– Right, so that attempt flunked as well. Any bright ideas?
– We could say it was a dream within a dream…
– Who the fuck do you think you are, Christopher Nolan? Get out of here.
– Amnesia?
– What?! You don’t do amnesia until the third season. At the earliest! Besides, how would that explain the new guy having completely other qualities and faculties?
– Well, he has just clean forgotten his real identity. He was a master spy and he didn’t even know it….ay.
– That’s even dumber. Besides that’s The Long Kiss Goodnight, Mr. Original. Fuck it, we’ll just do a reboot and retcon the shit out of it. And throw in some explosions to take the readers’ mind off of it. Lots of explosions, you hear me! Lots! We’re gonna need them.

Continue reading

Örvar wakes slowly. His sleep has been neither deep nor shallow. He just gradually fades from being asleep to being awake. Not much difference there. He has turned forty some weeks back in much the same way, his thirties just giving way as he passes on into middle age. Actually, old age. Outside of the court, most people of his generation are likely dead by now, Örvar reckons.

In here, though, a man can apparently live to eighty and still not have the goddamn decency to just die already. Örvar gives his left slipper a kick as the grinning face of the king hovers in his mind. The wrinkled visage winks at him, coughs and wheezes, as the king has done every morning for the past many years: ‘So Spymaster, you’ve kept me alive yet another day. I thank you humbly.’ The king looks like an insomniac Max von Sydow, part kindly old Lassefar, part Ming the Merciless. Neither part makes Örvar want to punch him in the head any less. Örvar bends to retrieve the slipper under the bed. He has spent almost five years failing miserably at assasinating the senile old codger. To make matters worse the king obviously knows and taunts him. It’s pathetic.

Continue reading