Tracy
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Ann slapped her forehead when she realized her mistake, notwithstanding that there were no ‘mistakes’ as such.
The story is for the writer that writes it, not the reader.
What the repercussions of that were for the future of publishing, Ann wasn’t quite sure.
“Oh, I can answer that for you, dear” Lavender responded. “On my recent trip to the future I went to the Pick Your Own Pages book store. There’s a wonderful Pick ‘N’ Mix section, and a Lucky Dip. You can pick various quantities, such as chapters, pages, paragraphs or sentences, and you arrange them yourself.”
“What a wonderful idea!” Ann replied.
“Oh, the idea was an old one, very old!” Lavvie explained. “People were doing it all along, though they didn’t realize it. The idea of being spoon fed an entire story went out with the Ark. It was the advent of random quote generators that started the ball rolling.”
Ann beatled off to check the random quote for the day….
“Arona! Sanso! Oh, how wonderful to see you guys again! Come and meet Lavender and Walter, we’re discussing continuity….”
“Let’s put it this way” Ann continued, “Tis better to allow the snippets to flow out than to bottle them up, which is where the expression ‘to rack ones brains’ comes from. Rows and rows of bottles of thoughts on metal racks in a dusty cellar, contained within the confines of the glass, denied freedom of expression, and all because the Bottle Rack Attendant, or BRA for short, refused to set them free to find their own way in the world of infinite individual storylines.”
“You see, by no manner is it an issue if things aren’t continuous” Walter was saying, which immediately brought to Ann’s mind the latest development at her end of the group project. For some reason lately she found that she was permanently signed in, as opposed to previously, when she’d had the dickens of a job to stay signed in long enough to make an entry. Permanently connected, as it were.
“….and I know it’s almost blasphemous to say that” Walter continued, causing Ann to raise an eyebrow, “…but the crux of the matter lays in the measure with which things are expanded and linked together.”
“If I may be so bold as to interrupt, sir,” Ann couldn’t restrain herself from interjecting, “Surely that is what readers are for? Is not the purpose of the writer, or indeed any artist, to simply offer particles, or pieces, for the viewer to add, or not, as they choose, to their own continuous storylines?”
Walter opened and closed his mouth like a godfish. (Ann had to laugh at the typographical error.)
“For example” Ann continued, warming to the subject, “When I random read book pages, then channel surf the TV, followed by a random roam around online, interspersed with perhaps a few phone calls, or various incidents throughout the day, I’m making a continuous story of my own, with pages and screenshots and conversation snippets borrowed, if you like, from many external sources (and before you say anything, I am aware that no source is external, but don’t let me start digressing). The era of being ‘told’ a story to beleive in its entirety is over! Everyone knows these days that we each make our own story, with a bit of this, and a bit of that. It’s The Age of Random Tips & Snippets, after all, everyone knows that! It’s T.A.R.T.S. time now!”
Ann was having a nightmare. In her dream she was an olive in a catering sized saucepan of spaghetti. The oily sauce made it impossible for her, especially given her round shape and lack of useful appendages, to gain purchase on the slippery strands.
“Walter, I am so releived to see that you’ve finally seen how flimsy continuity really is,” Ann said, and flung her arms around him.
“Steady on!” he gasped, trying to extricate himself from her clutches.
The writer wanted to write, full stop. The problem was that the writer’s desire to write was continually interrupted with things in brackets assuming monstrous and all comsuming proportions. Endless chains of things in brackets that always seemed to have priority.
“You could always write about the things in brackets, Ann,” remarked her new friend Lavender. “Might be fun. A thrilling blast, even.”
“I didn’t know you couldn’t swim, Lavender. Oh!” Ann exclaimed. “Lavender sync! I left one of mothers Yardley English Lavender soaps in the car, and it’s great for covering up the smell of smoke.”
Lavender rolled her eyes.
Ann sighed. She suddenly realized that she’d spent the summer time travelling, back to the Summer Before the Great Shift Trauma. She’d completely forgotten that the Worserversity was Post Shift. Oh well, she would write a historical account of The Times Before The Great Trauma Started.
“What Great Trauma?” asked Monica, who had been reading her mind again. “There was no Great trauma in MY shift experience.”
“Really?” Ann was momentarily puzzled. “There wasn’t in mine either.”
“If you’re going to write about trauma, you’ll have to make it all up.” Monica replied.
“Why would I want to do that?” Ann was still puzzled.
“For the fun of it?” Monica suggested.
“Oh yes, of course…for the fun of it…”
Ann was still puzzled.
The summer Holidays were nearly over, or the Hollow Days, as they were known to some. The last days of summer had been a bit hollow for Ann at any rate, rattling around inside her own head, not really knowing whether it was full or empty. Ann had spent most of the summer sleeping, and with virtually no dream recall, it seemed as if half of the summer was missing. Probably just as well, what with it being such an odd summer. She wondered if she would simply sleep through the shift, like Ned Young slept through the mutiny. Didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“Normally” the Worserversity students started rolling back towards Poubelleville round about now, but the word “normally” was becoming obsolete. What was normal, what could be expected? Ann didn’t know. She packed her coloured pencils, her detachable hand and her wooden men, and fished out her homework assigments for the holidays that she had only just remembered.
Alliteration. Bugger bollocks and blast, blimey but what a bother, too bloody hot and bored.
That’s a bit bloody depressing, she muttered to herself, try another letter.
Sweltering summer of sweat and sand, sleeping and sleeping, sublime surruptitious snooze, sail away in the sunset swell, sunrise surrender, ships ahoy!
Fan the flames, far sighted fellows! There’s a flash in the funnel for fast falling fishermen. Far flung, fun fueled, oh fast fleeting fantasies, follow the folks with the flags! Flounder not, fresh fishies, for fun feels fantastic!
Ah, wallow in wisps of wordless wonderings, weather the winds of wandering whispers, while weighty wells of wishes work winsome wonders, woven with worn wool and worrisome white weathered windows. Whether we will, whether we won’t, who will win, what will work, will we watch it water the weeds….
“I wonder how high
Is an ostriches eye…”“Yes” replied Flipswitch, somewhat obscurely.
Ann was encouraged to continue, notwithstanding the enigmatic response from the professor.
“Ellen Melon went to town
To shop her felon hubby…”“And he said, Lovely Jubbly!
I have no time
to make this rhyme,
I’m fishing with a zebra.”
Professor Gub smiled kindly at the young student. It was a common trait of the individuals in this dimension that they needed endless repetitions of information before they could assimilate it, and Prof Gub assumed that this was simply another example of the density of the inhabitants. It hadn’t occured to him that his words weren’t clear enough, as in his own dimension, the words were always accompanied by the clarity of the energy of the meaning behind the words.
“The assignment is to explain the symbolic significance of a statue of Walter Melon with pigeons sitting upon it. “ he explained. “Simple and profound, lengthy and convoluted, the choice is yours.”
Turning to Lavender, he asked “Are you understanding?”
“Oh yes, thank you, now I am” replied Lavender politely. The student sitting next to her, the enigmatic and dashingly handsome Dieter had helpfully passed her a note with Prof Gub’s words translated into plain English.
“And anyone” continued Professor Gub “who hands in their assignment written in Slooperniff instead of English will be eligable for the draw for the trip to the Worserversity in September. Any questions?”
Godfrey stood looking up the pigeons sitting on the statue of the Academy’s founding father, Walter Melon, pondering the symbology.
“What do you reckon the symbology of that is, Aaeiulie?” he asked his colleague, this years alien-Xchange visiting professor, Aaeilulie Gub, from the Worserversity in the Slooperniff Dimension.
“No idea, God, I’ll use this as my next class assignment, see what the students come up with. Anything else, or just the statue and the pigeons? Keep it simple, profound? Or convoluted but with lots of options?”
“Oh keep it simple, if I know those students, they will manage to convolute even the simplest ideas.”
“If they didn’t, we’d be out of a job” said the alien.
“We don’t call them ‘jobs’ anymore, we call them S.M.I.L.E.S, or Something Marginally Interesting, Lucrative & Enlightening.”
With a perfectly straight face the alien replied “What rubbish.”.
Ann had unexpectedly found herself in the hot seat, so to speak, after using the bidet immediately after chopping up chillis in the kitchen. Pondered the symbology of the mishap, she couldn’t help but think of the word ‘rekindling’ and wondered if this might be of some use for Prof Moose’s assigment. Clearly, had she used a little more dish washing detergent on her long slender fingers, she wouldn’t have experienced the ‘rekindling’ at all.
Chubby fingers? Ann examined her long artistic slender fingers for the umpteenth time. What on earth was Gremwick on about?
OH! Suddenly it hit her. He was writing about that probable Ann that branched off years ago, that bloated old alcoholic Ann. But she was still in the dark about that reference to detergent.
It was a pleasant walk to the Academy from Ann’s student digs, the leafy suburbs of Poubelleville were dappled with sunlight and sweetly scented with lilac blossom. Bird twittered in the trees and miniature zebras nibbled at the grass verges as Ann made her way to class. As she walked past a sidewalk cafe she spotted Monica, or rather Monica spotted Ann, and called her over to join her for a cup of rhubarb tea. Ann had forgotten she was late for class, and gave Monica the customary seven kisses ~ three on each cheek, and a final one on the nose ~ and pulled out a chair.
True to form ~ for Monica was the Academy’s best known gossip ~ after the inital pleasantries, the conversation soon turned to the latest scandal. Max the janitor, one of the students, and Professor Moose had been caught engaging in a menage a trois in the broom cupboard.
“All in aid of an assignment, so they said” explained Monica. “Who did you choose for your menage a trois, Ann? You’re in old Moose’s class, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t translate the assigment that way.” Ann frowned. “Gosh, I wrote a haiku about slobber instead, everyone will think I’m all prim and prunes.”
“Well, we only need one more” replied Monica with a sly grin.
“What?” Ann blushed as she cottoned on. “Oh!”
Monica wriggled about in her chair, revealing an expanse of lean tanned thigh, not altogether accidentally.
“Mind if I join you?” asked Good God Gordy, calling to the waiter for a cup of Hornygoatweed tea.
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!”
Ann Aspect had started the evening course “Free the Fiction Writer Within” without much hope, but much to her surprise, she loved it. She enjoyed it so much that on impulse she quit her day job at the Frozen Flounder Company and signed up at the Fiction Writers Academy as a full time immature student.
After a few weeks of juggling the struggling to look after the children and cook for her husband, keep the house clean, and all the other things a busy wife and mother does, as well as her assignments, Ann decided that it would be much more fun to stay in the students accomodation. She left them a note on the kitchen table saying simply “Have Fun Dears, I’m off!” and left, taking nothing with her but the clothes she was wearing (and the red wig). She called in at the cash point machine on the way to the Academy and withdrew as much money as it would allow her, and then threw her bank card in the gutter. Free! A clean slate, a new life!
