October 2, 2009

“And moving through a mirror clear”

Autumn had come, so it was still dark outside when she entered the apartment. Inside, the bright bluish light lessened her melatonin production while she was wondering for a moment whether to take the first door or the second a little further down the corridor. The first one, however, only led into a vacant bathroom, so she approached the second one.

The absolute silence that shrouded her presence was inevitable rather than purposeful or even deliberate.

A muted chuckle grew imperceptibly louder.

Through the door the corridor opened into a room which, she surmised, was much bigger than it felt. Carefully avoiding little piles of computer hardware that littered the floor, she made her way across toward a desk, occupied by a laptop, and a chair in front of it, occupied by a person—the chuckle, it seemed, emanated from him. Soon the person’s eyes left the screen and, by that, the six hundred and forty second xkcd comic while the chuckle was fading. He turned around and beheld an empty room, for she was an incorporeal third-person narrator, invisible, impalpable. But she was not omniscient: Unknown even to her, in one corner of the room there leaned yet another third-person narrator, invisible, impalpable.

Though no less limited, he saw her and much later narrated this.

March 31, 2009

Poetaster

(Thanks to Andy Weir for the Planet Devourer, someone else for the raven and Poe for The Raven.)