Category Archives: Story Shard

Story shard – wrinkled time

It seemed like such a good idea.

The concept had been sound.  Grab various important figures from all parts of history, ask them questions, and clarify so many questions and quandaries that had bedeviled historians for so long.

Carl looked round at the roomful of squabbling historical figures and wondered how it all went wrong.  Washington was yelling at Kennedy, Lincoln was being badgered by Jackson and Grant, A possible knock down, drag out, fight seemed to be more and more probable between Franklin and Roosevelt (teddy).

Apart from the start of the project, it had all gone wrong.

From a young age Carl had a keen interest in history.  To him the facts, figures, personalities, and events were more than just mere words on a page.  They weren’t just dull, lifeless, two-dimensional characters.  They lived and breathed and spoke to him and he so wanted to know more about them.  He devoured everything he could find about his favorite historical figures but the sources he could find were limiting and he yearned for more.

As he matured he found he had a talent for theoretical physics and pursued twin improbable degrees in history and physics.  As he did his post-graduate work alongside some of the leading physicists in time and space research a ludicrous idea popped into his head.

His mentor, Dr. Hideyoshi, had proposed that everything in the universe was at its core just energy.  All matter, energy, space, and time were just expressions of energy.  That energy all had a particular address in a complicated matrix of time and space coordinates.  If someone wanted to travel time or to bring an object through time to the present all they would need do is to figure out the particular address and then manipulate the energy to move it to another time and space coordinate.

Dr. Hideyoshi had spent decades doing the theoretical work and now with a team of assistants he was putting together what he called his dimensional manipulator.  A high energy machine that could bend and twist time and space to move objects from the past to the present.  Carl had definite ideas as to what it should be used for.

Story Shard – A matter of scarcity

 

Michael woke up in the dark.  The nightmare he woke from seemed so real that he was shaking.  He could still see the shiny black bumper of the German sports car as it knocked him over on the street corner.

He reached for the bedside lamp but couldn’t find it  He pawed and pawed and got frustrated and sat up.  The lights slowly came up by themselves and an old man in a white gown carrying a clipboard was looking at him.

“Hello Michael”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a sort of reception committee.”

Michael suddenly thought about the dream and felt a cold lump form in his gut.

“you mean I’m dead, right?  You’re like St Peter, right?'”

The old man chuckled.

“Let me answer the second part first.  I am a representation of what you expect to see, I really have no physical form or name.  If it helps you can think of me this way and call me Peter.  As to the second part, well not dead yet.  You are in a bit of a coma right now and you will be waking in a few hours.  But we wanted to have a talk with you while you were out.”

Peter helped Michael off the bed and started walking.  The walls of his “room” seemed to dissolve.  They seem to be walking down an office corridor.  On either side young men and women hovered over what seem to be combination computer stations and drafting boards.  One or two of them looked up at him and seemed to regard him as junk yard dealers regarded a wrecked Maserati.

“you see, it’s about you an a matter of scarcity.  Have you ever thought about what went into making you?”

“I suppose carbon, and hydrogen…”

“Oh no not the physical aspects, but your characteristics, how you think, feel, what makes you scared, or brave?”

“No, not really, Don’t really get what you’re saying”

Peter sighed.  They walked on and past all the tables and seemed to now be walking on a catwalk over a lab of some kind with several tables and technicians working with vials and what looked like gas cylinders.

“you see we made you here.  Everything from the physical parts of you to the undefinable qualities that make up your character.  You were designed out there and built on one of these tables years ago.”

Michael tried his best to take it all in but was still stuck back at the part of being in a coma.  This had to be a bad nightmare of some kind.

Peter saw he was facing some resistance.  He walked to a large monitor and showed Michael a collage of images from his childhood, to youth, to his adult life and little by little he felt Michael coming around.

“Some qualities like bravery, genius, charm are rare.  We have limited reserves of these.  Back before you were born we were expecting a minor Armageddon breaking out just as you would reach adulthood.  We needed heroes and brilliant scientists, and leaders fighting for the side of good, but do you know how “expensive” those can be?”

Michael shook his head

“Yet we needed minor leaders, and heroes, and so on to take up the fight as well, and that’s where you came in.  We had tagged you as a minor hero and imparted some rare qualities into you in small amounts.”

Michael and Peter walked over a table where a finished human received the last of his qualities before being sent out

“But as sometimes happens. these Armageddons sometimes get called off.  Bad scheduling, mystical misalignments, who can say?  Your career as a minor hero got called off and we tried to fit you into a humdrum everyday existence as an accountant.  Long and short of it is, that we want those rare qualities back.  As I said those materials are rare and this was too good an opportunity to pass up.  You won’t wake up the same as when you went into the coma but you will be happy.”

 

Story Shard – May 8th, 2013

From time to time I write out bits and pieces of a story.  Most of the time they go nowhere but sometimes they are the kernel of a short story or novella.  They can be anything from a sentence to a whole chapter.  This will be the main point of this blog.  Read along, comment, correct.  I won’t be offended.  It’s just exercise after all.

 

May 8th, 2013 (Character and scene description exercise)

Parent’s weekend at the college.  It was late April and already there was a slight warm breeze in the late Friday night.  He walked round the campus.

Mom and Dad had come up a few weeks earlier so there was no point in them coming back.  Not that they had much of an urge to come up.  They were strict Brooklynites and never liked to leave the neighborhood, much less leave the city and come out all the way to some little town in western Massachusetts.  The air didn’t smell right, the people talked funny and they no doubt had strange ideas.

Everywhere around the college kids led their parents round to see their classrooms and points of interest.  He deftly sidestepped a large mob taking pictures in front of the academic hall.

His best friend Jake who had indifferent parents had left him stuck.  Jake had a gig in Boston playing some dive pub near the water front and would be gone all weekend.

Becca had dumped him on Monday.  She had decided that a penniless english major was not the best prospect to present to her parents that weekend.  Instead she would present Pete Mayweather from the Boston Mayweathers.

He was past morose now and was somewhere between bitter and cynical right now.  He was also at loose ends.  All the school activities were centered on families and he didn’t have the money to go to some bar so he just wandered round the campus.

A baseball game.  The local team was hosting and the stands were packed with parents and kids.  Those unlucky enough not to have a ticket crowded behind the right outfield on the train tracks trying to get a peek at the game.  He was certainly never into all that rah rah school spirit crap that most of his classmates liked but this was better than nothing.

Story shard – April 4th, 2013

From time to time I write out bits and pieces of a story.  Most of the time they go nowhere but sometimes they are the kernel of a short story or novella.  They can be anything from a sentence to a whole chapter.  This will be the main point of this blog.  Read along, comment, correct.  I won’t be offended.  It’s just exercise after all.

 

April 4th, 2013 (supernatural business implications)

When considering a profession in the darkness elimination field one should be aware of the many opportunities and pitfalls involved with these.  In the past it was argued that one monster is another, is another.  But should you really take this attitude?

After all vampires are not subject to the same lunar conditions that werewolves are and mummies shrug off silver bullets and stakes to the heart.

Don’t even get me started on ghosts and demons.  Rather this presents an opportunity to discuss these in two broad categories; the physical and psychical.

The physical opponent is one you will be able to beat down time and again and it just matters the amount of firepower you are willing to invest into this or whether you use a specialized tool.  The psychical will require an investment into research and into mental preparation.

For the CEO thinking of launching such an enterprise it would behoove them to expand the hiring net out to include scholars, police officers, certain types of criminals, scientists, and the generally adventurous types.  Plus of course the requisite support personnel (accountants, secretaries, weapon smiths, salesmen, etc)

Too often it is that a lack of fore planning at the start of such a venture leads to lack of operating capital or lack of job opportunities.  Thus a well balanced support team is just as vital as the actual fighting team.

Marketing is also vital to the nascent evil fighting team.  How exactly do you market your skills out to the public at large?  Do you take out ads in national press outlets?  “Hello, we kill monsters.  do you want to learn more?”

The need is clearly there but how to connect the end user with the service provider?  Mostly it would involve going out and scouring news sources for news of the strange, for unexplained deaths and occurrences and putting in a lot of leg work.

You don’t just walk up and ask if they have a monster problem.  Develop them slowly.  Allow them to realize and come to terms with their problem and then let them reach out to you for help.  Making them admit that they have a problem and need help to cope is often the hardest step in the process.