Authority

Jeff Vandermeer (2014)

  • INCANTATIONS
    • 001: Falling
      • adroit
      • "Never do something for just one reason," his grandpa had told him more than once, and that, at least, Control had taken to heart.
    • 002: Adjustments
      • undulating
      • how anacronistic it was to deal in paper
      • "We live in a universe driven by chance," his father said once, "but the bullshit artists all want causality."
      • cantilevered
    • 003: Processing
      • ossified
      • "Tomorrow," he said. "I'll see it tomorrow." Or not. No surprises. No satisfaction for the keepers of stange secrets. No strangeness before its time. He had truly had enough for one day, would gird his loins overnight for a return encounter. The thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism They were waiting for the Look or the Reaction, and they didn't care what it was so long as it inflicted some kind of discomfort.
    • 004: Reentry
      • languor
      • internecine
      • The chessboard, frozen in time, reflected the progress of their last game together.
      • It was the kind of place where he and his father would have gone canoeing when he was a teenager. It wasn't true wilderness, was comfortingly close to civilization, but existed just enough apart to create a boundary. This was what most people wanted: to be close to but not part of. They didn't want the fearful unknown of a "pristine wilderness". They didn't want a soulless artificial life, either.
  • RITES
    • 005: The First Breach
      • nodule
    • 006: Typographical Anomalies
      • "I think I would remember forgetting that."
    • 007: Superstition
    • 008: The Terror
      • He was also, according to his file, "a first-rate scientist partial to beer," the kind of mind Control had seen before. It needed dulling to slow it down or to distance itself from the possibility of despair. Beer versus scientist represented a kind of schism between the banality of speech versus the originality of thought. An ongoing battle.
      • Was the night before often a drunken reverie or more of a somber meditation?
      • erudite
    • 009: Evidence
      • sussurations
      • sommelier
      • terroir
    • 010: Fourth Breach
    • 011: Sixth Breach
    • 012: Sort of Sorting
    • 013: Recommendations
      • flense
      • Just how elephantine, how rhinoceroscrutian, had the Voice's efforts been in following up on Control's request?
    • 014: Heroic Heros of the Revolution
      • ovoid
    • 015: The Seventh Breach
    • 016: Terroirs
      • Control had asked for this experience, but now did not really want it.
      • catafalque
    • 017: Perspective
      • "We used to have forks and spoons in the cafeteria," Whitby said, mournfully. "Now we just have sporks."
    • 018: Recovery
      • "They just sprayed insecticide here. I can smell it. You can see the hint of foarm on its carapace. It disorients them as it kills them; they can't breathe because of it. They become what you might call panicked. They keep searching for a way to get away from what's already inside of them. Toward the end, they settle down, but that's only because they don't have enough oxygen to move anymore."
  • HAUNTINGS
    • 000:
    • 020: Second Recovery
      • harangued
    • 021: Repeating
    • 022: Gambit
    • 023: Break Down
    • 00X:
  • AFTERLIFE

Page last revised on: 2024-02-23