[hr][hr]
The challenge was: To search though long-abandoned story ideas and find one that could be turned into a flash piece. Authors had to submit the new story and the original idea.
THE FOLLOWING ENTRIES WERE RECEIVED:
Story
[center]Corina, Corina[/center]
I had to go to her funeral. It wasn't just to honor her and the fact that she had lived to the age of one hundred, but because I'd known her for all of that century.
Tuesday had been like any other day going to the safe house. That is until I saw the police car, the ambulance and the EMTs roll out a sheet-covered form from her huge Victorian. It was just across the street from my hideaway. I'd gotten off the bus and looked around the town. The bus followed the old trolley line, and the pharmacist and coffee shop had changed into a CVS and a Starbucks across the years. The local bakery had become a Tim Hortons. Change is natural, I guess. And its my job to make sure that when things change in time, they do, in fact, change naturally. I turned and began my short walk to the safe house, a bolt-hole safe from the Time War.
I had a few bottles of Louis Koch Lager from Missouri 1934 to do a taste test with his great-great-grandson's take on the recipe. I needed some fun as I was returning from a wild assignment to a time-line in which Ben Franklin had been treated fairly by Parliament when he first voiced nascent American grievances. He never radicalized and became the voice of change in England. He was eventually rewarded with being the first Royal Governor of the United Colonies of America. The small button for the doorbell measured out the curls and swirls in my fingerprint and hidden cameras struggled to recognize my face. The lock clicked open loudly, as I stood staring at the scene at her house. Neighbors and some of her children stood around anxiously. Her daughter looked to be crying. I knew I had to go to her funeral.
- ---- “Sir, there's a turtle trapped under Mr. Sumner's fence. Please, we have to save it.” I looked down to see a young girl dressed in a plain brown dress. Her black hair hung down in twin pigtails. Her hands had mud on them and the dress was streaked with dirt – much to her mother's coming distress in this age of washing boards and clothes lines. I believe I still had some of Troy's soil under my fingernails.
“Do I know you, young lady?” She was maybe five years old.
“I'm Corina,” she said, “from over there.” She pointed to her house. “But there's a turtle trapped in the fence by the stream.”
“Okay, let's go. We have a rescue to do.”
---- “There's a zaftig, even in that shape,” Perreault said
I looked up from my book to see our new neighbor arrive. A pregnant woman exited the Model A. Her fastidiously dressed husband held the door. A horse drawn dray, piled precariously with furniture, followed it. “I think that term's about twenty years too early. The haberdasher and his wife are going to have a child, and they need a bigger home.”
“They could fill that house with an entire brood.”
“The child's name will be Corina.”
“Was that in the briefing?” He smiled and rubbed his newly grown hand beneath the bio-glove he wore to protect the injured body part. His old hand was blasted off at Second Bull Run.
“No, I've met her. Or I will in time.”
“Do tell!” He smiled salaciously.
“It's not like that,” I said.
---- “Do you think electing Mr. Roosevelt will help out the working people? My John is only on half wages at the mill, and we are lucky he has that.” I'd met her on the street and offered to walk her home. After all we lived on the same block. She mumbled something about being a married woman, but handed me her groceries to carry. I think her smile was coy, too.
“I think he'll do fine.” That is if FDR survives Zangara's assassination attempt. He didn't in all time-lines.
“My father says he's a Bolshevik.” She laughed, freely and sweetly. I laughed, too.
“And here, I take my leave of you.” I tipped my fedora to her.
---- She was surrounded by a group of kids on primitive bikes. She wore her hair long and carried her “high school” books close to her chest. She looked scared.
“Boys. Is there a problem?” There were four of them, ten years younger than I was, and probably faster. But untrained, I thought, my feet facilely stepping into the Crane stance, my hands becoming ready. The biggest one looked strong from work on his family's farm. I'd bloody his nose first. Hopefully worse. Farmboy tossed down a hand-rolled cigarette, and they rode away.
“Thank you,” she said. We talked about her education a bit. “I'm going to the Normal School.” I smiled. That institution would become a teachers college, state college, and then state university. But she would never graduate. Both a young beau and the Great Depression would see to that. Then children, then the exigencies of life.
“What?”
“You know: I only half believed her stories. Thought they were senile dementia or Alzheimer's. I mean how could she know a 'nice man' who never ages all through her life. You know: an old woman's fantasy. But here you are. I can't believe it.”
“You must have me confused with someone else,” I stuttered.
“No, I don't. I'm Corey. Really Corina on my birth certificate, but everyone calls me Corey.” She did look the same: the face the same oval, the eyes the same brown, the figure curvy but svelte, though the hair was dyed blonde and her fingernails were a jet black.
“Hello, Corey. Would you like some coffee?”
“I'd prefer a drink. And I do need to get away from the loving embrace of my family. At least the embrace without Grams.”
We left.
[center]THE END[/center]
[hr][hr]Idea
Sci-fi romance story. A time traveler stays in a contemporary house between assignments.
Across the way he keeps meeting a girl - as a child, a teenager, a married woman, an old woman. At one point he saves her from bullies.
They meet in his chronological order, not hers, and develop a platonic romance/relationship.
He goes to her funeral and meets her great-granddaughter.
They talk with the suggestion of a non-platonic relationship to come.
Use alternate history time-lines to pepper the time traveler's time away from the house.
e.g. Franklin does well before Parliament Council and becomes voice of reason between Sons of Liberty and Parliament, eventually becoming King's charge d'affairs in America.
Start with time traveler getting off bus seeing changes to town: no pharmacy - CVS, no coffee shop - Starbucks, no bakery - Dunkin Donuts or Tim Hortons. He has the beer Sam Adams came from, wants a taste test. He sees the EMTs take her out, and begins remembering.
Story
[center]Operation Make Ronald Reagan a Star [/center]
2032. Two spies infiltrated the federal forbidden technologies storage facility in Ottumwa, Iowa disguised as maintenance workers. They dispatched the night watchman. Then, using a stolen map, the quantum physics graduate student from Turkey and his accomplice, a young woman from Spain, located a device whose function had never been determined, though its builder, Dr. Simon Loud was known to be a proponent of the theory that time travel was possible. As a precaution, the US government had impounded Loud’s laboratory and all his research materials, labeling his work “dangerous to the moral fiber of America and heresy in the eyes of God.”
It took Abdul twenty minutes to get Dr. Loud’s devise up and running. During that time, Sophia changed into a knee length red dress with a plunging neckline and shoulder pads. She slipped on seamed stockings and shoes with stacked heels. Her dark hair was already piled high atop her head. She added crimson lipstick.
“How do I look?”
Abdul glanced up from the circuit board. “Like Ida Lupino?”
Sophie glanced out the window. “The god squad is here. Are we ready?”
“Almost.”
Three blond men wearing black suits with clerical collars burst into the room, their weapons drawn, just in time to see Sophie disappear, though not all at once. Her image seemed to stutter, now here, now gone, now here for a split second more, then vanished forever.
As one, the three turned their weapons on Abdul. “Where did she go?”
The graduate student began readjusting dials at random.
“Stop that!” the most senior of the three ordered. He advanced on Abdul menacingly, his weapon aimed at the student’s chest.
The young Turk raised his chin defiantly. “Shoot me. It won’t matter. Once she’s done, none of this--” he waved his arm “---will exist.”
The squad leader lowered his rifle. He shot the Turk in the knee.
“This isn’t real, this isn’t real,” the wounded student muttered over and over again.
[center]***[/center]
1942. Jack Warner had fallen hard this time. If he was not careful, his second wife was going to divorce him, and that would cost a pretty penny.
Oh, but baby, that Sophie had some moves. And all the right curves. No one filled out a corset and garter belt like that sweet little Spanish senorita.
And talk about smart. That girl must have grown up watching the picture shows. She knew every one of his movies backwards and forwards, could tell whose star was rising and whose was falling. She had predicted which films were going to bring in the gross during their opening weeks and which would flop.
Now, she was telling him to go with Dutch Reagan for the film version of Everyone Comes to Rick’s. They had talked about using Reagan for the lead. But then Dutch got called up for service, and they decided to go with Humphrey Bogart. Sure, he was shorter than his costar, but that was what boxes were for.
Jack leaned out the window to get a better looked at Sophie, who was sunning herself beside the pool. She wore a swimsuit that was positively indecent. A woman like that could be raking in the dough, and yet she would not take a cent from him. She was only interested in his work. Brains and beauty. What a combination!
His hand hovered over the phone. He hesitated. Through the window, he caught a glimpse of Sophie’s creamy thighs as she rolled over on her chaise lounge.
He picked up the phone. “Gimme Hal Wallis. Hal, it’s me, Jack. I want to use Dutch Reagan for the new picture. Yeah, I know we agreed on Bogart, but he’s shorter than his co-star. We need someone the GIs can identify with. Yeah, I know they called up Reagan, but the Army’s only using him for training films. I’ll get the military on the phone, tell them Casablanca is going to be worth a hundred training films for sheer propaganda value. ‘American saves European refugees from Nazis in Northern Africa.’ They’ll love it”
[center]***[/center]
1943. Lately, Sophia’s feet hardly seemed to touch the ground when she walked. And her reflection in mirrors had grown dim. Abdul had warned her Victory means suicide. If you change the past---your own past---there is no guarantee that you will even be born in the new future.
It was a chance she had to take. Operation Make Ronald Reagan a Star was too important. Too many people had sacrificed to make this possible. They had studied the history of the American Theocracy, and they had decided that the one pivotal moment was the 1980 presidential election, when Reagan beat Carter, and the Federalists began stacking the courts with judges who would later begin dismantling the US Constitution. If Ronald Reagan could be steered away from politics and back towards acting, then the future might change for the better. And so, Sophia had been chosen to go back in time to make sure that Reagan got the role of a lifetime, the role that was almost his, Rick in Casablanca.
Now, she could only wait and see if the substitution of actors had worked. Last night, the film had made its nationwide premiere. She smoothed her blouse and joined Jack in the breakfast nook of his Hollywood bungalow, where he was reading the morning papers.
“How are the reviews?” She poured herself a glass of juice.
“Variety ‘splendid anti-Axis propaganda’. Oh, and you were right about Dutch. ‘Lives up to the promise shown in King’s Row. Performance should be considered for an Oscar.’”
The tingling in Sophia’s feet began to rise. Now her legs were numb. She held out her hand. The tips of her fingers were transparent.
“I’m going to have them fix him up another star vehicle. A fly boy film, army will love ---what’s that?” He lowered his paper.
The glass of juice lay shattered on the floor. Sophia was gone.
[center]THE END[/center]
[hr][hr]Idea
Back in time to give Ronald Reagan the lead in Casablanca->megastar, stays in movies, never goes into politics.
Story
[center]Job Interview[/center]
"Okay, well, I think you've answered all my questions."
The interviewer, who had introduced himself as 'H, just plain H, my friend', shuffled the papers on his desk, then glanced up at the candidate with a quick grin.
"Let me just expand a little on what I've already told you about our operation here," he said. "I want to make quite sure that you're familiar with our enterprise and happy about your - uh - potential role within the organization. Although the successful applicant will be working by himself for most of the time, we do feel it's vitally important that he's as totally committed to the House of the Hart as the rest of us." He spread his arms wide. "We want you to feel part of a team."
The candidate nodded eagerly, shifting forward in his chair to convey his enthusiasm.
"Right. Well, as you know, the Hart is an entirely new concept. It's larger than anything that's ever been seen before, and part of our problem is going to be attracting enough people of the right sort." H ran a hand through his fashionably greying hair and smiled encouragingly at the candidate. "That's where you come in. As you're aware, we're a little off the beaten track, although we are of course taking steps to create the necessary infrastructure in the immediate locality - new roads, that kind of thing.
"But what we really need is publicity. We have to put the Hart on the map, get it talked about. Obviously, we don't expect this to happen overnight - " he chuckled merrily at the thought " - which is why we're proposing a twelve year contract. We want to attract some big names, make the Hart the place to be seen.
"Incidentally, we're talking serious luxury here. Good food, good drink, graceful surroundings, and really high class entertainment. Quality, that's the keynote. We'll have poetry recitals, we'll have some of the best musicians in the business performing regularly…
"All of which is fine. But you know as well as I do, my friend, that in this day and age that isn't enough.
"What we need is a hook, a gimmick, a peg on which to hang the whole enterprise. And what people want these days is a whiff of danger, a hint of the horrors lurking in the darkness beyond the campfires of civilization.
"And for that I do most strongly feel you could be our man."
He leafed through the papers on his desk until he found the relevant sheet.
"Now, I'm empowered to offer the successful candidate a choice of remuneration. Either, a flat salary plus five percent of the take, or - and this one is a bit of a gamble that could just pay off very nicely indeed - fifteen, yes fifteen, percent of the take. Whichever you choose, you also get three meals a day provided by the company kitchen - though naturally you won't be eating in the staff canteen! That wouldn't do at all now, would it?"
The candidate smiled at the incongruity of the suggestion.
"Yeah," said H, consulting the sheet of paper again. "Three meals a day, and living accommodation. A rather nice apartment by the sea, running water, central heating, all the usual offices… The only snag is the isolation, but of course in this instance that'll probably prove an advantage. It means a bit of a journey to work, but nothing you won't be able to cope with."
He beamed at the candidate. "We leave the number of hours you put in pretty much up to you, though we do expect you to be on call in the event of an emergency."
The candidate raised an eyebrow. "What kind of emergencies do you envisage?"
H shrugged. "That's not something I would feel ready to commit myself on at this stage of the game. Frankly, until the show is up and running we just can't tell what kind of eventualities may occur. But I suppose at the moment I'm thinking in terms of the unexpected arrival. You know the kind of thing I mean, the youngster with a reputation to make suddenly turning up out of nowhere." He frowned, his face suddenly serious, dropping his voice as he leant across the desk. "Let's just say there may be occasions when we need you to remove disruptive elements at short notice, and leave at that, shall we?"
The candidate nodded. "Fine by me."
"Well, that's great, just great." H rose from behind the desk and took the candidate by the arm, ushering him towards the door. "Now, I expect you'd like to have a look around the area, maybe check out your apartment, because I can tell you, my friend, that the post is yours when you give the word."
The candidate sighed with relief, then paused.
"Oh, there is just one last thing," he said hesitantly.
"Yeah?" said H when it was obvious he would not continue without encouragement.
"Can I bring my mum?" asked Grendel.
[center]THE END[/center]
[hr][hr]Idea
Grendel was a marketing ploy to make Hrothgar's new hall the talk of the North. Hrothgar a company executive in a smart suit. PR man? Grendel the spice of danger - big brooding bouncer at the nightclub. All got out of hand. Mum taught him all he knows. Loves his mum, and his mum loves him. Interview for the job with the PR man? H?
[In the epic poem, Beowulf kills Grendel the scourge of Heorot, but just when they all think it's safe to go back in the hall, Grendel's Mum arrives seeking vengeance.]
Story
[center]Spawn of Osk[/center]
Osk did not compare himself to other mages, with their pretentious intonations and melodramatic finger twitches.
No, he did not compare. And could not, in reality. He had found it difficult to excel when there existed a hundred other aspiring wannabes, each with the vague hope that one day they too would be archmages, sporting their own white beards and pointy hats as they discussed inane theories in hazy dens and musty libraries.
Instead, Osk found it worthwhile to evaluate himself against the common peasant, for which the comparison favored him for once, albeit only slightly.
To them, his smattering of arcane learning made him seem like fucking Merlin. Let the other aspirants struggle in the cities and courts. Let them stab each other in the back and throw former allies under the proverbial cart. He found his niche as a simple hedge wizard, where he flowered as Someone Important.
Life was good. What he lacked in money he made up for in potatoes and other root vegetables.
Osk sat before his new table, his hand gliding over the smooth, warm wood. Sometimes he accepted payment other than coin for his services, and this particular item he considered his grand prize. He had a particular dislike of the cold stone benches the students were forced to use. They seem to suck the warmth, like some insatiable succubus. He almost cried in happiness at his upgrade in furniture.
He sighed. He did have to work, from time to time. He cracked his knuckles. Pulling a clean sheet of cheap parchment from a stack, he focused on the spell he reasoned would drive out vermin from someone’s abode.
Well, it worked on the cat.
The trick to writing spells lies not with the ink, but with the etching, pressing down hard enough to imprint. The ink only guided, making the indentations easier to see. In nature, arcane symbols abounded by accident, found with the chaos of tree bark or the weathered fissures on rocks. It made the world a magical place. Osk, though, preferred to create his own magic in his majestic hut. Silly, chaotic nature.
His writing covered a quarter of the page when a blast of late autumn wind came in through the window, causing the papers to swirl around the room. He shivered and cursed. He hated wearing robes yet everyone expected it, even the peasants. One could, if defending his masculinity, argue a robe quite different from a dress. That brought little comfort to Osk who felt the breeze in certain places he would rather not.
He marched over and shuttered the window. Still grumbling, he began gathering the sheets of paper littering the floor.
Something behind him squeaked.
Spinning around, he saw only the table, chair, cot, and fireplace in the small room. Shaking his head, he returned to his task.
Another squeak, this time louder.
Osk turned again, his eyes narrowing on the table. He grabbed the broom and crept over. He squatted down to peer underneath.
The table rattled, startling him. He fell on his ass and gaped at his beloved furniture.
The table shuddered again, twisting, its legs spastic and alive. Then, to his amazement, it began to walk. It took a couple tentative steps toward Osk and, with the grace of a dancer, delivered a nasty kick to his forehead.
The mage tumbled backward, head over heels. He found himself with his feet high against the wall, the weight of his body resting on his neck and shoulder. As blood poured out of his wound into his right eye, he pondered his situation for a moment before gravity toppled his body over in an unceremonious thump onto the dirt floor.
He staggered to his feet just as the table charged again. He ducked sideways and received a glancing blow to his ribs. He sucked his breath from the sharp pain. He backed away until he found himself in the corner. Between him and any egress stood the table, bucking and quaking, shattering what few possessions he had.
Osk did not understand. Had some rival mage bewitched his table? Had some jealous other discovered his formula for happiness?
Then he saw something glowing on top of the table: arcane glyphs. Right where the page had rested.
Oh. So that is why they used expensive, heavy vellum on hard, stone tables. It all made sense now.
His short-lived enlightenment evaporated, replaced by terror. The table lurched forward. It reared on two back legs like a horse, its front legs pawing at the air. He saw its back legs tense, readying for a final leap.
Osk grasped a wooden spoon lying nearby. With trembling hands, he brandished it like a katana and waited for table’s charge.
The door crashed open. In a blur, thunderous blows from axes rained down upon the table. In the mayhem, Osk dimly recognized a couple of the local woodcutters, their faces grimy and determined.
In the shower of splinters and woodchips, a sadness filled Osk. His table, his creation, shuddered one last time.
He dropped the spoon.
[center]THE END[/center]
[hr][hr]Idea
September 20th, 1999
Image of a drawing from another page.
Imprint of a drawing from a previous page.
Imprint of a drawing from an early page.
~earlier
Footsteps of a drawing from an earlier page.
Whispers of sketch from a previous page.
Whispers of sketch from an ancestor page.
Legacy of sketch from an ancestor page.
September 21st, 1999
There are whispers of sketch from an ancestor page –
Hard to imagine such thin-crafted paper.
One wonders the pencil and applied pressure
Upon that margined legacy page,
The indentations of artistic intentions
Still evident on descendant leaves.
The hand, so solitary its endeavor,
Behave in a manner so typical in
Touching more than its allotted universe.
This failed as a poem, but it may make a good story.
December 29th, 1999
Idea for a story. Based upon that failed poem I wrote. Wizard is writing a spell and uses cheap paper. Leaves indentation on paper underneath. Gives the spell a soul.
Story
[center] Emergence [/center]
The hatch was locked. But after the long climb up the maintenance shaft, Hume Umbral couldn't face returning to the city below.
He studied his hands in the dim, bluish light of the LED lamps lining the shaft, bruised and cut from pointless scuffles with Enforcers and others who had simply had the bad luck to be in his way. If they had just let me have more light... But light, at least the kind he needed, was out of reach, here at the top of the ladder, and there at the bottom.
He opened his right hand, flexing it, wincing as blisters stretched and broke and clear fluid trickled down his wrist, then replaced that hand on the rung and repeated the exercise with his left hand. The pain brought a kind of feverish clarity to his thoughts, and he contemplated the chain of circumstances that had brought him to this point.
The Great Ice Age had been the ironic result of "Global Warming", as ocean currents that carried equatorial heat toward the poles faltered and died. Over time, the cities had burrowed into the earth, so when the snow and ice covered most of the northern hemisphere, they were ready. Cities like subVegas had to become self-contained and self-sufficient, small nations in their own right.
Topside was uninhabitable. Ice and snow still covered even this part of the Nevada desert to a depth of tens of meters, leaving no vegetation and only a few animals alive.
"There is no sunshine to be had on the surface -- only cold, and starvation, and death," the textbooks said.
Which meant that Hume, and everyone else in subVegas, had to depend on the government-operated Sunlight Parlors to stave off the effects of LTSDS -- Long Term Sunlight Deprivation Syndrome. Vitamin D supplements took care of most of the physical effects of living without the sun, but the psychological effects could only be cured by exposure to sunlight, or its artificial equivalent.
Energy was scarce in subVegas, so this sanity-saving technology was limited to government-controlled facilities. And time and space in the Parlors was limited, so...
People "whose jobs require clear thinking" got priority in the Sunlight Parlors, more time allocated, the right to "bump" people -- like Hume -- whose jobs were deemed to be less dependent on mood and mental state. It was "purely coincidental" that the privileged ones were precisely those with the most wealth and power in subVegas -- after all, the government could be trusted to allocate resources belonging to all the people in the fairest possible way.
Not believing the government line -- and saying so, loudly and publicly -- had been the worst mistake of Hume's life. subVegas had no the space or resources for jails, but they did have a simple and effective means of punishment: they cut his Sunlight rations to zero.
Shortly thereafter, he had lost his job, and had to depend on rations that, like the Sunlight he had once been granted, were never quite enough. But he did have time, then, to study materials not in the textbooks. He had learned that at the latitude where subVegas festered like a blind pimple under the ice-covered desert, there should be sunlight for more than half of each day at this time of year, and even through heavy cloud, much of it would still reach the ground.
And he had learned that subVegas was not self-contained -- fresh air was drawn in through shafts that penetrated all the way to the surface, kept clear of ice and snow by heating elements and automated sweepers. A maintenance shaft ran parallel to each air intake to allow for repairs to the great turbines and fans that moved and warmed the air on its long descent, so there was a clear route all the way up and out.
Finding one of the shafts, breaking in, had taken days. Climbing the seemingly-endless ladder had taken hours, and almost all of Hume's diminished strength.
I'll never make the climb back down, he thought. And if I do, what then? More weeks without Sunlight?
He shook his head. He would break through the hatch, see the real Sun, or die.
He still had the small screwdriver he had used to open the keypad at the bottom of the shaft. But this keypad was different -- the screws securing its cover had star-shaped holes that made his one and only tool useless.
Useless as a screwdriver, he realized suddenly. And useless as a prybar to muscle his way through the hatch. But as a miniature prybar to break open the keypad cover --
He worked the thin, flat end of the screwdriver blade into the seam on the side of the case, pushing hard and twisting to penetrate as far as possible. His wounded hand oozed blood and clear fluids and sent dazzling spikes of pain up his arm, but he could feel the blade working its way deeper.
Finally, the screwdriver refused to move even a millimeter further. He loosened his grip on the handle, ready to close his hand if the tool started to fall, but the blood-streaked plastic stayed in place.
Please let this work...
He pushed on the screwdriver handle with all his strength, clinging tightly to the ladder with his other hand. With a loud crack, the keypad cover popped off, and tumbled down the maintenance shaft, leaving only irregularly-timed ticks and clacks in its wake as it caromed off the walls.
For more than a minute, Hume hung there, exhausted by the combination of fear and exertion. Then he looked back at the exposed circuitry of the keypad. After a moment, he placed the tip of the screwdriver so it bridged two coppery lines and --
The lock on the hatch disengaged with a creak and a snap.
Hume pushed the hatch open, coughing as frigid air slashed its way into his lungs, and climbed out into the light.
[center]THE END[/center]
Idea
The original note that inspired this just-written story (long since lost) was just a few words about Seasonal Affective Disorder (depression more common in people living in northern latitudes, especially above the Arctic Circle, where they receive unusually low levels of sunlight.
