The Sun War! --Forward! To the MOON!

Set the scene(1): it's a tuesday night in 1931. In the balmy air of the South Seas, the deadly, battle-equipped 'thopter of the deadly, battle-equipped Thorn Triad banks, lurks, wafts. (TT, pronounced "tut tut" or "tsk tsk".) Unbeknownst to the kelp nor plankton below, the TT await(s) merely the rising of the full moon. Under its second-order light, third-power thinking--aloft in the night's brisk breeze--will blot!--out!--the!--sun! Anyway, that's the plan.

But! Hark to that choppy thrumming. Such an eldritch pulsation could--and does--only belong to the potent thirty-three-cylinder chemo-diesel motors bolted madcap to the dirigible of those noted questers...the Enthusiasts of the Inscrutable!! Billy "Kalamazoo Jewboy" Trelawney (nee Throckmorton) squints, oddly, thru his pilot's goggles, joggling levers and spinning the two great wheels controlling the ungainly craft. Collision perches magnificently at the bow of the airship, lensing the gorgeous ornithopter ahead, above. Slamming closed his kaptain's spyglass, he bellows.

"Not far off, now, my kinky kike! Clap open the chemo-diesels' throttle, whilst I try an' bring online the electro-lone generators!"

Trelawney complies. Collision hitches at his jodhpurs and clambers toward the gravidish underbelly of his beloved conveyance. Using a combination of spanner, hex key(2) and cheat sheet, his tetra-starred left hand manages to fire the generators, hanging from a spar, boots and wang waving in the wind. (With his poet's acumen and his engineer's emotional cast, he's decided to void his bladder 'pon the briny deep even while he works.)

He then repairs to his cabin to ease himself and contemplate a wardrobe change. A jaunty flapping white shirt proves Just the Thing, an' he doth not resist leaving open to the midriff, exposing a brawn of white flesh and dark tattoos.

Trelawney, as usual, manages most of the craft's operational heavy lifting. He's hyper-hacked the electro-lone generators into the new-fashioned Emotional Inertia Field Actuator Device (EIFAD, pronounced "eye-fad"). The airship, being possessed of a seriously stunning degree of Emotional Inertia, lurches into a hurtle, at the cost of any discernible subtlety. As a semi-intended consequence, there is now No Backing Down. There's an event on the horizon, and the hand-crafted Inevitability Gauges (IG) are totally redlined.(3)

Therefore, the Thorn Triad's mystical senses, uh, sense the approach of the Enthusiasts of the Inscrutable! The TT mobilize(s) for pitched battle! This, natch, takes the form of the three of 'm taking to their tasteful deck, spread out, facing inward, bare arms outstretched an' like diaphanous gowns and eerie wagglings the order of the day.

Under the hoarse supervision of the unkempt, cigar-munching Kalamazoo Jewboy, Collision activates the Emotional Inertia Cannon (EIC, pronounced "ike"). A strangely inward WHOOSH attends the initial volley, which proves as withering as a mother's sullen withdrawal. The TT's 'thopter's wings tatter.

The TT--who, incidentally, would literally Never Dream of calling themselves this--deploy much magic. Rose's eyes,
covered with the dead skin of another, Reach Out and Touch the pursuing craft.(4) The effect is like being molested by a shadow cloud. Trelawney slumps. Overwhelmed. Conveniently for the narrative, his prone form lies 'cross the power coupling which, uh, couples the EIFAD to--with?--the EIC.

Collision, oblivious, unleashes another torrent of a-energy. That which is only potentially power floods the unmute frame of the hapful Kalamazoo Jewboy. An event sure to have Consequence of Moment on down the road.(5)

Collision's barrage rends asunder the bonds of friendship 'tween the Thorn Triad. Renders them sundered. Their familial ties only remain. Rows-3 determines the figure in her locket must now be written into existence. She decides to move to the moon, and as for the noted blogger? She'll write him when she gets there. (Thus will she complete her entree into being--having been herself invoked, and provoked, by the blogger she seeks now to create. Rereading those kinda gross passages from the Symposium would clarify matters here, prolly.)

Rows, ever alert to the turn of the tide an' blow o' the wind, growls "Let me slip into something relatively spiritual.". Time passes. The ornithopter lists, abused; the airship remains at a hurtle, shambolically.

Rows steps onto the deck. Tan Rose's touching eyes flap creepily. Rows-3 doesn't wanna know from this shit, and slides out of read/write focus in a structurally appropriate parallel to Trelawney's fall. (See...She'll Be Back. And all like that.) Rows is wearing black tights, white deck shoes, and a concert t stolen from an ex-boyfriend. A big belt, gold hoops cocked over her full hips.

"Collision!" she keens. "Stay your hand! Hold! Let us (inc.) depart this battle in our several ways! No more seek we (exc.) to dark the sun. An' you allow our retreat, we all, us three, will bugger off to the Moon, on errands which need not confront you."(6) You know that song? "Ain't to proud to beg"? Rows doesn't--it's fucking 1931, remember?--but if she knew it, she'd hate it. She's WAY too proud to beg. And if Collision doesn't back the fuck down, she's gonna get to a degree of anger usually reserved for boyfriends who take your sister's side.

Collision, an enthusiast, is intrigued. His imperfectly-absorbed Warrior's Code is unclear on this point. He offers a gracious shrug, an effect offset by an unconscious adjustment of the half-hard 'neath his jodhpurs. "Have it your way." "Bitch." he adds, wholly unacceptably. The ornithopter sways, exactly like a moth pursuing the moon. Collision bends to attend Trelawney, currently glowing with an actively unpleasant grey featuring yellowish tinges and fringes. Not at all unlike this writer's irises.

Stay tuned! For more episodic semi-fiction, composed in a nigh-epistolic manner!

Notes:
(1) It's not infrequently desirable to allow one's enemies to define one. You appear then in a high-contrast way, with intriguing misapprehensions and odd attributions your own cohort'd never cognize.

(2) Hewn, the both of them, from the living rock of an iridescent meteorite.

(3) IGs made by Kathy Collision during:
(a) her tryst with Jonias Spicer;
(b) her reverse-steampunk phase.

(4) Don't make me spell it out.

(5) "The road" here standing-for 'the future' in a metonymy for a journey, where "journey" is related to 'a series of events' as either a metonym or a metaphor, depending on the level of granularity of your analysis. I'm in love.

(6) Rows deliberately mispronounces "concern" as "confront" for obscure reasons.

Zen and the art of the mixed message

Chris Collision comprises a collocation of niche vices. Back left pocket chew can ring attests to this. Four stars adorn the fingers of his left hand, that he may leering declaim "Four-star fingerbang Right Here, bay-bee!!" He's business cards. Of an evening, he'll take to the boulevard to hawk homemade tshirts reading "Every father is a motherfucker."

A lumpish, beary man; yet does he pull trim (now and again). He shan't refrain from slipping into singing a shanty's refrain, and despite their long acquaintance, you noted blogger, he's 'most No Idea who Rose Selavy might be. Hark!

Collision (upon noting a misunderstanding potentially leading to a conflict, attempts a Joak): Hey, can I help it if I'm the most interesting person I've ever met?

Selavy (characteristically gratuitous with the flatness of her affect and the lightness of her tone): Chris. You're the only person you've ever met.

He seemed to be thinking to the third power

On a Tuesday in 1931 Rows claims to have spent the night in her ornithopter. A tear in its wing took on the shape of another Rose, who was much more tan (much more, for Rows this close to the sun took on the pitiful shade of a mouthful of pear), and whose eyes against the wind wore the most exquisite black leather gloves. The noted blogger submitted the aforementioned questions to Tan Rows, but in the form of a third Rows, who printed off a nude photograph of himself, and hung it around their necks like a charm. Even though Rose could not see the picture through her leather gloves, she touched it softly during the interrogation. The noted blogger about this was aroused to think to the third power, surmising to Roses in a subsequent interview: “Where will you go in the ornithopter? Do you have your passport? Give my regards to Collision?” Rows, Tan Rose, and Rows-3 stalled, until the noted blogger winked at them a magical number of times, and disappeared into something relatively spiritual. For years after, until around 1935, a plea to “write me when you get there” was heard pinging in all of Roses new poems. The noted blogger can be seen from the vantage point of Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 2PM, dressing the nude picture of Roses in words that made sense to mostpeople.

[from] Roiling the Nite 'Way (a musical for several persons)

[band vamping jauntily]

Collision: If I remember correct, when we met, you sported supported a pencil mustache, and you went by the name Ross Cellabee.
Rose: You don't. Viz., remember correct. Sic.

[band kicks in jazzily]

C: I was trawling, late of the merchant marine--
R: I was drawling, mate to a purging regime.
R & C (firmly): Let's stall the whole thing, boss!

[band backs off]

C: Aw, come off of it. You were building orreries that spring...to life under the full moon...that summer...in the Hamptons.
R: Me? Or the orreries?
C: Don't be ornery. You learned me the difference b'tween flowery talk and the distant instance(s) built into longing for the brambles.
R: Are you drunk?
C: Naturally.
R: Setting you straight would go something like this.

[band strikes up again, insistent]

R: I had just begun to learn
that my own attempts to earn
a living--in civill service...
would hardly last a year
now let me bend your ear
with its inherent contradictions
C: You were not civil nor did you service--
R: The talk was drivel and the acts were worthless!
C: Hating peons writing poems
is no way to be of use
R: I was pressed into the position
depressed if you want the truth...

[the dance over, they face one another, 2 arms lengths between 'em]

R: I was not civil
C: Their talk was drivel!
R: I did no service
C: Those acts are worthless
R & C: Let's stall the whole thing, boss!

[nice fanfare, curtain, band wheezes]

R (offstage): Wanna see a neat design for an ornithopter?

An iconoclastic debut

The noted blogger had the serendipity to find a blog dated 1923 debuting a personality called Chris Collision. Collision, it seems, recalled his introduction to the in medias sneeze Rows Selavy, writing "If I remember correct, when we met she had a pencil mustache, and was calling himself Ross Cellabee, to which Rows replied, 'You do not. Viz., remember correct. Sic.'" The mustache, also known as Our Mutt, had no comment until 1925, where in one of his famous interviews he erased not only himself, but Rows, who was much relieved as she had developed a pesky allergy to lead. The role of Collision in this happy end becomes clear in later blogs, when Collision discovers a cure for Rows and Mutt. But this is not their story. It is the story of the noted blogger.