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Comments RSS TrackBack 101 comments

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  1

  oxlin

  in January 10th, 2012 @ 11:47

  Like I said on the random thread, I recently submitted a short story to a contest. Now it is hard to know what to write next. That story flowed quite well and other things are frustrating suddenly. hopefully I can find something new to write. Maybe now that it is morning it’ll be better. Perhaps I should try again.

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  Kittymine, OSW

  in January 10th, 2012 @ 13:08

  I’m in middle of doing my second Specific Dialogue exercise. My creative writing counselor gave me one last summer. The idea is to write a short story, but only using 7 random pieces of dialogue, which were selected by my counselor. This obviously forces you to be more descriptive and to not overuse dialogue. I finished the first story in two days. Now I am working on another, but it isn’t going so quickly because I don’t have hours at a time to just sit and write since I am in class most of the day.
  I’ve also decided to write a story that has been going on in my head since elementary school. I’m still slightly hesitant about putting it on paper because its really really strange.

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  2.1

  Agent Lightning

  in January 11th, 2012 @ 16:51

  Go for it! Even if it turns out not as good as you expected, you’ll enjoy writing it.

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  2.1.1

  Kittymine, OSW, with various characters on BA

  in January 12th, 2012 @ 15:26

  Very true. The world may think I’m mad, but who cares?

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  3

  Mikazuki

  in January 12th, 2012 @ 17:15

  I’m editing my NaNo currently. My friends who did NaNo too are helping me out, as I am helping them. This makes me happy. ♥

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  Zinc

  in January 14th, 2012 @ 20:00

  For my drama final, my group has to make and perform a ten minute script.

  Our plot is a necklace that grants wishes. I’m in charge of writing. Ach.

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  4.1

  Mikazuki

  in January 15th, 2012 @ 15:15

  Good luck! Actually, that’s what I have to do for my Engilsh final. Do you have to memorize your script? (It seems as though you would, but just to be sure…)

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  5

  Cat's Eye

  in January 22nd, 2012 @ 13:32

  I’m applying to a prestigious writing program in Iowa!! I’m super-nervous. I’ve tried to scrape together all of my best writing from over the years, but it turned out what I consider my best piece has been lost somewhere, and I need one more three-page piece to round out the application and I don’t know what to put.

  Aaaaah.

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  5.1

  oxlin

  in January 23rd, 2012 @ 01:32

  Ooh, awesome! Is it SF/F focused/the one I’m thinking of/a greek letter? I always wanted to apply there but now I’m too old.

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  6

  Agent Lightning

  in January 23rd, 2012 @ 16:54

  I should edit my NaNo.
  I’m too busy.
  I’ll do it this summer.
  The truth is, I was rushed for wordcount and some of the scenes are so badly written and Sue-ish that it’s painful to go back and read them. I’m deleting long passages of text and replacing them with new ones. My plot is totally changed.

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  7

  POSOC

  in January 28th, 2012 @ 21:40

  I’ve got a particularly virulent form of writers’ block. Usually when I’m blocked it’s some form of having too many ideas or not knowing how to get them on paper. This time, I have no ideas… the first time I can even remember this happening.

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  8

  Jadestone

  in January 29th, 2012 @ 00:31

  I am on my second pleasure-reading book of the week. It really makes me miss writing. Why is it that whenever I get more into one creative thing, the others seem to phase out of my life? It’s not even totally a time thing. It’s like I only have so much creative capacity and I can’t seem to spread it around as much as I want to

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  9

  POSOC

  in January 29th, 2012 @ 02:17

  I just closed a tab by mistake and lost six massive paragraphs of brainstorming. DX
  Utter disappointment. At least that furious writing helped me break through my writers’ block. Expect updates on the Green Moon Cycle, a pulpy “Dying Earth” tale in the vein of Jack Vance.

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  10

  POSOC

  in January 29th, 2012 @ 02:20

  FFFFJDDDF I GOT IT BACK
  “Recently Closed Tabs,” thou art a worker of miracles. Below is the genesis of the Green Moon Cycle, as furiously typed through a haze of sleep deprivation.
  “Right now, I want to write the kind of pulpy Science Fantasy post-apocalyptic story that Jack Vance and similar authors did. A “dying earth” far in the future, when the modern age has faded into myth.
  I like the idea of a key motif with the kind of slap-in-the-face celestial alienness you get from two moons or the wrong colored sky, one that can remind the reader that this is not our Earth. It’s not subtle, but I’m burned out on subtlety. I want big, bombastic, glorious, and decadent; lush jungles and decaying cities. A red sun is a little too unrealistic for me (a red giant would have swallowed the Earth; the sun is hotter, but still a familiar yellow-white). How about a green moon? Some kind of vacuum-resistant lichen or algae, made as part of a failed terraforming project in the Time of Steel Cities, has run rampant over the side of the moon we can see and veined it with threads of turquoise, emerald, and viridian. It’s got a place in nearly every myth — sometimes representing fertility, sometimes decay. I love it. I’ll use the Green Moon Cycle as a working title. Cheesy, but again, this whole project can be seen as a backlash, counterbalance, or antidote against the stringent realism (in science fiction) and painstaking understatement (in fantasy) that I’ve striven for over the last few years.
  I see the main supercontinent as a kind of Pangaea Ultima, our continents brought together again by the relentless march of tectonic drift. The interior will probably be a vast desert, the Great Dry, the Sun’s Grindstone, the Place of the Hungry Winds. It’s uninhabited at its heart except by a few creatures that have adapted to the extreme conditions — in any case, equatorial areas are unsuitable for human/humanoid life in general by now.
  Most of the stories will be set on the Southern Coast, a large zone that’s warm but still fertile and wet enough to support an astonishing variety of life, occupied by several dozen different cultures, nations, and factions.
  Over the timescales on which continental drift takes place, phenotypes melt and flow like hot wax, to paraphrase Stephen Baxter. The flora and fauna will be similar in broad strokes — the animal, plant, fungal and bacterial kingdoms will all still be around, otherwise it would get far too weird. Probably even mammals and birds — they’ve been around for millions of years already. However, no specific species that’s around today will survive in the same form to the Time of the Green Moon. People are more likely to be riding wallarats than horses.
  Which brings me to the subject of “people.” I’m going to keep relatively humanoid protagonists so that the audience can relate to them easily. That said, humans are going to look very different. There may even be several different “races” or species descended from modern humanity. I’ll stay within the limits of biological possibility (mostly), and there will be no Terry Brooksish cop-out rehashes of orcs and elves, but other than that, the Rule of Cool will govern my path. (Agile arboreal hunters? Desert dwellers with camelid fat reserves and sharp teeth? Philosophical subterranean scholars, living on cavefish and covering stone walls with an infinitely complex Braille library? The imagination reels.)
  I’ve covered the Science (which I’m not going to adhere to slavishly by any means). Where does the Fantasy come in? What’s the role of magic? I’m going to borrow from Charles de Lint’s “Consensus Reality” here. Magic existed. It faded as we systematized the world — once people started filling in the blank spaces in the map, it promptly vanished in a puff of logic, walled out by reason. When the Steel Cities fell in wrath and atomic fire, darkness and superstition covered the world like a returning tide. Magic found its way back through the widening cracks in humanity’s collective knowledge. Monsters unfurled their wings and bayed at the stars for the first time in millennia. By the time of the Green Moon Cycle, humanity’s children have harnessed magic as well as science, and the Great Continent runs on a different set of rules.
  (That was the most fun I’ve had in ages. Consider the writers’ block broken. This will be back.)”

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  10.1

  POSOC

  in September 12th, 2012 @ 00:31

  OK, the first story of the Green Moon Cycle is now in the rough-outline stage. Radioactive pirate steamships for the win!

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  10.1.1

  KaiYves- Curiosity Will Lead The Way!

  in September 12th, 2012 @ 07:24

  I await it eagerly!

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  10.1.2

  Jadestone

  in September 13th, 2012 @ 00:42

  Awesome!!

  (Also helllooo how are you, you haven’t been around much)

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  10.1.2.1

  POSOC

  in September 13th, 2012 @ 01:30

  I’m not doing badly. Yourself?

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  10.1.3

  POSOC

  in September 15th, 2012 @ 14:31

  I’ve finished… half of it, I think. I might wait until it’s finished to post it up, though. Check for inconsistencies and such.

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  10.1.3.1

  KaiYves- Curiosity Will Lead The Way!

  in September 15th, 2012 @ 18:02

  Okay, great!

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  11

  Vendaval

  in January 29th, 2012 @ 22:42

  There was an interesting article in the NY Times a while ago about authors (some now famous!) who got their start playing text-only multiplayer games online. So all those hours on BA really might not be wasted adolescence after all!

  nytimes. com/2011/09/24/books/jim-butcher-one-of-the-authors-from-ambermush.html

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  12

  Mikazuki

  in February 23rd, 2012 @ 09:28

  *keyboard smash*
  There is a writing contest I want to enter. The place that had the writing contest was really cool. But the fiction category has a limit of 750 words. 750 WORDS!! HOW CAN I POSSIBLY EXPRESS WHAT I WANT TO SAY IN 750—
  OK. Well, I know I should be able to do this, but…I’m finding it ridiculously hard. The prompt is very vague and I’m not sure how to accurately follow it in one scene or so. Heeeeelp. Also, I have until March 7th. >.<
  [/writingwoes]

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  13

  Cat's Eye

  in April 3rd, 2012 @ 19:10

  So every year our Hebrew School has a contest for teens writing about the Holocaust for Yom Hashoah, the Jewish remembrance day of the Holocaust. This year, due to some mix-ups with all classes being required to submit something and everyone else in my class being a lazy jerk, I ended up writing a piece.

  The prompt was either “teens” or “Jews who fought”, I couldn’t remember which, so I wrote about both. Uh, warning for Holocaust, I guess? My therapist was almost crying when she was done reading it.

  It’s called “-1”.

  1. The American soldiers return home, later, and are kissed, and bought drinks, and twitch at loud noises.

  2. His granddaughter listens to him tell her about it when he is old and she is his age, and she says, “Innocence.”

  He says, “Yes.”

  She says, “Like Little Red Riding Hood.” She is a scholar. Her Bat Mitzvah was only a few years ago. She read from Deuteronomy, unless that was her mother.

  He says, “No.”

  She says, “Zeyde—I mean, you know, big bad wolf, generic scapegoat, innocence tropes, all right—”

  He says, “I know that.” He has a German accent and a doctorate from NYU.

  She says, “So, you know, in a literary way, it’s like Little Red—”

  He says, “No,” and cannot explain why.

  3. The girls complain the most about the stars. They are huge and ugly, they say, and do not match their brown hair. They fear ridicule from their friends. Ridicule is what they are afraid of.

  4. When they say Juden, they mean schweine. Or when they say pigs, they mean Jews. It’s hard to tell.

  5. In the woods there are no candles to light for Shabbat. There are no tallises to lay over their shoulders. There are no cooling loaves of challah in the kitchen. There are no sharp slaps from Mama when darting fingers go to pick out the raisins. There are no voices, mother, father, sister, melding and winding together in the dusty candlelight.

  One of them says, “God’s night sky will be our Shabbat tablecloth, and His stars will be our candles.”

  Sometimes they are.

  6. His granddaughter asks him, “Zeyde, am I a Jewish American, or an American Jew?”

  She also asks him if she should study Spanish or Mandarin, if she looks more like a runner or a swimmer, if she ought to keep her hair brown or bleach it blonde.

  She asks because she doesn’t know.

  7. Their mothers tell them about Lilith, and the Golem, and Abraham and the statues, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the exile to Babylon.

  Their teachers tell them about Snow White, and the Last Supper, and the Crusades, and Antony and Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt, and Odysseus’s journey home.

  Their newspapers tell them about the Juden.

  Soon, so do their teachers. (Their mothers never do.)

  8. That’s why not Little Red Riding Hood.

  9. His granddaughter is up in arms today, a picture of fury, on a mission from God, rousing the whole world in her passion. It’s something about a man and his child soldiers.

  10. They learn how to handle the kick when a gun fires. They learn how to run faster than they’ve ever run before. They learn how to keep their eyes and ears open, and how to cover each others’ backs. They learn how not to complain. They learn how not to miss people.

  11. The girls snip and scold each other across the classroom, gossip and giggle together, because it’s what they do. The boys punch each other and make faces; when they’re sent to the principal’s office, he smiles and says that boys will be boys. The teacher stomps her foot, tries to regain order. She’s trying, she says, to teach them about heroes.

  12. His granddaughter rolls her eyes at her homework and says, “When will I ever have to use this?”

  13. They have all had Bar Mitzvahs; they have all read from the Torah; they have all said, “Today I am a man.”

  The next day, they returned to the seventh grade.

  14. Tomorrow, they will go back to school. Tomorrow, they will fail a Physics test. Tomorrow, they will walk down the street arm in arm, rush under storefront roofs to escape the rain, wind their watches, buy new shoes, fight with their parents.

  Tomorrow, they will say “when I grow up.”

  15. His granddaughter grumbles and growls at her homework and he does not tell her when she will need to know about heroes, does not tell her why she will need to know about heroes, hopes she will never need to know about heroes.

  16. They say, “Yitg’dal v’yit’kadash sh’mei rabah.”

  17. His granddaughter, bleached blonde hair and brown roots, Deuteronomy and Little Red Riding Hood, Jewish American and American Jew, granddaughter, child, says, “Amen.”

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  13.1

  Choklit Orange

  in April 3rd, 2012 @ 21:20

  I cried too. This is so beautiful, Cat’s Eye. Thanks for posting it.

  I suddenly want to be more religious, or at least keep on more of the traditions I’ve slacked off on. Thank you for that too.

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  13.2

  *Cskia

  in April 3rd, 2012 @ 21:51

  This is just beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

  Because of this, I really want to sit down and do something. Reach deep into myself and write or draw or sing something. Thank you for that too. You are so inspirational.

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  13.3

  POSOC

  in September 8th, 2012 @ 22:02

  The whole thing is brilliant, but the double meaning of “They learn how not to miss people” particularly leaped out at me.

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  Armada

  in April 30th, 2012 @ 21:53

  I’m currently working on a story in which I’m trying to keep pretty much all of the characters gender-neutral in as non-obvious a way as possible (no gender-neutral pronouns, hopefully no forced repetition of people’s names). I am stretching my sentence-forming abilities pretty caking far, and quickly reaching a conviction that I am never, ever going to attempt anything like this ever again.

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  POSOC

  in May 8th, 2012 @ 22:04

  The worst kind of inspiration, for me, is the sort that comes with ideas that are so huge and complicated, so tangled and majestic, that I would sell my left nostril to be able to do them justice in writing, but I don’t have the necessary grounding in post-Soviet Russian economics or quantum computing, or the perspective to look back on the nature of childhood without being mired in its tail end, or the life experience to fully draw relationships between people in all their complexity and wonder and pain, or a million other things I presently lack.
  I know that the only way to learn to write well is to write, and to live. But it’s still frustrating to be stuck hoping that I /might/ someday be able to grasp one of these ideas and get it down in a form that isn’t hopelessly inadequate and makes sense to somebody else.

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  15.1

  Jadestone

  in September 8th, 2012 @ 23:24

  This

  I read a beautiful article the other day about the mythology that’s being created by children in the homeless shelters of Los Angeles

  and it just made me want to turn it into stories

  but I don’t have the time or the talent to do it justice

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  15.1.1

  POSOC

  in September 8th, 2012 @ 23:51

  Really! I read something similar about children in Miami a while back and was very disappointed to find out it was largely fabrication. (Of course, that doesn’t make it any less valid as a source of inspiration.) Do you have the name of the article?

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  15.1.1.1

  Jadestone

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 00:05

  Aw it may have been Miami as well/the same article actually : / Sad to hear it’s fabrication… but the idea would still be really cool

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  15.1.1.1.1

  POSOC

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 00:39

  Yeah, “Myths over Miami” was awesome regardless of the author’s embellishments. It was like something out of Charles de Lint, but with more urban legends and terrifying apocalyptic Catholicism.

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  15.1.1.1.2

  POSOC

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 01:19

  This, and a recent discussion about writer’s block, have inspired me.
  Suppose the small children of a particular city, or even a city block, have this legend about a sort of spirit of unfinished things. Every half-built sand castle spoiled by bullies or an early bedtime is rebuilt in all its glory somewhere in his house. Every game of checkers left abandoned is played to its conclusion — either by him, playing both sides, or by him and some kind of servant/friend that he built out of scraps. They talk about him in the same breath as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, with the faith of children. Invented, perhaps, by a creative babysitter.
  He might start out in some rich suburbia — but the legend spreads through playgrounds and parks and filters through other parts of the city. As his storytellers grow more desperate and/or poor, they attribute more power to him — to fix broken homes, broken bones, broken dreams. “Prayers” are in the form of half-finished sentences that he is supposed to pick up and complete.
  “I wish my parents would…”
  “I wish I could go to…”
  “Please let my sister…”
  Et cetera.
  I don’t know what I could do with this personage, though. If he would turn out to be real, or not — if the babysitter or elder sibling would have to face up to what she or he inadvertently created.

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  15.1.1.1.2.1

  Jadestone

  in September 13th, 2012 @ 00:44

  I like this!! Very different from the ideas I was thinking up. I got really into the idea of the angel war and the interweaving of other mythologies around it, where they draw strength from the belief of people but the only ones left who can see the true things happening are those who were never taught what things “should” be, and the demons thrive off fear…

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  15.1.1.1.2.1.1

  POSOC

  in September 13th, 2012 @ 03:01

  So angels live on belief and demons live on fear? I think it might be more symmetric if the angels lived on hope… because both hope and fear are different forms of belief. Hope is belief that everything will turn out all right, no matter the evidence against it, and fear is belief that everything will go wrong, no matter how much you try to squash it.
  But that might take it over the edge from symbolic into unsubtle/anvilicious.

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  15.1.1.1.2.1.1.1

  Jadestone

  in September 13th, 2012 @ 10:46

  That’s more along with what I intend, I think. Both use belief as a source of strength, but take different approaches to gaining it–the demons through terror, which works a lot better, but is against what the angels stand for. There will probably be a plot point where in a dire moment an angel must use fear rather than hope in order to stop something really terrible from happening, and then it will have consequences as the story goes. I’m kind of sticking with the notion that the angles are slowly losing the battle (at least for most of it). The other mythological beings that are around (neither angel nor demon) may use other forms of belief as well, maybe stories or by adapting in other ways, that the angles will probably have to start using as well as things keep getting worse for them.

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  16

  KaiYves

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 15:12

  Okay, so these are my ideas for that children’s TV series that I wanted to brainstorm with you guys. All of the names are placeholders and open to change.

  The Whitford Collection:

  Over its century-plus history, the renowned Henry Museum of Natural History has been host to many remarkable scientists, explorers, and managers, but none are as illustrious or as fondly-remembered as Christopher and Caroline Whitford.

  In the middle two-thirds of the twentieth century, this dynamic husband-and-wife team of explorers brought the museum to worldwide prominence, overseeing its expansion in-between globetrotting expeditions to the far corners of the world. ((Think of the O’Connells from The Mummy: The Animated Series or Arnold’s parents from Hey Arnold.)) Any sly allegations that Chris was an “absentee director” were soundly disproven by the genuine care the Whitfords both showed for the museum and its visitors, children in particular. They delighted in surprising younger visitors with recountings of how they had acquired artifacts on display in the museum.

  The Whitfords died several decades ago, but new items marked “From the Whitford Collection” still appear on display from time to time. Surely, though, there’s no mystery in that and all of it was collected in the past, right? After all, that’s what the museum officials say happens…

  That’s what one/two local kid(s) believed until recently. Until the day en/they snuck into a private storeroom and discovered the truth. As ghosts, the Whitfords continue their adventures, periodically stopping back at the museum to leave newly-acquired artifacts in the secret storeroom. In exchange for agreeing to keep this secret, the kid(s) ask(s) to be allowed to participate in these adventures.

  In retrospect, that may not have been the smartest thing to ask for. Some of the Whitfords’ old enemies are still out there (either alive or… otherwise), eager to target the museum, and some items in the collection have dangerous histories of their own…

  Five second X meets Y description: Tutenstein + Jackie Chan Adventures + Danny Phantom + fictionalized MOS Boston.

  Details:

  – Does this whole idea sound stupid?

  – Is it one kid or two who finds the ghosts? The dynamics of a braver kid who dragged their less-impetuous friend into sneaking into the storeroom to begin with would be interesting. Are they both boys? Both girls? One boy and one girl?

  – Do the kids work at the museum (at least after the first episode), or are they constantly having to dodge guards to get back into the storeroom?

  – What is the museum’s current management like? Well-meaning but intimidated by having a famous predecesor haunting the museum? Fussy and out-of-touch like Professor Bedehty from Tutenstein or Dr. McFee from Night at the Museum? Interested in using the powers of some of the artifacts for nefarious means of en’s own?

  – Did the Whitfords have any children of their own? If they did, how do they feature into the story?

  – How did the Whitfords die? Maybe they disappeared and nobody but them knows what really happened? (Unless they have Ghost Amnesia about it.) (I’m imagining them as active as adventurers from the 30s onward and their death/disappearance having been in the 60s or 70s.)

  – Do the exhibits in the museum come to life at night? Maybe they don’t usually, but the ghosts can make that happen if they want?

  – I want this to be very internally-consistent, so what permanent exhibits does the museum have?

  – Generally, any ideas for other characters, villains, and stories would be greatly appreciated, too.

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  16.1

  Agent Lightning

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 16:01

  I like this idea! I like the idea of two kids who contrast each other. A braver kid and the less-daring one would be a good place to start. I don’t know about gender, but they should definitely work at the museum after the first episode or so. And I think the Whitfords’ deaths should be a mystery– they disappeared. And my opinion would be that the exhibits shouldn’t normally come to life, but I like the idea of the ghosts being able to make that happen.
  It’s a really great story idea! I like it!

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  16.1.1

  KaiYves

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 20:32

  Thank you, AL! I’m glad I’m not the only one who’d like to see this show.

  If the current director DOES know, maybe they gave the kids jobs at the museum to further make sure they didn’t tell anyone outside of the museum about the ghosts? (Because the museum would look silly if word got out that they make special arrangements for ghosts.)

  How much of a mystery should the disappearance be? Just that they were suddenly gone one morning or that they something happened on an expedition and were never heard from again? (So that we have a vague story of what happened to them, like “They disappeared in the Himalayas while looking for the Yeti”, or “They disappeared in the Amazon.”)

  I think it would just be the coolest scene to have the ghosts bring displays to life to drive out thieves/intruders/evil minions.

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  16.2

  Enceladus

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 16:04

  This. Yes. This.

  I wish I had this in my childhood

  (that should answer your first question)

  I think that both kids should find the ghosts- I really enjoy(ed as a kid) the brave-geeky dynamic pair. In regards to gender, I think that it might be more successful thematically if its one boy one girl (Let’s include everybody in adventure!), but I don’t really know otherwise.

  Current management: A villain or two hidden in the staff would be good. Otherwise, I think that a current museum keeper would be the perfect place to include a clueless mentor archetype (Think Giles from Buffy, if he had no idea what was going on)

  Whitford deaths- this could turn a really uplifting and cool show into something relatively dark and realistic. Same with the children issue.

  Other ideas: As well as a history part of the show, would having some characters involved with more science oriented knowledge be appropriate or are you thinking it would be more along the lines of a history adventures show?

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  16.2.1

  KaiYves

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 20:24

  Thank you, that’s good to hear!

  I think brave-geeky, one boy, one girl, is a good combo, maybe brother and sister.

  Somebody in the museum administration knows about the ghosts, as the new artifacts get catalogued and displayed, but having the director him/herself be out-of-the-loop about it would be funny, although I think it would be a bit mean to show them as dumb in general as opposed to just unaware of the ghosts.

  Tutenstein showed that you can have a kids show with an undead protagonist without it being scary by not having the manner of death mentioned in most of the episodes or discussed in detail when it does come up. The Whitfords are adults who are used to talking to children, and they’ll probably know to gloss over any gory details to keep from scaring the young protagonists– they’d just say “Avalanche”, “Shipwreck”, or whatever and change the subject.

  This would be both a science and and a history adventures show– there’d be episodes about everything a natural history museum covers. (If it’s all archeology/history/ancient civilizations, how are we going to get to show the dinosaurs, or the tigers, or the robots, or the mammoths, or the volcanoes, or the meteorites or the…) Heck, the real Museum of Science that inspired this even has a math exhibit, there might be a math episode.

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  16.3

  KaiYves

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 16:09

  GAPAs, as you can probably tell, there is no such thing as the “middle two-thirds” of anything. I meant to say “the middle two-quarters of the twentieth century”.

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  16.3.1

  POSOC

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 18:36

  You can have a middle two-thirds if you put one-sixth on each end of it.

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  16.3.1.1

  KaiYves

  in May 15th, 2012 @ 19:24

  Good point.

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  16.4

  KaiYves

  in June 9th, 2012 @ 19:32

  Fiddler and Pan, just so you know, this was the idea I wanted feedback on.

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  16.5

  Midnight Fiddler

  in July 5th, 2012 @ 20:19

  I like.

  Two kids, for sure, with contrasting characters for funzies. Geek/brave seems to be good. Why were they sneaking around in the first place? Maybe one of them worked in the museum store already, and was showing the other around after hours? (Not allowed to be there though, so they still had to sneak.)

  Dunno about management, maybe very top-down, keeping most of the people involved (guards, clerks, etc.) in the dark. Only the director knows about the ghosts?

  Maybe one of the kids is a relation of the Whitfords? The one who works at the museum maybe. A great-niece/nephew or something. Whitfords never had kids, but they were involved in their neice/nephew’s upbringing, and so current kit (great niece/nephew) was given a job?

  I think the Whitford’s death should be fairly mysterious. They vanished on one of their adventures. Like you said, this is a kid’s show idea, so you don’t want it to be too gruesome.

  Not a fan of coming-to-life exhibits, but maybe at some point the ghosts can move things around (clunk around in a suit of armor or something) to chase off a villain (perhaps the director of the museum, who’s suspicious of the kids)?

  I don’t have any other ideas. But if I think of more, I’ll post them.

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  16.6

  Purple Panda

  in July 9th, 2012 @ 22:46

  Hi Kai,

  I think this sounds like a great idea for a kid’s show. I haven’t seen most of the shows that you mentioned in your description, so I’ve been thinking about it with a mood of Magic Treehouse, which you described earlier; it also seems to have the fun, exciting but silly nature of Scooby Doo. I talked to my sister about this, too, so lots of the points in this comment are sort of disorganized brainstorms that we had; I hope you’re able to follow it all!

  –One thing to keep in mind is the difference of what is fun to the author and what is fun to the audience. It may be fun for you to keep all of the descriptions of the history of the Whitfords, details of all the exhibits, etc. But for kids, you’ll want to keep it simple.

  –I like the idea of two kids. Brother-sister pairs work really well. One thing I’m wondering is why there are two Whitfords? It may work better with just one Whitford ghost. You can approach this in two ways: either the focus is on the Whitfords, or the focus is on the kids. (I recommend focusing on the kids, because of the nature and audience of the show.) Groups of four can be difficult in shows, but trios can work really well. But no matter how many characters you include, it’s really important that they are all different. Every character needs to have a purpose. The purpose doesn’t have to be super linear (that is, each character doesn’t have a specific job), but they each need to bring something, have their own flaws, quirks, and strengths that are balanced within the group. You can’t have two characters that are too similar — combine or eliminate characters if that is happening.

  –It seems a bit strange to me that the kids would be working at the museum. Kids need to go to school, and it’s hard to rationalize giving kids this age real jobs, or even volunteer positions, at a big museum like this. I don’t think the audience would understand the concept of keeping kids quiet by giving them employment. My sister says that many shows are able to skip that explanation. Nobody really knows why these kids are spending so much time at the museum, but if nobody at the museum questions their extended presence, than it doesn’t matter. Maybe after the first season, they give them an “honorary badge” or something fun.

  –Does the museum know the Whitfords are alive as ghosts? Maybe there’s someone who is taking credit for the new artifacts and discoveries. What do the Whitfords think about that? What are that person’s motives? What do the kids do? That could be a multi-episode arc. Maybe some people at the museum know about the ghosts, but they try to keep it away from the executives/director, but then somebody finds out and starts questioning it. Maybe you can have those people join the adventures and add characters to the team to explore new relationships and ideas as the show continues.

  –In terms of having people at the museum unaware of the ghosts or other happenings, I don’t think that it’s mean for some people to be like that. The director, or whoever, could sort of be like the Sultan in Aladdin, who is unaware of things, but not in a mean way — just oblivious of everything.

  –The Whitfords don’t seem like the people who would lie or gloss over things. I don’t think they should have died in a gory accident, but maybe they just sailed off into the sunset or got lost on an adventure. Maybe they even died of old age on a remote island somewhere. Definitely no violence, and no hidden violence, just fun conflicts. Maybe they came back as ghosts old and frail, and the kids have to do more things for them, help them out with certain tasks. (One of them has a bad back or something.)

  –I don’t think the Whitfords had any kids. They were too busy adventuring and discovering, and that would just be too complicated. But they are good at working with the kids at the museum.

  –I think the Whitfords should just be people. Giving them magical powers, or the ability to bring the museum to life, just adds too many elements to the show. I would recommend keeping the general structure simple and changing up the stories and adventures of each episode to keep things interesting, but don’t keep adding elements (like magic) to the show. Or, if you do want to add things, add them slowly, or have them come up as periodic nuisances (maybe guest characters who have special abilities), but you don’t want too many things for the audience to keep track of.

  –What is the structure of a typical episode? Will they find something new ever episode? Or will they take a journey over many episodes or the whole season to find something big? How long will each episode be?

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  16.6.1

  KaiYves- Curiosity Will Lead The Way!

  in August 15th, 2012 @ 22:08

  Sorry, I’ve been very busy and only now had the time to sit down and write a response to your awesome feedback! (One word of advice: never try to juggle a 9-to-5 internship with two college classes in the evenings!) I’ll deal with Fiddler’s comments first, then Purple Panda’s, and then I’ll add my own miscellaneous thoughts:

  Midnght Fiddler:

  – For why they were sneaking around, I was thinking that they came to some sort of event after-hours (like a lecture or sleepover) and one kid (the smart one) decided to show the other one (who hadn’t visited before) around, but en wanted to go off the beaten path and dragged their cousin along into the off-limits storerooms. I think it might make sense for the smarter one to already be working at the museum in some capacity—at they very least, en visits frequently.

  – Top-down, with most people at the museum unaware of the ghosts seems like a good idea in general. I’m torn between Director Humorously-Unaware-of-the-Ghosts (“Ghosts? Here? What nonsense!”) and Director Aware-and-Humorously-Intimidated-by-Having-Famous-Predecesors-Around-to-Judge-His-Actions (“’What would Chris Whitford do if he were still around?’ they all say… Well, he is, and rest assured he’ll make sure I know…”)

  – I don’t know about having the kids related to the Whitfords, it would sort of weaken the “adventure is for everyone!” message Enc talked about by having them be from the same family. Having them be just random kids inspired to become adventurers rather than having it be “in the blood” seems more inclusive.

  Purple Panda:

  – I agree, there will definitely be some Scooby-Doo influence here.

  – By having things planned out, I don’t mean that there would be huge infodumps, just that the background would be solidly in place to be revealed bit-by-bit instead of clumsily making things up as we went along in writing the episodes. The actual information in each episode would be simple, it would just be internally consistent because it would be planned out in advance.

  – Having somebody else take credit for the new discoveries and introducing other scientists who may be added to the team over time are great ideas.

  – Definitely, the focus should be on the kids.

  – The bad back idea is brilliant (like the swordfight in Up!) Having the Whitfords be older and in need of help with certain tasks (as well as maybe confused about modern technology) would help to explain why they take the kids along as assistants and provide the opportunity for some gags.

  – Adding elements slowly and having more and more be revealed is the general order of the show, I feel. That’s what exploration is—filling in the blank spaces on the map little by little, with plenty of surprises along the way.

  – I would say that there would be three basic types of episode:
  1) The group goes off to a far-off place on an adventure.
  2) The group has an adventure within the museum itself (a break-in, an object’s magical powers causing trouble).
  3) The kids discover something in the museum or the storeroom that prompts the Whitfords to recount the story behind it, a-la “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck”.

  Of course, these types can be blended—a flashback about an artifact’s history or an old ally or enemy of the Whitfords can lead to a modern follow-up adventure in an exotic place or within the museum (they go back to investigate the other “X” shown on the old treasure map, an old villain returns to attack the museum), and events at the museum might prompt a trip elsewhere (to find a cure for a curse, to catch a thief and recover what en stole), etc.

  There would probably be ongoing plotlines, like museum staff becoming suspicious, looking for sets of connected artifacts like the 12 talismans in Jackie Chan Adventures, figuring out the identity of a masked villain, that sort of thing, but each episode would also be able to stand on its own.

  Miscellaneous:

  I like the idea of the kids being cousins, with the smarter one living closer to the museum and thus being more familiar with it. Maybe at the beginning of the series, they end up being in the same school, which wasn’t the case previously, and thus there’s a “learning to work together with someone you dislike and becoming friends” element to it.

  As for their details… I kind of like the idea of the girl being the smart one, and, to fit with the exploration theme, maybe Hillary as her name? (As in Edmund Hillary, and maybe her older sister is named Mallory?)

  Having visited the American Museum of Natural History recently, I guess the big question in my mind is: marble or concrete? That is, older marble-and-brass museums like AMNH have their own special ambiance, as do newer concrete-and-plastic ones like the Museum of Science, but which is the aesthetic of the fictional Henry Museum?

  (For reference, this is what I mean by AMNH and marble: http:// images.nymag.com/listings/attraction/4museumofnaturalhistory .jpg

  And this is MOS and concrete: http:// 1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-P8rjtsHVs/TyGMwugCGJI/AAAAAAAAAaw/zaPqEXf_AeA/s1600/IMAG0103 .jpg )

  The inspiration for this series came from the MOS, which was an older collection moved to a new location in the 1950s, and having giving the Henry a similar history fits with the idea of the Whitfords as mid-twentieth-century, but you try to watch Night at the Museum and tell me there isn’t a certain magic to marble-and-brass even in the daytime.

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  17

  Kai D

  in May 20th, 2012 @ 16:25

  I am writing a cool story. It is called Brother. I will type it here for you:
  Brother
  By Kai D

  Chapter 1
  There was a BOOM sound that came from the other room. My brother was at work. My brother was notorious for being experimental with everythin he was given. Lately, he was into putting chemicals, plastics, and metal alloys together to form dangerous things. He had been grounded from his room for fear of him finding a way to burn the house down. His name is Morticus Andrew Dunn, or Moe for short. He is described by the word “mad” in three different ways: He’s mad when I interfere with his “world revolution solutions (notice how in this quote he tries to sound smart and important), he’s the “crazy” kind of mad, and that’s his initials, too: M.A.D.
  I found it extremely funny when he burned himself by putting dry ice into a fire. My name is Olive Diamond Dunn. My initials describe me in only one way: I am odd. I tend to mix foods together like my brother mixes chemicals. When my family hurts me I don’t cry while when my family leaves me by myself I do cry. To tell the truth, Moe and I are weird in different ways entirely.
  I am only able to type Chapter One because I don’t want to type so much.

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  17.1

  Kai D

  in May 20th, 2012 @ 16:50

  I will add Chapter 2 here:
  Chapter 2
  I’ll tell you the events that I remember most that happened to Moe and I, or should I say, from him to me:

  One of these so-called “events” happened when I was a newborn. He was 4 then, but he still had a crafty reputation. When Mom brought me through the door, he started asking for samples. He put me in a warm place in the sun and held a piece of glass over me (I still have the scar on my forehead and I look like a female look-alike of Harry Potter). He got slapped and sent to his room.
  Another one of these “events” was when I was 4, and he was eight. I loved to ride my bike all the time.
  (this is only part of Chapter 2)

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  18

  LittleBasementKitten

  in August 17th, 2012 @ 14:19

  Oh, I’d forgotten about this thread!

  When I went to summer camp a few weeks ago, I learned about this cool way of almost forcing yourself to write a story without it seeming like you are forcing yourself. It’s called “Four Windows and a Door”: I don’t know if any of you have heard of it? Anyway, it goes like this:

  First Window: pick a room and describe it as much as you can. What can be seen in it? Heard? Felt? Smelled? What is in the room? Is it dimly or brightly lit? Is there anyone inside it, or is it empty?

  Second window: pick a person in the room and describe en as much as possible. Is en male or female? What does en look like? Is en tall/short/slim/husky/fashionable/etc.? What is en wearing? Is en old or young? Alone or with friends?

  Third window: pick an object connected to your character and describe it (not its relationship to the character: that comes later) as much as possible. What is the object? What color(s) is/are it? What does it feel like? Where is it in relation to your character? Is it on their person or across the room? Is it small or large?

  Fourth window: describe the object’s relationship to your character. When did en receive this object? As a child? Did en get it from a family member or was it found on the street? Why did en keep this object?

  Door: what happens if this object is lost, stolen, or broken? This is the story’s “exit”.
  —
  I wrote a story with this outline and I rather like it. Once I have access to a computer again, I’ll post it here. I just wanted to share this with you guys in case you wanted to try it.

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  19

  Bibliophile

  in August 17th, 2012 @ 16:06

  …It’s kind of amusing, the sort of thing that comes from my keyboard when I have writers’ block about something specific but still am trying to just write, no matter what nonsense comes out. For instance, I’m trying and failing to answer the question, “Through what conservation methods/activities do you feel young adults can most meaningfully impact their immediate environment?” for a volunteer application, and in the meantime, I ended up somehow writing, ‘“But tut!” said he, the magistrate. “Of what import is that? For after all, the kangaroo was not wearing a hat.”’
  …I don’t have any more of an idea than you do about what that could mean or how it’s relevant to the question.

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  20

  LittleBasementKitten

  in September 8th, 2012 @ 08:21

  Guyyyyyyyyssssss, I need help. I had an idea for a story, in which there is a giant mechanical semi-sentient bird. Problem is, I have no idea why this bird even exists in the story universe. My first thought was “some rich kid had it built and abandoned it in a warehouse”, but I thought maybe y’all had some better ideas?

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  20.1

  Lizzie

  in September 8th, 2012 @ 14:39

  Maybe no one knows. Maybe it was found at an estate sale, and they don’t know if the previous owner made it or found it or ?

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  20.1.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in September 8th, 2012 @ 16:16

  But surely the writer should know where it came from.

  To come up with a reasonable scenario, I’d need to know more about your fictional world (and what “semi-sentient” means).

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  20.1.1.1

  LittleBasementKitten

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 05:55

  Ooh, I think I may have not chosen the right word. When I wrote “semi-sentient” I was thinking it would be like most animals, who seem to know who their owners are and respond to commands. So it wouldn’t just be this giant mechanical bird whose only thought is “CRUSH KILL DESTROY SWAG“, but it wouldn’t have a human’s capability(? Curse my lack of vocabulary!) of thinking. It would be somewhere in between.

  As for the universe…I think, based off the other bits and pieces I’ve figured out, this bird is found in an airplane hanger outside of Nameless Big City somewhere in the U.S. in the medium-distant future. Um…in my mind it’s peace time, but there could just as easily be a war going on. That’s really all I can think of, unless you wanted to know about the main character.

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  20.1.1.1.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 07:47

  That’s fine. Is there interstellar space travel, or intelligent machines (who might have built the bird for their own purposes)?

  It’s hard to imagine a practical reason why someone would want an enormous robot bird that is about as intelligent as a real bird. If it were a military weapon, it would probably be less birdlike. If it were a prototype, it probably wouldn’t be big.

  That leaves impractical reasons, like art and religion. It also raises the question of whether the bird has hidden capabilities that even it isn’t aware of — programs that are triggered only under certain conditions. Can it lay eggs? If so, what do the eggs do? Maybe they aren’t just eggs, and maybe they are what the bird is really for.

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  20.2

  bookgirl_me

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 05:42

  Was it originally meant to be sentient or mechanical?

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  20.3

  KaiYves- Curiosity Will Lead The Way!

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 09:41

  Maybe it was built as a pet and then abandoned when the owner died or moved orlost interest? So it misses its owner, and maybe it got put into storage because it was scared when its owner wasn’t there and pretended to be a statue when other people came to investigate?

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  21

  Agent Lightning

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 12:31

  From something I’m writing in my spare time:

  That night, he ran again. This time, though, he ran down the hill, and that made it better. He could fly down the hill; take great leaps and strides with his feet barely touching the ground. The houses were different, too. Some weren’t houses anymore. Some were shops and schools. Some houses had no exterior, only an interior. He was careful not to look at these houses because he knew that if he did, he’d be sucked in.
  This time there were people on the sidewalk, people he had to dodge as he flew down and down and down. There were two people there, in their mid-teens. He could hear them as he approached them, but he didn’t know what he was hearing and what he was thinking and what they were thinking. Everything just came to him in a flow of sensations.
  He heard lots of things. He heard their conversation, a nonsensical argument, the type that one would expect from a dream. And it was a dream. He knew that, but quickly forgot it again because he would only wake up, and this strange dream-reality was far better than the waking world.
  Before he could come very close, though, a new figure came towards him, and barreled into him. He wanted to keep flying down the hill, feeling lighter than air, but the girl rocketed right into him, and they entangled and fell to the sidewalk.
  It hurt, and when he hit the ground, the ground hit him, too. There was the distinct feeling of hitting the ground, which hurt much harder than a dream should have. It seemed to slam into him, and he lay for a second on the ground, telling himself it was only a dream and all this pain was imagined, which was hard when it was so real.
  “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Are you okay? Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” And the voice seemed to slam into his eardrums, vibrating and making sound. This was the most lucid dream he’d had in a while.
  He opened his eyes and discovered a girl, older than him, standing awkwardly above him, a very concerned and embarrassed look on her face. She had curly brown hair done up in a hairstyle that seemed to belong in another decade and a round figure, and was wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt. Her pale face was streaked with red, as if she’d been crying.
  Slowly, he stood up. No… it’s fine…He had to be content with thinking the words, because talking was not an option.
  “I’m so sorry… I did not mean to run into… I’m so sorry, I did not see you coming! I’m so sorry…”
  I’m fine. Really. He dusted himself off and wondered when his dreams had begun to get so detailed.
  From where he was standing , he could see the two boys from down the hill—they looked about the same age as the girl, and when they saw her, someone shouted something, but they were too far away for the words to be heard.
  “Oh, no,” gasped the strange girl, “they’re coming. I can’t let them see me… I can’t let them see me…”
  He thought he could have sworn the girl cast a wistful look at the two boys before she ran across the street and kept running. There was a lot of shrubbery and he kept having to hack his way through it, but it was easier. Normally in a dream this would have stopped him, and this time he didn’t float away on a cloud of thoughts.
  He knew this was a dream, and he decided to let the dream take its course. But strangely, he did not feel any urges. No strange dream-force floated him either way.
  The two boys had broken into a run—a few feet from him, they stopped.
  “Do you—“ asked one of them, but the boy knew he could not talk in dreams. He had tried before, and it always ended in him waking up. He reminded himself not to talk, even though he wanted to so badly.
  He had a reason to run now, and did so, running after the girl. It took a long time to catch up with her, and by the time (although time meant nothing in a dream) that he found her, he had become…exhausted. His legs were aching, and he was panting. How strange of a dream to include all these abstract sensations, rather than the strange floating feeling of being wrapped up in blankets in a bed. He tried not to think about it too much. If you knew you were in a dream, you woke up.
  The strange girl turned around. “Why did you follow me?” she asked. She was crying again.
  The boy didn’t answer. As strange as this dream was, he knew that talking wouldn’t work. It never did, and he couldn’t wake up just yet. Just in case, he opened his mouth and thought as hard as he could. But what to say? He ignored the question, hoping that the girl would ignore him and keep running. He didn’t even know where they were.
  She turned around. “Please stop following me. Please.”
  He shook his head. This was his dream. He was going to follow this character and see what she did.

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  22

  LittleBasementKitten

  in September 9th, 2012 @ 16:03

  Robert-I think there is interstellar travel, but it’s only for the very trained/rich. As for intelligent machines, that’s a good idea as well. Hidden capabilities would be an interesting mechanic to explore. If it does end up laying eggs, I have no idea what they could do other than be eggs. Maybe it senses the needs of organisms around it and lays eggs that contain things to fufil those needs?

  Kai-Ah good ideas good ideas everywhere. Maybe I can do a combination of your and Robert’s ideas.

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  23

  POSOC

  in September 12th, 2012 @ 02:12

  I think I’ve just discovered that I’m more productive when I have a clear plot outline. “Writer’s block,” 50% of the time, is me not having a clue what happens next.

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  24

  Randomosity101

  in November 7th, 2012 @ 15:47

  I’M WRITING AGAIN I’M WRITING AGAIN I’M WRITING AGAIN CAKE I MISSED THIS I’M FINALLY WRITING AGAIN THE WORDS HAVE ACCEPTED ME BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!

  Ahem. So. There was a book I started writing in freshman year (for NaNo, actually, if I remember correctly) that I never got through the beginning of. It started off as massive writer’s block, so I took a break from writing it. But when I tried to get back to writing again, I couldn’t. I already knew generally how I wanted the entire story to go, it was just the words that were the problem. When I write a story I like to let the words flow the way they will, but if I don’t have the right feeling for them they don’t flow at all. I didn’t have the right feeling for it for two years. I talked through my ideas with my friends until I knew how I wanted every aspect to go, but the words just wouldn’t work for me. Finally, today, I got the right kind of feeling back. I’m going to be sure as cake to hold on to it this time, and I WILL finish this book!!

  *sigh* It feels so good to be writing again…

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  25

  KaiYves- Curiosity Will Lead The Way!

  in November 21st, 2012 @ 17:26

  As discussed on the Random Thread, here is “Falling From The Sky”, a homage to old sci-fi B-movies and that period in the 1950s when people could get government funding for any crazy science project by claiming it had military applications, as well as an excuse to use the useless information about flying saucers I absorbed during that misspent “paranormal” phase I went through when I was seven… (As my tone should make clear, I do not believe in flying saucers, except the kind you can buy at Carvel.)

  –

  From: Agent Sphaera
  To: Agent Katmai
  Subject: “Stable Time Loop” Case Study, as requested

  Dear Katmai,

  So great to hear from you again! The case study that you requested from the History of Technological Development department—it should help you explain the concept of the “Stable Time Loop” to your discussion group, but you may also want to show the late-20th century flatfilm “The Final Countdown” in class if time permits.

  As the events and personages described in this case study are rather obscure, I’ve added explanatory footnotes and an introduction with some historical background for the benefit of your trainees.

  If there’s anything either the Department or I can do to aid your class in the future, don’t hesiate to ask!

  –

  Historical Background:

  In the middle decades of the 20th century, the town of Alamogordo, New Mexico, was the site of various experimental projects carried out by the United States Air Force, under the multiversal principle that secret and semi-secret experimental projects are best carried out in the middle of nowhere.

  One of these secret operations, in the late 1940s, was known as Project Mogul and aimed to use sensitive microphones and similar detectors attached to high-altitude balloons to detect sound waves caused by Soviet atomic testing. In early summer 1947, the controllers lost contact with one of the balloons, and it was blown around before crashing near the nearby town of Roswell.

  Locals weren’t sure what to make of the wreckage they saw the military collecting, and Project Mogul’s secrecy meant few details were released to the public until 40 years later. In the intervening period, however, this secrecy, together with a few unrelated circumstances that will be discussed later, led to wild rumors that the debris actually came from a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. This folklore and speculation turned an otherwise unremarkable incident into what contemporary experts have accurately called “one of the 20th century’s greatest non-events”.

  A little more than a decade after this Mogul accident, another high-altitude ballooning project also occurred at Alamogordo. With advances in aerospace technology soon to produce the high-flying SR-71 reconnaissance jet and the first human spaceflights, the development of high-altitude protective gear was a high priority. While the engineers developing these pressure suits and parachutes were able to obtain a lot of useful data from wind tunnels and vacuum chambers located on the ground, the only real place to test such gear was in the upper atmosphere itself.

  In 1959 and 1960, then-Captain Joseph W. Kittinger made three balloon ascensions into the mid-levels of the stratosphere, eventually as high as 30.6 kilometers (19 miles) up. Impressive as these flights, higher in the atmosphere than anyone had ever traveled before, were on their own, their most remarkable aspect was that upon reaching these altitudes, Kittinger JUMPED from his balloon’s gondola, reached speeds of over 960 kilometers per hour (600 miles per hour) in free-fall, and parachuted safely back to Earth. The well-known space pioneers of the following decades all owed a tremendous debt to these dramatic tests of protective equipment.

  (Those of you who have undergone emergency orbital egress training may be familiar with Colonel Kittinger’s name through the “Kittinger Escape Protocol”, or KEP, drills named in his honor, and those who spacedive recreationally may have already seen the still-amazing footage and still images of these Project Excelsior test flights during your certification classes. But then, I don’t even know if they teach Cousteau and Gagnan in sub-aqua classes anymore. We neglect these pioneers to our own shame…)

  These Excelsior experiments set a record for the highest-altitude parachute jump that would stand for 52 years, until October 14, 2012. With the guidance of Colonel Kittinger, then 84 years old, Felix Baumgartner of Austria (those who have taken Xavier’s class may be familiar with his Timeline 5417 counterpart) set a new record by jumping from 38.6 kilometers (24 miles) up and became the first human to travel faster than the speed of sound without a vehicle. This project was known as Red Bull Stratos, after its principal sponsor, a soft-drink manufacturer of the period. (As with Calbraith Rodgers’ Vin Fiz Flyer a century before, this long-defunct company is today almost exclusively remembered for its sponsorship of this endeavor.) Mr. Baumgartner would remain the record holder until—oh, but I’m rambling, that’s not really relevant to this story…

  All of the above events occurred both in the Prime Reality and in Timeline 3042. The principal difference, however, was that in 3042’s 2012, a random chrono-vortex happened to form in the skies over New Mexico, not too far from the Stratos launch site. We begin with a fascinating historical document, a transcript of contemporary online commentary on the incident…

  ——————————————————-

  Falling from the Sky

  Universe 3042, October 21, 2012

  AstroTalk Forum with the AntiPseudoAstronomy and Cosmos Daily Forum

  Currently viewing: Space Exploration -> Baumgartner 120,000 ft Parachute Jump Attempt Today

  Mr. Vermeer:

  Have they found that balloon yet? It’s been a week.

  DodoDreamer:

  Not yet, the latest news reports say they’re still looking. Guess it really is a whole lot of desert to search.

  Bastion:

  I just hope it didn’t blow all the way to the Pacific! Then they’d never find it, and it’d just add to the floating garbage piles. Ick.

  Lingo-Bingo:

  What matters is that the jump itself was successful, although I’d really love to see the capsule in a museum someday. Kind of ironic that something NOT falling from the sky in Roswell is news, I guess…

  Bastion:

  Ha, maybe it went through a wormhole!

  DodoDreamer:

  That’s just silly, I hope you’re not seriously suggesting that’s what happened.

  –

  July 12, 1947, Alamogordo Army Air Field, New Mexico

  Finchley took a deep breath and lifted his garrison cap to wipe away the sweat. The scenario he found himself in was unenviable, to say the least. A Mogul spy balloon apparently downed, with plastic shreds strewn across the countryside being found by dozens of civilians, and the papers already jumping on it. His whole department was in for it, there was no denying that.

  “Sir!” A junior officer came running in, out-of-breath and eyes wide.

  “Yes?” Finchley turned to face him, worried about what further calamity had managed to occur in the course of the debris recovery. Nothing was ever so bad, he was quickly learning, that it couldn’t get worse.

  “Sir, we think you should come look at this, the recovery team just brought it in to hangar 5.”

  “What are you talking about? What did they bring in?”

  “That’s what we don’t know, sir. The recovery team found it, but none of us know what it could possibly be.” The officer responded.

  Finchley chuckled slightly and followed the officer back to the hangar. Some low-level recovery worker who didn’t know about Project Mogul probably had found the unit’s detectors and was baffled by them. Heck, even he sometimes suspected those science boys made their gadgets weird-looking on purpose, just to see how folks like him reacted…

  “It looks like some kind of vehicle, sir, but beyond that, we haven’t the foggiest–” The man pushed open the door, and Finchley followed, the grin suddenly disappearing from his face as he beheld the large silver object in the center of the hangar.

  The body of the thing was cylindrical and slightly tapered so that it was thinner at the top than the bottom. Atop the cylinder, there was a cone shape, further tapering inward, and then another, much shorter, cylinder-shaped area at the top. Two railings projected from one side, surrounding a sort of step, but other than that, the gumdrop-shaped object was perfectly streamlined. A porthole was visible along one side. Between the railings, there was an opened door that appeared to lead to the craft’s interior, but it was too dark inside for Finchley to make out anything. [1]

  This was no Mogul sensor array. In fact, it looked like no aircraft Finchley had ever seen before. Maybe it was a lost payload from White Sands? [2] He examined the markings visible on the silver surface in the hopes of getting a clue. The words “MISSION TO THE EDGE OF SPACE” beneath the porthole certainly seemed to support that idea.

  The writing on it was certainly English and in the Roman alphabet, suggesting that it was at least one of theirs and not something made by the Russians. The characters “N502FB” were painted on the top cylinder in black, probably some sort of identification number. An odd-looking black-and-gray striped lozenge pattern, like a spear point, appeared several times across the surface. Above the porthole, an image of two charging bulls, colored red, facing each other in front of a yellow circle appeared below the spear point.

  A rising sun? Perhaps it was Japanese? But the text below it was in English, if oddly punctuated and capitalized: “RedBull STRATOS”. (Well, that last part sounded Greek, actually…)

  Those words appeared again in the black-and-caution-striped band along the object’s bottom, only this time run together and framed by periods and strange three-letter combinations: “WWW” and “COM”. They must be acronyms for something, Finchley thought, but what? Some sort of project even more secret than Mogul, but definitely something created by their side—after all, who else would write in English? And who else would have this kind of technology?

  [1] Photographs of the “Stratos” capsule are included here for reference: http: //redbullstratos . tumblr . com/post/34000276584/the-red-bull-stratos-capsule-is-back-home-at-sage

  [2] White Sands Missile Range, also located in New Mexico, was the site of many pioneering rocketry experiments during this period.

  –

  December 2, 1955, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico

  Finchley shifted in his seat, trying to overhear the conversations outside the room’s door. The General had told him that he’d found what might be a clue towards the origin of the strange capsule. Nearly a blasted decade, within which time the base’s name had been changed, and the darn thing was only more mysterious than the day they’d found it.

  After a full investigation, no match had been found for the object within any known civilian or military project. There was no aircraft in the country registered with the number that appeared at the capsule’s top. A Soviet origin still could not be ruled out, but the English writing on the outside seemed to suggest otherwise. Which left Finchley at a dead end when it came to pondering its origins.

  The General stepped inside, followed by a thin, excited-looking man with limp blond hair.

  “Finchley, this is Dr. Peterson, one of Colonel Stapp’s people over in the high-g research department. [1] ‘Thinks he might have some sort of hypothesis about what that capsule of yours was used for.”

  Dr. Peterson adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses with shaking hands and began to speak.

  “Well, as the recovery teams made clear, the object was attached to a large piece of polyethylene film when it was found, and that material appears to match other pieces found in the area that we were able to distinguish from the Mogul debris. So, it seems to me that the object in question is a balloon gondola. And judging from its thickness and airtight qualities, one that was intended to be used very high in the atmosphere indeed.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s been suggested before. But if it was made to be airtight, why was the door wide open when we found it?” Finchley questioned, unimpressed.

  “Oh, well, that’s easy—the man inside parachuted out. But it wasn’t an accident [2]—oh no–that hatch is DESIGNED to be opened from within, and with that step and handrails, and the pressurization system, the whole capsule is ARRANGED to help a passenger jump out.”

  “But he’d be parachuting from, from the STRATOSPHERE!”

  “As strange as it may sound, it appears to be physically possible, Sir. Our ‘High-Dive’ tests with dummies [3] have confirmed that a man ought to be able to parachute from such an altitude and land safely with a proper stabilizing parachute and a protective suit. And according to our rocket-sled tests, the g-forces involved should be survivable.”

  “But you haven’t done so yet—so who do you suppose did this? And why?”

  “Well, Sir, I don’t know much, beyond their name and insignia, but I believe it’s some secret extra-governmental organization, and they call themselves—STRATOS. And their purpose, well, to put it simply, sir—invasion.”

  “Invasion?” Finchley raised his eyebrows.

  “By using these high-altitude balloons, they can insert paratroopers from near-space without our being aware of it. Balloons can travel vast distances on upper-atmospheric currents—those attack balloons used by the Japanese made it all the way to our West Coast. [4] Think of it—all of these strange sightings these past few years, those vehicles Mr. Arnold saw, nobody knows what it is. [5] Well, I think it’s them—I think it’s STRATOS, deploying more of these spies and saboteurs. They’re examining our defenses, three years ago they buzzed Washington. [6] And I think they mean to take us over.” Dr. Peterson declared, eyes wide.

  “An invasion from space…” This man was an engineer? That was just the sort of nonsense nuts had been spouting to the press since the “flying saucer” flap had started.

  “NEAR-space, sir. About twenty or so miles high in our atmosphere, but still far short of the boundary of space. [7] And these aren’t Martians—whoever they are, they’re human, but they must have an impressive array of scientific minds working for them. They’re good.”

  “Rogue scientists, you say?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But you say you’ve done tests with dummies, you must not be too far from this near-space parachuting yourself, right?” The General cut in. “If we fully funded your project, how long would it take for us to match the capability you say they have?”

  Dr. Peterson bit his lip as he tried to think.

  “Three, four years, sir.” He answered.

  “Very well. When you return to your division, you are to tell them that we want them to accelerate the ‘High-Dive’ program and move to manned tests as soon as possible. Finchley here will oversee your progress, just as he’s been handling all of our other investigations related to the capsule.”

  “Yes, sir.” Peterson answered.

  “War from near-space… sounds like science fiction.” Finchley muttered.

  “What would your grandfather have said if you told him someday we’d be fighting with supersonic jet fighters and atom-powered subs? If you’ve seen what they’re doing at White Sands and at the Eastern Test Range [8], I really don’t think it sounds that far-fetched, sir. Personally, I think we’ll find the edge of our atmosphere’s no greater obstacle than the sound barrier was.”

  “Alright then, very well, you’re dismissed.” The General said, showing Dr. Peterson the door, while rolling his eyes.

  [1] Dr. John Paul Stapp (1910-1998), a pioneering aeromedical researcher, was studying the effects of high g-forces on the human body at Alamogordo during this period, often by strapping himself to a rocket-propelled sled on rails. Dr. Stapp’s work led to improved ejection systems for pilots. Later, he became an advocate for automotive safety and seatbelt use. Together, these accomplishments saved millions of lives. For that reason, Dr. Stapp is a prime example of what is known to ITA agents as a “Stagehand”—an individual who would ordinarily attract little attention, but whose absence from the timeline has far-reaching effects.

  [2] EMERGENCY egress from a damaged stratospheric balloon had been demonstrated at far lower altitudes in 1934 by Albert Stevens, Orvil Anderson, and William E. Kepner, the crew of the National Geographic Society’s “Explorer I” balloon.

  [3] Project High-Dive, the precursor to Project Excelsior, released crash-test dummies equipped with parachutes from aircraft and balloons to simulate what humans would experience. The recovery of these sometimes-mangled dummies from the deserts around Roswell led to the later claims that the Air Force had discovered and examined alien bodies in the area.

  [4] During World War II, Japan used incendiary bombs attached to balloons to attack the United States. These efforts were largely unsuccessful, although one detonation did kill six unfortunate picnickers in Oregon. A summary of this “Project Fu-Go” can be found in the September 2002 issue of CRICKET magazine.

  [5] Kenneth Arnold was a private pilot whose 1947 report of a UFO sighting gave rise to the term “flying saucers” and started a popular wave of hysteria about such “saucers” that lasted for much of the next two decades. Incidentally, he did not describe the objects he saw as saucer-shaped, but only said that they moved “like saucers skipping across water”.

  [6] A 1953 event that occurred at the height of this flying saucer craze. A comic-book account of it was recorded by the United States National Archives and can be viewed here: http:// research . archives . gov/description/595553

  [7] The boundary of space with regards to Earth’s atmosphere is defined officially as 62 miles or 100 kilometers above sea level.

  [8] The Eastern Test Range is an older name for the spaceport at Cape Canaveral, which has also been called by several other names throughout its long history.

  –

  September 13, 1960, Washington DC

  “Thank you for your report, Captain.” The slim, redheaded man standing before the panel smiled slightly and looked downwards, unaccustomed to such attention.

  Finchley felt a tap on his shoulder. The General stood behind him, with a grim expression on his face.

  “Finchley, I want you to come outside for a minute.”

  Finchley complied, following the General into the hallway and closing the door behind him. He could still faintly hear the sound of people moving about in the room, stepping forward to shake hands with the presenter.

  “Look, Finchley, what I have to say isn’t good news at all, but I figured it was best you hear it from me and not the review board.”

  No, it certainly couldn’t be good news then, Finchley thought, not if it involved the review board.

  “These projects of yours have made our service the laughingstock of the Pentagon.” The General said, angrily, “You’ve sent people to the South Pole [1] and the deepest bottom of the sea [2], your Blue Book folks have been combing the globe [3], all looking for this nefarious ‘STRATOS’ organization. You tracked down some random family in Austria and harassed them about their genealogy, asking about a name none of them had ever heard. [4] You’ve spent millions. And despite all of that, you haven’t discovered one shred of proof that this group even exists, let alone that it’s trying to conquer the world.”

  Finchley swallowed hard.

  “That man in there risked his life with an untested parachute because of an object he doesn’t know we found thirteen years ago because it’s classified beyond his clearance. An object the review board thinks is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. And you heard his report—the system’s just too impractical to be used as a method of troop deployment, too dependent on the weather, too risky. They say we’d need forty, fifty years of development to make it work, ever. Now that his test jumps are done, the brass is shutting down Excelsior, shutting down this whole program of investigations inspired by that blasted capsule, and sending it to the scrapyard to be melted down.”

  “But, but, what about—“

  “The personnel will all be reassigned. Yourself included.”

  “Reassigned?!?”

  “Finchley, with how fed-up the brass is with these kooky projects of yours, you’re lucky to still be wearing that uniform. But our scientists are in love with you because of all the supplementary data they gained in the course of the investigations, so you’re staying. In fact, you’re being appointed to our Arctic Research Department. You leave for Thule in a week.” [5]

  “Thule? GREENLAND?”

  “Don’t thank me, thank the scientists. They’re the only ones who’re coming out of this whole boondoggle with anything besides headaches. ‘Fellow from Lockheed darn near talked my ear off this morning about how the Excelsior data will help them save folks in high-altitude emergency ejections… but as for Dr. Peterson’s fantastic notions, I suspect Captain Kittinger will be the last man to jump out of a perfectly good balloon at THAT altitude for the foreseeable future…”

  White-faced, Finchley had no strength to reply. *Foreseeable future, that’s a laugh. This certainly wasn’t what I foresaw when I woke up this morning!* He angrily thought.

  “And as for you, I’d recommend buying some warm socks.”

  [1] Several military-supported Antarctic expeditions occurred during the 1950s. In 1956, the first permanent research base at the South Pole was established, eventually to grow into today’s Amundsen-Scott City.

  [2] In January of 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, aboard the Bathyscaphe Trieste, made the first dive to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the Earth’s oceans. (This is the source of the name of the Trieste Base located at Challenger Deep in Timelines 1305 and 10116.) Interestingly enough, both this “Project Nekton” and the Project Excelsior jumps occurred in 1960 and would not be repeated until 2012.

  [3] The flying saucer craze prompted the Air Force to conduct an investigation known as Project Blue Book. In 1969, they concluded that flying saucer sightings were not evidence of extraterrestrial visitation or any threats to national security and that investigating them had had been a WOMBAT.

  [4] Mr. Baumgartner would not be born until 9 years later. However, now that his father had heard a name he thought sounded interesting…

  [5] Thule Air Base was an installation in Greenland connected with polar research during this era.

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  25.1

  KaiYves

  in January 28th, 2013 @ 08:34

  This really slipped under the radar, I guess because I posted it on the same day Jade posted her story.

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  Jadestone

  in November 21st, 2012 @ 22:59

  HELLO

  IT IS DONE

  *********************************************

  [Since the formatting didn’t survive in the post, we’ve created a Google doc for “The Case of the Calcite Crew.”]

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  26.1

  Jadestone

  in November 21st, 2012 @ 23:07

  WAH

  LINE BREAKS FORMATTING DIED

  I FORGOT ABOUT THAT

  ALAS

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  26.2

  Choklit Orange

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 01:01

  GENIUS

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  26.3

  Jadestone

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 01:15

  Thank you so much!

  A few notes: This assignment was an Independent Data Analysis. That’s why the boss was named Ida.

  “Billy,” or “William D. Nesse”, is the author of my textbook. I put him in for the places where I looked things up in it. So he’s an anthropomorphized mineralogy book.

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  Dodecahedron

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 09:02

  This is fantastic, I love the quotes at the beginning XD

  however I have this comment about word choice in one small part:
  “If there’s one resource I know I can always rely on for discrete information, it’s my buddy Billy. ”
  I’m not sure if you mean quantized/discrete information, or subtly acquired/discreet information. Either might work, but “discreet” is more of a mystery novel thing to say, and “discrete” is more of a science thing to say.
  and a small typo: “Aallastonite,”

  Otherwise this was perfect in every way.

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  Jadestone

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 17:49

  Thanks for catching that typo!!

  And ahaha I wasn’t sure anyone would catch the discrete/discreet thing!! I did in fact mean discrete, as our textbook is basically all charts and tables and graphs and mineral definitions. But I was definitely trying to play off the mystery-feel of “discreet.”

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  26.3.1.1.1

  Dodecahedron

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 19:27

  Discrete/discreet is my favorite set of words that sound the same!! Well chosen

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  26.4

  KaiYves

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 09:03

  That was so great, Jade. I loved it, and I learned a lot!

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  26.5

  Midnight Fiddler

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 09:35

  This is the BEST THING.
  Would you mind if I sent it to my geology professor? Because I have a feeling he’d absolutely adore it.

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  26.6

  Cat's Meow

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 12:56

  This was really fun to read, Jade! Thank you for sharing!

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  26.7

  Selenium the Quafflebird

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 14:25

  Jade, this is excellent, well done!

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  26.8

  Agent Hippie

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 19:24

  I loved reading this! You’re an excellent writer.

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  26.9

  Maths Lover ♥

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 19:38

  I really like it!

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  26.10

  Agent Lightning

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 20:58

  This is great, Jadestone! *applauds*

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  Jadestone

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 21:05

  Thanks everyone! And Fiddler, yes, go right ahead! You should put my real name in there though, for real-life people things.

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  27.1

  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in November 22nd, 2012 @ 21:28

  Buh buh but we all know your real real name is Jadestone.

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  27.1.1

  Jadestone

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 00:31

  Yes but colleges wanted something they call a “last name” (last in what?) so I made up a pseudonym to use in the Outside

  (this way they can’t track my progress in world domination)

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  27.1.1.1

  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 00:43

  Okay, that makes sense. I feel much better now. Good thinking, Agent Optics.

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  27.1.1.1.1

  Randomosity101

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 16:40

  Agent… Optics? How many names does she have?? I thought she was Agent Space Squid!

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  27.1.1.1.1.1

  Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 17:19

  She has many guises. It’s what makes her so good at her job.

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  27.1.1.1.1.1.1

  Jadestone

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 17:46

  *vanishes with much swirling of her cloak*

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  27.1.1.1.1.1.2

  Randomosity101

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 17:59

  I suppose it must.

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  27.1.1.1.1.1.2.1

  &

  in November 24th, 2012 @ 16:54

  ( For the record, my first name is Agent, and my last is Kool-Aid.)

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  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 16:37

  uh… do i have your permmmission to write out a chapter of a novel i am writing here? *N00b unsureness* *N00b unsureness*

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  28.1

  Jadestone

  in November 23rd, 2012 @ 17:46

  of course! This is exactly the place for that sort of thing

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  28.1.1

  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in November 24th, 2012 @ 08:57

  ok i’ll get working on it. this is pretty much the first one i wrote… like, ever so i might be bad.
  hopefully my keyboard won’t die or glitch like it did before.

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  28.1.1.1

  Jadestone

  in November 24th, 2012 @ 22:51

  That’s okay! Museblog was where I first started writing (REALLY TERRIBLE) poetry I’d done stories before MB, but even with those I’ve gotten a lot better since the first things I posted on here.

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  29

  Midnight Fiddler

  in November 27th, 2012 @ 22:22

  Sometimes out of the blue come snippets of things that I really want to put in a context and then unleash. But then as the little thing rattles around in my head persistently, I can’t come up with anything I’d like to frame it with that goes quite well enough.
  It’s terribly vexing and it won’t leave me alone.

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  POSOC

  in December 2nd, 2012 @ 22:43

  Now that NaNo’s over, I think I’ll get back to work on the Radioactive Steamship Pirates story. The characterization is kind of weak as it stands, and the plot’s only half-finished. But that can be improved.

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  31

  LittleBasementKitten

  in December 13th, 2012 @ 16:09

  So, I’m sort-of kind-of writing a medium-sized story, and I have a question about word choice in one of my sentences. The story is about a fairly old car (1949 Chrysler) that is for Some Reason self-aware, and it’s been in this car museum in Florida for the past thirty years. It was originally taken off the road after a bad accident which killed its first owner five years after it was first made. My question is about this sentence:

  “Judge [the car] had gone over the accident exactly 1,607 times in his head in the fifty-eight years he had been off the road: twenty-seven in the impound lot, one getting ‘fixed,’ and thirty in the showroom of the museum.”

  After the colon, is it clear enough that the car is talking about the number of years it’s been off the road and not the number of times it’s gone over the accident? And if it isn’t, is there any way I can make it clearer?

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  31.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in December 13th, 2012 @ 16:51

  I think it’s ambiguous enough to warrant a little signposting. How about adding another “years” after “twenty-seven”?

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  31.1.1

  LittleBasementKitten

  in December 13th, 2012 @ 17:11

  That’s what I was considering, but I was a little worried it would sound a tad repetitive. But I’d rather sound repetitive than ambiguous. Thanks Robert!

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  Kittymine, OSW

  in December 28th, 2012 @ 12:45

  Below is a short story I wrote as a submission for the Literary Journal that my college puts out. I don’t know if it will be selected for publication, but it was fun to write.

  A Whimsical Repast
  The auditorium was filled with school children happily eating lunch at round stone tables. The ceiling was glass and ivy climbed the walls. Bushes dotted the room. Instead of linoleum, the floor was dirt and mulch. One small kindergartener with curly brown hair smiled mischievously at her classmates, her green eyes twinkling. She pulled a green felt Robin Hood hat out of her backpack and placed it on her head. The entire table of six year olds giggled. The laughter spread as one by one, every child put on identical felt hats, pulled from bags or lunchboxes or even thin air. The teachers would have been trying to stop the chaos, but they had all turned into trees. Birds began to chirp as sweet music wound through the air, colliding with the laughter to form a lavender display of color.

  The curly-top kindergartener shrieked with joy and leaped into the air, gliding aloft far longer than was natural, and landed on a table top across the room. She was barefoot; they all were. Laughing, she ran like a kite at the wall of the auditorium, intending to bounce off it, but it was no longer solid. Her surroundings seemed to gray and blur as she passed through and then she was in a metal box with a black carpeted floor. A panel of numbered buttons was on one wall. She began to shake with fright as the box plummeted down, down, down. It came to a stop and the chrome door slid open. Before her stood a man; she had never seen a man before. He was wearing a white lab coat and a surgical mask and he reeked of disinfectant. Behind him stood some of the older children, but their hats had turned blood red and they wore steel-toed military boots. She screamed but on one heard her. The tall man in white held her in a vice-like grip and stung her arm with a needle, filling her veins with a crystal fluid that drained the strength from her body. She slid to the floor, limp and helpless. The other children crowded around, taunting and chanting poisonous words. She began to sob, tears pooling around her body, the water growing and spreading, reflecting the harsh white lights of the ceiling. She seemed to melt, sinking into the pool of tears as darkness hovered at the edge of her vision.

  She sank into the pool of tears and her surroundings blurred again. Now she was swimming in the ocean, the summer sun warming her, touching her wet curls with gold. She felt free and blissfully alive. Dolphins and porpoises cavorted beside her; the sea spray glistened like diamonds suspended in the air. She grabbed a proffered fin and rode the dolphin to an island of pure white sand. The sand was hard and crackled like paper when you walked on it. In the center was a box made of chocolate filled with finger paints and glitter. The little kindergartener began to paint, her face serious and determined. A gooey rainbow took shape. She sprinkled it with silver glitter and backed away to survey her handiwork. The giant rainbow in the sand peeled away from the ground and became a path leading upward into the sky. Grinning, the little girl ran up and up and up until she came to rest on a spongy surface that smelled like fresh rye bread. She looked across a river of peanut butter and jelly to see an identical spongy shore on the other side. Mustering all of her remaining strength, she jumped high into the air, cartwheeling and landing with a soft bump on the wooden seat of a school desk. The classroom was decorated in cool shades of green with pictures covering the walls. Her teacher presided over the class from a five-wheeled throne, bestowing kind smiles on every child. The curly haired kindergartener sighed contentedly, opened her lunchbox, and tucked into her sandwich. Inside her backpack, her green felt hat smiled.

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  33

  Catwings/LittleDancingIrishGirl

  in January 4th, 2013 @ 11:25

  um… can i post a long warrior cats story?

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  33.1

  Robert Coontz (Administrator)

  in January 4th, 2013 @ 11:37

  I don’t see why not. But it will be more readable if you double-space between paragraphs.

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  34

  Vendaval

  in January 27th, 2013 @ 20:34

  Cold Storage

  I like to read to them, when I’ve got stuck. You gotta to pipe up to hear your words over the constant hum of the refrigeration units, but that’s how they say Socrates got so good at talking, ain’t it? Socrates shouts at seashells as he susses out Sophia down by the seashore. Anyway, I doubt they could hear me even if they were alive, the chambers are insulated so thick to keep the cold in. Brushed steel covered in whispers of frost. They look peaceful, perfect and still; but even angels have wicked schemes, you know? I know I’d sure get bored of an endless sleep on the tundra, so I figure the least I can do is give them a little entertainment, something a little wicked to stave off resentment. You see, everyone’s got a cure for writer’s block, and this is mine: I read detective stories to the frozen dead.

  I fell into the job of cryoclerk mainly by accident, as I find most things do if you don’t think on them too much. I’d been in town for Frozen Dead Guy Day, the finest party held in Nederland, CO (pop.1,470) all year, wandering the streets and checking out the sights. Just the usual for the first day in a new town, figuring out where to sleep, what to do, how does Nederland (elev. 8,228 ft) work? So I’m strolling around down by the reservoir just minding my own business when I duck into a little shed to, uh, take care of business. But to this day I still maintain that it wasn’t my fault, anyone woulda figured it was a port-a-potty, with a star on the door and all. Anyways, my pants are down and the next thing I know I swear I’m making eye contact with every single resident of the town- the walls have fallen and there’s a man orating “…representing the TuffShed brand, it’s The Frozen Dead: the beautiful! the talented! the… Can I help you, son?” To which there was only one response, of course. “Thank you for the job offer, sir. I won’t let you down.”

  But that’s the how of it, not the why. Why would a young man give up the open road for a small apartment and the privilege of watching meat popsicles 8 hours a day? Well, if it weren’t here I’d be teaching English in Saudi Arabia, waking up at 5:56 AM to the azan and conspicuously not drinking whiskey, or counting people on subway cars at 4 AM like that guy John, from that Band of Giants? Anyway, here the hours aren’t too bad, and -if you can keep a secret- I keep a flask of bourbon in the bottom drawer. I figure there are two types of people who’ll take dull jobs just so they can try to get themselves other jobs so they can enjoy their lives- artists, and Americans. I happen to be both, which I can only figure means I’m gonna make it twice as big. As Steinbeck said, we’re a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and as Aristotle said, hope is a waking dream. I’m dreaming in this walk-in freezer to write the crime thriller detective mystery of the century.

  Things got off to a rocky start, the novel being a new medium to me. My hitchhiking out west had favored the single scroll stream of consciousness approach, a torrent arcing across page and finger unedited unless editing was exactly what it needed, straight from the mind but what is the mind but raw emotion and thought shaped by image do we not shape the world when we shape ourselves truly language is the miracle of life! I thought some Dada poetry might ease the transition into longer and more structured writing, as well as help me understand my new employers. I have a theory (one of many, mind you) that the best way to get to know a new organization, whether it be company or religion, is to cut all the words out of the first piece of literature they give you and mix ’em up in a hat. Then you pull words out at random, writing a poem. Mizar Corp. had given me Cryonics: Are You Misinformed? The poem’s taped on Mr. Venturis’ chamber at the moment, but I can’t imagine he minds much.

  Cell Death
  can be when dead and
  effort technology that can theoretically to been
  lessons molecular If chemistry life
  for freezing) capable new protect the
  beyond nanomedicine disorganized case are
  science temperatures sufficient in chemistry which medical

  author’s note: this piece is unfinished. if anyone wants to continue it, please do! i would hope to see phrases like “cold blooded killer” “freeze!” “This one’s for you, Walt!” “the stiffs,” and “chill” used appropriately. actually, the title could be Chill Stiffs, or maybe they’re ice zombies and the title is Cold Blooded Killers.
  on a technical note, I am well aware that actual cryonic storage chambers don’t hum as they require no electricity at all, only liquid nitrogen, but i think it adds ambiance. oh man, what if he’s hearing The Hum and just figures it’s the refrigerators or the festival but it’s actually far more Sinister.

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