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    Debudaderrah
    Debudaderrah
    Debudaderrah
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Debudaderrah

    By Robin Wyatt Dunn

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "Debudaderrah takes a concrete hard science future and layers it with myth and spirits and other core elements of humanity; those symbolic leaps that separate us from logic machines ...

    This is SF poetry with a sense of mystery, of actions unseen like dark planets whose gravitational pulls warp motives in actions seen, but whose reality and orbits must be deduced without firsthand observation.

    Imagine that the chapters of this book are a disorganized line of sake cups filled randomly with sake or plum wine. And just when you find a proper altitude within which to navigate the astral plane, the next cup is full of single-malt scotch, the kind that’s *supposed* to burn."

    -Herb Kauderer, author of FLYING SOLO

    --

    Debudaderrah, far colony, receives a surprise: a sentient robot from some Earth which does not yet exist. The robot has orders to eliminate all life it finds; but the robot is also human, with a troubled conscience. Science fiction poetry by Robin Wyatt Dunn.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobin Wyatt Dunn
    Release dateJan 15, 2018
    ISBN9781940830230
    Debudaderrah
    Author

    Robin Wyatt Dunn

    Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in Los Angeles.

    Read more from Robin Wyatt Dunn

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      Book preview

      Debudaderrah - Robin Wyatt Dunn

      Martin Frost, and son John

      Schist, a tribal leader

      Bat of the Bethua, a nomad

      Eliza, a student

      Dogae, lead dancer

      The people of Los Angeles

      Roberto, a writer

      Muriel, a young woman

      Francisco, her boyfriend

      Spirits

      Roberto, a robot of Borderline

      The Horned Man, a spirit

      Alexandra, a robot of Padua

      Heriananus, a robot of far away

      I came to Debudaderrah as a child, rumbling my engines, waiting for grace. Who was it told me I had been born there?

      What is it, Dad?

      That’s the Light Dancer. Isn’t it beautiful?

      Beautiful is not an adequate word for Debudaderrah, swept over the sand and into the sky in the shape of the sandstone spirals which compose the dancers’ monument.

      Its reaches were not infinite; you could see its limits. But there were hidden parts just out of sight.

      Who made it, Dad?

      Your great-grandfather.

      How did he do it?

      It took him his whole life.

      Here I sing of Debudaderrah, though it be wrong. Though I am inadequate. I sing.

      You imagine parts in order, but for me they happen all at once:

      1.

      Schist listened to the darkness behind his eyes, feeling the weight of his body. Two feet, two hands. Two eyes; the curve of his back.

      Outside, the sound of wind.

      In Ravens.

      - -

      Bat knew it was good to ride the demon; he had, after all, made it himself. It was made almost completely of steel; it flew faster than anything he had ever made.

      700 knots. In the thin air of Debudaderrah, right on the edge of the speed of sound.

      The tribe of the Bethua would have their vengeance.

      He screamed. Under his thumb, the world clicked:

      - -

      Each member of the tribe in Ravens were dancers. As they began their warm-ups, the shield above their town turned on, and they looked up:

      - -

      The physical models don’t do justice to the feeling of the thing, that shield, any more than Einstein’s equations capture the emotional registers of witnesses to the atomic bomb.

      It was a dream; even as Debudaderrah was a dream. Dreams are something that I do not understand. It may be that you understand them better than me, and all the peoples of Debudaderrah. I hope then someday to know you.

      Their earth shuddered as under a great light. And Bat of the Bethua was tumbling to his death out of the air.

      He screamed for a dozen miles.

      2.

      We rise; it is no matter we say, we say, that we rise, we say, but it does matter; I write to you; my apology, confession, and plea; we are not alone here for you are coming; and others:

      Martin Frost knew the weight of company.

      Debudaderrah, bent under the weight of its new post-war dignity.

      They are standing shadows over their temple.

      Is he dead, Dad?

      No, he’ll live.

      John was ten. On Debudaderrah, almost a man.

      Are you ready?

      Yes.

      Martin lifted him onto his shoulders.

      Behind him, Dogae prepared himself to lift both man and son onto him.

      3. [from Borderline]

      I am dictating this to you from an apartment in Los Angeles, but I was born long ago in a hydrazine manufactury, the last of my line, designed to regulate the infrastructure of our dispersal between the worlds.

      He who holds the key is god; one of our robots. But the work is human; and it is more than hard. It's religious. Or something different, but the same. Some thing with no name.

      You scout the territory and you know the risks: space is not some walk in the park. It is waiting for you to come to it. It is prepared with all manner of traps, and what it expects most is to eat you.

      But we are animals: we keep moving. I keep moving. And I hold on to the train.

      To Debudaderrah the map is scanty but still adequate. We navigated 5,000 light years through temporal sludge to pledge that beacon and come home, but never got the return signal.

      What that means is this: the story is still going on. I was supposed to have that story done and tidied up, and returned to the database for processing over a millennium ago. But the thing is still running.

      I indict myself, even as I am made again:

      My question is simple: just what in the fuck did you do?

      4.

      From the light the robot descended, shining in armor from another world. It was hard to look at him because your eye would slip aside, looking for something behind him, something his mask hid, or his body did. It was distracting; it continued some weeks into our knowing him.

      My boy was the bravest; he ran right up to the thing as it began to declaim in its language. I thought Bat was dead (but he wasn’t). We know we had robots before; but the intelligent ones all stopped working long ago. I guess we figured this was one of them. But it had a funny way of talking; even before you could start to understand it, it was like looking at it: too many things at once. Like an angel, shouting all kinds of nonsense out of the sky.

      I come the grace of an angel, it had said.

      What I heard

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