Writer's Journal

The “Panorama” bits, while time-consuming, were really fun to write.

Patterns in Noise 15-18

1^st day, found journal.

Thought the house with the unbroken windows would have food. Didn’t notice the doors thrown open. Puddle of water inside the air conditioner housing, and found blank book inside.

Not a complete waste.

4^th day, found journal.

Another skyscraper falls. So it goes.

Some tried to live there, but the higher they go the more deadly those buildings are. Giant deathtraps. Chimney-like. They all channel the heat upward, so if you go to high the air gets thin and dry and you perish.

Then idiots try to follow you up and recover your stuff. They die, too.

Best to wait for it to collapse and then pick through the rubble. No food or water, though, unless you don’t mind long pig jerky. Unless you don’t mind kuru.

6^th day, found journal.

Someone killed the fiddler that lives down by the park. Bled him dry and drank him. Guess that’s one way to get your moisture.

Managed collect some moisture overnight and squeeze it out. Not much. Enough to keep me alive.

11^th day, found journal.

Saw some kids sitting in a car, pretending to drive it. Stupid children.

13^th day, found journal.

Really should’ve headed north. Chances are they still get rain up around Calgary or Juno. Maybe even as far south as Billings.

But the trek would be deadly.

I’m stuck here.

Need to keep my head about me. If I’m not careful, I might have to turn feral like everyone else.

Found a recently-expired can of olives. A little salty, but it was enough to trick me into going on.

17^th day, found journal.

Twenty-two seconds of rain at four AM. Woke up and tossed my blanket out into the street, squeezed moisture from it before checking the barrel. Fantastic amount of rain, and only a little acidic.

Almost a millimeter at the bottom of the barrel. Amazing.

23^rd day, found journal.

Last of the water gone. Lips cracked. Blood not seeming terribly unpalatable.

28^th day, found journal.

Got me a gun and a knife. I’m walking to Billings. Ripping these pages and putting it under a rock. I don’t need them, but maybe if someone finds them, it’ll be like proper human contact. Something better than thinking you’re going to get your throat cut.

Just think, maybe if we’d been smarter, none of this would’ve happened. Woulda Coulda Shoulda.

Sound: A knock on the door.

Malcolm opens the door to discover no one is there, he looks down, furrowing his brows.

An object: A large square package, wrapped in brown paper. The paper is held on with tape, and there is a note written in a small, cramped hand: “Open with care, Mal.”

He picks it up, and brings it into his home, setting it on the table. He circles it like a dog investigating an unfamiliar plant.

The paper is folded about it with great care and precision, looking almost machined. A single, narrow strip of tape holds it shut, placed at the top, covering the fissure between the opposite edges of the paper.

He reaches over, and plucks the tape free, peeling it back to reveal the contents. Inside is the package repeated, like the worlds most boring matrioshka doll.

But the note on this parcel: “Be gentle, Celene.”

The inside of the paper is covered with more of the dense, small handwriting. It is not all oriented the same way, nor did it seem that the writer had used a ruler or other straight edge to help align the text.

It reads: “I know you’re skeptical, Malcolm. You have to trust me, though. We have never met but we know each other in some ineffable way. Maybe it’s because we’re fated to collaborate on this project.

“I am not the man who knocked on your door. That was Charles Hoffman, a 76-year-old former milkman. He’s a friend, but you will never meet him. There’s no need. I know that this is difficult to accept, but I know that you will continue reading.

“It is imperative that this package make its way to the next step in its journey. After that, you will not be further inconvenienced. You need never worry about it again. But it’s important. I don’t have the words or the time to explain just how imperative it is that you send this on. I can’t communicate that, but I believe it with all my heart.

“Malcolm, I know you don’t believe me, but please, entertain the possibility that this is a mission that cannot be denied. Entertain that something terrible will happen if this package fails to reach its destination. I’ve seen what will happen, and if it can’t be prevented, we might as well all…”

“Please deliver this to Celene Boyle. Go back to the address after a week and show her this paper. Talk with her. I promise you won’t regret it.”

The package: Sitting in the middle of the table, tempting him to rip all the paper off and reveal what lay inside, beneath so many layers. What could possibly be so important?

But he shook his head. The address below wasn’t that far away. He could take it, easily. But why not just mail the damn thing?

Malcolm shrugged and walked away, leaving the package on his dining room table. No sense in getting too worked up about it now.

Lots of exposition in this section.

patterns in noise 13-15

Normally, I would post some piece of half-baked fiction, generally of a fantastic persuasion or science-derived.  Often with an eye towards the apocalyptic (because, let us be frank, the only things that stories are ever about are sex and death, and the End of the World is the biggest of both.)

Today, much of the internet is down to protest SOPA and PIPA.  And because the Internet is technically based out of the United States — you must register with an office in the USA to receive a domain name — this is a global issue, though certainly one that might fall under the heading of First World Problems.

I’m not participating with the normal protest, not because I don’t support it, but because I’m one person, and my grasp of the internal workings of this fantastic machine you’re looking at here are, quite frankly, beyond me — I don’t know how to muck about in its internal workings, and I’m not about to try.

But I’m a(n aspiring) writer, so perhaps I should write on the subject?

Lets see what others have said on it, first, shall we?  Notably, here’s British SF writer Charles Stross:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/01/sopa.html

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/12/seasonal-flame-bait.html

And here’s another Brit, warren Ellis, on the same subject:

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=13642

Mr. Ellis is obviously a bit more concise, and as paranoiac as Mr. Stross sounds, there has to be some kind of ulterior motive, because online piracy has actually helped the music industry, and even if it didn’t happen, the movie industry is currently so intent on destroying itself so thoroughly that only making movie attendance cumpolsory could save it.

Either the RIAA and the movie industry as a whole don’t actually want this bill, or they are so dangerously incompetent that they would drown in a light rain shower, that they would suffocate in a paper bag, that they can most likely be found licking doorknobs in public buildings on their lunch-breaks.

Most importantly, though, go here.  Watch the video, make your own decision, and get involved:

Samuel Moffit became renowned in the field of physics before he even had completed his college degree which, coincidentally, was not in the field of physics.

While camping in the Big Bend National Park, Moffit noticed a patch of ice on the river, despite it being fairly late in spring. He went to check, and found a small point of pale blue light surrounded by a visual distortion.

Approaching, though not to close, he saw that it seemed like the air was moving towards the point, but there was no suction. Water condensed upon the ice below it, and quickly froze.

Moffit furrowed his brows, and tried to understand what he was seeing, but it did him no good. All he got was a nosebleed from the cold, desiccating air.

By the time he reported it, the ambient temperature had dropped a full degree Celsius in the hundred yards around the blue point.

By the time the rangers arrived to see it, the river was dammed by the ice.

By the time they’d called it in to the park service, five more such points were discovered around the world. Spots where the heat was draining out of the world.

It was hailed as an end to climate change, and scientists started studying the phenomenon, the “Moffit Points.”

They were holes in Space-Time, pulling heat through to some space beyond space. No matter was tugged through, just energy. Heat, sound, all light outside of the upper visual and lower ultraviolet ranges.

And they were easy to replicate. Within six weeks, as the temperatures dropped lower and lower, CERN had replicated one in laboratory conditions, and realized what it was: infinite energy with finite work. It would seemingly never run out.

And when Samuel Moffit heard this, he realized what he had found. He began a campaign calling for an effort to learn how to destroy the Moffit Points. He insisted that they were dangerous, as was the effort to use them as a solution to the energy crisis.

When asked why, he explained in simple terms:

“Some alien in another universe has begun to drill into our own, and pull the heat out. And they keep appearing. Soon we’re going to freeze over.”

And he was mocked and ridiculed, because it was easier to see free energy than an ice age.

In which the weird things start happening.

patterns in noise 10-12

[Not exactly Flash Fiction, but I enjoyed it.  I recently reread Lord of Light, and really loved the bit that Zelazny stole from the Katha Upanishad.  This is based on the story of that book.]

The young man came to the tar-paper shack on top of the hill, and sat outside, waiting for the occupant to open the door and speak with him. He rested upon a convenient stump, but not really resting, back straight, up on the balls of his feet, head held level.

He was a young man in his shirt sleeves, a concession to the great heat of the day, and he squinted as he looked down the hill at the township below.

Without food or water, he sat, coiled and ready, as the sun went down.

The moon rose, and slid across the heavens like a pearly marble sliding across dark velvet. The young man did not shiver in the relative cold, nor did he peer into the lit window of the shack.

The moon settled in its westernmost abode, and it was dark until the sun rose, crossing the high blue vault of heaven like the spark that arises from a forge as a blacksmith works, or from the torch of a welder as he cuts and joins metal.

Still he waited.

The sun fell, and the moon rose, attended by her legions of stars, who crossed the darkened heavens like fireflies. Smoke rose from the shack’s chimney, but he was not stirred by hunger to knock on the door.

The sun rose again, and in the blistering heat of dark, the young man did sweat, but not once did he complain or move into the shade.

At evening on the third day, the shack’s door opened up, and the young man stood, muscles aching from remaining on edge for most of three days.

His host was an ancient man who wore a moth-eaten black suit. The man didn’t speak, but offered the young man a tall glass of water and a plate of baked chicken and greens.

He watched silently as the young man ate.

“Why have you come?” he asked once the young man finished.

The young man produced three gleaming silver coins.

“I have come to ask you three things, and I have brought you payment for those three things.”

“Keep your silver. If you will ask anything of me, then you will work for it. Tend my stove and stir my pot, chop my wood and carry my water.”

“Then I offer you my silver in payment for my food and lodging,” the young man said.

“Very well,” the old man replied, holding out one pale, lined hand, “you will sleep on the floor. I have a bed made up for you. What is the first thing you wish to have done?”

“I wish that you deal with me fairly and that I may return to my family alive when my last task is done.”

“I have no need to cheat you. Rest.”

In the morning, the young man found a note with instructions for the day, he chopped wood and carried water, but did not see the old man. He ate no breakfast, but took a drink of water at the start of his day, and again at noon.

At the end of the day, there was a pot of beans and rice on the stove, but his host was nowhere to be found.

And the next day there was a note, instructing him to fix the car that rested outside. Waiting before the shack was a black Model A, which required that the young man change its spark plugs and oil, required him to pump its tires with a hand pump and wipe down its windshield.

Once again, he took no breakfast nor lunch, having a drink of water at sunrise and at noon, and at supper he ate the food that the old man had left for him, a slice of dry meatloaf.

He slept, and awoke to another day of chopping wood and carrying water. He took no breakfast and no lunch, drank water at sunrise and noon, and the old man was waiting for him in lieu of dinner.

“What is the second thing you would ask of me, child?”

“That at my appointed time I am allowed to pass unmolested, that you not come for me until I am truly ready.”

“You ask a great deal.”

“I know.”

“You ask something I would rather not give.”

“I know.”

“Yet you have payed the price I have set. The next one will not come so cheaply.”

“I know that it won’t.”

“Sleep.”

The next day, he worked without food, taking water at sunrise and sunset, and working through the hottest part of the day. He carried water and chopped wood. He patched a hole in the roof of the shack, and mended the fence for his host.

At the end of the day, the shack was dark and cold and empty.

On the day after, he took a long draught of water, and went to work. He walked down the hill, and picked a bushel of apples for the old man, carrying them up the steep and rocky hill. He repeated this action thrice, and then took another deep drink before he went to sleep at the end of the day.

The next day, the old man left him a note telling him to pluck the weeds from the garden outside, and build a fire, casting them in to be burned away into nothing.

The young man did so. Building a small fire, and gathering up the weeds in the garden, plucking them from the root so that nothing would ever regrow. And he bound them together with a length of twine, before casting them into the flame. And smoke coiled upward, and ephemeral line drawn toward the heavens.

And in the evening, the old man was there. And he appeared strong and hale, and his suit was freshly tailored. And on the table wasn’t the simple fare of the previous nights, but two plates with a fine cut of steak on each, seared on the outside, but hinting at a juicy interior.

“Make your final request,” the old man said.

“I wish to know what only you and those you have taken know.”

“You ask too much.”

“No. I have performed your tasks. I wish to know what lies beyond death.”

“Ask me for any automobile and the love of a beautiful woman. For beautiful women. Ask me for the means to gain pleasures like you never dreamed, and I will give them to you.”

“Those are fine gifts you offer, oh Death, but I wish for knowledge.”

“Ask me for all fame and all fortune, instead. More wealth that Midas, more beloved than any saint. But do not ask me for knowledge of what lies beyond death.”

“Temping, oh Death, but I would know the truth instead.”

“Ask me to reveal the inner workings of the universe, the sciences of life and the primordial fire. But do not ask me for this thing.”

“You make a fine offer, oh Death, but I would rather know what is to come.”

“Then I will grant you the gift of prophecy, I will show you all that will ever be, I will give you the means to alter the flow of events to your liking and create the future you wish. But do not ask me what lies beyond that dark gate.”

“You are most generous, oh Death, but I would know the answer to my question.”

“I can offer you the world, I would be your entire army and give to you all of the kingdoms of the Earth, if you will simply hold your tongue.”

“I am sorry, oh Death, but I will not be satisfied by anything other than the answer to what I ask.”

And Death grimaced at the young man, crossing his arms, for he knew that he had agreed to pay a price that he had never wanted to pay.

“Then if you will not hold your tongue, if you will not ask me for pleasure and wealth and power and wisdom, then I suppose I must answer your question.”

[This is almost more of an outline for a story than anything else.  Tell me what you think.]

Tyche floated, cold and forgotten, out past heliopause, cutting through the Oort cloud. It looked to be about the size of Jupiter, but glowed slightly red in the dimness, offering its own illumination.

Around it floated icy moonlets, chunks of ice pulled in by the planet’s gravity and captured.

And also around it, further than any moonlet, orbited a metal cylinder, kilometers long.

Long after humankind had first left the solar system, an explorer was sent out, carried by powerful fusion torches, engines that harnessed the same sort of power as the sun.

Despite the power, the journey took almost a year.

And upon arriving, they found a ghost ship – spinning, silent and seemingly dead in orbit around a planet named “victory.”

The explorer clamped on to the outer hull of the ship, and the crew cut its way in.

And on the greater, ancient ship, not a soul stirred, neither living nor dead.

The vasty interior was cold and silent, but within the walls and bulkheads of the ship were pulsing sources of heat. The reactor slumbered at the base of the ship, still live after two hundred years at the edge of the solar system.

But no air cycled, no lights flickered on, and the doors had to be pumped open.

It spun slowly, creating only the barest of centrifugal force to suggest downward.

The crew combed the ship, and found the soil dead, the seed stores frozen and emptied, and the computer core flaring with extreme activity.

They cut open the bulkheads and looked upon the colonists – jars containing nutrient fluid in which brains floated, all slaved into the central computer core.

The explorers went back to their ship, and called home. After sending the signal, they closed the airlock, and distributed the weaponry they had brought with them, waiting for word to come from a seemingly eternity away.

I really enjoyed how this part came out.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

patterns in noise 7-9