:V

You are SEVERAL HUNDRED BIRDS IN A TRENCHCOAT, craving a SPONTANEOUS, UNFORSEEABLE, and PREFERABLY MESSY+SPECTACULAR EXIT from the low-key ULCER ACCRETION STATION that is your persona of A SHODDY YET SERVICEABLE FACADE OF ADULTHOOD. You are currently at your work desk.

You turn to the dark recesses of the internet for advice.

You read:

>_

Classifieds:

Spacebird seeking employee - preferably a multitude.
Job entails spacehunting and spacetracking.
Pay: High.
Amenities: Many.
Thrill: Lots.

Oh, they updated all the computers to block access to "fun" websites. Damn! Well, time to get some real, bona-fide human WORK done.

You must be registered to view this content.

Classifieds:

Spacebird seeking employee - preferably a multitude.
Job entails spacehunting and spacetracking.
Pay: High.
Amenities: Many.
Thrill: Lots.

(In no particular order)

1. bird

is a rich, romantic purple. Dark enough that people assume it's black. An idealistic hue, where light reflects off it or transluces through spread feathers, that there's the color you wish upon nebulae.

It's fond of the stars. Won't shut up about Crux, Orion, Scorpius (it only knows three notes). Its eyes and heart are enshrined in an intermontane basin where the sky stretched out enough to let it glimpse Antares.


2. Another bird

chooses now to remind it it drew blood, once.


3. This bird, meanwhile,

is the patron saint of the word "vertiginous".

and when you were still young, still A COUPLE-SCORE BIRDS AND SEVERAL HUNDRED AS-YET UNDIFFERENTIATED PROTO-BIRDS IN A TRENCHCOAT, this bird could contort its neck until the mask of its face stared up.

(Birds aren't in the habit of looking straight up. Not even flightless ones. It's like they know something.)

This bird's song reminds you all known complex life in the universe is found in a fifty-kilometer thick halo surrounding a rock with a diameter 250 times that. Its feathers are so fine, they're like the skin on an apple.

Under its gaze, a pale blue sky is a yawning chasm, and you cling with all your talons to the Earth's surface and anticipate gravity's repeal and the abolition of all directions not Down.

In spite of how ugly a bird this one is, you're fond of it. It's like a child's drawing.

---

You don't think you'd take the job, even if it were real.

SpoilerShow

Other commands being accepted later, maybe,

Find more birds to assimilate into your legion

Oh, they updated all the computers to block access to "fun" websites. Damn! Well, time to get some real, bona-fide human WORK done.

4. Kind of sad to look at.

You stuff enough birds in a small enough space, and some will invariably be relegated to the bottom of the pecking order. This has negligible improvement on the living conditions of the collective; a weakened individual is probably more susceptible to disease, come to think about it.

No, you don't get to choose which ones get bullied. Birds can be assholes like that.

This one's picked on by other BIRDS IN A TRENCHCOAT, loosing gold feathers as it darts adroitly from obligation to obligation. These birds wither and shrink and leave the bounds of "pitiable" appearance and settle down in "shameful". They don't die.


5. There's a handsome bird, of philosophical bent and its song awitter in many circles, the loudest proponent of the merits of bird-death. Death of the self. Death as a quantity, what if 2 plus 2 equalled 5, just a thought experiment. Death in general, really. An impractical and fanciful, if occasionally amusing bird to entertain.

Moreso than little gold things that were unassuming to start with and now just make you feel bad looking at their sorry state.


4.'s pure song gives listeners a sense of satisfaction, and quells anxiety. It's hard to pick out its call over the gheek-shriek of a different


6. bird, cawing criticisms of the gold bird's sorry state.


You've a stack of papers you can work through. These would do little to help the gold bird's lot, but at least you could make it sing.

You wouldn't hear it, but you might take comfort in knowing it's there.

Maybe.

You'll entertain the flock after dealing with this. Shouldn't take long.

Promote #5 to Head Bird, that one will promote unity. You must have unity if you are to exist.

You must be registered to view this content.

You had to return a stag beetle to a coworker, and drop bundled up papers in the shed during cleaning time. There's a breeze outside and

7. a bird made entirely of esses and haitches, and the various configurations they'd make on rooftops and passsageways. It hunkers, solitary, in spaces where the wind and rain drown out noises less monotonous. It reminds you of green and spring and amnesty, despite lacking colors of its own.

The sound of an engine reminds you of 7's affinity for

8. An anxiety-riddled bird, feathers like radio towers bent under strain. It can occasionally tolerate, but generally dislikes sound - it smoulders away when assailed until ash cakes its plumes. In a weakened state, a stray sound can punch through its timpani skin like the butt of a flamethrower.

Your coworker sneezes, and 8 reels. It's a nice afternoon, you should leave work.



The trenchcoat, for what it's worth, is metaphorical.

Can you all fly? What about the ones that can't?

SpoilerShow

Find more birds to assimilate into your legion

You've got just the right amount for yourself as you are now. You might not like all of them equally, nor may you understand let alone be at peace with each and every one of their motives (a fair twinbushel/handful of which are at clear odds with others or You, SEVERAL HUNDRED BIRDS IN A TRENCHCOAT). You rely on

9. a bird that scuttles - never flies - yet its feet never quite touch the ground. Its eyes are gems, flawlessly cushion-cut into marvels of geode-metric symmetry, haphazardly shoved into its skull. Its scream would warn of a cosmic order's shattering; the creak of its neck is purely symptomatic of Reasonable Doubt and no cause for concern.

While it never speaks, its voice is soothing. Trustworthy. Smooth and digestible as any fine lie.

Its poison is palatable, if awkward to admit to in polite company. Much safer, still, than making more acquaintance than necessary of

10., 5's good friend. Grinning panfurcation (thank - let's call them 11 - for that phrase). A cartoon of a creature, popping colors collars and appealing silhouette. Its beak is knife and chasm in turn; its cry is crisp like kindling being split.

10's a danger if mishandled. Thinking too hard about the what-ifs of its potential can lead one to be delusional.

became a recluse
i bought a computer
set it up in the home
elusive big one
on the screen
saw the holy ghost i swear
on the screen
where's the cursor?
where's the eraser?
where's the cursor?
where's the eraser?
a G O HAITCH O 8 O 9 O
G O HAITCH O 8 O 9 O
G O HAITCH O 8 O 9 O
HAITCH O 9 O G O HAITCH O



















what's a computer

Promote #5 to Head Bird, that one will promote unity. You must have unity if you are to exist.

Birds may well be disorderly things, and uncaring ruthless toward each other and the whole as nature is inclined to be. That is what they are though, and despite fractal tiers of disorder and uncommon sense you're still you. You still are what you are - unity be damned or revered as a false truth.

You're a mess, sure. You, surely, are a mess. 9 glows comfortingly at this revelation; giving 6 pause.

5's a dreamer, anyway; not a leader. Troublesome to the wrong company or the wrong audience, sure. An instigator and powderkeg. For all its morbid trappings, though, 5 prefers to set the scene, frame the real object lesson.

That sort of charm and courtesy passes for royalty in the Trenches. How else would you explain 5's heavy silver crown; their bone-white quills, the earth churning in supplication at their feet?

5 holds court with its jesters - the separatist 10, sullen 12, voracious 13. They're the better ones.

Anyway,

None of them are the entity closest to being what we could call "in charge". That's

14.

Where is the time? Is it going away, escaping the frame of reference
That surrounds yourselves? Slightly farther than the plans crafted
and carefully adjusted, but yet within view? Internalized, hidden away,
known only to the inner heart?

go bird postal on your bird boss

vent to some friends

what is 14 like?

---


15. is small. Delicate. Markings crisp as cartridge-ink, and a similarly punctuated sans-serif cry. Its prominence in the flock peaked quite a few years ago, and it has since peaceably retired to niches and nooks.

You hadn't paid it much thought in the intervening years, but you glanced at someone's writing yesterday and admired their penmanship. Exchange words with a friend about bygone days and the tk-tk of its beak as it pecks at tails and apexes feels natural as breathing.

Not all that surprising though that it's faded from prominence. Its ideal habitat needs a good mix of ligatures to perch on; counters and apertures to make its nest. The orthography round these parts really isn't suited to it.

Can you all fly? What about the ones that can't?

Most can, but if they went gallivanting off somewhere they wouldn't be In A Trenchcoat anymore, would they? It's a philosophical debate whether it's the trenchcoat, or the several hundred birds, or the sum of its parts that's most important, and some forefront birds in the field wouldn't mind picking the concept apart at length, 10 spearheading the project most likely.

---

16's been slacking off, it seems.

It's a young bird yet, hatched from necessity by 13's latest madcap endeavour. Primarily neck and two tidy rows of zygodactyl feet, 16 the Clerk-lark crawls over furniture all sinuous and grabby-delicate. It knows only two words - "identify" and "heed" - but it knows them in the language of every bird 'neath sun or trench.

It's in charge of calling specific birds - their very birdness - to attention. Sullen and in competition with no shortage of other flashy trenchcreatures, its primary means of locomotion is an unappreciated slink.

At your disorganised work desk, twenty past shoulda-been-home-already, 16's sprawled on a bed of stationery and pointing out the outstanding clientele.

6. 8. 17. 8. 13 and 12, joined at the hip. 18. 8. 17. 6. Jesus. 17.

Only way to shut these assholes up is a change of scenery.

You finish up here for now. 7 croons to a raincloud-beleaguered 1, reminding it of the nice purple of the sunset not twenty minutes ago.

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

I'm a rude butt and forgot to mention in my last post that these are great!
Thank you Gime, these are great!

became a recluse
i bought a computer
set it up in the home
elusive big one
on the screen
saw the holy ghost i swear
on the screen

19's a national embarrassment, but you'll always have a soft spot for it.

It's a hoatzin. It's basically a Sonic The Hedgehog fancharacter, and has a similar extent of emotional maturity under that magnificent hairstyle. 19's all show and little substance, a laundry list of appropriate symbols and accouterments and adjectives in lieu of an organic, trench-fostered personality. 1 and 16 and similar in this regard.

It's quite happy to share though. It lazily stretches open its wings - 19, hatchmate to the likes of 15, hasn't seen much action in a while - and safety pins and tins of hair dye rattle off them like contraband.

Even the dead can find fulfillment in carrion-picking company, it seems.

where's the cursor?
where's the eraser?
where's the cursor?
where's the eraser?

20's limbs are severed; a metre-odd adrift. Neon feathers barred with electric blue bloom from the stumps, their markings sparking to life when its disembodied claws clench. It'll occasionally get overexcited and kick up a jabbering fuss, its ungainly drawl out of sync with its beak. For all its discombobulation, it flies just fine.

When 13 starts off on one of its grandiloquent proto-tales, 20 kicks up a fuss and drunkenly stumbles all over your workspace. Its watchful gaze is invaluable in arguments, though, so you can forgive its foibles.

Where is the time? Is it going away, escaping the frame of reference
That surrounds yourselves? Slightly farther than the plans crafted
and carefully adjusted, but yet within view? Internalized, hidden away,
known only to the inner heart?

Time is subjective, a concept; its existence and impact utterly dependent on your perception of it. Thinking about that makes you bitterly acknowledge you're barely responsible enough to keep potted basil alive, much less an entire dimension of reality.

You can kind of relate. You sometimes just stop existing in any tangible, reachable sense - for bullshit arbitrary reasons like spanners tossed into the deus ex machina from on high. It's 12-indulgently cliche, that your (narrative?) gears never get spinning 'til you've delved to the depressive depths of your
.

The inner heart's as much a fucking consensus mess as any other part of you, bee tee dubs. Thanks for asking. You're such a goddamn open-hearted individualcollective your circulatory system's practically diffusing. Your capacity for compassion and even-handedness through interpersonal fractiousness is lauded by many.

You suppose that's a good thing.

4's little golden feathers have been fouling up the place. They drift down to the metaphloor, where another anxious and harangued-looking creature awaits them, stomps on them, rips them up.

21. Its tone is wheedle-reedy, always breaks one's concentration, and gets noise-loathing 8's hackles up like no bird's business. It speaks in should've-missives that missed their deadlines, consigned to a nebulous never-history disconnected from any and all presents.

It's got a substantial nest of those, guarding it jealously against all but 6. Inquiries eventually relegated to less anxious coworkers, offers expiring before you took up on them, snippets in that vein.

You suffered a phone call, and made one yourself to relocate a few of these feathers down 6's complaint-laden throat. 6, unfortunately, has as many mouths as there are known ills in the world. One maw reserved for regurgitating 21's calls to calling doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of its multimodal yodels.

It's all disgustingly symbolic, anyhow.

go bird postal on your bird boss

22. A cigarette burn on reality's flank. Denser than any known avian, with a petulant tenacity easily mistaken for iron resilience. Eyes like embers, winking into existence on the breeziest slight. If you don't pay attention, they'll drift free of 22's skull on those very same winds, and find a nice dark corner of your coat in which to settle. Watching.

Smouldering.

Setting 11 to task; for none are quite as talented at bringing out that particular bird's finest. It's a damn shame, because too often the aftermath is another notch on 2's scarred, indictive flank.

It's a dangerous one, 22.

Under 14's direction, it's sequestered away somewhere deep and quiet, where other birds' agitation won't fan its flames. 14's far from unshakeable though, so 22 does get its occasional time to shine.

The coat's interior been a Hadean starscape of late. They cluster first upon the peripheries (looking outward, at this or that source of irk for 8+17+others), leaving you a little hot under the collar. And your other hems too, sure.

2 augurs these consternation constellations, reminds you as it loves to do of how little well they bode. As it gesticulates to the scorch-marks of clear habit, where 22's embers seem determined to repeatedly malinger, more sparks dance to where they can watch over several hundred birds instead.

The little sun(bitter)n's in zenith, of late. You're coping, though. 14's coping.