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This is an incredibly rough short story (actually I’m composing off the cuff) The idea came to me a few mornings ago. it’s not sci-fi, it’s futuristic actually, and quite a mundane story or about something what can be considered mundane but it has futuristic twists.
Whaa! I’ll come back to it , gotta take care of some errands first. (Damn)
😆 😆 😆 😆
Oh my gosh, you had me laughing.
Well, I was all ready to do the deed then well, I got to watching The English Patient, did a little drooling, and then one thing led to another and here we are,no story.
I did have a dream i was fracking Jimmy Stewart, and eeeuuuw he was old. He was in love with me and well, it was bizarro.
I promise I will get on the story soon. Is that acceptable MS. Frey 😉 ?
I promised a story I did. Well RL is doing a number on my time.
I’m upset I can’t get back to Lost second season let alone writing 😥
I wish I had the skills to get to the meat of the story without having to go through set-up! 😡
Yep, it’s always a pain. Anytime will be fine…. but you will do it wont you?!
Saddy, how nice of you! Ya, I have the token strep throat going around, so writing is a no go. I’ll write it and post the link I think when i feel better and off this grueling work schedule.
I work till i get run down you see and then I have to rest, this is that period.
I watch light children’s fare like Howls’ Moving Castle because its entertaining and simple now.
I’ll get it written once hiatus is over.
My reflection is all that i see as I uncomfortably shift in the cold chair and look at the walls of glass that have been our home for this past decade.
No one really remembers the true color of the sky except in sappy reminiscences over plentiful spirits. At times I missed the chaotic flights of insects and the trails of leaves falling on my lap where I could breathe but that too is only to be found at the bottom of a bottle.
She showed me this. I twinged. He was there; a tear escapes.
A warm hand touches my shoulder, a tissue offered, an annoying clucking of a sympathy uttered as push my weakness back into its hole.
I watch as the corpulant man agily strides to his throne and sits, steepling his fingers and sighs.
Over the expanse of glass between us, a tension fog remains.
With a loud creak he sits upright, and places his arms on the table.
“Are you sure you want this?”
I stifle my annoyance at such an idiotic question.
“I’m here,” I reply.
“And the others?”
“They agree.”
With a nod, he clanks a few keys on the board and attaches the receiver to his head.
“As you know the difficulty is not in the retrieval from your dad, he was intelligent enough to leave some decisions with you and your siblings in case of his demise, but it’s the other party.”
“My step?”
“No, she will go along with it as long as the retrieval does not impinge on the reputation of your father’s good name or injure the family in any way.”
“You should have thought of that when she wrote her memoirs.” I muttered under my breath.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. I assume you are speaking of her.”
“Yes, retrieval from her will prove difficult and I might add,epensive. She was cremated you see and her ashes scattered in a remote location so to get a match and repro seed would mean we would have to bring a huge amount of sample from the sight. And because it was unprotected from 12/20 well it could mean all of her DNA was destroyed.”
“But it has been done.”
WoW! Great start! That last bit really got me going and I loved the opening, lilting, almost dreamy first two paragraphs – they were great!
My reflection, so real to me, yet so different, gazed through elevator doors at the others occupying its tiny space. My current shearing was a hack job born of deadlines and desperation.
A beeping vibration emanated from the breast pocket of my borrowed unstyled suit. Looking around at the other descending travelers with a smirk I plugged the receiver into the required port.
“Go,” I whispered.
“Did you?” The tinny voice inquired.
“Yes, and no. I’ll get back to you when all is ready.”
“Fine.”
I unplugged the port as the doors swooshed open.
I paused in the lobby to stare at my reflection in the great clear obelisk housing a preserved spreading chestnut.
Its massive arms the picture of health, beckoning all who enter to sit below and dream of days long gone.But it was not yesterday, I thought angrily; no birdsong, no restful contemplation here is this petrie dish we now call UC.
I quickly stride over to the enclosed walkway and onto the people mover. I found a seat and loosened my tie. The blaring video announcements allow me to sink back into my constant melancholy as long as I watch the endless stream with my public face.
The adjustment was hard; those first few years after 12/20; losing all form of identity, having the port placed in our auditory center. knowing that we were all accessible yet all dispensible. As a citizen of UE we had to submit to the probing in order to eat, to mask true selves with a public face in order to live.
Suddenly I was very tired: I longed to be home, not the glass box set aside for me, but my father’s house.
An author note: i write for me, not to be published, not to “break into anything” I write it because i can’t see it in the slim pickings offered. You may thinks a snore, you may like it. Don’t really care.
If you like read, if not find something else.
Now where was I?
I must have dozed off for a while, because I awoke to twilight and a missed connection. Wearily, I observed I was the only one left in the glass coffin that moved the masses. With one quick glance to confirm my solitiude, I removed the receiver form my breast pocket and another small attachment from my pants’ pocket. I screwed them tightly together and inserted it into the port.
” I missed my stop.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” a warm voice chuckled.
“I don’t see how you can laugh at this. It will take me half the night to get back,” I snapped.
” Look, they’ve been tracing us pretty heavy since your office chat, it’s better to let it cool off for now.”
“But I had some great material to work from today,” I protested.
“Go home.”
“It really would develop into something revolutionary.”
“I said go home, you know the ideas you pull from these stresses don’t pan out.”
“But…”
“Goodbye L74, make sure you don’t come by for three days.”
“But this isn’t….”
“No? Your call from the elevator to your sister? You could have blown all of our covers with that stunt. You can afford a little heat but she can’t, her work is just getting the suits in an uproar.”
“One obscure gallery? What kind of trouble could she get into?”
“Believe me, they are taking a hard look at it this time.”
“Oh, C, I’d better call her.”
“Not a good idea.”
“She’s my sister! I promised our father to look after her.”
“WE are looking after her! It’s too risky, if you show up John Wayne style they could really shut us down.”
I smiled at that remark.
“Okay, okay, but you must promise that if it gets remotely dangerous, you pull her, AND you’ll let me go get her.”
“I agree to the first and will ignore the second.”
I sighed. This was not the time to argue for the exact coordinates of my sister’s location.
I sighed heavily. “Three days?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you then.”
I managed a kink in my neck and fitful nod- offs before reaching my destination. With my cement feet and gritty eyes I stumbled into the night towards my box.
And it was a box, literally. Privacy was only permitted in the waste disposal room and laying on ones back on the hard governmental issue futon. Everything else was candid camera.
I was tired enough to think it was funny. First, John Wayne, then Candid Camera?! Any other time when I was fully rested I was sickened by the reminder of our State.
As I keyed in my card and retinalized my front door, the lights blinked on and the blaring announcements could be heard through the plexi-glass.
The only warm voice I heard was from HANA, or the Home Assistant Non Android. It was sentimentality that kept the old gal scanning my castle, and not some new PAM or PAW, that would act like a spouse instead of a alarm/housekeeper.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like what gets next to me the same temperature, though I have heard that some models can be built to specs so precisely it was like having a second live-in lover.
Another way to keep us happy and occupied, I suppose.
“Welcome home, Lane; you have been away for 18.37.21 hours.
” Thanks HANA, what’s the run down?”
“Compiling, please wait.”
” The following is your weekly allotment of food stuffs, received at 0900 hrs.
“Skip to messages, HANA.”
“Compiling.”
“No phone messages. Three solicitations at central door at 1500, 1545, and 1700. Selling food stuffs known as cookies.”
“Those little weasels! I knew if i broke down and bought one box they’d never leave me alone,” I laughed.
“Invalid input. Please try again.”
That was the problem with HANA, no sense of humor.
The tepid dribble flowed down my sore neck and pooled at my toes. I leaned heavily against the misted glass and then turned toward the stream. I would have loved to stand there another five minutes but it was almost impossible to purchase more water cards if my allotment ran dry.
I grabbed my worn robe and began collecting the pieces of my ill-fitting and ill-gotten costume off the tiny floor.
Arranging it neatly on a hangar, I placed it in the back of my clothes space: all the while fervently hoping that I would not have to don it again anytime soon. But I knew that was a lie I told to that worn reflection that gazed back at me though my cracked private space mirror.
Wrapping the threadbare ends around my shivering thighs, I head for the bed, or what passes for a bed now. It’s pointless to lie down while I’m shaking with cold. This vinyl sure the hell won’t warm me up. So, I do what I’ve done for my bedtime ritual of the last few months. Until my hands stop shaking; I pick at the little chenille left on the hem and reflect.
Tonight was an old favorite: when a bed was a bed; a woman a woman. Sometimes, I feel ashamed I don’t remember her name, but I relive her touch, her smell, her laugh, and her taste many a night by the weak light of the monitor that never sleeps.
But my overwhelming fatigue shortens the pleasure of tonight’s remniscence; I begin playing the “If I had only” scenario again and again until not only fatigue sits on my shoulders but my old friend “Melly” takes up his familiar perch.
“Mel, if only I had gotten a name, a GIPSY, something!”
But as usual Mel just sits quietly on my shoulder, offering no comfort.
I balled up the white lint in my fist and tossed it into the basket. I then removed my robe and slid under my two issued and two highly illegal but highly prized blankets and turned away from the monitor’s flicker.
“I’m bleeding!” Wild-eyed I examined myself for the source: my hands crimson; my breath coming in short gasps. I then turn them over and notice the blue and the purple, and yellow also adhering to my skin. Then it slowly faded away to fleshtone.
“She’s working again,” I sighed in relief.
They said blood is thicker than water, but I can do that one better.
It seems that our father not only gave us this talent and drive and inherent need to create but also the link that me and my sister shared since the cradle.The vibration of the port across the room testified to this.
I walked over to the dresser and casually inserted into my center.
“Yes sir, how are you?
Though all I heard was static: the HSI, or Home Security Initiative lightly monitored our actions. Any sudden moments to the waste disposal room with a buzzing port looked suspicious and bought a one way ticket to the local HSI office for downloads of conversations and difficult questions.
I then moved toward the unit and left the door ajar. It was then I turned on the shower tap and closed the door completely. After the door was secure I grabbed one of my illegals from behind the toilet and slid to the floor.
” Go, ” I mumbled.
” Did I wake you?” the soft voice queried.
“What do you think! And why do you always start with red? You scare me half to death when you start with red.”
She chuckled.
“I’m sorry, I had forgotten you don’t like that kind of alarm clock.”
“You got that right.”
“Hey, be fair, you know how much sleep I’ve lost when you get started on your next story; how you pace the floor? I must have ruined a hundred pairs of shoes and scared off a million first dates by pacing in odd places.”
“May be we should coordinate these things.”
“Hah! Corraling the muse in a schedule: you must be more tired than I thought.”
“Yeah, I am, but I got a mini vacation. Which reminds me, you’re seeing trouble from the suits?”
“Lane, It’s nothing.”
“Don’t tell me it’s nothing, if Col mentions it to me, it HAS to be something, so stop stalling little sis and spill.”
She sighed. “There were a few suits at the opening. They must have gotten in through one of those patron wives. We thought it was a remote enough location to display some pieces and I needed the money so I let them take Guernica Revisted.
“Damn.”
“Damn what? That the suits got in or I let them take GR?”
“Both! You know what happens if they trace you, to all of us.”
“Lane, relax! That’s why we never use our names, and we don’t sign our work. Besides the PW’s don’t ever want to really know about specifics, it just makes them feel important in their circle if they say they know LRA’s.”
” I want to come see you.”
“No, big bro, no way.”
“Why?”
“Because you know what happens when we get together. ”
“It’s been 3 years, Bea.”
“I know, but we can’t risk it.”
“Then you come to me. I can get the proper pa….”
All I heard was static.
I heaved myself off the cold tile and stepped into the freezing trickle. Three empty days and an angry sibling starting a work; looks like it’ll be Mel and me will be killing off another bottle before its renewal time.
My Lord it’s been a while …..
I think it best to print this off….. and go back to it on my PC at my pace and may be post a link to it to save bandwidth….
I was so engrossed with the other story that i forgot about this one; that one has a sketched out outline; this one does not….
I’ll try it……
I wanted to work so badly but I understood the reasoning behind C and my other colleagues. Going to make contact with suits is always risky to a face.
It could mean an renewed interest in the hours of tape that make up my uneventful life to glean a pearl of possible descent from the norm; to catch a criminal before the crime.
Many have fallen before me in such a circumstance; a trumped up treason charge here; a libel suit there; all have fallen out of our world in a void that no one dare breach for fear of the collusion of being “different”.
Mel reared its head as I thought of my father and a time when thinking and acting different was something to be celebrated; something to be proud of.After 12/20 the spirit of individuality perished for all.
I was eternally grateful he had died shortly before that date; he would have been one of the first to slip into the void had he lived or been well enough to speak out over the changes that swept over us over the following months and years.
And she….. she barely got out dead.
My step was a chameleon; she weathered the changes better than most I would say. Her deceased spouse was touted as one of the last independent thinkers of our pre-12/20 time; but she was a follower; not a trailblazer. As long as she could afford to look youthful and could spout the occassional “in” phrase of her set; she was happy.
But the other…. the step would broach no talk of HER. Even as my father lay helplessly without a way to speak the ideas burning in his eyes; my step would not allow her scent to be anywhere near us. I tried and failed many times to place a pen in his hand or strain to hear the noiseless whispers formed by his lips… but all I could see was the love he felt for me, for all of us…. and the need to connect and comfort us and oh so many thoughts still unspoken.
I knew if she had been allowed she could have bridged the gap medicine could not during the last moments.That look of ” I must tell you something” and a sudden squeeze of his lifeless hand that miraculously reached for mine. I knew she knew what should have been said; what he wanted to tell me.
I know she took those final thoughts in their entirety with her to her grave.
This is why I must find whatever remained of the other even if it costs me all I have left.I must have those final thoughts of my father. They haunt me in dreams and in waking.
They are my birthright; they are my future.
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