Ben Wright - Queex

@queex.bsky.social

I write stuff. Been doing bioinformatics since they called it statistical genetics. He/him or they/them. https://patreon.com/Queex https://queex.carrd.co Avatar & banner: @felflowne

“They were with an expedition taking samples looking for ore deposits. The monsters killed the adults but left Ursa alive. I’m not sure why. She managed to survive by herself for quite some time before she was rescued.”
Ursa reappeared. She was riding her animal companion, a brown bear nearly the size of a horse. The girl looked incongruous atop it. The only time Ursa’s scowl seemed to lessen was when she was with her animal. The bear had no saddle or any of the other paraphernalia associated with riding, but there was a sort of harness around its body that held a large backpack. Ursa kept her bedroll and other possessions in it, apart from those she carried with her on her own belt. She wore that pack behind her, and low, so it didn’t interfere with her balance on her mount. No armour would have fit her, but she seemed quite comfortable in a sleeveless, white tabard. She had dark brown leather britches, apparently chosen for their hard-wearing qualities judging from the scratches and scuffs. There was a similar look to her boots, which Essendra thought had to be too large for her.

“They say,” Eilert was standing at Garnas’s shoulder, as he had been since they came up on deck, “that you used to be able to walk from one end of the docks to the other, ship to ship, never setting foot on land. Grand Billon is considered the jewel of the Hepatizon coast.”

His keen eyes picked out a space and he whistled a short series of notes. The lookout, high up in the rigging, appeared to understand and looked to the same part of the docks. He repeated the whistle, confirming Eilert’s discovery.

“What changed?” Garnas asked.

Eilert shrugged.

“Business decisions. Currents in the interstice. Change will always come.”

The Shaved Link was one of the smallest ships there. She passed a galleon sitting low in the water, a junk-rigged schooner almost lost in a haze of incense smoke, and a squat, iron-clad frigate bristling with gun ports.

The same image, but done up as a clickbait youtube thumbnail. A red border, with the figure with the slicy device matted over it, a pointy arrow, and the glowy text caption "CASTRATION REALLY HURTS??"

The final leg of the journey took them through orchards that surrounded their destination: the town Vellanixhal. Essendra rode on the driver’s seat. She wanted to look forward for a CHANGE. It was strange to think that, only a handful of generations ago, cultivated land that wasn’t protected by walls was unheard of.

The wagons rounded the last corner and broke out of the trees, putting the outskirts of the town before them. These were the old farms. Pride and prudence kept the walls around them maintained. What had once been humble working smallholdings were now the manor houses of the rich and influential. There were gardens, a thing for which there hadn’t even been a word a hundred years ago.

A capybara caught midway through a seemingly gravity-defying leap from a close-cut grass bank into a wide, brown river. The high-rises of a city are on the far horizon. A small caption had been added near the animal's head that reads: 'Hup".

The damp path yielded onto cracked and stained concrete. Untold decades of weathering had exposed steel reinforcing rods, which in turn had corroded to almost nothing. The river edge of the concrete was in fragments and held together only by those few rods remaining. Gantries that had once been suspended over the river lay immersed in it like languid arms from a lazy boat. Ahead of Garnas a massive structure towered, wreathed in vines. The holes of old windows had been forced wider by tree-trunks twisting through them; or perhaps the great trees, hundreds of feet tall, were wearing the remains of the building like stiff clothes.

Factory One.

The war might have been going the jungle’s way, but it was not without losses. Substances more noxious than mere iron and concrete still lay in sumps, gutters and leaking barrels. More than half the trees Garnas could see were already dead. One of the oldest had collapsed, taking several floors with it. The factory had many more wings and many more floors, still standing defiantly, and the battle would be raging long after Garnas died.

The same Holy Trinity diagram pastiche, only this time Soul is annotated with Cancer (the alchemical process of Solution), Juice is annotated with Scorpio (Separation), and Tea is annotated with Pisces (Projection).

When the caravan leader finally allowed them all to stop and prepare for rest, the sun was high in the sky.

Vennan had chosen a nicely defensible position. The land ahead was slashed by a deep, rocky canyon. A heavy and broad stone bridge crossed the gap. This side of the bridge began from a sharp overhang that jutted out into the canyon. Monsters attacking from the other side would be easily spotted and limited to fighting two or three abreast. That meant Vennan only had to worry about a serious attack from behind. With the guards and heavy spell support from Jehhan’ni, he was quietly confident that any assault would be driven off. The guards themselves were taking few chances – they had driven sharpened stakes into the ground in a rough quarter circle and were readying their pavises.

I wasn’t ready.

The lie I told myself was that I was laying the groundwork for what I needed to do, but it rang hollow, even to me. The plain fact was that I was scared.

“Take sips, and only when you absolutely have to. It’s better to reach safety joking about how much water we still had left than die with safety in sight because we wasted it. The sooner you restrict your intake, the sooner your body will adjust. Don’t worry too much about food. We’ll die of thirst before hunger becomes a real problem.”

He looked around, noting who nodded immediately and who appeared reluctant. He could feel his skin tingling where the sun beat down on it.

“We should rest during the day. The nights are going to be colder than you think, but if we keep moving we should stay warm enough. Do not wander off alone, not for anything. If you lose sight of the group you may never find it again. You can’t trust your sense of direction.”

I grew up under Section 28. In my secondary school of 1,200 pupils, not one single student was out as LGBTQ+. Not one. We know that the repression of LGBTQ+ people kills them. That was the effect of bigotry enshrined in law, and it carried a toll of human lives. I had school friends who could only embrace who they were far later in life than they should have beenable to. While some have thrived, there is no way way to make up for that lost time. Others did not make it. Killed by legislation. Section 28 remains one of the darkest and most shameful parts of British history, and it sickens me to see it is at risk of playing out again — and it is playing out again.

I do not respect anyone who supports these monstrous proposals, neither do I respect anyone with mealy-mouthed excuses as to why they won't oppose them.

Will you stand for what is right?

Dear Calum Miller MP,

I'm writing to you about the urgent need to disapprove the EHRC's abominable proposed guidance. Please support Nadia Whittome's motion (EDM 240).

As someone with trans and otherwise LGBTQ+ family members, it seems that every week brings a new, horrifying erosion of rights that should never have been in question. To watch hard-fought justice be rolled back, against not only simple human dignity but the wishes of the general public at large, is harrowing. What the EHRC proposes goes even further, stripping away de facto rights that trans people have always enjoyed in Britain.

The inescapable iniquity of the guidance can be seen in the differences between trans men and trans women: trans women are 'not woman enough' and must be forced to accept the risk of men's toilets; trans men are 'not men enough' for the gents but are also banned from the ladies. This is nonsense. Exactly the kind of nonsense you get when you begin with prejudice and work backwards from there.

These proposals have been roundly condemned as both unscientific and unworkable by many national and international bodies with considerably more expertise than the (frankly unqualified) appointees of the EHRC, and that alone is sufficient reason to reject them. From the meritless Cass report, to the tainted ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, to this guidance, we are witnessing a co-ordinated effort by a privileged cadre of bigots to remove trans people from public life. Conscience demands that this be opposed, at any cost.

“You’ve come from the Northern Safe Zone?”

The man’s features betrayed the fact and he saw no reason to deny it.

“I’ve not been home for some time, but yes. I’ve brought copies of several seminal texts,” he explained, opening up his bag to demonstrate. “I intend to translate them and leave copies here. It’s a long task and I need money to live on.”

He sighed.

“At first I sought a patron, but that didn’t work out.”

That’s baited the hook, he thought. It should be plausible. After all; it’s true. Please don’t ask for further details about the failed patronage, though, I so dislike needing to lie.

She disappeared into a back room and stayed there just long enough for Garnas to grow bored, cross the marble tiled floor and sit on a hard wooden bench. Her smile was appreciably more genuine when she returned.

“I’ve been authorised to give you a carriage fee waiver for medical reasons. The fee was eight thalers per ticket, so your new total is fifty-seven thalers.”

Eilert couldn’t disguise his disappointment. He turned to the others.

“It was worth a try. I guess it’s only a week until―”

“No.”

Shirin stepped forwards.

“We agreed you need to get treated as soon as possible,” she said. “It’s not just the week waiting here, it’s the extra week of journey time. We can afford two tickets. Use them for you and Garnas. If I can’t rustle up another fourteen thalers by tomorrow morning, then I’ll join you when I’m able to.”

A fake Star Trek The Next Generation title card.
The Enterprise-D floats in front of planet. Overlaid text reads "The Gang Violates The Prime Directive"

“I don’t believe I’ve seen either of you two here before,” he began, smarming like thick oil. “If you need the care of a safe pair of hands—”
“We’re good, thanks,” Essendra said, looking away.
“I’m just trying to look out for you, you know. Getting established can be hard if you don’t know the right people.” There was a mocking tone to his words.
He tried to slide into one of the free chairs but Ursa gently tripped him as he tried to sit. He fell on his rear and banged his head on the chair on the way down. Essendra leaned over to him.
“Are you okay?! Do you need any help getting up?!” she shouted in his face.
“What? Stop shouting!”
“I thought you must be hard of hearing, because you didn’t seem to hear what I said before.”

Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant, Police Squad.

The packed earth path was known to turn to mud in the rain, and it ran steeply up onto the headland to the south. Treacherous in the extreme in wet conditions but taxing exercise in any weather. Garnas was the only one who used it these days. He’d hammered metal spikes into the ground alongside it, something to hold on to if he ever got caught in a downpour. He always came here alone, and was acutely aware of the danger should he become injured. This was a land that devoured the careless.

The wind whipped his coat around him as he walked. He set down his bucket and rod to tie it more tightly. He’d salvaged the thick waterproof fabric himself. It was stronger and warmer than garments woven from grey hemp. It marked him as someone who had been into the jungle in search of spoils―and one of the few with the right mix of bravery and caution to succeed. Something about this coast caught the imagination, instilled wild ideas of wandering into the unknown.

Goblin the tortoise, who has climbed onto a wicker baster in the garden, in defiance of good sense and physics.

Doctored panel from the comic version of Transformers: The Movie (1985).

Optimus Prime holding a gun and saying: "You who are without decorum now plead for it? I thought you were made of sterner stuff, Guy Kelly!"

Here there’s a camp. The fire hasn’t been lit, yet, but it’s been laid. Night comes early in the hills and it is as well to be ready. Dry wood is in short supply. There’s a bear lying down near the tents.
If you move from there towards the mountains, over a rocky ridge that’s covered with a thick layer of moss, there is another bare area. In this case, there’s no sign of human or geological intervention, just a circle of earth covered with vines. In the centre of this circle there is a single large flower. Its shape resembles a tulip bud, pointing upwards. Creamy orange petals, each over six feet long, form an overlapping pattern with only the narrowest of apertures at the top.
Sticking out of that aperture are two pairs of boots.

Steven Seagal wearing his trademark black bandana, BUT ALSO a patterned fuchsia suit and a hot pink silk scarf. He looks like a Romani stereotype about to read your fortune in an 80s action film that has aged very poorly.

He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to join in, but he knew to set his body against the ship’s rail—on the starboard side, the port side rail was still missing—and tense.

Something struck the prow of the ship like a giant’s fist, making every timber groan in protest. Even prepared as he was, Garnas nearly toppled forwards. He apologised as he pulled himself away from Shirin’s back.

Waves rolled against the hull as the ship broke free of the mist. With only a single judder it had left the interstice to rejoin a mundane sea. The vision in the marble had not done the port justice. Colours were in constant motion. Shouts carried all the way out to the ship; hawkers’ lures drowned out top-of-voice squabbles, pierced in turn by children’s excited shrieks.

Reading between the lines, the council had probably intended to ‘volunteer’ someone from her chorus before I arrived. If the task was dangerous, better have it fall to one of Dieuwke’s ill-behaved whelps than someone who mattered. My arrival had given her an opportunity to punt it away again. The rest of the council believed it was getting one over on her this way, forcing her to choose between a former student and a current one; when in fact this outcome was exactly what she wanted. I don’t know if it spoke of her confidence in me, or her willingness to hang me out to dry.

“I understand,” I said, for her benefit more than the others. “Is this a good time to discuss the nature of this task?”

Following the river was a mistake. It might mean you could move more quickly, but you had your back against a figurative wall. Even if you could fight off dangerous fauna, the noise and the blood would bring more animals―or worse. Following the river was a mistake, but it was a mistake Garnas guessed the missing explorers had made.

His hunch was confirmed by scraps of cloth on a resinbush. The plant was one of the few without vicious thorns, which made it look less dangerous to the naïve eye. Its leaves secreted a quick-setting adhesive that hardened to a bond with greater tensile strength than leather. If the wanderers had continued into that harmless-looking patch of bluish undergrowth, they would still be there now. As it was they had only left behind one blue sleeve. At least they hadn’t tried burning the leaves away. Their resin was a natural accelerant.

A giant 3½ inch floppy diskette, red, hangs in space in front of a volcanic planet

Birmingham's famous 'Mr. Egg' restaurant.

Essendra looked to the side and caught a glance of herself in a mirror. She was still wearing her gambeson and it was stained with blood and dirt. Cuts on her hands and face hadn’t had time to heal fully. She usually wore her hair in a tight bun at the back of her head but somewhere down the line she’d lost the barrette and her hair was down around her shoulders. It reminded her too much of how she used to look.

“You’re welcome to stay in one of the guest rooms here in the Guild for another night or two if you wish. Or you might prefer your own bed.”

There was a secret under that bed. Essendra was nervous about leaving it there unguarded. If she hadn’t been so Fatigued when the Guild had offered her one of its rooms, she wouldn’t have left it unattended for even one night.

Spoof Dune 3 poster. Paul holds aloft a krisknife that he and Chani stare at. Title above them reads "Worm Tools".

The man kept silent until Garnas brought his skinning knife right up to his face. Light from distant lamps reflected off a worn handle and a frequently-sharpened blade. A knife wasn’t seen as a weapon, not until it was used as one.

“The south docks. White cross warehouse. Fellkar heard there was a bounty on her. Figured we could collect more from you.”

“How many? Weapons?” Garnas kept his voice patient, like he was speaking to a child.

“Four. But Fellkar’s worth ten men. Swords. Bows.”

Garnas drew his knife back slightly, but didn’t sheathe it.

“Now your boots.”

Prompt: I want to surprise my sleep paralysis demon with a picture of them looking nice for a night out on the town
Response: A pitch black humanoid demon with horns, a tail and glowing yellow eyes, who also happens to be wearing a nice white dress and holding a red flower.

Exchange from the website 'your ai slop bores me'.
My prompt: I would like a picture of a sinister cheese
The response: A line drawing of a wedge of Swiss cheese, in yellow, with the holes in. Two black lines create fierce eyebrows just above 2 holes in the side, that makes them into eyes, even though they are uneven in placement and size.

Without the walls to obscure his view, he could look down the slope of the headland to the town. The river mouth was a natural harbour, at least for ships with a shallow draught, and the town was perched right where it met the sea. It was far less impressive when you realised most of the buildings were derelict. You could tell which were still in use by the way the corrugated iron roofs were patched. Those open to the sky had already been completely cannibalised. One day there would be no more usable roofing material left. Perhaps then some would have to be salvaged from the jungle.

The eye was never drawn to the town, however. The river stole the show. A river of rust―harsh orange with the glint of an oily film on the surface.

Cropped screenshot of an email folder, with one email has the sender as """"TESCO"""", that's right: TESCO with four sets of scare quotes. I appreciate the honesty.

3 stewards and a pilot from the fictional airline 'Air Scotia'. Two of the stewards look like nice boys, the captain seems not quite all there.

This is a sitcom, not an episode of Mayday.

“I’m more interested to know how he keeps control of it,” she whispered back. “Astute political connections? His own supply of bruisers?”

I nodded. I wanted to believe this uncle had noble—or at least benign—motives, but we had to be prepared for anything.

The man who greeted us was older than I expected. He carried a smile so broad it looked like his head was about to fold in half. He shook our hands one after the other, as if he was greeting old friends.

“Yes, good! I’m glad Matija was able to find you. My name is Adetokunbo. I saw you admiring the gantry. I’m really proud of it, although it hasn’t seen as much use as I had hoped.”

The man was a ball of enthusiasm. Once he’d finished shaking our hands, he apparently forgot which way he’d been going and went back down the line shaking our hands again.

An intricate voxel city, seen from above. With copy-pasted streets, unique buildings and gardens and squares and yards and other extraneous detail.

“I came here for the ship’s compass,” the victim explained. “It’s the only one aboard that’ll work in this messed up magnetic field. I reckoned we’d need it.”

They stretched out an arm, half-heartedly. Just beyond their fingers, a shattered metal case spilled viscous fluid and gears out onto the sand.

“I’m more worried about you,” Garnas said. “Where does it hurt?”

“Where doesn’t it hurt?” The chuckle turned into a damp moan.

Garnas got no response when he tested Yazhu’s arms and legs, but the hiss of pain when he pressed gently on the ribs suggested a break. It was not an encouraging sign. Moving the injured would ordinarily be considered an error, but there was no alternative here.

A synthwave-cum-cyberpunk level, as seen through the lens of 80s puzzle platform mascot Dizzy the egg. All in glorious 256x192 resolution.

Details of a UMAP (?) of bluesky posters. User is in between clusters named "Leftist Creative Progressives", "Queer Leftist Creative Professionals", "Creative Professionals & Nerd Culture", "Queer & Left-Leaning Creatives", "Leftist Queer Community".

The character Captain Hans Geering from the comedy 'Allo 'Allo. He is a WW2 German officer in full uniform, with glasses, delivering a half-hearted 'Heil Hitler', which he abbreviates as "'tler". In appearance, credibility and politics he is a close match for Graham Linehan testifying to the US congress.

Gadja reached towards the fire. There was a whisper in the air, a dull wooden thud, and Gadja’s hand was pinned to a log by the shaft of an arrow.

Toolan stood up, drawing back his hands for a spell, but a cloaked figure was suddenly behind him with a knife. One deep slash across his belly and he dropped to the ground, limp.

Essendra felt something hit her on the back of the head and she was too startled to do anything other than topple forwards.

More figures emerged from the dark, all cloaked, all armed. One kept a sword near Gadja’s face.

“These two are down,” someone said.

Jake and Elwood Blues, sitting in children's school chairs, as they visit The Penguin. Both of them are wearing white shirts, black suits, black ties, black pork pie hats and sunglasses. Elwood is making an expository hand gesture and saying: "Well then, I guess you're really up shit creek."

The lights in the sky were fainter now. Were there fewer than there had been a minute ago? Garnas couldn’t tell. He turned and looked ahead, to where a vast marble showed him a fish-eye vision of their destination. There was water, extensive wooden docks, and what looked like tiers of streets on the lower slope of a bare hill. The image was too smeared to see details, but what could be seen looked exotic to Garnas’s eyes. He was used to the greens of the sea and the jungle and the thousand orange shades of rust. These piercing swatches of colour: the blues, the whites, the yellows; they tantalised.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he could already hear seagulls. The interstice was untroubled by incidental noise, which had only made the sounds of the ship seem louder. Even the muted voices of the sailors had become intrusive. Now the cracking of the sails rang in Garnas’s ears.

A surface-to-air missile in the process of launching, with a drawn-on speech bubble implying that it's saying the quoted post.

There was only so far she could retreat, so she swung the mace in an overhand attack. The orc raised its cleaver to parry.

The cleaver splintered. The mace struck the orc on top of the head, and carried on all the way down until it smacked into the floor and sent stone chips flying in all directions.

Essendra stepped back, streaked with blood. The orc was dead.

That was only a glancing blow. What kind of bonuses does this thing have? How on EARTH could I even hold such a powerful weapon with my Skill? If the mace is a joke, it’s a lethal one.

She wiped some of the blood from her eyes.

That’s enough for one day. Maybe this will make sense in the morning.

A book with the title: "Seven years of manifold; 1968-1980"

$The truth had given me nightmares. I dreamt of the floor falling away from me, slipping sideways, as the walls cracked and parted. The faces of my friends, as panicked as I was, all of us helpless to arrest our fall. Horrible sounds as entire rooms collapsed inwards. Screams. I grabbed at a banister, for all the good it did. I turned my head upwards, hoping that some miracle could save us, but there was no time for anyone to conjure up a Song. A strange moment of relief when I saw my room-mate on the cistern level, safe, abruptly shattered when a chunk of masonry slammed into him from above. When we had no more breath to scream, the sound of the wind in our ears made us deaf, anyway. We dropped into the mist, the fractured pieces of tower clearing a way before us. Further we plunged, sinking a well into the orange clouds. We fell for so long that the mist rolled back over the top of the clear area, taking away the sun.$