"Aereial walkways had been strung from one side of the street to the other, with stairs and ladders snaking their way through the dark fissures between the buildings. Now and then a wheeler sped through the water, sending a filthy brown wave in its wake. Very rarely, a sleek, claw-like volantor slid overhead. But volantors were off-world tech and not many people on Sky's Edge could afford that kind of thing any more. It didn't look right to me, but all the evidence said that this had to be the place."
Alastair Reynolds, Nightingale.
If the cast was wrong, if planets sheared apart, if dull drives in nonthreatening country were not enough, as if these things had an answer. He was crystallised into fear. Surely no one could survive being re-written so many times. He didn't know who to ask for advice. In reality there was no one. The planets were fearsome in their size, and the collisions, the groaning yaws as things fell apart, all of it left him startled as a rabbit; munching grass on a frozen clearing, eyes everywhere.
He kept looking for the grey eyed woman he had spoken to in the next pod, only two days ago now. It seemed forever. Once there were shafts back to a former humanity, cosy scenes he could recall or ponder. Most of them were gone now, or if not he had fully lost touch. He was proud of his achievements; or had been. He had gone to university; he remembered even now. But the friends he had made there, the things that had happened there, for all of them it was like looking through very thick glass; all the images distorted, a distant context to everything.
Once he had thought there would be justice in time; that as the writer of history he would get to tell the tale. In this way many injustices, personal and social, would be rectified. That house in Gladesville. You remind me of the worst time of my life. Please don't come around again. Kids crawling amongst the chaos. None of this exists anymore, none of it, he thought. Who am I to argue that things aren't better. He looked up the poverty indicators for the last 20 years. There was no argument. Things were definitely better.
Which couldn't explain his harking back to a different time; when they laughed in the sun and everything was shockingly vivid; when the party barely ever stopped. He couldn't be propelled into anything. So what if he had been rewritten nine times. What did that matter; when no one he had ever known seemed to exist anymore. What, that corny old phrase, was there to lose? They came for him nonetheless. The first time was something of a false alarm; he was taken back to the medical centre, prodded around. He overheard them thinking: ten times, is it possible to be rewritten ten times? We've never been this far before. We've never found any one this resistant.
The same thing happened as happened before. He woke up in hospital with complete amnesia. There was glass and steel everywhere. The nurses always seemed to be somewhere else, just out of sight. Slowly the slabs of amnesia began to lift, and he began to remember his previous visit, but none before. Parts of his old life, his office life, drifted in and out. And something else, too, manufactured memories, he couldn't be sure, of an older life, where he always seemed to be in the sun; a laughing glint in the delightful company of someone he fancied utterly.
Although he couldn't be sure, he knew, even more baffled than before, there was something different about this hospitalisation. He overheard the staff talking in low mordant tones, a mix of genders, a doctor, changing nurses. He couldn't be sure but he thought he heard them say "rewritten ten times" as if this was a matter of concern. He could see a building burning, and didn't know where it fitted in. He could see the hospital building in the centre of a large clearing, surrounded by pine forest. None of it linked. Or synced.
It was, he realised, perhaps more quickly than before, a story he had lived through before. Eventually after weeks, if not months, he found himself back in the recovery room with other patients. They sat collapsed in armchairs, one flew over the cuckoo nest arm chairs he thought, for no reason. Some were watching screens, most were just sitting, watching the floor. He thought he recognised a woman with big grey eyes but couldn't be sure. He kept staring at her and eventually she looked back, startled by his gaze. She smiled and moved a hand towards him. "They did it again," she whispered; and he held her. He had no idea what to say.
Their affection appeared to go unnoticed, who could tell in this place, and eventually they sat down near each other, just to be near each other. They had no idea what anything meant. It was still early days. "We knew each other," she said. "I think so," he murmured into her hair. Their hands clutched together.
"I don't know what we've done," she said.
"Neither do I."
"Why target us?"
He shrugged ruthfully. "Resistant, I think, that's all I can think of; I don't know what it means."
It means to be careful, it means to stop getting your brain wiped, it meant they were either going to be farmed out to a rural community for the brain dead, where it wouldn't matter they had been wiped so often their heads were nothing but confused sleights. Or they could be returned to the office for another try.
When he looked up he caught a nurse watching him. She looked away, and then looked back. He returned her gaze. For a minute he thought she wanted to help. But when she came near them she was all business, talking about medications and how they would have to be back in their rooms by six. He was sadly relieved; and he cuoldn't make a single piece of emotional sense. There were other ways out. The village, the sunshine, the green grass, the place where the dead heads went. He was relieved, saddened; and burnt out, literally. They led him back to his room without any problems.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2227907.htm
MICHAEL TROY: While the ANZAC legend was born in Gallipoli, many more died in the battlefields of France.
RICHARD TRAVERS, HISTORIAN: The campaign at Gallipoli lasted about eight months, but after the diggers came to the Western Front in 1916, they really found that they had more casualties than they had at Gallipoli after two or three months, so that it was a devastating introduction to a totally different form of warfare, much more intense, much more artillery, on a much bigger scale. The British called it "scientific warfare".
MICHAEL TROY: In 1916, these determined-looking volunteers left Australia on the troop ship Ajana. Few could have been aware of the horrendous conditions that lay ahead on the European battlefields. Early German advances had been halted in Belgium and France and a long war of attrition had begun.
The opposing armies faced each other from their trenches for 800km along the Western Front, which ran from the English Channel to the Swiss border. The small town of Fromelles would be the Australians' first big challenge. For the new troops under British command, the nightmare was about to begin. In July 1916, the Australian Fifth Division marched under to battle confidently. Within a day, they'd suffered devastating losses with 5,533 casualties, including 2,000 killed.
RICHARD TRAVERS: The troops were not experienced, they were thrown in without adequate preparation. The result was a disaster.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/the-early-word-billification/
The Early Word: Billification?
By Ariel Alexovich
Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are each making two campaign stops in Indiana today, but that’s a cakewalk compared to what Bill Clinton’s got on his agenda — six rallies in Oregon.
But the grueling schedule is exactly how the former president wants it. The Wall Street Journal has a front-page story about his increasingly influential role — some insiders call it a “Billification” — in his wife’s campaign.
The former president says he’s in uncharted territory. “Being the spouse is more difficult than when I was the candidate,” he says in a brief interview. “When you’re running, you’re out there driving every day. But when you’re the spouse, you feel more protective. It’s much harder.”
Mr. Clinton has placed several of his own aides at headquarters, including his former lawyer and a bevy of strategists. Known as a bad loser, Mr. Clinton privately buttresses his wife’s drive to push on, telling her, according to aides: “We’re not quitters.”
The Politico, however, suggests that Chelsea Clinton may be Mrs. Clinton’s best surrogate — or at least better than her dad.
The former president has stumbled badly at times, veering wildly off message, picking fights with reporters and making ill-considered comments that have caused his wife’s campaign to relegate him to out-of-the-way locales. The once-and-maybe-future first daughter, on the other hand, has loosened up and eased into her role as a surrogate, hitting her stride just when her mother needed it most.
Of all the Clinton surrogates on the campaign trail, she is proving to be among the most steady — unburdened by the past, not prone to controversy and, in more ways than one, better suited to this YouTubed campaign than her father is.
http://voanews.com/english/2008-04-26-voa6.cfm
Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, says he welcomes China's offer to hold talks with his envoys, but only if the talks are serious.
The exiled Buddhist leader was questioned about China's recent statement in New Delhi Saturday. He said he welcomed the prospect of discussions about problems in Tibet.
It would be the first such meeting since violent protests in Tibet last month. China said Friday that its officials have agreed to meet with the Dalai Lama's representatives.
Also Friday, Tibetan exile prime minister Samdhong Rinpoche said the Tibetan government-in-exile maintained contacts with China throughout the protests. But he said formal resumption of talks require the situation in Tibetan areas of China to return to normal.
U.S. and European leaders welcomed the announcement of China's willingness to meet a private representative of the Tibetan spiritual leader.
The Chinese government has not released details on the expected meeting. A report by China's state-run Xinhua news agency says officials agreed to the meeting in response to requests from the Dalai Lama.
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