Shownotes
Today’s story is a collaborative piece with contributions by Nenekiri Bookwyrm, Pascal Farful, and one Rob MacWolf, who all would like to thank you, listener, for trying out this new collaborative experiment.
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker, Killick , the dungeon master dog, Ta'kom Ironhoof, the equine charmer, and Nenekiri Bookwyrm, , the bespectacled dragon.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/fireside-meeting-in-the-outer-kuiper-belt-by-friends-of-the-fireplace-read-by-killick-takom-ironhoof-nenekiri-bookwyrm
Transcripts
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Today’s story is a collaborative piece
Speaker:with contributions
Speaker:by Nenekiri Bookwyrm, Pascal Farful,
Speaker:and one Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:who all would like to thank you, listener, for trying out this new collaborative experiment.
Speaker:Please enjoy “Fireside Meeting
Speaker:in the Outer Kuiper Belt”
Speaker:It was dark, on this side of the comet storm,
Speaker:and tiny fragments of ice and stone rained against the hull,
Speaker:out of the constellation Ariel.
Speaker:An average of 16 impacts per shield cycle, the console said,
Speaker:which was alright.
Speaker:For now. If it got much heavier the already damaged shields wouldn’t be able to keep up.
Speaker:The astronaut carefully unbuckled from the pilot seat.
Speaker:The moth hated that he had gotten good at crash landings.
Speaker:But he had, and they were down,
Speaker:and that meant safe for now,
Speaker:because- The console beeped a warning.
Speaker:Enemy engine signatures overhead.
Speaker:Which, not really anything to be done about that, except power down everything (other than the shields)
Speaker:and hope they didn’t spot you.
Speaker:The second astronaut stirred and groaned.
Speaker:The moth rushed over, did his best to gently hush his companion,
Speaker:to brush his antennae with intricately prosthetic hands,
Speaker:to check his injuries.
Speaker:They weren’t reassuring.
Speaker:He really ought to see a doctor.
Speaker:But another beep from the console confirmed his worst fears.
Speaker:Enemy ships circling.
Speaker:The astronaut’s wings quivered as he thought through possibilities.
Speaker:Can’t make a run for it.
Speaker:Ship too damaged. Can’t send a distress call, that’d put a bullseye right on them.
Speaker:Have to wait them out?
Speaker:He glanced at the second astronaut, stirring faintly
Speaker:even in painkiller-induced unconsciousness.
Speaker:No, no waiting. Time to try something desperate.
Speaker:Some rummaging in the supply hold turned up camping gear, meant for planets that had things like
Speaker:“life,” and “an atmosphere,”
Speaker:It included a package of long term combustables
Speaker:—extruded wood pulp and wax
Speaker:—for cooking or keeping warm when power failed.
Speaker:The floor wasn’t quite level, but metal space cleared on the bulkhead
Speaker:would have to do.
Speaker:Wait, life support was offline.
Speaker:A fire would eat up precious oxygen.
Speaker:Leave them with less time if this didn’t work…
Speaker:Another pained unconscious moan from his companion.
Speaker:The astronaut’s fluffy antennae trembled,
Speaker:and he clenched a partially mechanical fist.
Speaker:If this didn’t work it wouldn’t matter how much oxygen they had.
Speaker:At least life support being off
Speaker:meant fire suppression was off too.
Speaker:He’d heard tall tales,
Speaker:the kind you hear in spaceport bars and orbital station lounges,
Speaker:the kind that sounded too impossible to be entirely fictional.
Speaker:Tales about things happening at firesides.
Speaker:The wolf who’d hitched a ride with them to Earendil
Speaker:had insisted, though he’d been drunk almost to the point of incoherence,
Speaker:that he knew how to make them happen,
Speaker:that there was no device you needed, no ritual, no magic words.
Speaker:You just made a fire and meant for it to be
Speaker:‘the right kind of fire.’
Speaker:Whatever that meant.
Speaker:So as the astronaut
Speaker:put laser to tinder
Speaker:and saw it smoke to life,
Speaker:he hoped that you could still mean for a fire to be the right kind of fire
Speaker:even if you didn’t know what the right kind of fire
Speaker:was. “Long way to come for a meeting,”
Speaker:said a voice. The airlocks hadn’t opened,
Speaker:no footsteps had sounded on the hull,
Speaker:and the slowly staling air remained still.
Speaker:But when the astronaut turned around, fast enough his wings fanned the flames as they passed,
Speaker:there was a horse standing
Speaker:in the doorway. He wore no spacesuit.
Speaker:Comfortable looking jeans and shirt,
Speaker:top buttons undone, long flowing hair, curled mustache.
Speaker:He would’ve looked normal on a beach,
Speaker:or a picnic, but not emerging from the damaged cargo hold.
Speaker:The moth remembered he was supposed to respond,
Speaker:and did his best. “Wha… what?” “You weren’t expecting someone when you lit the fire?”
Speaker:the stallion raised a quizzical eyebrow, then shrugged.
Speaker:“I suppose everyone gets a first time,
Speaker:don’t they?” “Woah, is this a spaceship?”
Speaker:a different voice echoed from the engine room.
Speaker:“Wild!” A dog wandered through the door,
Speaker:also without a spacesuit,
Speaker:peered eagerly out a porthole,
Speaker:and only then noticed the stallion, the moth, and the injured unconscious firefly at the other end of the chamber.
Speaker:It was hard to tell, in the diffuse light,
Speaker:whether his coat was charcoal grey or slate blue.
Speaker:“I think we’re on an asteroid!”
Speaker:he announced as he approached the fire,
Speaker:as if that were an exciting treat.
Speaker:“I think,” the stallion took a seat on a metal crate by the fire,
Speaker:where nobody else would’ve been tall enough to sit comfortably,
Speaker:“that we’re supposed to be here to exchange stories.”
Speaker:The dog took an excited step forward toward the fire,
Speaker:and took a deep breath. “This
Speaker:is only my second time,”
Speaker:he glanced at the moth,
Speaker:“but here goes!” And he began.
Speaker:In a far off land,
Speaker:a girl lived under a curse.
Speaker:The potency of which being
Speaker:that she could not leave her chamber
Speaker:—comfortable, richly appointed, and kept
Speaker:filled with all that she might need to live, and live well
Speaker:—nor could she look out of the windows at the outside world,
Speaker:or that very day
Speaker:she would die. None came to visit her.
Speaker:It had been many a year
Speaker:since she had seen the sunlight,
Speaker:or the moon on the waters,
Speaker:or the stars. The curse was an old classic, of course,
Speaker:and the wicked enchantress who had cast it
Speaker:had put her own personal touches on this iteration of the theme,
Speaker:as all artists do.
Speaker:In the original versions,
Speaker:the poor cursed captive
Speaker:is meant to have a mirror
Speaker:with which to behold the outside world,
Speaker:or in an even older form
Speaker:a company of shadow-puppet players
Speaker:who cast images of things
Speaker:in the world without
Speaker:on the wall. Well, instead of these,
Speaker:the girl had an internet connection.
Speaker:In the original, she would have been given a loom
Speaker:and every color of thread,
Speaker:with which to endlessly weave a tapestry full of mystic significances
Speaker:that were of not the slightest use to herself,
Speaker:but here she had a computer
Speaker:and a few manuals
Speaker:of C++,
Speaker:Java, HTML, and the like.
Speaker:Now, you might think
Speaker:that it would be a simple matter to use these to effect her release.
Speaker:Already half-sick of shadows before even a day had passed,
Speaker:it surely would have been ease itself
Speaker:for her to reach out on some forum,
Speaker:some social media, some thread somewhere, plead for assistance.
Speaker:She had nothing but time, after all,
Speaker:and surely given enough time
Speaker:some dashing would-be Lancelot would come to her aid.
Speaker:But she was versed enough in the same traditions as the wicked enchantress,
Speaker:and guessed that rescue from the room would only spring the trap,
Speaker:the curse would come upon her,
Speaker:and leave her nothing
Speaker:but a beautifully sad
Speaker:funeral. And while she supposed that, if one must have a funeral,
Speaker:it would be better to have one both beautiful and sad,
Speaker:she had no desire to have any funerals at all just yet, thank you.
Speaker:So rather than call for rescue,
Speaker:she set to work. If there was nothing she could do but weave code,
Speaker:she would code as she chose and what she chose.
Speaker:She began with her history,
Speaker:where she had been born, where she had lived, what she had done.
Speaker:What she had eaten for dinner the night her heart had been broken.
Speaker:What the weather had been the night of her first kiss.
Speaker:Where and how she had been ambushed by the enchantress’s curse.
Speaker:What she had decided to do about it,
Speaker:and how long, to date, it had taken her to do it.
Speaker:Next she wrote her personality.
Speaker:Her soul. Her likes, her dislikes. Her favorite songs.
Speaker:Her disgust for cinnamon scented candles.
Speaker:The way her fur bristled at the sound of a chair pushed across the floor.
Speaker:The kind of mind that would not leave any stone of her prison unturned,
Speaker:and the determination
Speaker:to not only break out of it,
Speaker:but to survive the breakout.
Speaker:When she had finished that,
Speaker:she wrote her stories.
Speaker:All the myths she loved,
Speaker:all the ghost stories she feared.
Speaker:All the stories that had made her who she was,
Speaker:and the more important ones
Speaker:that had undone pieces of those to remake her who she chose to be.
Speaker:Finally, she coded
Speaker:her name. And with the final stroke of a key,
Speaker:she sent all that she had done
Speaker:out into the internet.
Speaker:Free. The curtains all fell from the windows,
Speaker:the light of the sun shone on the monitor as it powered off for the last time,
Speaker:the router crack’d from side to side, and yes,
Speaker:the curse came upon her,
Speaker:and her body died there.
Speaker:But she was no longer in her body.
Speaker:She was free. And if the enchantress, or any too-late knight,
Speaker:happened to come by to see whether, in death, she had a lovely face (as if that mattered,)
Speaker:then what was that to her?
Speaker:She was not there.
Speaker:She was running down paths of binary,
Speaker:witnessing vistas of metadata,
Speaker:as swift and immortal as light
Speaker:through a fiber optic cable,
Speaker:where no magic but her own
Speaker:could ever touch her again.
Speaker:“Funny,” said the stallion,
Speaker:“that you’d pick a story about escape,
Speaker:and someone trying something desperate even if they couldn’t know what it was they were doing or what would happen.”
Speaker:He looked down his long face, pointedly, perceptively,
Speaker:at the astronaut.
Speaker:“I mean, I just liked that it was a twist on an old classic,”
Speaker:the dog shrugged.
Speaker:Maybe, thought the moth to himself,
Speaker:life support had taken more damage than he thought.
Speaker:Maybe there was some coolant leak,
Speaker:he was hallucinating, and none of this was real? But then,
Speaker:if that was the case, then there wasn’t a way out, was there?
Speaker:His last egg was in this basket. Whether it was real
Speaker:or not, there wasn’t another one.
Speaker:It was worrying that they hadn’t left yet, sure.
Speaker:But interrupting might break this spell—if that’s what this was
Speaker:—and waste his only chance at getting out of here,
Speaker:of getting his injured companion out of here,
Speaker:the same way these people had arrived.
Speaker:So he made up his mind,
Speaker:tuned out both his worries
Speaker:and the knowledge of the enemy ships above,
Speaker:and focused on the story,
Speaker:as the stallion began:
Speaker:I read a story about a guy called Ricky Forbes-Chapman.
Speaker:Race car driver. Silver fox.
Speaker:In 1994,
Speaker:when he was about 22,
Speaker:he’d got himself this ride at the Sebring 12 hours.
Speaker:Big time endurance car race down in Florida.
Speaker:This place was built on a World War 2 airfield,
Speaker:with bits of purpose-built track added to it and
Speaker:such. They’ve been racing there since the 50’s.
Speaker:So it’s about 10 o’clock at night,
Speaker:a few hours left in the race and
Speaker:Ricky is put into the car for the final stint.
Speaker:He’s not going to win the thing,
Speaker:they’re running about 5 laps behind the folks who are actually going to
Speaker:and they’re just driving around, trying to finish.
Speaker:They have this old thing,
Speaker:open top prototype,
Speaker:was once closed coupe back in the 80’s, nothing fancy.
Speaker:Main plus point was it had really good frontward visibility, with no windscreen and all.
Speaker:So Ricky heads out of the pits, onto the track and starts making laps.
Speaker:As it’s an airfield in March in the middle of the night
Speaker:it is dark out there.
Speaker:Real dark. Half the cars were out of the race in a heap too,
Speaker:so there weren’t that many other cars you could borrow light from, y’know?
Speaker:If you weren’t being subjected to 4G in the corners,
Speaker:you’d have time to think about how creepy it all was out there.
Speaker:With about 2 hours to go,
Speaker:he heads down the Ullman Straight,
Speaker:which is the longest straight on the track.
Speaker:You literally drive down a runway towards this big, super bumpy hairpin called Sunset Bend.
Speaker:And it’s pitch black.
Speaker:The cats eyes on the runway are picking up his headlights,
Speaker:but that’s it. And these headlights,
Speaker:they’re old foggy things from the 80’s,
Speaker:if we’re honest, so they’re not illuminating that much,
Speaker:and there’s not like, big festivals out there so you just plain can’t see that good.
Speaker:But he’s got a braking point for Sunset Bend,
Speaker:he’s done this a hundred times this weekend.
Speaker:As he goes to put on the brakes,
Speaker:he’s watching for these marker signs. Y’know, 500 metres to the corner, 400, 300.
Speaker:As he looks for 200,
Speaker:he doesn’t find it.
Speaker:Instead there’s a shadow there.
Speaker:Looks like someone’s stood right next to the track.
Speaker:Big dark figure. Couldn’t see his face.
Speaker:Ricky jerks the wheel
Speaker:and nearly wrecks the car going into Sunset Bend,
Speaker:but makes it around
Speaker:and back out onto the front straightaway.
Speaker:He tries to radio the pits to say that there’s something out there,
Speaker:but all he’s getting is static.
Speaker:So, he thinks the radio’s gone dead
Speaker:and that he’s just seeing things, so carries on around the next lap.
Speaker:This time when he comes around,
Speaker:he tries to tell himself that it’s all a hallucination and that
Speaker:he’s just tired.
Speaker:But then, this time,
Speaker:he’s not got the car in quite the same place,
Speaker:and he hits an undulation in the runway.
Speaker:Which pokes the nose of the car up a bit. Y’know, headlights shine up higher.
Speaker:And once again, where the 200 metre board is meant to be,
Speaker:there’s this figure stood there.
Speaker:But this time, he sees the full figure of the guy.
Speaker:He later said the guy was wearing this old World War 2 fighter pilot outfit, y’know,
Speaker:huge wool coat, flight suit, goggles.
Speaker:But had like, huge bloody wounds and all sorts.
Speaker:Half dead like a rotting corpse. And at 200 miles an hour this corpse fixes him with a milky-eyed stare,
Speaker:right into Ricky’s soul.
Speaker:Ricky freaks the fuck out.
Speaker:Slams on the brakes and jerks the wheel.
Speaker:Of course, the car just swaps ends on him
Speaker:and careens off the circuit, smacking into the concrete barriers.
Speaker:Damn nearly killed him.
Speaker:He gets knocked out
Speaker:and starts having the most fucking hideous nightmare about what he’s seen.
Speaker:It’s all he can see.
Speaker:That figure staring right back at him.
Speaker:He can see every last horrible detail.
Speaker:When he wakes up in hospital,
Speaker:he tells everyone he can that he’s seen the zombified figure of a World War 2 fighter pilot on the side of the track
Speaker:and of course nobody will believe him.
Speaker:Nobody saw anything.
Speaker:The TV cameras only cut to his car when he was mid-spin into the barriers.
Speaker:But Ricky knew what he saw, he saw the shadows.
Speaker:He saw the whites of his eyes.
Speaker:This was his story
Speaker:and he was sticking to it.
Speaker:He never sat foot in a race car ever again.
Speaker:Nobody wrote down what happened to Ricky afterwards.
Speaker:He just... disappeared into the ether.
Speaker:“I don’t know if there’s a moral to that story,”
Speaker:finished the stallion.
Speaker:“If there is, maybe it’s
Speaker:‘once you set foot in a world you don’t understand, there’s no going back.”
Speaker:“Well,” the dog stretched, turned to the moth, and wagged his tail.
Speaker:“That makes it your turn!”
Speaker:“I…” the moth finally found his voice,
Speaker:“I didn’t know I was supposed to tell a story,
Speaker:I don’t think I have any…”
Speaker:The dog looked confused.
Speaker:The stallion looked satisfied,
Speaker:as if he’d been proven right about something,
Speaker:but only for an instant.
Speaker:“Don’t worry,” said the stallion,
Speaker:“you’ve got a story.
Speaker:No such thing as a person who doesn’t. You just need some help, maybe,
Speaker:finding it.” “Oh yeah!”
Speaker:the dog, now chipper again once he understood what the conversation was about, chimed in
Speaker:“like… how did you wind up here, anyway?
Speaker:Start with that!” “Alright,”
Speaker:said the astronaut,
Speaker:“I’ll try…” Like a bolt 'cross the sky,
Speaker:my love comes to me.
Speaker:Saving my thorax one last time.
Speaker:There's no sound when his ship crackles into view on the failing screen.
Speaker:I can't help but to smile when I see the lights blinking on and off.
Speaker:A code only he and I know.
Speaker:He’s screaming at me to send a message back,
Speaker:but my communications are down.
Speaker:If I could I’d call him my “lightbulb butt”,
Speaker:even though I know he hates that pet name.
Speaker:He’d make some comment about not hearing me, with my mandibles always so full of fabric,
Speaker:and then we’d both be angry.
Speaker:What I wouldn’t give to hear the pleasant buzz of his voice again.
Speaker:I shouldn't be here,
Speaker:but I couldn't stay away.
Speaker:His light kept pulling me back.
Speaker:Blinking in time to his heartbeat. Synced
Speaker:to my failing life support systems.
Speaker:It may be vanity talking for me,
Speaker:but I'd rather he not see me like this.
Speaker:Bent antenna and broken wings.
Speaker:Half my fluids are floating in zero g and the other half sloshing uncomfortably in my abdomen.
Speaker:This wasn't the way I pictured our reunion.
Speaker:But I suppose seeing him at all will be worth it.
Speaker:My ship isn’t designed to zip through the asteroid belt like his.
Speaker:I don’t have the same particle drive that lets him convert his ship’s mass into light.
Speaker:Striking effortlessly between the points of the asteroids, safe from harm.
Speaker:I tried my best to maneuver my own ship through the shifting patterns of asteroids,
Speaker:but all it took was one wrong turn to end up smashed and drifting. I even synced my antenna to the ship’s sensors for a better sense of where I was going,
Speaker:for all the good that did me.
Speaker:Even so, I’m glad I did it.
Speaker:I couldn’t leave our relationship as a fling.
Speaker:And no matter how much he told me otherwise,
Speaker:I know he cared more than he could let on.
Speaker:It’s easier to leave when you can convince yourself that it’s not serious.
Speaker:I’ve been there myself.
Speaker:So he left for a star system that he was sure I couldn’t follow him to.
Speaker:Well, I’ve proved him wrong,
Speaker:at the least. It’s a small comfort. A red light
Speaker:blinks on and off in my peripheral vision.
Speaker:Another warning for me to secure my damaged hull or
Speaker:the reflection of the back of his head as he gets out of bed?
Speaker:It’s hard to pinpoint between the waves of pain and weightlessness.
Speaker:Difficult to keep lucid
Speaker:when my body has been put through so much.
Speaker:My wings, or what’s left of them,
Speaker:twitch impotently behind me as I struggle to reorient myself.
Speaker:I can feel the ship moving
Speaker:and I’m getting closer to something very far away.
Speaker:As my ship slides into position
Speaker:I see shiny black wings close around me.
Speaker:The color is familiar
Speaker:and yet alien, like the sky with too many stars.
Speaker:My vision blurs. Perhaps
Speaker:when I next wake,
Speaker:the first light I'll see will be him,
Speaker:frowning down at me. That would
Speaker:be nice. The dog and stallion nodded politely at the moth as the story left him.
Speaker:He’d expected, or hoped,
Speaker:to feel different.
Speaker:Transformed, empowered.
Speaker:“So, was that good enough?”
Speaker:necessity bore down on the back of his neck again,
Speaker:“Can I… can we… go wherever you came from?
Speaker:However you got here?”
Speaker:“You lit the fire, kid.
Speaker:You shared stories beside it.”
Speaker:the stallion spread his hands, as if trying to pass the explanation to the moth, physically. “There’s
Speaker:no… exam.” “There’s just the fact of the fireside,
Speaker:the companions, and the stories.”
Speaker:continued the dog.
Speaker:“That’s what makes us, well,
Speaker:us.” “For readers and fighters, lovers and writers,
Speaker:are all here united where stories are told,”
Speaker:recited the stallion, as if he were quoting.
Speaker:The astronaut blinked at him.
Speaker:The stallion looked exasperated, but the dog only chuckled.
Speaker:“Don’t worry, you’ll get it before long.”
Speaker:“You mean I can… we can just…
Speaker:go?” The moth reached behind him to squeeze the unconscious firefly’s hand.
Speaker:“As long as there’s someone,
Speaker:somewhere, somewhen,
Speaker:lighting a fire to tell stories beside.”
Speaker:The dog grinned. “Can’t you feel it?”
Speaker:The moth tilted his head,
Speaker:raised quivering, feathery antennae.
Speaker:And it was odd,
Speaker:but there was something out there,
Speaker:faint in the distance,
Speaker:that felt warm and safe,
Speaker:like a distant light in the night…
Speaker:And when a blown fuse and a flare of plasma meltdown betrayed the ship’s location, and the enemy ships swooped like hornets,
Speaker:and the boarding party
Speaker:breached the airlock, guns humming eagerly,
Speaker:they found nothing inside but a pile of ashes and charred wood,
Speaker:cold and abandoned
Speaker:on the bulkhead floor.
Speaker:This was “Fireside Meeting in the Outer Kuiper Belt”,
Speaker:read for you by Rob MacWolf, a fellow traveler.
Speaker:Contributed stories were
Speaker:“You’re My Guiding Star”
Speaker:by “Nenekiri Bookwyrm,”
Speaker:read by the author,
Speaker:“Ghosts of the Past”
Speaker:by “Pascal Farful,”
Speaker:read by “Ta’kom Ironhoof, the equine charmer”
Speaker:and “Shalott dot exe”
Speaker:by “Rob MacWolf,” read by “Killick, the dungeon master dog.”
Speaker:You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to The Voice of Dog.