Category: fiction

Sunday

She emerged from the bedroom right as he finished making his coffee. He was always the early riser, but he required far less sleep than her.

Smiling widely, she took a deep breath. “Oh, what a great smell.” As he glanced at his hands, mug of coffee in the left, and a plate of waffles with butter and syrup on the right, she clarified, “Not the waffles. I don’t smell them at all. I just smell coffee. It smells wonderful.”

His response wasn’t deep. He was already working on his yard and garden in his mind. Although the temperature was only fifty-one at this early hour, a strong sun, unfettered in its warmth or sunshine by seasons or clouds, was rising. He was eager to get out there and get dirty.

The point for him was that she seemed okay, and in good spirits, something important in later introspection. Eating and finishing his coffee, he went outside and completed hours of yard work, interrupted only with a few breaks to pee, drink water and wipe away sweat. He loved this part of his week, shaping the yard, trimming the bushes, weeding, pouring more decorative bark and spreading it out. The end results pleased him with tangible, visible evidence that his efforts achieved something, a result that eluded him in most other activities in life.

Going into the house, he made lunch and then went looking for her to talk about the yard and thoughts that had come to him while he was out there. He found her asleep in a recliner with a throw covering her. Although the house thermostat reported the temperature was seventy-one, she had a space heater on by her feet. The room was frighteningly hot to him.

“Hey,” he said, not sure how loud to speak or what to say.

Her eyes fluttered open. Her mouth was slack. Drool glistened out of one corner and down her chin. She remained in her pajamas. “Are you alright?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. “I’m cold.”

“Can I do anything? Get you anything? Water? Juice, or tea?”

She shook her head once in the barest movement possible.

“Are you sick?”

Opening her eyes a little, she looked at him and nodded.

“What is it?”

“Tired,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

Frowning, he returned to the kitchen and cleaned his lunch dishes, worrying about what was happening to her. He wanted to make sense of her condition. He’d heard the vacuum cleaner running while he was working outside. He’d looked through the window once and saw her dusting in the living room. It didn’t make sense. Several medications were prescribed for her to cope with her auto-immune disease. Perhaps one of these were suddenly affecting her. That was the hopeful aspect. Worse was that the disease had taken the drastic negative turn they’d always feared.

He heard her shamble down the hall. The bathroom door closed. Bath water began running. He listened, thinking about her and the situation, and then sat at the breakfast table and wondered, what would he do if she was gone?

***

Written in a dream, remembered in the morning.

0

Flight

Bruce learned he could fly when he scared his family with his first lift-off at his second birthday party. General excitement and amazement, with shadows of fears, greeted his brief zooms over the picnic table, tomato plants, and aging white back yard fence.

He didn’t remember the flight. He remembered Granny McCune taking him by the hand and speaking to him. No words were recalled but her face, white and softly folded, small — one of the reasons he enjoyed her so much was her small stature, like an flowery elf, he’d decided, something he’d never shared with anyone — remained sharply focused in his mind.

Flying, itself, though, he forgot all about that. He was a little boy in America, he was growing, going to school and learning a lot. Nobody else flew and no one encouraged him to fly, so he forgot. Granny McCune, may she rest in peace, died when he was five. He didn’t know why. Then, there’s a memory gap, it seemed like, between her death and funeral when he was five, until he was living in Chicago when he was eight.

Even as an adult, he didn’t understand why they were living in Chicago. They were staying with aunts and uncles but he didn’t know why. By then, he had a little sister, as he always called her, instead of younger sister, to go along with his big, older sister. He was the only boy and a middle child. Dad was away often. He didn’t know what his Dad did then.

While in Chicago, he shared a bedroom with a cousin, Clarence, who was fourteen. The room was small, and he slept on a little cot beside Clarence’s twin bed. Keeping his curiosity to himself, he wondered where Clarence’s other twin bed was, because, he figured, if it was a twin, there must be two, right? Yes, that’s what he thought.

Clarence was a big baseball fan, a big fan. Wearing a Cubs hat and a pitcher’s mitt and holding a baseball, he listened to the games on a large Philco transistor radio in his room whenever he could. He wanted to be a major league pitcher, like Don Cardwell, who’d just pitched a no-hitter for the Cubs, but even then, while pitching for a Little League team (who were unfortunately, the Pirates), he knew he didn’t have it. He tried, and was better than most, but something inside him told him that he couldn’t do it, he told his little nephew without rancor or sadness, but rather the casual, matter-of-fact peculiarity with which the family processed victories, defeats, deaths, weddings and holidays.

Being an older American male and encouraged by his Mom, and Bruce’s mother, his Aunt Linda (who, shockingly, Clarence found attractive, which disturbed him because she was Mom’s sister), Clarence became a mentor to his little cousin, teaching him to play catch. Bruce showed a remarkable natural ability for catching the ball. Throwing was another matter, but throw that ball anywhere and he’d race and jump for it.

Naturally, doing one running and jumping effort, Bruce took off.

He’d not really noticed that he’d done it. To him, it was about getting the ball. Clarence would have put it down to an amazing jump, except Bruce continued hovering, pleased with his catch and then focusing on throwing the ball accurately to Clarence.

Catching the ball, Clarence watched Bruce land and then walked to him. “How’d you do that?”

Not understanding the object of the question, Bruce shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was his stock answer. Other children wanted to know how he remembered things so easily and effortlessly. He didn’t know and didn’t want to explain. He felt the same about whatever it was that Clarence was asking him about.

“Do you know what you just did?” Clarence asked.

Certainly, Bruce understood what he’d just did, he caught the ball. That seemed so obvious, he shrugged. He was beginning to wonder if he was in trouble.

Looking around the yard like he was worried about a wild animal getting him — something Bruce understood because his Mom always warned him to be careful, “And don’t let the wild animals get you,” — Clarence said, “We’d better go inside.”

Clearly, he’d done something wrong. Bruce said. “Can’t we catch a little longer?” Why couldn’t that be done? Only darkness, the threat of wild animals, and an adult’s summons or admonition curtailed his activities. This seemed very arbitrary of Clarence, a word Bruce had just learned. He hoped he was using it correctly.

“No, I’m just thirsty,” Clarence said vaguely in what Bruce recognized was a lie. However, if Clarence was going to lie, that’s the way it was going to be, because Clarence was older than him. So, shrug, oh, well.

That night, there was an intense meeting in the dining room involving Clarence and all the adults. After that, Bruce’s Mom and Aunt Jean sat Bruce down and sat opposite him in a way that told him, This Is Serious. “Honey,” his Mom said, touching his cheek in the manner that she did, which irritated him. Pulling back and grimacing, he pushed her hand away and said, “Stop it. You’re always touching me.”

Aunt Jean and his Mom looked at each other. “He doesn’t like being touched,” his Mom said. Aunt Jean nodded. His Mom explained to Bruce, with interruptions and assistance from his Aunt Jean, that he should not fly, because others couldn’t fly, and that would scare them. He didn’t understand why they’d be scared of that, because he wouldn’t do anything to anyone, and pestered her about that point with impatient questions, until she finally said, “I know, I know, Bruce. Just promise me that you’ll never fly again, okay?”

“I promise,” Bruce answered. He wasn’t happy. In bed later, he thought it all over. He understood he’d flown without trying. That’s why Clarence stopped playing catch, he figured. Clarence did have a look on his face. He didn’t look afraid, but that must have been it. He thought he’d apologize to Clarence the next day but a family emergency interrupted.

It took some time for him to understand what had happened, years, really, but his Dad had been killed in a car accident in Indianapolis. His flight and his cousin’s reaction fused with his promise to his Mom, and his Dad’s death into a defining core of his future behavior.

For a long time, Bruce didn’t fly. He didn’t tell anyone he could fly. He went to college, met girls, had sex, was drunk a few times, and sick sometimes, and smoked joints five or six times, but he never told anyone he could fly, and he never flew. He pursued a normal, flightless life of graduating college, finding employment, marrying, becoming a father, divorcing, marrying again, divorcing again, and settling into ruts that dissatisfied him more and more as he aged. He thought life would have been different than it was, and it disappointed him that it wasn’t.

It was at a party one evening when this reached a natural point. Fifty-two years old, he was the oldest person at the party by a few years. He thought the others, his co-workers, had invited him because they were being polite. It was a tight group of people, and even if he thought little of the others’ intelligence and talents, he liked them as individuals. The party sounded fun, too, and he was in a funk, as he noted to himself, an abysmal black mood that he didn’t think was ever going to end. He’d endured other funks but this one seemed worse. He was thinking about going to a therapist about it, although, he tacitly informed himself, his problem was that he didn’t feel like he fit, and he felt lonely. He didn’t believe anyone particularly cared about him, not even his children, sisters or Mom. So he had no outlets for his complaints. That’s why he needed a therapist, just to have someone to talk to about what bothered him.

The party wasn’t working out. Held at Michele’s house on the coast, he was a little jealous of everyone else. They seemed happier, more satisfied and better engaged. They laughed a lot. As they did, he slipped to the edges. Drink didn’t entice him. He thought that if he left, nobody would notice, so he tested that theory by slipping out.

A misty sea breeze regaled him outside. He heard the ocean but didn’t see it. Sunset was imminent, so he walked down a street in the beach’s general direction. Seeing a sign marked, “Beaches”, he followed a trail through some grass into a sharper, damper sea breeze. The trail went up, away from the beach, which disappointed him. He thought he’d walk along the beach at sunset, but after a while, he found himself on a bluff. Tule fog dominated the ocean’s horizon. The sun was just eating into it.

His ongoing internal treatise about who he was, what he wanted, and why he was dissatisfied, was resumed, and then he remembered how he’d flown. The memory burped up out of the nothing of thought in such stark clarity that he was certain he was thinking of a book he’d read, or a movie that he’d seen. But then, with still introspection, he recalled his flight when he was eight years old and his promise to his mother not to fly. He took out his cell phone with a thought that maybe he should call Mom and ask him if he was remembering that right, or not. But then, he thought, why hadn’t it been mentioned all these years? Also, he remembered it with more intimate details that whispered, “It’s true,” to him. And although he loved his Mom, she really was about herself, her health, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren these days. She rarely actually asked him, “How are you?”

Instead he thought, why? I will just fly. Others were on the beach and the bluff, but he didn’t care. So, as the tule fog swallowed the setting sun’s dulling tangerine presence, he stepped forward, off the ground and into flight.

Others always argued about what was seen and what had happened. He would not know that. Flying felt so beautiful and natural that he immediately felt released. The sun’s last rays were warmer, and the breeze was less. Without thinking much about it, he kicked off his shoes and let them plummet to the ground. The rest of his clothes followed, piece by piece, even his cargo shorts with his wallet, and his boxer shorts, until all that he wore were his expensive sunglasses. So attired, he rose into the sky above the tule fog, into the space where the sun was still over the horizon, and continued flying toward it. Small craft were underneath. Swooping and laughing, he waved to their occupants, pleased with their reactions.

Why hadn’t he flown all these years, he asked himself. He’d been missing out an a powerful element of himself.

He continued on, climbing higher, until his sunglasses slipped off his face and he rose into the ether like a happy, unencumbered two-year old, leaving behind a huge mystery about what had happened to him. His BMW was still at Michele’s house, and they had the reports of what others had seen. There was one video of the flying man incident on someone’s cell phone but everyone thought that was faked. His shoes washed up on shore at different locations and were collected as unremarkable trash, as was his other clothing, and his wallet was found years later, hundreds of miles north of where he’d disappeared. Some claimed that was evidence that he’d been alive, hiding under a different name.

Only his mother, on hearing the news that her son was gone, understood, and accepted.

0

The Bored

I rarely have contact with such people, and their noise levels were high, so I watched and listened. Five females and four males, I guessed they were fifteen to eighteen years old. I’d seen several of them in the coffee shop before. One of the boys, with disheveled, thick blond hair, was louder and goofier than the rest. One girl looked older, exhibiting an awareness of body and attractiveness that the others didn’t. The swarthy, muscular guy with tight, short hair trying to get attached to her could have been eighteen.

Oddly, their syntax hadn’t changed much from teenagers I encountered decades ago. Many “Oh, my God,” “OMG,” and “I know, right,” spiced their cryptic exchanges, along with staccato bursts of laughter and giggles. The biggest difference between what I’d known as teenagers and this herd were their phones. Even while talking to one another, their phones were sirens calling their attention. Most held them close to their faces or bent their heads and peered intently, like oracles searching for the future.

Something, perhaps overheard, or in their demeanor, kept me focused on them because I thought they were planning something. Then one girl, white, with a veil of dark heavy hair swept over half her face, looked up at the others and smiled. Her mouth, with lips painted bright red, was partially open. “Okay, everyone ready?” she asked. “Got a number?”

“Yes,” answered the group with an impatient chorus. The oldest male seemed less enthused with this. I suspected whatever was happening was an obstacle to interfering with the girl sexually, and he’d been ready to get some. The group started calling out numbers. As the numbers were announced, another yelled, “Mine.” They handed phones to one another with squeals of discovery. A phone swap, I realized.

“Okay,” the dark-haired girl said. “Everyone swapped? Everyone swapped? Okay, then. For the next twenty-four hours, until this time tomorrow, everyone uses the phone they have now, acting like they’re that person, okay? Then we come back here tomorrow to give our phones back. And you can’t tell anyone, okay? Those are the rules.”

New phones in hand, laughing but somehow seeming like they were a little more malevolent than before, the group broke up, heading for the door in pairs and threes, leaving the oldest boy walking slowly in trail.

He was the only one without a smile.

7

Love’s Fabric

He saw him across the swirl of activity. It took some effort to press himself closer for a better look. As he made his way past an entanglement of shirts, jeans and underwear, the other spotted him.

Despite his heritage and their obvious differences, instant attraction occurred. Shedding regard for what others might make of it, the old black rayon polyester blend, a plain sock from an inexpensive store, began dancing with the young gray and black wool Gold Toe. Soon they found commonalities. Both were dress socks, although for different occasions, meant for a man, sizes ten through thirteen, and shared a calf-high design.

It wasn’t long before they were entangled in intimate acts within the dryer’s hot confines. Opprobrium rapidly followed. “You already have mates,” they were told. “Think of them. And the authorities will separate you, once the cycle ends.”

Knowing this was true, they spent as much time as possible together. Some sympathetic plaid boxer shorts approached them. “There’s a way out of here,” she said. Yes, stories of that underground dryer vent was woven through their society.

A buzzer’s warning pierced the cylinder. The cool down cycle. Little time remained. They made their decision. Love was hard to find among the clothes. They followed the secret route out, hopefully, to happiness.

It helped to be open to looking past another’s materials and age to find love, but to fully embrace it was to fully embrace the unknown, and venture into new realms.  It would be hard, but they knew it would be harder yet to give up without trying.

2

Truths, Re-discovered

I read a wonderful book during recent flights. ‘Ordinary Grace’, by William Kent Kreuger, won a few prizes since its publication. My wife recommended it to me. “It reminds me of ‘Peace Like A River’,” she said, a book we both enjoyed.

“Who wrote that?” I asked. We both came up with Leif and nothing else. We were in the car, without computers and the phone wasn’t picking up a signal, so we couldn’t look up the name. Finding the novel’s author was put on the to-do list.

Yes, ‘Ordinary Grace’ reminded me of ‘Peace Like a River’, but I also thought of some of Louise Erdrich’s novels, as well as ‘A Separate Peace’, by Thomas Knowles, and even Harper Lee’s treasure, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. Gorgeously written, it was beautiful story telling, the sort of writing that incites a riot of fears, envy and worry in me. I want to write novels like this, and after reading ‘Ordinary Grace’, I was afraid that I wouldn’t. I was afraid the current novel-in-progress (NIP) was a miserable failure.

After finishing the novel, I stewed while visiting with friends and family and suffering through the requirements of socializing. They say you’re not normal if you don’t socialize, if you fail to sit down and chat, making small talk or exchanging witticism and sparkling insights regarding movies, politics and the economy. Though I’ve lived sixty years, employing my tongue to make demands for food, answer questions, and make presentations and speeches, I remain a novice socializer. Contrary to some opinions, it’s not a choice I consciously embrace, but that’s an altogether different post.

When I was finally freed to sit down and write, I entered my NIP, prepared to revile it. Surprise instead comforted me, surprise that it wasn’t the miserable pastiche of words that I’d decided it was, because it came to me. After reading the opening chapters and correcting a sprinkle grammar, spelling and punctuation issues, I went away satisfied that I’m not the horrendous hack that I’d accused myself of being.

I continued to think about why I liked those books so much, what it was about their imagery, story-telling, pacing, arcs and characters that reduced my writing confidence. First, these stories all harkened to eras that I understood through living, television, movies or other books. That’s a helpful, useful advantage. Phrases and expressions of the times could be used without elaboration or explanation because we knew these things. 

Second, I recognized that I could love to read certain types of novels without being a writer in those genres. Third, I can create the imagery and other matters I regarded as so masterful. It is work, requiring more critical and ojbective appraisal of what I’ve written to refine, polish and improve.

Yet, another truth runs under the surface. Years ago, I learned about the window of five. Its application then was about approaching suppliers and customers, and viewing their requirements through five windows to develop deeper understanding and forge stronger relationships. I’ve since extended windows of five thinking into other realms, such as fiction writing. Without resorting to extensive diagnosis, dissection and explanation, it’s possible to utilize windows of five thinking to peel layers back and garner insights into novels.

The truth about these novels was their power to engage, involve and inspire me is intimidating because it was artfully accomplished. Regardless of the genre or author, my goal as a reader it to find books like these, because, in the window of five about what they bring to me as a reading experience, I escape now, and am transported to somewhere else. I’m moved by the characters’ experiences and I identify with their issues. I learn some lessons, often about myself and how I think and feel about different matters.

Those are also my writing goals. I want readers to be engaged in my novels, to become transported to somewhere else. I want them to be entertained, but I’d also like them to think, without me prodding them to think.

Through all this thinking, I end up where I began as a writer, wanting to write something that I enjoy, that others will hopefully enjoy. I need to satisfy myself first as a reader when I write, understanding that others’ enjoyment will depend largely on what they bring to the book, but that it’s my writing skills that will help them enter the book and live through its experiences.

I can’t say with authority that this is what it’s all about; I’m self-taught. I’m probably often profoundly incorrect about my conclusions. That’s acceptable. What’s required is to keep thinking about what’s been learned and to keep striving to learn more and improve. I will probably never been completely satisfied with anything I write, which can be useful incentive to encourage me to keep attempting to improve myself.

It’s a truth I lose and find, again and again.

0

Catsight

Catsight (noun) 1. A feline’s ability to penetrate the ordinary with its vision and apprehend an object or creature’s true nature. 2. Faculty of seeing and comprehending creatures and objects not seen by other species.

In use: 

I thought I was alone, but Stormy orchestrated a snap-roll and sat up in her bed on the piano bench. Whiskers forward, ears pricked up, and eyes wide open, her catsight was tracking something. She was looking toward the window. I looked that way and listened. Nothing but the pink moon flooding the nocturnal landscape was evident to me. I asked Stormy, “What is it? You hear a raccoon?”

That last was spoken as a prayer to seduce my runaway fears.  Stormy’s jade eyes tracked something move toward me. If it was a spirit, as suspected, I hoped it was a friendly one. Spirits were normally friendly during a pink moon. Friendly or malicious, it would probably be a long night. I was pleased with Stormy’s catsight. Without it, I’d be caught wholly unaware. At least now I was a little prepared.

0

Cheeseburger and Beer Ice Cream

I’m working on the chapter, “Ice Cream Headache”, which is part of the science fiction novel, “Long Summer”. I’ve been writing about the cheeseburger and beer ice cream that Carla once made for Brett.

Unlike many things in their society, her concoction wasn’t compiled, but was handmade. As an expert in Earth culture with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first century in America, she likes sampling ‘the real thing’. The cheeseburgers are one inch in diameter, with real cheddar, bacon, onion, mustard and pickle, as Brett likes them. After freezing them, she made ice cream with Venus Mon IPA, folding the frozen cheeseburgers into it, “Just like they did in state fairs,” she says.

She scoops it into a malt cone ‘that she made herself’. Brett restrains himself from his observations about her use of bots. She’s always using bots but claims she does things herself. In a flash into the future, he knows he eventually tells her this, causing a rift that can’t be mended.

Before letting him sample the ice cream, Carla asks if his taste buds are turned off. See, the sensory input from taste buds in the future can be controlled so you never taste anything foul by your standards. But she wants him to have the real experience, not something filtered by his taste buds and his preferences index. He lies, telling her, “Of course, it’s off,” while checking with his systems to turn it off. Then he samples the ice cream.

The sample is not the one I described, but another one, a moderately dark chocolate flavored with bourbon, with small chips of bittersweet chocolate, nuts, and marshmallows and swirls of salty caramel. This is one of the problems with being shuffled through moments of now. One thing is being experienced and then details change.

For some reason, after writing all of that, I now want a cheeseburger and beer, followed by some ice cream.

Time to go eat.

0

In The Cards

The cards, slick, dry and neat, were comfortable and familiar in his hands, Shuffling them, he naturally recalled when the cards didn’t exist. Everything had to be held in his head in that period. It was messy.

He’d invented cards, as far as he knew, and he was certain he knew the truth. After he’d used them in public a few times, others began crude imitations. Some worked. Most didn’t. Then they became used for fortune telling and games. They could be very effective for seeing hidden truths but people truly needed the ability for that. Most didn’t have those abilities.

That nobody remembered or acknowledged him as the inventor didn’t bother him. Time and reality were barely stable then. History was yet to come. History didn’t matter in the long run. Neither did time.

Today’s deck was fifty-two. He liked fifty-two cards. They shuffled well and easily fit in his pockets. Cutting the deck, he pulled a few free and spread them face down on the table. Some beer imbibed, another ordered, and then he turned the first over.

A star ship.

Been there…. No, he didn’t want to go to a star ship.

Next he turned over a hot desert, and then a castle. Alexander the Great came up on the next card. A frigate followed. All felt dissatisfying.

He sipped his beer. An IPA, its BTUs were listed as one hundred fifty. He expected a sharply bitter beer but discovered pleasant nuances and currents. The problem with here and the cards was that he didn’t know what he wanted. He’d come here searching for something different. He’d found something different. It wasn’t working out. Greed and violence were consuming honor and principles. The people and nations were becoming husks.

Yes, he’d lived in such places before.

Returning the drawn cards to the deck, he went through the picture cards, stopping when he came across a landscape that was dark, with withered plants, despite the bright sunlight depicted. With a little effort, he heard a moaning wind and felt a chill crawl into his bones. Memories of the place quickened. He’d lived there twenty lifetimes before and had no inclination to return there.

He licked his thumb and ran it over the scene. Its image blurred. Between swallows of beer, he kept licking and rubbing the card until his thumb was dark and the scene was obliterated.

Mason came by. “Do you need a refill?”

A young university student majoring in education, he liked her. Most young woman attending that university were majoring in education, sadly sexist, in his view. She was also an artist. Her acrylics sometimes decorated the pub’s walls. “Can you do me a favor, Mason?”

Although she wiped down his table, she questioned him with a brown-eyed look and flicked back her brown hair. “Anything. Well, almost anything.” She grinned. “We’ll see. What is it?”

“You’re an artist, right?”

She smiled. “I try.”

“Oh, such false modesty.” He put the smudged card face up on the table. “Put your thumb on this card and think of a place for me, somewhere you really like.”

“Really?” Suspicion and doubt were in her expression. “Why? What’s going to happen?”

“It’s new software. It’s going to create it.”

“No way.”

“Sure, way.”

Mason hooked her hair back behind her ear with her thumb. “I just put my thumb on it? Either thumb?”

“Either thumb, and then think of a place, somewhere you really like.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere.”

“Does it have to be real?”

“No.” Her questioned intrigued him. “Be as imaginative as you want.”

Smiling, Mason shrugged. “Okay.”

She put her thumb on the card. Her mouth fell open. She flicked a wide-eyed look toward me. “It feels weird, like something is crawling over my thumb.”

“Don’t worry, it’s harmless.”

“No, I’m not worried. I trust you. How long should I keep my thumb on it?”

“You’ll know when to remove it.”

She was going to say more. A start interrupted her. In less than an eye twitch, she disappeared.

Finishing his beer, he picked up the card to see where she’d gone. He usually didn’t do things like this but felt a new avenue was needed. When he saw her creation, he laughed out loud, drawing looks from the seven others sitting around the pub.

She was already forgotten here, she already lived there. Well, he wanted different. Picking up the card, he put his palm on her creation.

“There you are, Doctor,” she said.

Glancing around the TARDIS’ interior, he put the card in the deck and stuck it in his pocket. “Yes, here I am.” He wondered what he looked and sounded like, whether he was a new Doctor or an old one. “Where should we go today, Mason?”

****

With apologies to Doctor Who and Chronicles of Amber fans.

5

Civilization

Rains stopped sometime in the early hours. Still dark, the winds howled around the house, beating down tree branches with its footprints and scaring the cats into wary, still watchfulness. Dawn brokered a gray, thin cloud sky but the wind remained a torment. Although anxious, he waited until the wind faded and the sun crept out before visiting Antville.

He’d watched his videos of the place several times since making videos yesterday and the day before. Antville had survived the first storm but it had been mild. Last night’s rain loaded heavy howler probably wiped them out.

But, no. He was delighted to see how wrong he was. They’d survived, and had also expanded. There now existed small walls embracing a town of busy streets and alleys. Small fields were sown in several directions around it.

It seemed implausible that they’d planted and cultivated so many fields so quickly. They must be operating on a different speed of time, although he couldn’t understand how. The sun was the sun, shining down on them for the same number of hours that it illuminated and warmed his world. How tiny their seeds must be.

Then, remarkably, a small puff of smoke drew his eye. Boggling him, he realized, it’s a car. Two ants were in it. Other ants spread out to let it pass.

Another antmobile approached from the other direction. Two cars. The two headed toward each other at a fast ant’s pace.

He saw the accident was going to happen.

He hoped it wouldn’t, and wished there was something on his end he could do.

But the two ant vehicles met head on.

It was a slow speed. No ants seemed harmed. Crowds quickly gathered. The two ant driver emerged from their vehicles. After a few seconds of gentle touching, their antennae and legs began wild flailing. Other ants joined in.

It was amazing how quickly the ants were becoming civilized.

1

A Big Thing

He was weeding when he noticed a little thing, the little thing being a large manifestation of small, black ants. That so many ants were out there, on his gravel path that hooked around the house’s side, amused him. There were but a few weeds here. Other than the weeds, there was the path and some protective, decorative bark used as mulch.

But on a pause to wipe his brow and scratch his nose, he stared down at the next section designated for weeding. The small weeds were not random; they were orderly rows. The ants were not meandering around them, but tending the plants.

His conclusion struck him dumb. He hold onto it and nothing else in his mind for a few seconds before saying, “The ants are cultivating plants.”

This, he thought, was a big thing. He wasn’t very educated but he thought he’d read that settlements becoming agrarian was a major step forward step in human civilization. Breathing the warm air over his find, he thought about what he should do. He wondered if this scene was being repeated around the world. Retrieving his cell phone, he recorded the activity for thirty seconds and marveled about it.

He couldn’t weed there any longer; he became a little sick about what he might have already destroyed. He worried about what might happen to the ants and their farm. A storm was due tonight. Clouds were already gathering. He could imagine what a heavy rain would do to their world.

But it was their world. They’d come this far without him. He would leave them be and let the ants take control of themselves. They seemed to be doing well so far.

Besides, it gave him a good reason to abandon his weeding.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑