Writer's Block

by | Jan 25, 2006 | Story

“Space-faring monkies with a mirror fetish?”

“Yup. In The Day Ambrosia Paled by Kinstev Ramod, chapter six.”

“Damn. Okay, uhh… how about ice cream that turns your teeth green and carries a rare strand of the bubonic plague? Unleashed on a modern colony?”

“As a government experiment: Fire Warden by Jack Strapley. As a mad scientist’s coup de grace: On Being Trembleton by Emilia d’Oernga. With a time travel sub-plot: Terra Infirma by Marguerite Bloc. Sorry, Glenn. It’s all been done.”

Glenn groaned and leaned back in his chair, running his hand through the long part of his hair and pulling it out over his eyes, staring at the brown strands in frustration. “Damn it all! How am I supposed to write if there aren’t any original ideas?”

“Hey, come on, Glenn.” Neil grimaced at his friend in sympathy. “You’re just not thinking outside the box. Look, I know it’s tough, but there’s got to be something you can do that’s not already in here.” He gestured at the Central Database terminal he’d been using, the letters on the keyboard nearly worn off from the fruitless searches he’d made.

Neil’s words were encouraging, but his tone was not—it’d been months since Glenn had come up with his last viable story idea, and he still remembered the celebration they’d had. Now their fridge was bare, and there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in the house. Neil let out a long sigh. “Look… maybe you need a rest, yeah? Let’s go out for a while. We’ll go to the club, see Jeannie and the guys, and just relax. I bet it’d help. What do you say?”

Glenn made a noise of frustration and sat up straight again. “No. No! We’re almost out of cash. What good is going out going to do? That’ll just make things worse. I have to think of something, and fast!”

Neil sighed and turned back to the terminal. “Glenn, we’ve been at this for hours. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

“No. No, I’ve got one.” Glenn turned sharply, his face lighting up as his eyes latched onto Neil. He paused dramatically. “How about… a guy with writer’s block trying to figure out what to put in a story?”

Neil groaned loudly and threw a stylus at Glenn. “Do I even have to answer? I think it’d break the database if I tried a search on that. Billions of billions of hits.”

Glenn chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Geez. I just wish that for once I could write something without caring that someone else already did it.”

“Wouldn’t sell.”

“Yeah, I know. I know.”

The two men stared in silence for a moment, Glenn at the ceiling, Neil at the screen that was nothing more than one massive search field.

“Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“How about a story about a writer who hacks into the Central Database and erases the old records so that editors will think his story is original?”

“You know,” Neil said with a slow grin, “I don’t think that one’s been done yet.”

Object Of My Desire

by | Jan 23, 2006 | Story

Here in the Quiet Dark, a raygun can be your dearest friend. It warms to your touch, responds to your requests, and clears your way. It is the best partner one can expect to have in the Quiet Dark.

I’ve had Lizzette here for longer than most of my friends. Certainly longer than my living friends. It is not a weapon, it is not a tool. It is a partner, a friend. A lover.

That’s not queer, or nothing. But Lizzette’s saved my life far too often to be anything but a lover. And here in the Quiet Dark, love is a rare and flowered thing. You best find it where you can. Some of us up here, some claim to love their crate. But that’s a parasitic relationship, and any crate knows that, from the little cargo rockets to those faster-than-light frigates. They know who runs ’em to the scrap heap. No, me and Lizzette, here, we’re partners.

I tried giving her, up you know. Lizzette, the crate, the Quiet Dark, all of it. Settled down on a orb, found a woman who didn’t care when last I felt the sun and tried to live a life of noise and brightness.

I was warned. They all warned me, just like I’m warning you now. It never lasts. Not for us. Not after all the time in the Quiet Dark. I saw stars collide, you know? Watched a dark hole form and drag in the cosmos inside it. You think I could explain that to someone used to blue above? You think you’ll be able to?

The whole time, I wanted Lizzette there, at my hip. She’d been with me, she’d seen it all. But my girl didn’t want none of that. Proper men don’t carry guns, she said. But Lizzette wasn’t just a gun. She was my partner.

Don’t go thinking you’re any different. I can read a man’s scars as well as a veiwport. You’ve seen too much, same as me.

I suppose a fight between Lizzette and such a woman was destined to end only one way. I wish I had something to remember her by, like that necklace she always wore. But that went in the blast.

Probably just as well. I have Lizzette, after all. What more do I need, way out here?

Next to Nothing

by | Jan 22, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

“I’m sorry, will you repeat that?” Admiral Bunka was squinting to hear, even though his very nervous ensign was right beside him.

“We, uh, are at full stop sir. There’s nothing left.” The young man was sweating and the two continued to look out the viewfinder towards…well, nothing. The whole crew was there, staring out into what should have been space but where space stood it wasn’t black. It wasn’t white. It wasn’t molecules. It was nothing.

“Nothing?” The Admiral began to blubber off non-sense like an ancient car tries to shoot off its muffler when it starts. He pointed at the viewfinder and glared at his ensign with a twitch just above his left brow. “Ba…d… er… don’t give me that nonsense, ensign! Move us forward at once!”

The ensign nodded nervously and returned to his post. They’d been traveling for seven years now, at about five hundred times light speed, when they suddenly came to this rather impassable juncture. The ship just stopped, and the crew had been clueless for the past hour trying to decipher just what was in front of them.

Someone from across the room yelled out, “Ensign! Don’t! We… we can’t!”

Bunka rose up and cleared his throat, “And why not, Sergeant Gimble?”

Gimble was a stout man, but his eyes glowed with the seriousness of his words, “We… we can’t just go forward into nothing! Then it will cease to be nothing!”

“What fimble-tossle! Of course we can go forward. It’s…it’s just a cloud.” The whole crew heard the Admiral, but they knew that he was lying. It was like telling someone who just had their arm cut off that they still had use of that limb. The ensign glanced at his Sergeant.

“Well, if nothing is nothing, then maybe if we go into it we’ll change it into something.” In any moment other than this, those words that the ensign spoke would cause any man to bleed from the eyes, nose, and ears. As it was, the words unfolded a debate in the main cockpit.

Admiral Bunka was the first to try and add in his opinion, “Well, if we’re next to nothing, then nothing is next to something. Therefore, nothing would be something. It can’t be something if it’s nothing.”

“Aren’t we looking at nothing? Isn’t it something we’re looking at?” said the Sergeant as he stood up to get a better look at nothing.

“Uhm. No. We can’t describe what we’re looking at. We may not even be looking at it. It’s barely even an it. Nothing, people. We’re talking about nothing here.” Now that the ensign had everyone thoroughly confused everyone on the deck, the three took a moment to look at each other before turning back to the viewfinder. The definition of nothing had these men absolutely confused, and they were suffering from a mild case of brainpan rupture.

Admiral Bunka appeared understandably perplexed, and rather upset at the whole situation. He stood up straight and nodded in personal acceptance of the decision he had made. “Full reverse then! We’ll go back the other way.”

The Ensign returned to his seat and began typing the orders until he stopped and glanced back to Admiral Bunka, “Sir, wouldn’t that be going away from nothing?”

The Master and the Apprentice

by | Jan 21, 2006 | Story

To the farmers the two monks looked like the comedy/ tragedy masks that adorned the theater in town. The older monk was bald, and smiled beatifically, as if every cold breeze was a kiss. The younger monk had a mop of black greasy hair and he frowned, looking again and again at his wet boots.

“Farmer Kerr!” said the older monk joyfully “Farmer Rae, thank you both for coming out here on this day.”

“Anything to catch a thief.” Muttered Farmer Kerr.

“Please! Please!” said the older monk. “No name calling! My apprentice and I have come from very far to resolve the disputes of your world, and it would be very difficult to reach a consensus on this when we start from a place of bitterness. Let us give thanks to the light in each thing, and the blessings of this day.”

“Master, can we just get this thing over with?” said the apprentice. The Master smiled.

“You have to excuse my apprentice, he is going through the stage of Philosophical Disillusionment. He’ll get through it soon enough and move on to Transcendence.”

“I don’t see how. Nothing actually means anything.”

“He is such a joy.”

The apprentice rolled his eyes. “What exactly is the problem you people have here?”

Farmer Kerr pointed at Farmer Rae. “Rae stole my sheep.”

“Please!” The older Monk waved his hands. “Stealing is so harsh a word. Can we say instead that the sheep seem to reside in his stable now, and you would like them to reside in your stable?”

“Master, if he took them, it’s stealing.”

The old monk pushed up the sleeves of his brown robe. “Young and delightful apprentice, please observe the rite of joyful silence, the breaking of which results in the most excellent slapping of my stick on your spine!”

The apprentice made a face and tried to scrape the mud off his boot on the bark of a nearby tree.

The monk turned to the farmers. “Who would like to tell me the tale of how the sheep moved from one field to another.”

“Well,” said Farmer Rae “Last winter was harsh, very harsh, and some people did not have enough grain saved from the summer and their sheep were left bleating and hungry in the field. I could not stand to see the creatures suffer, so I took them into my stables – with no complaint, I may add, from this man – and I fed them, and kept them warm under my heat lamps, and the sheep survived. Now, here, in the early spring, someone wants his sheep, the sheep that without me would have died, back in his stables. These sheep would have died without me, therefore, they live because of me. I should keep them.”

Farmer Kerr’s face had turned red. “He never asked me if he could take them! They are mine, he should give them back.”

“You do realize that you are arguing about sheep.” said the Apprentice. “That’s all you people do! You argue about sheep and land and fish. Don’t you ever want to see what else is out there in the galaxy? Don’t you realize that we live on the precipice of a black hole? Doesn’t it bother you that the universe circles an orifice of nothingness? Of death?”

The old monk shook his head, laughing. “My apprentice, he always makes me laugh. Farmer Kerr, by taking in your sheep for the winter, and feeding them, Farmer Rae did you a service. Farmer Rae, you did take these sheep in unsolicited, which was not wise of you. Farmer Kerr rightfully owes you payment of half his flock, but since you did not ask permission for your deeds, your payment is lessened. Unsolicited acts should be those of goodwill, my friend. You, Farmer Rae, shall divide the flock into three parts, and you, Farmer Kerr shall pick the two thirds you desire for your own, leaving one third with Farmer Rae in payment.”

They both grumbled.

“Consensus, my friends? Are you in peace with the settlement?”

“Friend speaks my mind.” They muttered, not exactly in unison, but somewhere close.

“Can we go now?” asked the apprentice

“Yes, my good and disillusioned apprentice. We shall go. Hold each other in the light, my friends!”

“Those people will be dead in fifty years.” Said the apprentice, as they trudged against the swamp towards their ship.

“Perhaps less.” Said the Master “This does not mean that we do not have this moment. Ah, look! The second sunrise!”

The land in the west glowed green as the second sun bloomed on the horizon.

Meanwhile, at Fox Headquarters…

by | Jan 20, 2006 | Story

“Can we say that on television?” Mool asked. He narrowed his eye at the monitor and raised a turquoise tentacle to his mouth as his other three appendages worked the digital controls.

“Mistep? Sure. It’s been clear for a decade.”

“But what about the Xedrin colony? We got an eight percent pull there last season.”

Nick pondered this for a second. He pushed his rolling chair away from the desk and slid over to the other tech. “If they’re going to bar us for mistep they’ll bar us for having a Relana, period. Leave it. It’s edgy.”

Mool sighed, a sound that hovered in the air for nearly thirty seconds due to his third lung. He dragged a tentacle over the trackpad and a scantily-clad blue female broke into pixels before reassembling at a different time signature.

“Molting season is just an excuse for her to turn down the environment,” the Relana complained as her overdue feathers bristled beneath the old ones. Her bare cheeks flushed to an irritated magenta. “’Oh, it’s so hot!’” she whined in a horrid approximation of a Terran accent. “Yeah, maybe on your ice planet, you frigid mistep.”

A tap to the panel, and her image froze. “Nice,” Nick said. “Do we have a retort clip?”

“We can skink one. Kelly was malko about the feathers in the sink last week.”

“Hmm.”

The cutting room filled with relative silence as the two techs pondered the next scene, Mool still sucking on his fourth tentacle and Nick gnawing on his thumbnail.

“Don’t we have a Penguinair ad?” he finally suggested. Mool’s skin tightened to inspired attention.

“A Texaco heating one, too!” he said, and his second tentacle yanked to the advert box. The clips were found almost immediately, and he slid the first cartridge into the control station. “We could run this pleb for centuries,” he said, as his mouth opened to a grin. “It’s like it never gets old.”