Inventions

[bryant]

Hey, it's an LJ-only post. Horked from felisdemens.

Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then, of course, post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead.

Comments

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

That time I saw you on the street near the Coolidge late at night. I called out to you, but you kept walking. Curious, I followed you for blocks, until you turned down a blind alley. When I rounded the corner, you were gone, but an incongruous little dust-devil was tossing paper and trash into the cool, moist air.

[that-cad.livejournal.com]

I was gonna do this one too, but I doubted anyone would participate.

Anyway.

I remember the time I bumped into you in Paris. When I asked you what you were doing there, you just said you were on vacation — which I thought was odd, since you were alone. That night I saw you dragging the body of the prime minister's son out the back door of a club. The next day he was reported missing, and somehow the police got my name and questioned me, but I didn't know where you were staying or where you could have gone. Imagine my surprise when you resurfaced in Boston, years later.

Now you go by the name Bryant. Brant. Bry-ant. Clever. Very clever.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

I was shaving, watching my face in the mirror. Then it moved and slid away from me, out the side of the frame and across the ocean.

Now I have no reflection. And every time I join a community or mailing list, you're there a moment ahead of me.

I smash every mirror I see these days, and keep a sharpened spoon in my pocket for the day we're reunited.

[bryant]

I'd just seen the rare Australian cut of the supressed Kevin Spacey movie; the one where he betrayed the secrets of the old men in Bavaria. Can you blame me for hiding in the whirlwind? He didn't, and they've been sandpapering his career down to a nub ever since. Before much longer he'll be presenting Oscars.

I can't let that happen to me.

[bryant]

I wouldn't come to GenCon if I were you. Unlike you, I haven't been avoiding mirrors. And we're waiting.

[bryant]

The prime minister's son ate my heart when he walked down that beach in Spain and deftly stole my lover away; can you really blame me for eating his soul?

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

There was that time that we met at the get-together jeregenest and peaseblossom threw. You showed up in a chicken suit and ran a Call of Cthulu game with disturbingly realistic props. The evening got increasingly surreal, until all I could really remember was a red haze and seas of amphibians....

When I woke up, I was in Newark on a trash barge with ten grand in a duffel. Fancy that.

[shadowflyer.livejournal.com]

It was noon on a Friday, back at Harvard. I had just returned from horsewhipping the Lampoon's lawyers - richly deserving, as you well enough recall - but I decided to have lunch in the Square before returning to Waltham. You were at Au Bon Pain with a devastating blonde. I thought it was a liaison of the sort whose details cannot possibly be engrossing to the sufficiently sophisticated, until I noticed the pistol in her lap. I was on my way to interrupt the conversation and find some excuse to skive off with you, but a crowd of skate-punks came crashing across my path and by the time I made free of them you were both gone.

I thought it best to hide my sense of relief when next I saw you alive.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You stared at me over your espresso, and for a second it looked like you were actually vibrating. You said, "Remember that time i told you i learned how to tune the Solaris kernel to balance clustered traffic by osmosis."

I replied, "Yeah, and?"

"That was not a figure of speech. And i need to teach the technique to someone else before my body loses cohesion. Are you up for it?"

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

I'd like to post my memory of Bryant, but I don't kiss and tell.

[bryant]

Every feather a bio-nanotech sensor, with every watcher betting vast sums on the outcome of the session. You won one of them a vast sum of money. I argued for 10% as your fee, but it had bills to pay.

[bryant]

And you went so much further with it than I ever could. The Earth's core is in very good hands with you. I don't know if I've ever told you I feel that way, but I should have if I haven't.

[bryant]

The blonde had mastered the legendary Thousand Butterfly Chaos Technique in the legendary 37th Chamber, and that was enough for her to keep me suspended in the moment. I almost wish I had died; it would have been worth it if I'd foiled her plans. But now there's nothing either of us can do to dislodge the thing that lives inside the Lincoln Memorial.

[bryant]

That's something you could say about everyone in the 25th hour.

[kodi]

I remember your weekly visits to my cell. For - how many years? 5? 8? There were no calendars in the hospital - you were there, every Wednesday at one, to reminisce with me, to remind me of the details of my life outside. The weeks and years were a blur of medication, television and Scrabble, but the visits were so constant and measured that they all coalesced together into crisp focus, like a huge stack of identical transparencies. In all my years at the hospital, there was just one Wednesday afternoon.

The only change, over the years, was my confidence in my memories. The first time, you guided me through them - my breakdown must have jarred loose the part of my mind that stored the events leading to my hospital stay. With your help, I reattached it, reconstructing the cruel way Marcel had framed me, until at last I could plainly see his twisted face smiling at me from the shadows moments before the police found me standing over the Senator's shattered corpse.

It's so fortunate you were there to help me remember correctly; during the trial, I started to remember the events of that night, right up to stumbling across the Senator as he lay on the pavement trying to draw one more breath.
I began to recall how everything clicked together as I caught a glimpse of the man who had set me up. But I was so confused, then - the face I saw in my dim recollection was yours, not his. It seems so hard to believe that I could ever have thought that - I'm ashamed to even think it, which is why I never mentioned it until now.

Now that Marcel is taken care of, though, I'm not nearly so ashamed, and I thought you might get a chuckle out of it when you see Marcel's unidentified, charred, tastefully pixelated remains on the nightly news, and think how easily it could have been you. I don't think they'll buy my insanity plea this time around, but if they do, I hope you still have Wednesdays free.

[bryant]

[For the record, I now want to run this campaign. Or play in it.]

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

It can't happen to you. You know the words of power. Kevin had the wrong scroll, the translation they made public as a decoy.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

I'm not afraid, damnit. I have a strobe light and a bottle of Jim Beam and a powerful soprano at my side, and I am not afraid.

...now if you'll pardon me, I'm going to hide under my desk for a while.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It's utterly kind of you to say so, but it's a hollow victory as long as you remain incorporeal. I will find a way to bring you back into synch with the rest of us, if for no other reason than i fear that i might soon be following in your footsteps.

[incandescens]

You took me out for French toast in a California breakfast bar. "They have the special coffee here," you said quietly. "Don't ask for it obviously, but leave a copy of Chesterton's collected poetry next to your mug. They'll know what it means."

I did.

Today, I'm busy practicing picking locks and climbing walls. When I go back there, I will have more of that coffee, and nobody will stop me.

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was clever, I'll give you that. The legendary competitive drive leading us on to see who could recieve the closest shave courtesy of the copper-skinned barber on the corners of Fifth and Quiet. Your insistence on using nothing but cream made of insouisance and marrowbone. Your command that the barber get closer, closer, ever closer to your skin, until I had no choice but to allow him to remove my entire face like the skin of a grape as a means to best you. I remember your laughter, and the scent of aloe, and the burning resolve in my heart to be second-best forevermore.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Remember the time you ran TWO Champions sessions for us without a three-month gap between them? Yeah, that was cool.

:)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I still remember the sweet gleam of the SL600 Mercedes Roadster we took for a joy ride through the French Alps and then down to the Rivera. A sweet, supple beast of a convertable with plenty of power and German handling to spare. A great way to learn how to drive a stick, and I had the best time showing you the additional power and control that comes of directing the capabilities of that engine to your will. Took a while to get all the tangles out of my sapphire hair, but it was worth it. The small diversion involving the AI, the auburn haired woman, and the tiger cub was also very entertaining. Wouldn't want you bored. *grin*

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

When the thing with seven eyes came up through the toilet and stole my copy of the Fiend Folio -- the first edition, with the "% chance liar" instead of "% chance in lair" misprint -- you were the only one who believed me, and who would help me find a photocopier. For that, I will never forgive you.

sadly

[totient]

the cloud is that the SL600 is automatic only.

the silver lining is how I know this.

Re: sadly

[liralen.livejournal.com]

dang dang dang...

Well, if I'm re-writing reality anyway... *grin*

[rmd.livejournal.com]

that time in prague when we stumbled into a high-level meet between the local hoods and the ex-kgb thugs, and you totally talked our way out of it, pitting both sides against the other until they ended up screaming at each other and failed to notice us slipping away.

and then we ended up in that underground bar drinking some unidentifiable thick syrupy liquor out of what looked like coffee mugs they'd ripped off from a hojo's, and we waited out the chaos above.

[bryant]

So the blonde in Harvard Square told me, that day when she had a gun pointed at my crotch and a smile pointed at my pleasure centers. I'm still praying it's true.

[bryant]

It's never too late to come back into the fold. I'll introduce you to a man who knows how to become ethereal; it does wonders for hangovers.

[bryant]

Hollow victory? That would only be fitting, since it's a Hollow Earth. You know I await the results of your experimentation with great interest, and not just for personal reasons. There's a madman in a Texas prison who might benefit as well, and -- I can't help feeling some obligation towards him.

[bryant]

I wouldn't worry about the root causes, if I were you. Isn't it better to think about the Senator, and the way the world is without him? I've never forgotten those photographs you showed me, and I've never forgotten the expression on the Senator's face as he bit into the beating heart of the sacrifice. Nor will I soon forget the way his wife smiled at me in Harvard Square.

Anyhow, look under your bed. There's a dingy white envelope taped to the bottom right-hand corner, tucked in, where the orderlies can't see it. Inside is a CD. If you can find a way to listen to it, you might find some solace there.

[bryant]

Nobody can stop you, but someone will try. The question you're going to have to answer -- I won't even give you a hint -- is whether or not that's the final test, or if they're legitimately trying to kill you.

[bryant]

There's a Senator who's not using his skin any more. True, he's dead, but there's a place in California that sells a certain coffee, and the busboy who works there knows a technique for bringing skin back to life.

Just skin. Not anything else. So you can see how it wouldn't normally be too useful; but in your case...

And if the Senator doesn't suit, Kevin Spacey's getting tired of his life.

[bryant]

DOH.

[bryant]

"Beast." A more apt analogy than you might think, or did you know at the time? I'm never sure; there's so much lurking behind that smile of yours.

In any case, it all became clear for me when I learned who fathered that cub, although I'm still mystified as to why.

[bryant]

You didn't say what sort of photocopier you wanted, and -- well, I should apologize. I was in a different context, for reasons you know quite well, and I just assumed you needed copies that were really indistinguishable from the real thing. And there's only one photocopier that works on the fabric of reality itself.

I apologize. If it's any consolation, the Ministry of Crows has been angry at me ever since, and I kept your name out of it.

[bryant]

That was amazing. Every time I go to Prague, I think about trying to find that bar again, but I can only see two possibilities: either I don't find it, and I'm disappointed, or I find it and they don't have either the liquor or the mugs. I think the latter is worse.