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In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Ann glanced vaguely over the bookcase, wondering where her dictionary was. Did people still use dictionaries in book form? I suppose any book will do for the purpose, she decided, and reached for the nearest book, a book about Rembrandt. She opened it randomly five times, using a ball point pen as a pointer, and selected five words for Prof Underbaker’s assignment.
…now…excite…
What a coincidence, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone here, Ann thought, with a slight shudder at the bird killing metaphor (if it was indeed a metaphor, Ann tended to skip the Labelling Words classes)…
…someone…
Ah, but who? Who shall I excite?
…pointed…
Pointed in the right direction? Addressed someone pointedly? Not to put too fine a point on it…
….time
Ann was interested to note that her selection of words started with the word NOW and ended with TIME, and popped it into her clue box in an effort to stay on course and finish the assigment.
There was no time like the present. Indeed T’Eggy was well aware that All is Now, she’d heard about that theory in Wicks, the online magazine that she’d found so enlightening. She’d been reading a copy of Wicks (a reproduction, the originals were now collectors items and very valuable ~ in an artifact rather than a monetary value kind of way, monetary value having been devalued in the early part of the century) in the teleport waiting room when she met the handsome foreignor in the dusty blue robes. Of course, it was not unusual to meet foreignors in the teleport waiting room, not unusual at all, but the tall, dark, and handsome stranger had excited her. Perhaps it was the flash of long lean tanned thigh that she glimpsed as his robes caught on the door knob. Of course, even the ‘waiting room’ was a retro touch, because there was no need to ‘wait’ for teleport travel. It seemed ironic in a way that folks in the old days had perceived ‘waiting’ as an onerous thing, an somewhat unpleasant period of clock watching and crossword puzzle books. These days ‘waiting rooms’ were popular places to meet people and choose probability pools. The latest trend was Turtle Nights, and Frog Nights, where men and women gathered in waiting rooms to choose partners, to find that special someone, loosely based on the old Hen and Stag nights.
“Do teleport stations have door knobs, Ann?” Pedro interjected.
“Oh!” Ann was momentarily non plussed.
“Non plussed? Is that a word?” asked Pedro.
“Pedro, stop interrupting! The assigment isn’t to design a teleport station!”
The teleport station had been designed in retro style, a facsimile of the Atocha train station in Madrid. Lack of need for physical details had not resulted in a lack of appreciation for physical detail simply for it’s artistic merit, not to mention historical educational value, and the TRANS (Teleport Relative to Any Now Space) Station was an award winning example of old fashioned detail. Why, it even had doorknobs, even though doors had been dispensed with several decades ago.
“I thought the assigment wasn’t to design a teleport station?” asked Pedro.
“Does it bloody matter?” retorted Ann, with a hint of exasperation. “The overall point is to write rubbish, and that’s what I’m doing!”
“I’m glad you pointed that out, Ann” remarked Pedro helpfully.
“Oh my god, look at the time!” Ann exclaimed. “It’s time for class!”
“Bugger that!” snorted Pedro. “I’d rather hear about what happened with T’Eggy and that tall dark stranger!”
Topic: Probably Real
She woke up at noon and it was 100 degrees, or 37 degrees, whichever you prefer, but whichever way you look at it, it was not a good temperature to wake up to. Everything was pointing in the direction of going solo, playing the game on her own for awhile, or at least until she was in a regular habit of giving herself priority, giving more attention to her own creative pursuits, and less time to the futile attempts to keep group projects going. She supposed for a moment that making a start whilst hot, tired, discouraged and confused was not the most ideal mood for a start, but at least it was a start. She wasn’t even entirely sure what it was she was actually starting, but suspected that it didn’t much matter, in the grand scheme (or lack thereof) of things.
She’d had a moment of inspiration when she started reading a book. She’d only read a few pages and had no idea how the book would turn out, but the format was interesting. Julie had had an idea, simmering on a back burner for years, to write a book. It always seemed to want to be an autobiographical book, and that’s where she always came unstuck because she couldn’t see the point of that, not that she was overly concerned about whether anyone would want to read it or not, but she often came unstuck when she wondered about how all the characters in the book might feel about it, which is why that moment of inspiration in the bathroom the other day seemed like such a good idea.
She could write a book about a probability party, perhaps called ‘Probably Real’, (maybe with the subtitle ‘Probably Not’.) There would be an occasion, the details of which she hadn’t worked out yet, in which various (not all, she soon realized!) of her probable selves met ~ such as in the Atkinson book, in some quiet desolate place with no interruptions (obviously somewhere with no internet connection, although there was always the danger of picking up a freak broadband WiFi), where they had all the time in the world to tell their tales, compare notes as it were.
Which was where the fiction idea came in ~ of course! Just call it fiction! Would just one of the probable selves be telling the truth, relating the only true version of Julie’s life? And if so, which one was the real probable self? All the characters in the book would have probable selves and probable lives; which of them was the real probable self, the official version? No-one would ever know.
Of course, anyone versed in the metaphysical mechanics of probabilities and such would realize that all probable versions are real, at the same time as all being, in a certain sense, fiction ~ made up. The only question was, would that be too unlimiting to contain within the confines of one book, but time (so to speak) would tell.
Procrastination had set in, as usual, not that that is a bad thing, and things pretty much carried on as usual for a few days. Julie noticed the puppy tugging at a particular magazine from the bottom of the magazine rack over the course of those few days, and eventually the magazine was rather pointedly poking out from the bottom of the pile, it’s title clearly showing: a booklet on How To Write FICTION, with FICTION in big letters.
Never the less, the procrastination continued, although the clue was duly noted. It hadn’t been the first time a Writing A Book incident had occured.
It was easy, in this case, to remember that date, because it was right around the time of the 1999/2000 milenium party, right around the time when that particular roller coaster had derailed. While unpacking the boxes of books and putting them on the shelves of yet another rented house ~ a particularly garish and tasteless monstrosity, a drug baron’s dream of unfunctional largeness with hideous coloured glass windows (it’s the sheer randomness of the colours that’s so awful, G had remarked) ~ a book flew off the shelf, quite literally, and landed alone in the middle of the floor some distance away from the bookshelf.
Becoming A Writer was the name of the book, and the funny thing was that she had been thinking of writing a book but didn’t know where to start, and had been toying with the idea of buying a book on writing a book. So she read the book and started writing, a little bit every day, following the books advice to just start writing, even if it’s just ‘I can’t think of what to write’. There was plenty to write about as it turned out, but circumstances changed, another sudden move of house ensued, another rollercoaster ride, and the writing stopped for awhile.
But back to the book, Becoming A Writer. For a long time, Julie had no recollection of buying that book, and wondered by what magic had it appeared at her feet. Many years later she perhaps would have simply accepted the magic, and would have known that she created the book in that moment. But at the time she didn’t, and in due course constructed a memory of buying the book some years previously at a car boot sale somewhere along the coast road.
(We did buy the book, piped up PSJ2, and I actually read it, unlike you, as soon as I bought it. My 5th book is about to be published, a lightweight comedy/detective series about the Costa del Crime)
PSJ2’s interjection reminded PSJ1 (Good grief, we’ll have to think of a solution to the probable self names, she noted) that she had in fact started writing a book about the Costa del Crime, called Peregrino’s, or perhaps that was the name she’d given to the bar, the central hub, of the book. Of course, that was in the days when bars had been her central hub; she doubted very much if she would choose a bar as the central hub of a book now. She hadn’t got very far with the book, and had burned it when PSA1 got busted, just in case. What to do first, bury the (probable, it must be remembered) pump action shotgun, or burn the book. She had buried the gun, under cover of darkness, in the back garden, wrapping it in plastic bags and blankets, making it look for all the world like the body of a dead child. It was dark, it was raining, and there weren’t many neighbours out there in the orange groves, and she could do no more than hope for the best that she hadn’t been seen.
No doubt there was a probable self who did choose to create being seen, but if so she hadn’t arrived at the probability party (yet, at any rate) with her tale.
That it had been a major probability junction was certain. Not just the gun burying incident, which had turned out to be no more than merely incidental, but the events leading up to it.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“It’s the 57th Creative Challenge theme, so I have to do it,” Ann remarked to her editor. “Obviously”, she added.
“What do you mean, obviously?” asked her editor (Ann had forgotten his new name in the second book, and toyed breifly with the idea of making up a new one ~ perhaps Rumbold the Pale?)
“Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Godfrey!” Ann replied tartly, secretly delighted that she’d remembered the old boy’s name. Notwithstanding, Ann continued to make little ‘cuh’ and ‘tut’ noises, and rolled her eyes a bit, until Godfrey eventually replied.
“Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”.
“I beg your pardon?” Ann looked at Godfrey in astonishment. “Holy Moly, I said that earlier myself, whatever does it mean?”
“I haven’t got a clue, dear,” he replied. “Just popped into my head, you know, how it does…” His voice trailed off as he stared into space.
“I’ll google it.” As Ann started the search, she realized she’d completely forgotten that she was doing the 57th Creative Challenge entry. “Blimey O Riley, what am I LIKE” she said to herself, with a wry grin ~ she wasn’t altogether sure what wry meant, but somehow she felt it was wry ~ “Now what was the theme again?”
“Misery Loves Company” Godfrey piped up. “And dare I say, it’s rather obvious what has occurred here.”
“What do you mean, obvious?” retorted Ann, somewhat snarkily, although nowhere near as snarkily as Lavender might have said it.
Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond with a few little ‘cuh’s’ and ‘tut’s’, and chose to simply smile enigmatically.
Ann scowled at her old freind and said “If you don’t spell it out, you maddening old coot, I’ll write you out of this story. I’ll delete you.”
“You can write me out of YOUR story if you wish, but I may continue to write YOU into MY story.”
“Oh Gawd, WHAT?” Ann said to herself. “Where did that come from?”
“Ann, let me explain.”
“You sound just like Elias, Godfrey!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Ahahahahahahah”
“Now shut up and pay attention”
“Elias would never say that”
“That’s YOU saying that, Ann, to yourself,” said Godfrey.
“YOU said that Godfrey, it’s right here in black and white!” retorted Ann.
“It’s never black and white, Ann, and it’s only here in black and white as ME saying it because YOU wrote it.”
“Well there’s no answer to that” replied Ann. She went to put the kettle on.
Ann returned to her computer with a steaming mug of tea.
“Now, shall we get back to the point, Ann?” inquired Godfrey, with a wry grin.
“I must look up that word later”, Ann mused. “I seem to be inordinately fond of the word wry tonight, I wonder why. I Wonder Wry…”
“ANN!” Godfrey shouted. “Back to the point!”
Ann looked pained. “What point?”
“The point of this story, and the obvious occurence therein.”
“Welp, you’ve lost me there, Gordon, there was a point?”
“Oh My God, this could go on all night” Gordon was wringing his hands.
“Good God Gordon, didn’t see you come in!” exclaimed Godfrey.
Ann was giggling helplessly. She was rather pleased with the way she covered her faux pas over the editors name.
“‘Ann was giggling helplessly’; you see Ann, there is your clue!” Godfrey said excitedly, as he read aloud what Ann had just written.
“OH! NOW I get it! D’oh! Nonsense loves company! Giggling loves company! No wonder I couldn’t stay focused on misery!”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“The thing about continuity, Lavender” remarked Aspidistra “is that when it appears to be elusive or absent, it’s simply that most of the continuity is simply veiled from view.”
“Well how do you know it’s continuous then? If it’s veiled from view, how do you know that the continuity is there?”
“Trust, my dear, simply trust, and add to the continuity impulsively, spontaneously, and don’t worry about anyone elses glimpses of the continuity string.” Aspidistra added, somewhat patronizingly
“Oh like you do, you mean” retorted Lavender with a snort.
“I hope you’re not catching that Swine Flooh, dear” Aspidistra replied kindly, misinterpreting the snort.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
It had been rather a bold move on Tajine’s part, especially as she was a new member of the staff at Little Big Hopeswell, but an ingenious one, or so she thought. Tajine always aimed to please; nothing gave her more pleasure than to arrange wonderful little surprises for people based on her assumptions of what would please them. In her few short weeks with Ann, she couldn’t help but notice the disparaging remarks her publisher, Pig Littleon, habitually made about Ann’s work. The last straw for Tajine had been when Godfrey referrred to Ann’s streams of thought as ‘incoherent’, and it was at that point that the plan began to form in her mind.
“Compliments to the new cook! I must say, that was the most delicious bacon sandwich I have ever tasted,” remarked Arthur, wiping his lips with a napkin. “You must ask Tajine where she buys her bacon, it has an enticingly subtle hint of peanut, quite delicious!”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
With an amused chuckle, Ann remarked to Franlise “Chapters, whatever next! Poor old Godfrey’s getting his strings in a twist.”
“I think he might be picking up on Chapter Focuses, Ann” replied the cleaner.
Ann looked at Franlise in surprise. “Good gracious me, Franlise, what an extraordinary thing for you to say!”
“Why?”
“Well, I didn’t think you were into any of that stuff.”
“I’m not!”
“Well why did you say it then?”
“I didn’t; you wrote that I said it, but I didn’t say a word.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Ann sighed, feeling tired and disillusioned at the unexpected changes. It felt like too much effort to start afresh, as if the disruptions and changes everywhere were permeating her own private sanctuary, and stray random thoughts now had no easy path towards release, that they would be bogged down and hampered with new details, and new explanations.
“How things have changed” Franlise remarked drily, reading the previous months entries. “I don’t know about ‘no easy path’, Ann, there’s a rush hour expressway of random stray thoughts gushing forth, don’t you think you should rein yourself in a bit?”
“I don’t see much evidence of a bog of explanations, either, or hampers of details.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“You can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear flu, Ann.” Franlise remarked as she perused the headlines in the Old Reality Harbinger newspaper.
“Or maybe you can! hhmm” replied Ann. “Maybe the gathered snot of the victims is spun into the finest silk, an amazingly versatile new fabric called snilk”
Franlise rolled her eyes, but Ann didn’t notice.
“One of the qualities” Ann went on “that the snilk had was to replicate anything gathered within its folds, so purses were made out of snilk, proving that it WAS indeed possible to make a snilk purse out of a pigs ear flu.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Aha!” Ann exclaimed, “So that’s it”. Ann had been pondering the symbology of the ‘out of order’ entry — well, truth be told, she had forgotten all about it until she reviewed the latest pages, and then it suddenly hit her: In the Rembrandt book she’d been reading, the dead artist had remarked that the conversations that had taken place in the latter part of the 20th century had actually occurred one day while he was still alive, daydreaming or slipping off to sleep while in his studio in Amsterdam.
“I suppose I should type out the relevant parts of the book to include in this entry” Ann thought, but she had an urge to go for a quick nap instead. Suddenly she could hardly keep her eyes open.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“You never know where you’ll end up when you enter the Elsespace Arangement, Arona” Sanso remarked, ignoring Arona’s concern about the baby. “I wonder where Zhaana is though?”
“Never mind her, what about Yikesy?” retorted Arona.
“Godfrey, there’a technical hitch and I feel that it’s your department.” Ann was unable to link previous entries, and she knew what a stickler her publisher, Godfrey Pig Littleton, was for details and continuity. “I simply can’t get the thing to work any more!”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Well, perhaps this will inspire you again to write in the story, Ann” remarked Sally, Ann’s twin sister. Sally always hit the nail on the head.
“Hmmm” responded Ann. “I can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes.”
“Well, that’s a tree synchronicity, there you go! Do you want to write about the trees?”
“Hhhmm, maybe…”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“I’m noticing alot of threes lately!” remarked Rhodedrendron, Aspidistra’s freind. “I wonder why?”
“I keep noticing sevens” replied Aspidistra.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Of course, there were probable versions of Snettie and Snooter that remained in Spreal, as well as probable versions that left Spreal much earlier. There was a probable reality in which Snooter and Snettie, and their freinds Spagwan and Illiofilly (sometimes spelled Iliophile) journeyed north a decade previously, as indeed there are probable realities in which Snooter and Snettie journeyed north, but Spagwan and Iliophile stayed behind.
“This could go on ad infinitum Godfrey, I better rein myself in” remarked Elizabeth, more to herself than to her friend Pig Littleton, who appeared to be engrossed in scrutinizing peanuts one at a time before popping then into his mouth and chewing them thoughtfully.
“Where were you planning to go with it, anyway?” asked Godfrey, inspecting another peanut.
“Well, I didn’t have a plan actually. I just started writing, really. And kept on writing until I reined myself in, and then….”
“And then what happened?” asked Godfrey, a trifle mischievously.
“And then the writing stopped.” Elizabeth laughed.
“How very singular, Liz dear” Replied Godfrey wryly. “You’re not making very good progress on Volume Two, I must say.”
“Anyway, Godfrey, I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” Elizabeth pushed her keyboard away and turned to face her publisher. “You’ve been tampering with my vowels again! It’s jolly well not cricket you know, old bean.”
Godfrey Pig Littleton focused on Elizabeth’s keyboard, a single peanut held alot as he concentrated, and the keys started to type on their own. Elizabeth swung round and read:
“…Oonyway Goodfrey, Oo’ve goot a boon to pook wooth yoo! Yoo’ve boon toompering wooth moo vooells agoon! Oot’s jooly wool noot crookit yoo knoo, oold boon….”
“GODFREY!!” shouted Elizabeth. “Stop it! Nobody’s going to understand that Nonsense!”
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
“Blimey, Leo, that reminds me about The Door” remarked Bea, who had got to the part about the door in the potting shed in T’Eggy Gets A Good Rogering.
“I don’t know how you can read that trash, Bea, really I don’t” said Leonora, with a sniff.
“Never mind that, what about The Door? WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT THE DOOR?”
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
“What a shame we didn’t get the 999th comment on the 9th of the 9th month”, Becky remarked to nobody in particular. “Still, never mind, at least I got the 1000th.”
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Margaret reckoned she’d made a wise choice deciding (with agreement of course) to ‘observe’ Becky. Her role as lifetime observing essence was proving to be rather amusing. What great fun it was to be married to the same man twice. At least remarked Margaret’s essence, whose vibrational tone translated as the name Yipper.
In reply to: Synchronicity
