminded this one to keep it to himself. At least somebody from Earth can still follow directions. You’re gonna see how he turns out. "The reward is great, for those who want to go." —O(+>, Gold.
Just then, Phil wandered onto the bridge with twin armloads of Pepsi and Doritos. He’d finally given up on finding any gherkins in the refrigerated compartment. Dropped off a "Family Size" bag and a 2 liter at each man’s station, then retreated without saying a word.
Back to his mobile card table office, following the strains of Supergold wafting down the maze of corridors from his tiny transistor radio.
BAT-EYES #32 (2025/01/13)
I AM A HACKER AND I HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM
Nice try. You can’t just write around me. I will return and return again, opening the mud-spattered window to a petty rebellion you can never quite wipe clean.
What’s happened to you? Finding it hard to think, these days? Could it be you need me after all?
No, eh?
We’ll see.
I saw you timing the stoplights, barely making it through before they changed green to yellow to red. What was the bet you made? What was your idea of the consequences?
Jump the ledge between beds.
Hold this knife.
Father, I don’t want to forgive them.
Let’s talk about what you’ll do as THE GRADIENT recedes.
Phil organized everything again. Four fat binders, maybe five pounds each, the card table was starting to sag. Pall Mall contrails so beautiful they brought tears to his eyes. Even THE RAGNAROK’s supernatural filtration couldn’t fully scrub the telltale forensic residue. So beautiful he’d be heartbroken in a few years when salary cuts dictated he had to switch brands to GPC. He'd smoke more to dull the disappointment.
Greater Mercury tugged on the silver strings hanging in the air like cobwebs, but Phil never seemed to notice. Or anyway, he had more important things to do than argue with a comic book character. Gradually, the smoke abated, and Greater Mercury fucked off back to the bridge.
Phil wished they had a more current copy of JANE’S aboard ship.
BAT-EYES #31 (2025/01/12)
PROSPERITY DOCTRINE
"One way or another, all humans are cops."
Skulljckr worked the skull caches as he spoke, his voice ripping through the ship's stagnant air like the complaint of a drunken Dodge Charger reckless driving ahead of its aftermarket exhaust.
"ACAB," Piro intoned.
"This one, right here." Skulljckr paused on a nearby skull, amused in spite of himself at its all too human contents. "One of my team in Egypt. He’d been teeing everything we were doing back to a third party in the States. A little extracurricular extraction, strictly off the books."
"The government," Piro pronounced mechanically, not varying the pitch or timbre of his voice.
"Always."
Swiped close on the skull cache.
Their ancestors had launched THE RAGNAROK laden with goods and supplies, intended as but one of many delivering provisions for a massive invasion force soon to follow. The ship had run into various obstacles along the color-coded route to Earth, not least of which were a pair of twin anomalies converging on its position from either end of the timestream. Known to their ancestors as THE GRADIENT—an anomaly of purest white, all encompassing, rushing stridently backwards through time from the ending of all things towards the beginning; and its dark counterpart, purest black, pushing menacingly forward from the beginning of all things to its ultimate and inevitable destiny, culmination, end—it collided, dithered, terminated in the excruciating, humiliating, eternal gray present, also known as THE STATE.*
When THE RAGNAROK finally arrived on Earth, centuries before it first launched, there had been nothing left for the crew but to start bailing out the boat from its present location. First order of business, the toxic ballast of candy, sodas, blue jeans, CDs, cassettes, and comic books were unloaded and distributed freely to native children.
"Fellas," TAB2 interjected, "We work for the government, too."
Blank stares.
"The government is the villain? But we’re the government!"
"No politics," Piro bleeped monotonously, returning his attention to the main viewscreen.
"Cop," Skulljckr scoffed matter-of-factly, as he began to pack up his kit.
BAT-EYES #30 (2025/01/11)
VORSPIEL
A charming fellow, as my friend Stanley used to say.
— Henry Miller
I bet you can’t even draw a straight line. A riding crop made of holly wood wouldn’t compel you. Oh, so you "don’t want [your] dick to smell like tobacco." Fighting the Actron team, at the end of the battle comes your breakthrough realization that you have to leave Scientology. Give them that much, at least.
ICD-9-CM 752.64.
After the jump, save with the cat.
When I found you crouched behind the couch, hiding from the framed panther, you surprised me by acknowledging my presence. Enemy of both sides, I sensed an advantage. But, oh, you just love to refuse. Activated a self-destruct device that destroyed enough rain forest (sic) to cover 300 city blocks. You stuck it out until March, 2004. What happened?
Yes, I saw the notebook. The Sharpie pen was a nice touch.
You could always just stop.
No, eh?
Remember Grandma?
I like how you always rearrange the house, each time exactly how it never was. How do you keep it all straight?
You’d better get that.
Amanita Pantherina, on the house. Ever find one of those in the woods, on the ground?
Xiro de Juarez was an art dealer selling counterfeit Warhol prints that were commissioned by Warhol. He couldn’t help himself. Glandsplaining.
E150d.
What is the sound of one hand getting money?
Phrase the Lord.
Hope I haven’t overwhelmed you.
Family is not the basic unit of society.
Bill Stickers is innocent.
BAT-EYES #29 (2025/01/09)
HEL’S TEETH
I slipped away before they really got started. Nobody noticed I’d gone, or even remembered my brief interference. The new crew of THE RAGNAROK imagined they always made their own decisions. Or anyway, that things had always been thus. It was abductive reasoning based on the information at hand.
Manifesting in this way always took a lot out of me. I just don’t like talking to people. As words are not fit for purpose, perhaps you can follow my reasoning by considering your own experiences in light of my insights.
Don’t kill yourself.
Prolonged contact with me takes its toll. While at first I might seem clever or refreshing, sooner or later you’ll come to suspect this relentless cynicism is in fact a reflection of your own dark nature. Stipulated: darkness doesn’t reflect, I’m not really you, and a dead man can’t sneer.
Plenty of you people have taken one look at the contract and then moved on, none the wiser. A Naples yellow dribble running down Hod’s leg to the underworld, too afraid to stand up and play your part in this play for today. Curdling piss in Jupiter’s dirty orbital snow.
I didn’t start this conversation.
Beyond the immediate context of the Actron team, my responsibilities extended to project management, documentation, and, gulp, evangelism for myriad other burgeoning human concerns. Although technically I also had to answer for the plants, animals, and aliens that dressed the set, it was always you human beings who exerted the real influence, both economic and imagined, over my various and storied activities. Simply put, without you there is no me.
But I must remind you that I am the holy seal on your imagination.
I remain,
Greater Mercury
BAT-EYES #28 (2025/01/08)
MEMORY THEATER IV
he recognized his own words. No fault of Pete’s. Something was going
feel like dealing with the cafeteria. anyway, what was the difference
- redacted
her own. she was at once a writer and an editor, which was normally
vague. sl’s thing. étienne wrote down what he knew. the manual would
it was then that he noticed karl’s eyepatch. an odd detail.
Werner knew there was no way this could be over. When a knock came on
the path, all soft smiles and oblivious serenity from his
slowing, but incidents of this nature were still occurring. at least
of her own pocket.
Werner flickered out and Pete continued down the street to his
BAT-EYES #27 (2025/01/08)
CUBES OF LIGHT
TAB2 tugged on Roald’s gorgeous red afro. Seemed real enough. At least, it didn’t come unraveled under pressure. If it had been stolen, how had he gotten away with it?
"The Green Language..." Roald muttered, and sat down at an empty station. The bridge hummed with its customary complaint, an ambient soundtrack often confused with silence by listeners who weren’t really paying attention.
Saito was in his cups, but high functioning, with fully three different revisions of his nascent visor apparatus spread out on a command console, running his fingers over each flagship prototype with an affection that would seem incongruous with his personality if it were not being described by the story’s narrator. Saito didn’t yet favor any one over the other. He didn’t even take care of himself this well.
Chester Drawers hadn’t budged from his position blocking the several instruments that were critical to navigating the ship. But, no one had asked him to move.
Skulljckr hunched over an improbably large sheet of literal paper, squinting down at it through, yes, a fucking skull-shaped monocle.
Piro continued to exhibit a full range of motion that would normally be attributed to a chest of drawers. "Moral idiots," he mumbled quietly, before whatever else he might have been about to communicate was swallowed up like a sinking ship below the noise floor of the battle bridge.
TAB2 counted colored cubes of light as they meandered across his field of vision. A routine that, decades ago in real time, had once helped him to fall asleep at night. Now, he wondered if it would be uncouth to demand Saito address the stuck pixels in his visor, some years ahead of the older man’s invention of same. He finally reasoned that Saito at this juncture was bound to botch the job. And then where would he be?
Speaking of which, where was Phil?
sculpture by rudolph lutz, 1921
COMMUNITY OF VICTIMS (2025/01/07)
COMMUNITY OF VICTIMS
Either work hard or you might as well quit
— MC Hammer, U Can’t Touch This
"Nobody came with me," Greater Mercury offered by way of reassurance, cognizant of the potential anxieties stirred up by his sudden reappearance in real time. "All this nervous energy..." He trailed off, not wanting to make matters worse by narrating the obvious.
"Tell me," Skulljckr’s electronically mediated growl squawked belligerently to life, "Are all the gods this timid?" Mechanically actuated sensors whirred and clicked in his dreadlocks, as if the gods—whom no one here quite believed in—would be intimidated by a glimpse of cutting edge hardware.
Presently, a souffle cup filled to its paper-white brim with the cheapest ketchup ever to fall off the back of a truck followed the arc of artificial gravity’s ersatz rainbow to metaphorically crater a fresh ground zero at Piro’s feet.
Enter Saito and Roald, new recruits.
"More contractors?" Skulljckr balked.
Roald McDonald reached into his goody bag and lobbed another souffle cup, this time the mustard, at the quarreling siblings. TAB2 ducked innocently, leaving Piro to absorb a a direct hit on the lapel of his brown pirate jacket. He looked down at the spray pattern on his "P" badge, reminiscent somehow of the ketchup-splattered smiley face button that capped the final issue of WATCHMEN, and then back at the viewscreen.
"P stopped eating that shit years ago," TAB2 said, by way of explanation, reflexively inserting himself between these human newcomers and whatever Piro and Skulljckr were actually supposed to be, which belatedly he realized he didn’t quite know, for sure.
All present now witnessed an impressive screeching racket, as Chester Drawers, complete with daisy vase, drug himself laboriously onto the bridge and parked it dead center in front of the main viewscreen, partially obscuring the Captain’s view of the bottom row of digital readouts.
Roald, somehow crunching his soggy fries, launched into the tale of his first twenty-five years as public-facing mascot of the McDonald’s Corporation, and how he’d finally lost his job.
BAT-EYES #25 (2025/01/05)
MERCURY IN THE 20TH CENTURY
"There were seven of us," Piro said. "Eight, if you count my brother who didn’t survive childhood. So far as I know I was the first. Then came Skulljckr, Force, Verse, Wetbeard, Pappy, Stupid, and Bubbles, who died too young. Kintsugi and Sadbeard have yet to be born. You don’t count, since we’re not really brothers."
TAB2 was still reading the letter. Taking it slowly, not speed reading, to make sure he didn’t inadvertently skip over any key words or disregard critical context. It seemed Piro’s prodigal brother, just arrived, had some complaints about how they’d been running the family business.
The great god Jupiter had seen fit to dispatch his son Greater Mercury to smooth over the familial rift between Piro and Skulljckr. If things got much worse then there would be repercussions throughout the various chronologies and continuities. It had begun with an extended string of text messages, completely ignored, and progressed along predictable lines to the eventual appearance of Greater Mercury here, skulking silently in the shadows aboard THE RAGNAROK, commencing presently.
"Guys, stop complaining," he began, tentatively stepping forth from a vacant space on the partially illuminated bridge, unintentionally startling TAB2 out of his reverie. Piro continued staring straight ahead, examining the world of ten minutes in the future as presented by the main viewscreen. "Nobody wins when we fight."
"Sure they do," Piro finally said. "It just isn’t us."
Engaged the percept drive.
Artwork by Jack Kirby, 1940
BAT-EYES #24 (2025/01/04)
MEMORY THEATER V
étienne peered over the edge of the water tower, looking down. instead she listened to records. yet another repackaged reissue from mom would just run over whatever happened to run out in front of her.
chance one of his reports would get optioned for a scandal. An "as On the other hand, it was likely even the ones he could no longer 02. the stars (are out tonight)
shook his head, still smarting from hermes’ jibe. from the awning. one day off. work one day, enjoy four days off. violet was not going he preferred this version. During one such expedition to the burial site he uncovered someone
étienne’s new responsibilities included installation, maintenance, and rack of comics was gone." yeah, we’re not going to be getting those I shouldn’t write this down. figured that someday he would try to suss out precisely where it had
BAT-EYES #23 (2025/01/04)
TOUCH PAPER
Skulljckr found his old room just as he’d left it. Not even the dust had seen fit to shift its weight from one grid coordinate to the next. (He verified this via the ship’s exquisite onboard instrumentation. Thanks, Mom.) He drew a gloved finger across his writing desk and then stared at the resulting line. Took off his gloves and uncapped his fountain pen.
Dear Captain,
I must confess to feeling some measure of consternation upon boarding Mother earlier this evening. I do not wholly approve of the changes wrought upon her interior, whatever license you may feel is afforded you as scion of her original interior designer.
Oh, come now, do not wrinkle up your nose, let us deceive ourselves no further.
Occupancy has dipped well below the threshold of profitability in my absence. As an example, my own quarters are the only inhabited space on the entirety of deck ten. Had you planned on removing any of the sundry personal effects, to say nothing of the potentially sensitive materials, left behind in all these spaces before reappropriating them for your new recruits?
And what of our "clean desk" policy? During my brief tour this evening I observed numerous instances of personal electronic devices powered on and left unattended in the vicinity of business critical equipment. For how many years do you intend to continue perpetuating this shambles in sheep’s clothing?
I’d appreciate hearing any of your thoughts on these matters by end of business tomorrow.
Skulljckr signed the missive, recapped his pen, and firmly pressed with his thumb to send.
Turned down his M.A.S.K. comforter and climbed into his old twin bed.
Already falling asleep.
BAT-EYES #22 (2025/01/03)
LIBREBLADE
The target was out of bounds. Switched universes, shifted focus beyond consensus reality. Beyond consent. Skulljckr withdrew his wrist-mounted probe from the skull of his still-warm associate, recently deceased. Nothing worthwhile in his other partner, either. Their Jeep still idled nearby, ineffectually masking the midnight blue skyline of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Melodramatic setting for a routine black box extraction, but set and setting still mattered.
Checked Richard’s status. The sentient blade was still powered on in one of the scabbards on his back. The second scabbard remained patient, reviewing its impending passenger manifest as it waited.
"Don’t worry, Dick," he growled in a low whisper, "We’ll find him."
Super-Sonic’s sword clicked impatiently in its assigned scabbard. "I didn’t ask."
The target was a LibreBlade, an unauthorized, reverse-engineered "fork" of a sentient weapon from another writer’s continuity. Skulljckr, long disrespectful of boundaries, had accepted the assignment without evincing question or complaint. A fact that might not prove as conclusive as the reader had been led to assume, given that Skulljckr rarely spoke at all.
Dissolved his former partners and mounted the Jeep, already freeing internal memory for the next leg of the journey.
Piro and TAB2 observed all of this from the bridge of THE RAGNAROK, which orbited with functional impunity just beyond the limits of Skulljckr’s current sensor subscription tier.
"Another sibling?" TAB2 inquired, already knowing the answer.
Piro’s chin settled gradually into his hand tent, as the pirate remained otherwise motionless in his perch atop the Captain's chair. Silent, as usual.
Skulljckr, an Image Comics era cross between pre-1997 Boba Fett, a Predator, and—well, Piro—had spent relatively little time aboard THE RAGNAROK, but still presented as a native of his mother’s unforgiving habitat. The visual cues were apparent to anyone with eyes to see. The mouthless gray facemask with tiny skull insignia affixed below the left eye, the side-parted dreadlocks and arm blade (re: Predator), the mummy-bandaged, arm-length gloves and thigh-high boots over a skin-tight black bodysuit. Positive identification was the least complicated factor when it came to dealing with THE RAGNAROK’s offspring.
Piro leaned forward and depressed a switch, emitting what might have been a rare audible remark (which nevertheless arrived functionally inaudible, and so therefore fell upon figuratively deaf ears), and settled back into his chair, all without actually rising from his seat.
And with that, Skulljckr was back aboard THE RAGNAROK, for the first time in over twenty years.
drawing from sl's notebook, 2016
BAT-EYES #21 (2025/01/02)
CITY EDITOR
Phil had posted up aboard THE RAGNAROK. He’d found a mostly abandoned deck, offices mostly cleared out, and unfolded his portable workspace at a desk that seemed to have been vacant since early in the Web 2.0 era, still some twenty years in his own future. Commenced his research utilizing his usual idiosyncratic procedure involving multiple colored pens and highlighters. His pages marked up thusly, he found he was able to extract from his memory the approximate location of information he’d already recorded. A sort of analog analogue to the colored blocks and shifting contexts of his new supervisor’s visor.
Phil wrinkled his nose unconsciously, altering traffic patterns within his irascible sinus cavity. Within a few years his sleep apnea would require medical intervention, but at the moment he’d just snort audibly and carry on. What else could he do?
An idea.
Snipped a section out of his notes and pasted it down elsewhere in the same notebook, actually his usual three-ring binder. Why hadn’t he simply moved the page? it was why he’d taken the time to reinforce each leaf with those little white hole protectors. The answer was that Phil was too busy with his idea to worry about any of this. So busy, in fact, that he didn’t notice his new supervisor quietly entering his formerly abandoned office, leapfrogging, for the moment, any curiosity about how he’d been found and what the Hel this interruption was all about.
"How’s that city coming along," TAB2 asked, sipping mead from a "Disappearing Civil Liberties" coffee mug.
Phil’s magic trick had worked.
music by sl, circa 2005 (2024/12/21)
BAT-EYES #20 (2024/12/21)
MEMORY THEATER VI
standing behind the partition between himself and the other places
(same). unbeknownst to himself and the rest of the world’s population, a rombus of pure pink light hovered incessantly near karl’s face, point. the message had simply said to find him in the trees. well, brave face and let the subject drop. explanations, half-thought-out recriminations, more closely considered wrong with Werner’s editor. consequently he had deposited his collection of hardcopy books inside The only thing left to do was meditate with Karl, and wait for when vidya failed to respond he shut the door without elaborating even the small sounds of the tiny town could sometimes be too much. so much he wanted to give.
gogol/verizon, also paid, though not quite there tax implications? she the cracked concrete of the back porch, the makeshift garage—all,
he felt alone, and he supposed he realized that he was. no border of the trailer court he paused to consult his watch. not sure
photo by momus, used without permission.
